by Marina Nemat
She sighed and looked down.
“Maman, don’t make me go back.” I was sobbing.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
I ran to my room.
The next morning when my mother came into my room, my eyes were almost swollen shut from a night of crying. It was as if all my grief and frustration had broken loose. My mother stood next to the door of the balcony, watching the street.
“You can stay home,” she said, “but only for a year.” She had worked it out with my father.
Aram called me one night in early September to say good-bye; he was leaving the country the next day. I had a feeling he was crying.
“I’ll miss you. Take care of yourself,” I said in a controlled voice. I had not told him about Andre, and I decided it was time he knew. So I explained that I had met someone at my church whom I liked very much.
He was surprised and asked me how long it had been. I told him that Andre and I had met in the spring.
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I thought we told each other everything,” he said.
“I wasn’t sure about it. I didn’t want to become too close to anyone ever again.”
He understood.
All males had to fulfill their military duty after finishing high school unless they managed to enter a university or if the government officially exempted them for medical or other reasons. Aram’s father had obtained an exemption for him because his brother was considered a martyr and he was his parents’ only living child. He didn’t have to go to war because his family had already given a son. He found it ironic that his dead brother was saving his life. The government had issued Aram an official passport, and he was legally allowed to leave the country.
Sarah called me one day in November 1981 and told me she had to see me right away. Her voice was shaking, but she wouldn’t tell me more on the phone. I ran to her house to find her waiting for me at the door. Her parents and brother were not home. We went to her room, and she dropped on her bed. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.
She told me that two days earlier, revolutionary guards had gone to Gita’s house to arrest her, but she had not been home, so they had arrested her mother and two sisters and had told her father that if Gita didn’t give herself up in a week, one of her sisters would be executed. So Gita went to Evin and gave herself up, and they let her mother and sisters go. “Marina…you know how stubborn she is. They’ll kill her. She doesn’t know how to hold her tongue. And we’re probably next. Well, Sirus is next for sure, but he says that anyone who has openly said anything against the government is in danger of arrest.”
Sirus was right. I knew they would come for us sooner or later. They knew whom to look for. They knew where we lived. I had never told anyone about the list, because I didn’t know who else was on it, and I didn’t want to frighten anybody or to get Khanoom Bahman in trouble.
“Yes, we’re probably next. It’s only a matter of time, and there’s nothing we can do. We can’t run. They’ll hurt our parents if we do,” I said.
“We can’t just sit here and wait.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I could at least tell my parents,” said Sarah.
“They’ll panic. There’s nothing anyone can do, unless you can all disappear together. If I tell my parents, they won’t take me seriously. Don’t worry too much. It can’t be that bad. People exaggerate. We haven’t done anything. Gita was really involved with her group. Why would they even bother with us?”
“I guess you’re right. We shouldn’t panic. We haven’t done anything.”
Fifteen
AFTER HE PROPOSED TO ME, Ali walked me back to 246. My friends surrounded me as soon as I entered the room, wanting to know what had happened. I told them that Ali was back and that he just wanted to see how I was doing. I could tell from the look on their faces that they didn’t believe me. They were worried, but there was nothing anyone could do to help.
I didn’t want my roommates to know about Ali’s proposal. I felt guilty and ashamed. I had put Andre and my parents in danger. Having no doubt that Ali’s threats were serious, I had to do what he wanted me to do.
I remembered when Arash and I had kissed. It had been the best feeling in the world because I loved Arash. Was Ali going to kiss me? I wiped my mouth with my sleeve, and a cold sweat covered my body.
“They can kill me if they want, but I don’t want to be raped,” Taraneh had said.
Even though I still didn’t exactly know what rape meant, I told myself that this wasn’t rape. Ali wanted me to marry him. This was okay…No, it wasn’t…Why was I even thinking about it? I knew I had to do it.
Marriage was supposed to be forever. Could I live with Ali forever? Maybe Ali had a temporary marriage in mind. I had heard that there was something called sigheh in Islam, a temporary marriage that could last from minutes to years. I also knew that in a temporary marriage, the woman had no rights whatsoever. This didn’t make any difference in my case, because I was a prisoner and had no rights to start with. Maybe he just wanted me to be his wife for a little while and then would let me go. If so, no one needed to know. I had to keep this marriage a secret for as long as I possibly could.
Hours went by, and I couldn’t eat, think, or talk to anyone. I couldn’t even cry. All I could do was pace up and down the hallway during the day and pass out from exhaustion at night.
Finally, on the third day, I went to talk to Sister Maryam. She knew about Ali’s proposal, so I didn’t need to worry about giving away my secret. I told her I didn’t want to marry Ali. She said that every marriage in her family had been arranged, and the women never wanted to marry the man their parents had chosen for them. Her own mother hated the man she was supposed to marry, but she ended up being very happy with him. I said I didn’t know how happiness would be possible under such circumstances. I explained to her that in my family, women chose their husbands themselves. She said that I didn’t live with my family any longer and I had to remember that Ali had given me new life. In her opinion, I was being unreasonably difficult.
My three days were over. At the beginning of the fourth day, I was called over the loudspeaker. Ali was waiting for me in the office.
“You don’t need the blindfold,” he said. “We’ll talk in my car.”
From the office, we entered a windowless hallway filled with fluorescent light. Until this moment, except for the 246 and the interrogation room, I had never seen the inside of Evin. It had been a black nightmare of angry voices, lashes, screams, firing guns, and the whisper of rubber slippers brushing against linoleum and stone floors. Yet, the hallway that now lay in front of me could have been any hallway, maybe in a regular government building or school. I followed Ali down the stairs, normal stairs like any other. A couple of revolutionary guards passed us on their way up and bowed slightly to Ali, saying “salam aleikom,” ignoring me completely. He bowed in return and greeted them. Once we reached the bottom of the stairs, Ali opened a gray metal door, and we stepped outside. The normalcy of what I saw shocked me. Evin reminded me of the campus of the University of Tehran on Enghelab Avenue. The main difference between the two was that Evin had more open spaces. The other difference was that a see-through metal fence encircled the University of Tehran, but Evin was surrounded by tall brick walls, lookout towers, and armed guards. Clusters of tall, ancient maple trees were visible here and there, and in the north, the Alborz Mountains towered over us.
Ali led me along a narrow, paved road and around the corner of a gray building to where a black Mercedes was parked in the shadow of a few trees. He opened the front passenger door, and I stepped in. The car smelled brand-new. Sweat dripped down my forehead. He sat in the driver seat and put his hands on the steering wheel. I noticed how long and slim his fingers were, and his nails were clean and carefully trimmed. He had the hands of a pianist, and yet he was an interrogator.
“What’s your decision?” he asked, staring at a string of amber-colored prayer b
eads hanging from the rearview mirror.
A sparrow flew off a tree and disappeared in the blue vastness of the cloudless sky.
“Is this a temporary marriage you have in mind?” I asked.
He looked at me, surprised.
“This isn’t a passing physical attraction I feel toward you. I want you for good.”
“Ali, please—”
“Is your answer yes or no? And don’t forget about the consequences. I’m very serious about this.”
“…I’ll marry you,” I said, feeling like I was being buried alive.
He smiled. “You’re a sensible girl. I knew you’d make the right choice. I promise that you won’t regret your decision. I’ll take good care of you. I have to make the necessary arrangements and speak to my parents. It will take a little time.”
I wondered what his parents would think about his marrying a Christian prisoner. And how about my family? How would they react?
“Ali, I don’t want my family to know anything about the marriage yet,” I said. “I’ve never been close to my parents. I know they won’t understand the situation and will just make it harder.”
I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer.
“Marina, please don’t cry. You don’t have to tell anyone, not until you’re ready, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes. I understand that this is hard on you. I’ll do everything I can to make it easier.”
As long as my friends and family didn’t know about this marriage, the girl I had been before Evin had a chance of survival. She could exist, dream, hope, and love even though she had to hide inside the new me: the wife of an interrogator. I wasn’t sure how long she would be able to live like this, but I was going to protect her. She was the real me, the one my parents and Andre loved and wanted back.
Ali returned me to 246, and I asked Sister Maryam if it were possible for her to send me to one of the rooms downstairs. I didn’t want to explain anything to my friends. Upstairs and downstairs were completely separate, and the prisoners couldn’t interact with one another. I wanted to be left alone where nobody knew me. She consented and called the representative of room 7 to bring my belongings to the office, and I moved to room 6 on the first floor, which like my old room on the second floor, was home to about fifty girls.
Soon after this, my health began to deteriorate. I threw up every time I ate, and migraine attacks paralyzed me. With a blanket pulled over my head, I lay in a corner most of the time, unable to sleep. My thoughts ran in circles and found their way to Taraneh. How I missed her. Since they took her away, I had avoided thinking about her, not wanting to imagine the details of the last hours of her life. Why did we turn our backs on reality when it became too much to bear? I should have told Sister Maryam that I wanted to die with Taraneh. I should have tried to stop her execution. I knew I wouldn’t have succeeded, but I should have tried. Wasn’t an innocent life worth a fight, even if this fight was condemned to failure? I was responsible for her death, because I had accepted her fate. But why had I remained silent? Was I afraid of dying? I didn’t believe this was the case. Maybe the reason was hope; I hoped to go home one day. My parents and Andre were waiting for me. How could I possibly choose death if it hadn’t called my name? Right and wrong became intertwined, and I didn’t know which way to go.
I stood in the middle of darkness. An open field with black hills surrounding it. Taraneh stood next to me, wearing her lucky red sweater, staring ahead. I touched her hand, and she looked at me with her amber eyes. Ali emerged from the night. He walked to us and pointed a gun to my head. I couldn’t move. With her small hand, Taraneh grabbed Ali’s wrist. “No,” she said. Ali put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Taraneh’s blood covered my skin. I screamed.
I woke with a scream trapped in my throat. My lungs refused to inhale. A face appeared over me, vague and blurry. Loud, incomprehensible voices had filled the room. But when there is no air, nothing matters except finding it. I tried to reach out and grab something, anything that might save me from suffocating. I tried to say I couldn’t breathe. The face…it was Sister Maryam’s. She was saying something, but her words seemed to come from far away. The room faded, as if someone had dimmed the light and turned it off.
I opened my eyes to see Ali talking to Doctor Sheikh, who was wearing a khaki military uniform. I could breathe now. We were surrounded by white curtains. I was lying on a clean, comfortable bed. A white scarf covered my hair and a thick white sheet covered my body. From a plastic bag hanging from a metal hook, a clear liquid dripped into a transparent tube connected to my hand. Doctor Sheikh was the first to notice I was awake.
“Hello, Marina. How do you feel?” he said.
I couldn’t remember what had happened, and I didn’t know where I was. The doctor told me I was extremely dehydrated and had been brought to the prison hospital. Then he disappeared through a small gap in the curtain. I looked at Ali, and he smiled.
“I’m going home to bring you some of my mother’s food. It can cure anything. Now try to rest. I’ll wake you as soon as I’m back. Do you want anything? Can I bring you anything from the outside?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you were so ill?”
“I really don’t know what happened.”
“Your roommates told Sister Maryam you had been throwing up for a few days.”
Tears filled my eyes. “I’ve always had stomach problems. It was nothing new. Just a little worse than usual. But I didn’t think much of it. Really. I thought it would go away. The nightmares and the headaches. I tried…” My chest began to tighten.
Ali bent closer to me, putting his hands on the side of the bed.
“Don’t worry. It’s okay. Everything is fine. You were sick. That’s all. Now, you can rest and get better. Take a deep breath. A very deep one.”
I did.
“The doctor will give you something to help you sleep. You need rest. And there will be no headaches and no nightmares. Okay?”
Ali’s voice woke me. He was calling my name, holding a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup. It smelled of lemons. At home, I always put lemon juice in my chicken soup. He told me that the doctor believed fresh air and a change of scenery would be good for me, and he offered to take me for a drive. I asked him if he meant outside Evin, and he said he did and told me to finish my soup so we could go.
As soon as I was finished eating, he helped me into a wheelchair and then pulled aside the white curtain surrounding us. We were in a large room; many white curtains had divided it into enclosed sections. Two of these curtains had been pulled aside, revealing two beds, one of which was empty, and a girl about my age slept in the other. She wore a navy headscarf, and a thick white sheet covered her body. There were no windows. Ali pushed my wheelchair through a door, and we entered a narrow hallway. Again, he had not blindfolded me. He opened a door, and I squinted against the brightness of the outside world. He guided my wheelchair down a ramp.
The sky looked like an upside-down sea; foamy waves of clouds floated toward the horizon. We passed a few blindfolded women wearing dark-blue chadors. In single file, they followed a male revolutionary guard. Each woman hung on to the chador of the person in front of her. The revolutionary guard leading them held a length of rope in his hand, the end of which was tied to the handcuff of the woman in the front; he dragged her along and the rest followed. A few days earlier, I had been like them. Now, I had Ali’s protection, and things had changed. I felt ashamed. I had betrayed them. I had betrayed everyone.
On our right, tall maple trees blocked my view, and on the left was a two-story brick building behind which Ali’s Mercedes was parked. Once at the car, I realized I didn’t want to be alone with him. Fear had crawled under my skin.
“Here, let me help you,” he said and took my left arm and tried to pull me up. I shook him off.
“Marina, please don’t be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you. I’ve never hurt you.”
He was right; he had neve
r really hurt me.
“Trust me. Even when we’re married, I’ll be considerate and gentle. I’m not a monster.”
I didn’t have a choice but to trust him. My muscles were raw and weak, and I felt dizzy as I stood up but managed to get into the car without losing my balance. At the exit, he waved at the guards, they opened the gates, and we simply drove out of Evin. I was shocked to see how easy it had been for him to take me out; he was probably far more important than I had imagined.
The street was empty and lifeless, but as we moved farther from the prison, it came to life. There were people, houses, and stores. In an empty lot, a group of young boys ran after a plastic ball, their faces covered with a flour-like layer of dust. Women carried their groceries home, and men stood around and chatted here and there. All the simple things people did seemed like miracles to me.
“You’re very quiet. What are you thinking about?” Ali asked after about half an hour.
“About life and how normal it seems out here.”
“I promise you that although it will take some time, we’ll eventually have a normal life. I’ll go to work and provide for you. You’ll take care of the house, go shopping, and visit friends and family. You’ll be happy.”
How could he speak about his job in such a casual way? He wasn’t a teacher or a doctor or a mechanic.
“My friends are either dead or in prison, and I’m not sure if my family will ever want to see me,” I said.
“You’ll make new friends. And why do you think your family would so strongly disapprove of our marriage?”
“For one thing, because of your job.”
“Marina, trust me; there’s hope. They’ll see how much I care for you. I’ve had to overcome many obstacles just to keep you alive, and there are many people who are against our marriage. There are many more obstacles for me to overcome, but I’ll take care of every problem. Your family will see the good life I’ll provide for you, and they’ll change their minds. We’ll face your family together, whenever you’re ready.”