Rosewater (Movie Tie-in Edition)

by Maziar Bahari

  Over the next few weeks, my father and Maryam stayed with me during the interrogations, and gave me the confidence to push aside my fears and try to steer our discussions away from me. Instead of talking about my alleged spying, we talked about aspects of life in the West that I knew Rosewater wanted to explore—sex, of course, but also the welfare system, mortgages, and even the price of a secondhand car. With each day, I felt him becoming more and more relaxed with me, which meant far less frequent beatings.

  I began to think that he was willing to allow me to direct the discussions because he simply had no other questions left to ask me. By now, I was sure, he knew that I was not guilty of the crimes he’d so badly wanted to believe I’d committed when I’d first arrived at Evin. I hoped the reason his questions about my alleged illegal activities had subsided was that I was closer to being released. Now, it seemed, his time spent with me was a bit of a reprieve for him—he was even beginning to enjoy my company, and taking a break from beating and insulting other prisoners.

  “Mazi, what would you write about me if you had the chance?” he asked one morning.

  “I would love to do an interview with you, if that’s possible,” I answered. I really meant it.

  “You’re so diplomatic, but this isn’t an interrogation,” he said. “I want to know what questions you would ask me.”

  I, of course, couldn’t tell him the truth: What makes a man choose a job that includes beating other men, making threats to end their lives, and playing mind games with them? Especially a man whose father endured all of this. “I think it’s important for young people to know your opinion about different issues so they don’t end up like me, being interrogated by you.”

  “Who do you think this interview will help?” Rosewater asked. “It can only help the enemy, the Americans and Zionists, to know our secrets.”

  “Well, it may help the enemy, but it can also help people to gain a better understanding of what the government thinks.” I hesitated, then continued: “I had all the necessary accreditations and took all the recommended precautions, but you still arrested me and put me through interrogations. I don’t want that to happen to other people.”

  “Mazi, don’t think that just because I’m not asking you about the crimes you’ve committed means we’re ready to let you off the hook,” he said unconvincingly. “We have our think tanks, and they are conducting research about you.”

  He then walked away from me and remained silent for a few minutes, deeply inhaling the fresh morning air. There was a light breeze that reminded me of London.

  “Look at this,” Rosewater said. I had been sitting facing the wall, without my blindfold, and I turned toward him. He suddenly, and perhaps out of habit, slapped me hard across one cheek. “Don’t turn your face, I said.”

  “But you said, ‘Look at this.’ ”

  “Haven’t you learned that you shouldn’t turn your head even if I make a mistake?” he demanded, before calming down. “I’m just saying, look at these people who come to work at this time. It’s eight-twenty and they’re supposed to be here by seven-thirty. I can’t understand how some people can be so unprincipled. No one has forced them to take this job. They’ve chosen it.”

  My face was stinging with pain. Rosewater seemed to be genuinely upset about other torturers slacking off at work. “We have a tough job, Mazi. We have to work long hours, as you know. We have to travel around the country, and sometimes we sleep in the office for only a couple of hours before going back to work. So many wives of my colleagues have asked for a divorce because they couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Rosewater pulled up a chair and sat behind me. I could sense a trace of regret in his tone. He told me that his wife was different from the wives of other interrogators; that she understood that he had dedicated himself to Islam and the return of Imam Mahdi and therefore she didn’t object to his long working hours, which kept him away from home.

  “I kiss her hands and her feet because she’s so good to me,” Rosewater told me. “From the moment we went to her house and she served me and my family tea and sweets, I knew that she was right for me.” In arranged marriages in Iran, it is customary that after the family of the boy asks the family of the girl for her hand, they go to her house to discuss the arrangements with her parents. The girl shows her face only once, when she serves tea and sweets to the guests. “The moment I took the tea from the tray and our eyes met, I knew that she would be a faithful wife,” Rosewater whispered.

  He took a Kleenex and blew his nose quietly. “I have a surprise for you,” he told me. “I’m going to let you talk to your wife one more time.”

  He didn’t say anything as he held my arm and led me to the phone, but I could hear him inhale heavily as he repeated the words “La elaha ella Allah”: There’s no God but Allah.

  I managed to get through to Paola at once, but the international calling card Rosewater was using had credit for only two minutes of conversation. I quickly asked Paola if she had found out the sex of the baby.

  “Yes!” she giggled. “What do you think?”

  “Darling, we only have two minutes—a boy or a girl?”

  “It’s a girl. I wish you could see the pictures from the scan. It’s a beautiful healthy girl.”

  “Marianna Maryam Bahari,” I told Paola. “I can’t wait to be with you and Marianna.” I couldn’t control my emotions when I mentioned Marianna’s name.

  “You’ll be home soon, Mazi,” Paola said, trying to calm me down. “I’m sure you’ll be home soon.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  On the morning of October 6, I was lying on my back in my cell and cycling with my legs in the air. I was pretending to ride my bike. I had taken a detour through Hampstead Heath and Highgate, and was just coming down through Belsize Park toward Primrose Hill. I was full of energy.

  I hadn’t seen Rosewater for a few days. Typically, a few days without human contact had left me feeling anxious and desperate, but this day, remembering the sound of Paola’s voice, and the work I now knew she was doing on my behalf, I practiced feeling better. The day before, for the first time since my arrest, I had been allowed a newspaper. Reading something besides my interrogation notes had given me energy, even though it was Kayhan (“The Universe”), the hard-liners’ mouthpiece. I devoured every single word in the paper. But most importantly, after months of designing my own crossword puzzles, I finally had access to a professional one. I studied it for hours, trying to learn from it. That morning, as I cycled toward Primrose Hill, thinking of the post-ride coffee that awaited me and designing a new crossword puzzle in my head, there was a commotion in the hallway. I stood up to listen, and heard prison guards telling some of the prisoners to pack up and clean their rooms. Blue-Eyed Seyyed opened my door and gave me a blindfold.

  “Ostad Bahari”—Maestro Bahari—“we’re gonna miss you,” he said.

  “What do you mean? Are they going to release me?”

  “Na baba, hol nasho. You wish. You’re going to the communal cell.”

  I had heard that when they transferred someone to a communal cell, it typically meant that his case had moved from one stage to another. I was still under investigation, and, as far as I knew, there’d been no change in my status. Blue-Eyed Seyyed led me through Evin’s labyrinthine complex, to a small alleyway with a building at the end of it. I had my blindfold on, but by then I’d learned how to raise my head and look through the gap beneath it without being caught. The guard opened a large blue gate and closed the door behind me.

  “Can I take my blindfold off?” I asked.

  “Of course you can,” said a man standing in front of me. I removed it and saw that it was Mohammad Atrianfar, the former deputy minister of interior who had praised Khamenei’s greatness in the press conference after the show trial. The fifty-six-year-old Atrianfar had been a revolutionary since his student days in the early 1970s. After the revolution, he became part of the Islamic government’s security and military apparatus. I had interview
ed Atrianfar several times and had always enjoyed his stories about traveling to Libya and Syria to buy contraband arms during the Iran-Iraq War, when Iran was embargoed by most of the world. He kissed me on both cheeks. “Welcome, Maziar. Isn’t this great? Coming here has got to be a good omen. I think we’ll be freed soon.” He stroked his thick gray beard. “You have to make sure that you feed the rat,” he told me.

  I assumed “feeding the rat” meant something like bribing the guards or being nice to them. “Feed the rat?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said with a big smile. “We have a big rat that comes to the courtyard, and we take turns feeding it.”

  I looked around my new environment. The cell was surrounded by high walls and had two large windows and a glass door—all of which were covered by metal grates. It also had its own small courtyard, kitchen, bathroom, and shower—even a television set. This shared cell was definitely an improvement over solitary confinement, but it was also obvious that we’d be more scrutinized here: two security cameras, mounted in the courtyard, pointed at the cell, and I noticed several microphones placed throughout the room as well.

  There were five individual beds in the cell, with proper mattresses, clean sheets, and blankets. For the first time in more than three months, I even had a real pillow. The walls were made of three-inch bricks, and the courtyard was covered with polished gray cement. I later learned that the cell was part of the block that belonged to the internal affairs unit of the Revolutionary Guards. It was here that they kept high-ranking commanders who had been arrested on various charges.

  Atrianfar told me that he had been moved to the communal cell two days earlier, and in the meantime, he had transformed it into a cozy studio apartment, anticipating the arrival of his new cellmates. He had tea and sweets waiting; he had prepared them himself. We could give the guards a shopping list for fruits and vegetables twice a week, he explained; the money was then deducted from the cash they’d taken away from us on the day of our arrest.

  I later learned that since a couple of days before Ramadan, I’d been considered one of twelve VIP prisoners. Not long after I arrived in the new cell, Saeed Shariati, the spokesman for the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the main reformist party, which had supported Mousavi during the presidential election, walked in. I’d met him on several previous occasions, and it was nice to see another friendly face. But after hugging Shariati hello, I noticed how broken and distressed he looked. During his imprisonment, he had apologized publicly to Khamenei and had stated that the reformists had pursued the wrong policies prior to the election. I could see the apologetic, dejected expression in his eyes, and wondered if others detected the same look in my own.

  The next prisoner to join us that day was another reformist politician, Feizollah Arabsorkhi, a handsome man with a kind face and big eyes. Arabsorkhi was a leader of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization (MIRO), a semiclandestine reformist party whose heads had been among the founding members of the Revolutionary Guards. As some of the most extremist and radical activists at the beginning of the revolution, the founders of the MIRO were close to Khomeini.

  That evening, my cellmates and I sat on the floor of our new home, sharing tea. As we talked, I detected regret in the eyes of both Arabsorkhi and Atrianfar. Both of them were now sorry for the part they’d played in creating a regime that was a far cry from their youthful ideals. They had believed that anyone and anything could be sacrificed on the path to establishing an Islamic state, but with time, they had become witnesses to the transformation of that state into a corrupt, tyrannical regime. They were victims of their own making.

  Unlike Atrianfar, Shariati, and me, Arabsorkhi had refused to apologize and appear on television. He said that because of this, his interrogators had practically abandoned him, and had left him in limbo for weeks. He wasn’t sure what charges were going to be brought against him. But though he was the only one of us who had refused to work with his captors, he still believed that the Islamic regime could be reformed. Atrianfar and Shariati, on the other hand, had each pledged their allegiance to the regime in their televised confessions, seeming to know that the system was rotten to the core and that it wasn’t worth their lives to try to reform it. They were no longer risking their lives for their ideals—they just wanted to get out of prison. We were all caught in that uncomfortable zone between trying to save our lives and betraying ourselves.

  Mohsen Safaei Farahani was our fifth cellmate. Farahani had been a member of parliament, deputy minister, and the head of Iran’s football federation. When Safaei entered the room later that night, he gave me a sad smile. We had met on a few previous occasions, and he had also known my father. In fact, he was the revolutionary who’d replaced him as CEO of Mana Construction Company after the revolution. “How are you, Mr. Bahari?” Safaei asked. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you after your father passed away.”

  Safaei had gotten to know my father well after taking over his job. I remember him calling our house seeking my father’s help in managing the company’s ten thousand employees. Even though my father was bitter about getting kicked out of his job for no good reason, he still felt responsible for the company he had built from scratch. My father spent hours explaining the company’s operations and personnel.

  Unlike other new revolutionary leaders, Safaei wanted to learn from the experience of others, and this impressed my father. But he was still surprised by the naïveté of Safaei and many of his generation, how they thought they could change the world within a few years.

  “It’s going to take a few decades for them to learn,” my father would say after each call with Safaei.

  In 2000, when Safaei was elected as a reformist member of the parliament and spoke out against the hard-liners in the government, my father said with a sad smile and even sadder cynicism, “It took the reformists two decades to learn from their mistakes, but I’m sure they will be forced out of the government and will be replaced by a new group of idiots.” My father’s prophecy came true in 2005, when Ahmadinejad came to power and stripped Safaei and other reformists of all official positions.

  I sat next to Safaei on the carpeted floor. He held my hand in his as he asked about my father, and I could sense his regret for dedicating his life to a government that had paid him back by putting him behind bars.

  I asked him if he knew why we had all been transferred to a communal cell and, more importantly, why I had been put in the same cell with four politicians.

  “They had a scenario that didn’t work,” Safaei said as he stretched his back. “We were all arrested according to a plan, a scenario. But their plan was too complicated for the Revolutionary Guards to execute, and it didn’t work.”

  Over the next several hours, happy and relieved to have others to speak with, we talked incessantly about the circumstances behind our arrests. We eventually came to the shared conclusion that the Guards had been planning the arrests months in advance and the postelection turmoil had provided a perfect excuse to execute them. Trusting in Khamenei’s words to the very letter, the Guards leadership truly believed that the green movement was led by a few dozen reformists who were aided by the West. By arresting those reformists and those who connected them with the West, the Guards’ higher-ups thought, they could finish people’s demands for reforms and put a stop to the greens.

  As we spoke, I came to understand that among the VIP prisoners, Safaei and I had suffered more physical abuse than the others. Some of my new cellmates had heard Rosewater’s screams and insults while he was interrogating me, and had wondered what was going on. Safaei’s physical torture was an anomaly among my cellmates; none of them had been beaten. They were all religious people, and their “religious” torturers had known how to put psychological pressure on them. They had threatened to harm the prisoners’ loved ones and friends and had even fabricated lies about the private lives of reformist leaders. Some interrogators had gone further and forced a number of women into making false confessions, swearing
that they’d had illicit sexual relations with the prisoners, a crime punishable by death.

  · · ·

  One of the real luxuries of the communal cell was the small television which showed the six main state channels. On the second day in the new cell, I was watching football when Rosewater summoned me to the interrogation room. I wished I could ask him to wait. It was the first time in months—since even before my arrest—that I had had a chance to watch a game. This one was a repeat showing of my favorite team, Liverpool, playing against Chelsea, but I didn’t know the final score, so it felt as if I were watching it live.

  Unfortunately, I had no choice in the matter. In the interrogation room, Rosewater sat me in the chair, opened the window, and asked, “Digestive or orange flavor?” Without waiting for my answer, he placed a cup of tea, a few sugar cubes, and a saucer holding some biscuits on the writing arm of my chair.

  “To start with,” he said in his most baritone voice, “I’d like to apologize for everything that’s happened so far.”

  Apologize? I didn’t know what to say. I nodded politely.

  “You know interrogation is a difficult process. This is the beginning of a new phase.” From beneath my blindfold I saw Rosewater take a biscuit from my plate. “May I?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, my voice revealing the anticipation I felt that this nightmare might finally be coming to an end.

  “Our think tanks and several of our colleagues have been investigating your case, and I’m glad to say that we now know you’re not a spy. And the holy Islamic system is going to treat you with kindness.”

  I had thought that I’d feel elated when I finally heard these words; instead, all I felt was furious. So, it’s all water under the bridge? I thought. You bloody bastard. All the beatings? All the insults? I remained quiet.