Rosewater (Movie Tie-in Edition)

by Maziar Bahari

  Haj Agha was quite sure that the Western media had been the main vehicle used to provoke the demonstrations, and that reformism, both before and after the election, had been fabricated by the West. To him, the green movement was driven by Westernized urbanites trying to bring decadence and moral corruption to Iran, and they couldn’t have done anything without the support of the West, especially Americans. Everything he said echoed a familiar fear of the regime. Khamenei liked to warn Iranians about a “cultural NATO” as threatening as the military one—a network of journalists, activists, scholars, and lawyers who supposedly sought to undermine the Islamic Republic from within.

  Though I knew my testimony was intended to prop up a despised regime, I told myself that I could talk about Haj Agha’s idea of velvet revolutions generally, without hurting anyone. As I was taken outside for my hava khori, or a short walk in a courtyard between two high walls, which I was afforded for an hour each day, I thought that I could even embellish and exaggerate his concepts so that they would sound more ridiculous. That way, when people heard or saw the confession, they would know it was coerced.

  When my hava khori was over, I was called inside to the communal guest bathroom for a haircut and shave. The man who cut my hair had a round face, thick glasses, and a short beard. His prison uniform was the same as mine.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “I was arrested after the demonstrations,” I answered.

  He told me that he had heard the news of the demonstrations and arrests on state television in his communal cell. The state TV called the demonstrators terrorists, and said that only those who caused death and destruction had been arrested. The barber seemed to believe everything that was said on television.

  “You don’t look like a killer,” he said. “Did you throw Molotov cocktails at the police?”

  “I’m a journalist,” I said. “I didn’t attack anyone. Why are you here?”

  “Five kilos of heroin,” he answered nonchalantly. The majority of prisoners in Iran are drug smugglers.

  I knew that possession of more than a kilo of narcotics could lead to a death sentence. “Five kilos of heroin and you’re still alive?” I marveled.

  “Yeah,” he said, as he trimmed my sideburns. “There were ten of us. All neighborhood friends. So they divided the sentence between us and none of us were sentenced to death.”

  The journalist in me was very curious. “Why did you smuggle drugs? Couldn’t you find another job?”

  “Like what?” he asked, brushing the hair from his apron. “I don’t have any education, I don’t have rich parents, and I don’t know anyone. I thought I could sell heroin, make the down payment for a car, and start working as a cabbie.”

  His simple reasons for taking such a risk were disarming. Before saying good-bye to him I had to ask a final question: “Who would you vote for if you were outside?”

  “Ahmadinejad,” he said. “Who were the other candidates?”

  The haircut was followed by a dress rehearsal for my confession. They took me to the same room where I’d had my mug shot taken on the first day. Brown Sandals arrived, carrying about ten shirts, and asked me to choose one. Most of them smelled of sweat and only a few of them fit. I settled on a blue short-sleeved shirt. Then they gave my glasses back to me.

  Rosewater was in the room, behind me. “Put on your blindfold and wait at the door,” he instructed. A few minutes later, he led me down a series of hallways, stopping at different checkpoints along the way. I’d learned to recognize certain rooms by their flooring. The room I was finally brought to was one in which I had once been interrogated. Haj Agha was waiting for me. He took my hand and shook it.

  “You know, Mr. Bahari, I really enjoyed meeting you last night,” Haj Agha said.

  “The pleasure is mine, sir,” I said as if I meant it.

  “In my line of work I have to meet many people who don’t understand ideas very easily. You seem to have an intellectual predisposition, and seem able to grasp these complicated concepts in a short time.”

  “Well, thank you, sir,” I said. “It was a very eye-opening conversation we had last night.”

  I knew I had to walk a fine line between flattering Haj Agha and mocking him. But he was so full of himself that he had no room for humor, and was oblivious to mine. “Give your answers as clearly and articulately as you can,” Haj Agha said. He added, “Of course, in your own words.”

  “Of course, sir,” I said. “But would it be possible to keep the notes for reference?” I wanted to hold the notes on my lap so that the interviewers—and hopefully the viewers—would realize that the answers I gave had been fed to me.

  “I can understand that it might be difficult to remember all that information, even for a man of your intelligence,” he said. “In order to have maximum exposure, you will be doing several interviews, one right after another. To make it easier for you, we have grouped the information in a series of questions on like topics and given them to the interviewers.” He said this so I understood that he was in charge of everything: the counterespionage unit, state television, my life. “We think this will help give the interviews a natural flow.” Haj Agha wished me good luck. “I’m really happy you’re doing this, Mr. Bahari. I don’t think the counterespionage interrogations would have been a very pleasant experience.”

  Rosewater made me stand up and led me to a room. He stood outside and directed me to remove my blindfold. The room had a sink and a bed. I guessed that this was the room where the interrogators took naps. He gave me a bar of soap and a disposable razor to shave with, and spoke to me from the hallway: “Don’t forget to give clear examples of individuals, spies who pretend to be reporters, spies who pretend to be politicians, Maziar.” This was the first time he’d called me by my first name. “Haj Agha has high hopes for you,” he said. “You can be freed in a couple of days if you perform well. We need names.” He then left me in the room to rehearse.

  You can be freed in a couple of days if you perform well. These were the only words I could hear as I read through Haj Agha’s script again. Outside the room, the camera crews were moving in their equipment. I could hear the familiar noise of tripods being set up, the lights adjusted, and tapes placed in the camera. The crew members spoke about shot sizes, testing the sound, and daily life. I used to be one of them, I thought. I missed my camera equipment. One of the cameramen complained that his wife was not helping him much in the house.

  “She works during the day and when she comes home she just watches television,” he said. “She doesn’t even iron my shirt. I even have to cook for the children.”

  “How old are they?” another guy asked.

  “My daughter is twelve. My son is ten,” said the cameraman. “And, you know, during the demonstrations after the elections I always had to carry the camera on my shoulders. My back is killing me, but my wife doesn’t care.”

  “I was lucky,” said someone else. “I was working in the studio during the demonstrations. I have four daughters. One of them cooks, another one washes, the third one cleans the house, and the fourth one irons my shirts!”

  “Lucky you!” another said. They all laughed and went on telling stories as I tried to read Haj Agha’s script.

  Suddenly the men became quiet, as if uncomfortable with the presence of a stranger in their midst. The unwelcome guest was Rosewater.

  “I guess I’m lucky that I don’t have any children,” he said, with an obvious sadness in his voice. “I don’t have any such stories to tell.”

  “Don’t say that,” someone said. “Children are the best things that can happen to you.”

  “They’re God’s gifts,” said the man with four children.

  Suddenly the door opened. I knew by then not to look up. “Put this on,” a voice instructed, and a black blindfold was thrown onto the ornately patterned Persian carpet in the middle of the room.

  Rosewater led me to Haj Agha’s office and instructed me to remove the blindfold after he left.
There were three camera crews in the room. I was told to sit in a single chair placed in front of a red curtain hung at the back. I understood from this that the “journalists” interviewing me would not be in the shots.

  The first interview was with a reporter from Channel One of the state television network. He held a photocopy of the same script I had. Talking to a prisoner under duress can be the most shameful thing a journalist will ever do. I stared at him, willing him to look me in the eye. I held the blindfold on my lap so that he could clearly see it.

  “So,” I asked him, “we’re both journalists. Do you do many interviews in prison?” He fumbled with the papers in his lap. “Oh, those?” I said. “Those are the questions you have to ask me. I have a copy of them too, as well as the answers I’m supposed to give you.”

  He finally looked up at me with an expression of helplessness in his eyes, as if telling me, “I know what I’m doing is wrong, but I have to feed my family.”

  Even though the interviewer had the script, Rosewater kept passing him more questions from behind a screen. He also guided me on how to answer. Each time I did not answer the questions according to Haj Agha’s notes, Rosewater would remind me of the counterespionage unit. “Mr. Bahari, maybe we should wrap up the interview and follow the other option?” he would say, then direct me to look at the script. “Maybe we should repeat the question again,” he would tell the TV crew.

  The second interviewer was from Press TV, the Iranian government’s English-language satellite channel, which has offices all over the world. While the Iranian government was harassing and imprisoning journalists, its reporters could work freely in Western countries. The Press TV reporter didn’t seem to have any problem with this. He was a particularly nasty character and spoke with a British accent.

  “If you’re a journalist, what are you doing here?” he asked me in English with a smirk on his face.

  I’d like to ask you the same question, I thought. I smiled at him and said, “I am here because I am a journalist.”

  No one in the third and last crew even bothered to introduce himself.

  “Where are you from?” I asked the interviewer as he sat down and hooked up his microphone.

  “We are supposed to ask the questions,” he said. I later found out that this crew was from the Fars News Agency, which is owned by the Revolutionary Guards.

  All the so-called journalists I spoke to that day were at the service of the government. A free press was an alien concept to them. To Haj Agha, Rosewater, and the journalists, this was a normal state of affairs; they were utterly convinced that the same situation existed in the rest of the world.

  I don’t know how many hours passed while I sat in that chair, answering their questions, telling them what they wanted to hear. Their questions, written by Haj Agha, were mostly about the evil Western media, and my answers, also written by Haj Agha, verified that their information was correct. As the day wore on, my thoughts drifted to Paola. I imagined her, pregnant with our baby, walking around our London neighborhood. She had on a long white maternity shirt and a floral skirt. As soon as this was over, I would go back to London, spend the summer with her, and finally get around to reading my pregnancy and parenthood books. I was really looking forward to that.

  “One characteristic of the velvet revolutions is their relation to the media. International media pave the way for such revolutions, and without their presence, these revolutions cannot happen,” I heard myself saying.

  I had very little idea of how to handle babies in their early months. Ever since Paola had told me she was pregnant, on that humid day in a small village in Cambodia, I’d been keeping a list of the baby books I wanted to read. I needed guidance on so many things: changing diapers, sleep patterns, being a good dad. The pile of books on my bedside table was tall, but the list of books I’d yet to buy was even longer.

  “Can you give us a few examples?”

  What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads. “BBC. CNN. Euronews. New York Times.”

  “Are you forgetting one?”

  My Boys Can Swim! The Official Guy’s Guide to Pregnancy. “Newsweek.”

  When it was over, they unhooked my microphone. Rosewater led me back to my cell.

  “Names, Maziar,” he said. “You forgot names.”

  I smiled. I nodded. I turned my back to him. And inside, I seethed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  I hit my head hard against the faux marble wall, again and again, ignoring the pain that crept up my neck. I deserved the pain. I had betrayed my family, my colleagues, myself. My father.

  What had I admitted to? What had I told them? I stood up and paced through the silence of my cell, and tried to speak to Maryam. After the confession, they had forgotten to take my glasses away from me again, and for the first time since I’d arrived, I could see every detail of the cell. In focus, it seemed less clinical—less impenetrable. The walls were covered in tiny, spidery cracks I had missed before, as well as dozens of scribbles: Your interrogator is more afraid of you than you are of him, that is why he forces you to wear a blindfold. This too will pass. Moghavem bash.” Be strong.

  Near where the wall met the floor, I found dozens of straight lines, marking the number of days different prisoners had spent in my cell: Twenty-two days. Ninety days. It had already been ten days, and I couldn’t begin to imagine spending even another night in this place. But, I thought with relief, I didn’t have to. The confession was worth it, even if I felt I’d let everyone down. Now I could go back to London, and be with Paola, and nothing was more important to me than that.

  It was hard to gauge how much time I spent pacing the small cell—maybe several minutes, maybe hours—but eventually, I fell to the floor again and curled the blanket around myself. I needed to sleep so that I’d be as alert as possible when the prison guard came the next morning to take me back down the same steps I’d climbed that first day in Evin. I pictured it all as I drifted toward sleep—getting my clothes back, seeing the fullness of the sky, finally calling Paola from my cell phone—and even in my dreams, I expected to hear a knock on my cell door signaling that the process had begun, and I could go home.

  · · ·

  But that knock on the door didn’t come.

  For several days, they ignored me. Why don’t they interrogate me anymore? I thought. Have they forgotten about me? The only human contact I had was with the prison guards who silently slid my food through the slot in my cell door or led me out for my daily walk and to use the toilet. Gradually I even came to miss Rosewater and his idiotic questions. Every day, I waited for him to call for me. I sat on the floor, listening for footsteps, and passed the time by counting things in my head. How many schools had I attended? How many houses had I lived in? How many women had I dated? How many cities had I visited?

  The knock finally came on the fourth night, well past midnight.

  “Specialist time,” I heard a guard say from outside my cell, in a sleepy voice. I’d barely slept since the confession, and I jumped up to take the blindfold he extended through the bottom slot. It was Brown Sandals. I was so happy that they’d finally come for me—that I was going to see Rosewater—that I momentarily forgot the rules. “Don’t the interrogators have regular working hours?” I joked to Brown Sandals, before immediately regretting it. I didn’t know what his reaction would be, and I didn’t want any problems before getting released.

  “Tell me about it,” he replied. “But don’t forget that they wake me up, too. I was having a nice dream.”

  This was a welcome surprise: a friendly exchange with a guard. It could only be a good sign, I thought. They were preparing to see me off, and no longer considered me a threat. I went with it, knowing that the fastest way for two men to bond is through sexual innuendos; it doesn’t matter whether you’re in an office in New York or a notorious Iranian prison.

  “Don’t worry,�
�� I said, “you’ll get back to whoever you were dreaming about as soon as you go back to sleep.”

  Brown Sandals laughed. “Don’t be naughty now. I only have clean, wholesome dreams.” He sounded like many jolly, middle-aged government employees I’d talked to in the past. He could have been an accountant, or someone in charge of a small local park. I wished I had talked to him earlier. It was only later that I learned that even though the Revolutionary Guards have their own detention center inside Evin, the prison guards work for the judiciary and are not as indoctrinated as the members of the Revolutionary Guards.

  He led me through the courtyard toward the building where I had been interrogated. I figured that they wanted to give me one last talking to, and warn me against any further reporting in Iran, before they let me go. I recognized Rosewater from his slippers and, of course, his smell.

  “Hello, Mr. Bahari,” Rosewater said. “Long time no see. Are you ready for freedom?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered quietly. I didn’t want to sound too enthusiastic. “I’ve been waiting for you.”