by Ava Homa
“Ly-ly-ly . . .” He sang along.
“Ly-ly-ly . . .” I hummed, buried my face in the diary, inhaled its pulpy scent. Despite the pain he’d documented, Chia’s words were healing, exuding love and humanity.
I sat on the sofa where Chia used to sit. There was no new place or person to visit. No lead. I hugged one of the cushions, clawed at it.
Chia’s book was still on the coffee table. I played and replayed my last video of him that I’d saved on my laptop. “Oh, dreams matter, Leila gian. Desire matters. Take them seriously.”
Through the slow dial-up internet I got online and, using proxy servers to break through the filtration of the websites that the government had censored, I logged on to my Yahoo account and noticed a new email from an unknown sender.
Leila,
Tried finding you at the bookstore, but you weren’t there. C. and I were captured together; we were filming a gov. truck running over protestors. We were held in custody at Ettela’at but were separated after three weeks. I was released yesterday. He should be released soon too. I might be able to trace him. It seems he was transported to Evin, then to Sanandaj prison, and later to Evin again. Will find out and report back. Stay strong.
I reread the three-day-old email, wishing the crescendo of my heart would let me concentrate. I read the email yet another time before I scrolled down far enough to notice a postscript.
P.S. No words can express how much I regret having taken him out of your home that day. It’s all my fault.
K.
This was a scam. This was not Karo’s usual email address. He would have certainly phoned to inform me, to save me from the three extra days in purgatory. If he was concerned the phones were tapped, he would have shown up at the door. He might have, though. I’d barely been home.
After pressing the elevator button again and again, I ran up the stairs two at a time to the twelfth floor and pounded on Karo’s door. There was no answer. Only then did I notice that in my rush, I had neglected to wear a headscarf. I ran back down the stairs, covered my hair, and wrote a note to slide under Karo’s door. “Home all day. Must MUST talk ASAP. Dying here.”
Chia was alive. Torn between a mild sense of relief and an unleashed animal savagery, I clawed at my hair and rhythmically beat my head against the wall.
Oh, how I needed to hug someone, but the only person I had in Tehran was a grandmother buried in a graveyard miles away from my place.
“Joanna. Joanna. Joanna. Chia is alive,” I cried into the phone. “His friend is released. He emailed me. Once Chia’s assigned to a prison, he can contact me; I can visit him. He will be released sooner or later. Tell Shiler.” What was the punishment for filming a government murder scene? How many years in prison? How many lashes?
“Avina min! What a relief,” she said. “His friend told you all that?”
I paused. “No.”
“But you know somehow?”
My heart skipped a beat or two. Then I burst into sobs. I couldn’t be certain. Was I deluding myself once again?
“Leila gian, trust your heart. You knew all this time that he was alive when no one else did. And you were right.”
I opened the window and shouted to the street: “He is alive. My brother is alive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The tall stone walls of Evin Prison, topped with their spiky barbed-wire barrier, became a common sight for me. The golden and scarlet leaves, whether hanging or falling, gradually retinted the city from green to orange and yellow. I marched back and forth on the street in front of the prison, searching for a solution and hoping for a miracle.
Shiler was training in the Qandil Mountains and thriving in her new community. She wrote to me about the camaraderie, the “Kurdistan won’t be free until women are” belief of the guerrilla fighters she had joined, the ball games, the bonfires, the hunting, the unique taste of tea brewed over fire, the primitive operas they conducted.
I told her Chia had been found, and she sent me ideas and contacts. I offered bail, found a pro bono lawyer, begged and pleaded, protested before the prison, even threatened to set myself on fire. Nothing worked. But at least, in contrast with the extremely slow pace of the limbo I had been in for so long, the days went fast.
Other than the two emails, the second confirming that Chia was in Evin, the now-free Karo completely ignored my attempts to contact him. He’d shared in our happy days but vanished when I needed him the most. Despite all that, I was not ready to hate him. He could be feeling guilty for being released instead of Chia, or he could have post-traumatic stress from prison. Maybe he was dodging further trouble by staying away from me. Whatever his reasons, little by little I forgot him too.
I met other prisoners’ families and bonded with two women and two boys who spoke my mother language. We were introduced to each other as Chia’s sister, Shirin’s mother, and Farhad’s wife and sons. Our names were irrelevant. We lived only to see the prisoners free once again.
These women, and others I regularly came across in hallways and queues, lacked the wealth and influence needed to solve problems in this country. All we could do was summon courage and show up before the armed soldiers. We held hands like schoolchildren, shared stories and memories of our imprisoned beloveds. Unexpectedly, we became shoulders for each other—strangers with a deep connection, who sobbed and prayed and cursed together. Farhad’s sons, Hewram and Hewraz, would cling to opposite sides of their mother and observe us in silence as we shuffled through words to find something positive to tell each other. The children’s presence, their bright eyes and lovely faces, gave us much courage.
On Tuesdays we could request visitation. Drained faces beamed with expectations.
The bearded prison guard with crooked teeth stamped my application, its bang like a slap.
“Again?”
“Your brother has been here for only a short time.” He opened a stained white handkerchief and blew his nose only inches from my face.
I flinched. “But my brother was captured one hundred and two days ago, and for most of those days I didn’t know where he was.”
“Why do you sound so arrogant?” He sucked back mucus loudly. “Are you a professor or some shit?”
“What?” I looked left and right, heat rising to the tips of my ears.
“No visitation for you until you learn to talk like a proper woman.”
I kicked the low cement wall between us.
“Next,” he yelled out.
I pulled my black headscarf forward, hid my face in my palms, and ran out of the building. I was immersed in my thoughts when I bumped into a giant.
“Leila!”
I was overcome with frustration, and he’d changed so much that I didn’t immediately recognize him—the ponytail was gone, and gone too were his brightly colored sleeveless T-shirts. He wore a formal black shirt, and the skin under his indigo eyes had turned dark.
“Are you here to see Chia? How is he?” The expression on Karo’s face was hard to read, and he avoided eye contact.
“Chia is alive, and he will be freed soon,” I declared loudly and firmly, as if telling the universe what to do next. Heads turned toward me. My heart threatened to burst.
Karo finally met my gaze in silence. Farhad’s wife and sons surrounded me. The boys stood, arms akimbo, ready to defend me. Their mother put her hands on my shoulders. All three of them glared at Karo, who stared at the ground for what felt like a long time. When he finally looked back up at me, his eyes were damp. He hurried away without a word. My eyes darted after him.
My friend placed her palm on my cheek. “Be strong, my dear.”
“I’m trying! Believe me. I am trying hard.”
She opened her arms, and I felt, for a second, safe in her embrace. Her tenderness reminded me of Joanna. When their bus arrived, mother and sons ran to catch it. I stopped, staring after the trio as they departed for the day. They waved at me from the window of the bus.
Two hours later I was home, toying
with the barley soup I’d made days ago, unable to swallow. I couldn’t remember the last solid food I had eaten. Mama called to see when her son would come back from his school trip abroad, asking the question so breezily it was if she’d forgotten we hadn’t spoken for nearly two years. That she and Baba didn’t call my bluff irritated me.
The cell phone beep startled me again.
I couldn’t tell you this to your face. The truth. You deserve it. We recorded on my cell phone, not his.
I didn’t recognize the number, but it wasn’t hard to guess the sender.
I know that makes me guiltier in your eyes. But it gives me hope that he will be released soon.
I felt a sudden unbearable pain in my chest, as if a stingray had stung me. “You killed my brother!” I typed with shaky hands, open mouth, and loud breath.
But I couldn’t press send.
Instead I sent: “And yet you’re free. He is held. No visitation.”
I screamed into a pillow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The phone rang early in the morning and this time brought good news. The bookstore owner wanted to see if I could work full-time that week. It had been more than three weeks since he said he’d call me for a shift. Not that the old man was to blame; I’d kept asking for days off to visit this and that place. When I went into the store, I met the woman they’d hired to replace me. She sported long, painted fingernails and had brought in lots of customers, but sales had only diminished—her admirers weren’t there for the books.
New releases excited me, and contact with regular customers happy to see me again was flattering. I was thrilled to have my job back, and because the owner now wanted more than anything else to spend time with his newborn grandson, I began working full time. Once again I had an income and free access to films and books. I had good news to share with Chia when I saw him.
When I got my paycheck, I repaid part of my debt to Joanna and went shopping, thinking about what items a political prisoner could receive. What Chia probably craved the most—thought-provoking books, papers, and pens—were all banned. That much I knew.
This time the first Tuesday of the month arrived faster than ever. It was still dark when I left home, carrying a light jacket for Chia to wear when he was allowed in the yard. I had also bought a couple of shirts and some underwear for him, aspirin, a toothbrush, and a comb. Crammed in among all the passengers on the bus, I kissed my gifts and pressed them to my cheeks. “Carry my love with you.”
By 7:30, prisoners’ families had already formed a long queue, even though the staff wouldn’t arrive until nine. I reclined against a pillar in the lobby and tried to muster patience, to be more like my brother. My cell phone had been confiscated at the door, so I had nothing to kill the time. All the women were required to wear chadors inside the prison, awkward black shrouds that covered us from head to foot except for our faces and hands. I kept tripping on the hem of mine as I shifted nervously in the queue.
A woman with a heart-shaped face and dark black eyes stood behind me. A girl of about six clung to her chador. Their skin was sunburnt. The woman said something in Arabic, but I didn’t understand. She didn’t speak Persian, so we couldn’t exchange more than sympathetic looks and smiles.
“What is ‘my daughter’ in Persian?” Shirin’s mother had once asked me. Never having attended school, she had not learned the country’s only official language. Then she told me how as soon as she had asked Shirin, “Bashy kchakam?”—Are you all right, my daughter?—in Kurdish, the curtain had dropped over the divider and the line had been cut off.
At her next visit, granted after months of pleading, she mostly pressed her face to the smudged glass and kissed it. Shirin had learned a few words in Persian from her fellow inmates, but the mother didn’t know anything more than “Khoobi?”—Are you okay?—which she repeated over and over again, pressing her lips and cheeks against the glass, asking Shirin to place hers on the same spot. “Khoobi?” she asked yet again, forgetting the few other words I had taught her. “I have to swallow my tongue every time I am about to say ‘my daughter’ or ask what she needs.” Her daughter Shirin had been sentenced in a court whose language she couldn’t fully understand.
At a quarter past eleven, my turn finally arrived to submit my application and present my birth certificate. As I walked to the stall, my leg caught in the folds of the chador and I fell facedown. Those waiting in line held their breath, concerned that my clumsiness would somehow jeopardize their chances to visit their loved ones. The Arab woman behind me helped me get up and brush myself off.
To my great relief, this time I received a blue card that would allow me to see Chia’s face behind the thick glass and hear his voice over the phone. Placing a hand on my heart to stop it from jumping out, I joined the second lineup: families permitted—but not guaranteed—visits.
The woman behind me started wailing in Arabic, sounding as if she were praying.
“Next,” called out the officer.
But the woman stayed where she was, crying louder, holding her hands over her ears, rocking left and right. Her daughter looked up at her.
“Shut up or I’ll call security,” the bearded officer shouted.
“She has traveled a long distance,” I stepped forward and explained.
The angry man looked at me with disgust. For a second I thought he understood Arabic and knew that I had made that up.
“Mind your own business!”
The young girl directed her pleading look at me.
The woman babbled away, looking first at me then back at the clerk. “See . . . this woman is ill,” I stuttered. “She is having open-heart surgery next week and wants to see her husband at least once before then. Please give her five minutes. Let her and the child see him. May God bless you and your children.”
The man cleaned his glasses and put them back on, looked closely at the large tears running down the faces of the woman and her daughter.
“She hasn’t slept in three days,” I continued, gaining courage. “She and her child stayed up all night outside the prison last night. Before that they were on a bus for two days traveling from the south. Please let her see her husband. For only one minute. May God reward you in this world and the afterworld! This might be this poor woman’s last chance to see the father of her children.”
To my surprise, the officer gave her a blue card. The woman hugged me and showered my face with kisses. I let her place her head on my shoulder and speak to me in her language. I responded in mine. The girl smiled at me, revealing broken, blackened teeth. I winked at her. She was the only one who had enjoyed my improvisation. Together we joined the next queue.
Scowling men in khaki uniforms escorted families up or down the stairs to speak with the prisoners. People whispered, informing each other that there was enough room for more than ten families to visit at a time, but because the conversations were taped, the officials preferred to keep it quiet. We all knew the rules, spoken and unspoken, but the guards who escorted us would stand by and listen to each conversation.
The clock hand kept its pace, impossibly fast and indifferent to our panic that grew with each passing minute. There was no air conditioning in the antechamber, and the water coolers had long been depleted. The heat was unbearable. People whispered to their neighbors, warning that the filthy wards became infested with beetles and cockroaches as the temperature rose.
Each family had twenty minutes to speak through a phone with a prisoner on the other side of the glass partition, but if they ever spoke a word that they should not, future visits would be denied and the prisoner would be punished. Visitation was highly emotional and stressful, even more so for people who didn’t speak Persian well: the elderly, the uneducated, the poor.
Those fortunate enough to see their loved ones came down the stairs wailing desperately, shocked by how weak, shabby, and ill the prisoners had become; some bore obvious signs of torture. I braced myself. It’s not that the families didn’t know what to expect—
Evin Prison was notorious not only in Iran and the Middle East but the world over. Yet to witness the boot print of brutality on your loved one’s face and body and not be allowed to care for them, nurse their wounds, even hug them, was the family’s share of the torture. My stomach churned as I braced myself to see my brother’s face, to choke down the sobs that were already clawing up my throat.
Then I thought about Baba in this very prison, where massive signs read “God, God, Preserve Khomeini to Mahdi’s Revolution,” and how he only had one visitor and was kept behind bars when his mother died and his daughter was born. I thought about a traumatized Joanna, who had once endured a mock execution as a cruel and unusual torture method, about Shiler growing up between the dull walls of the low-slung lockup with overcrowded cells. The malnourished prisoners who died from infectious diseases before they arrived at the gallows. The prisoners whose families were never granted the chance to see their broken features. If the walls of Iranian prisons testified to what they had witnessed firsthand, God’s heart would shatter into a million pieces.
I steeled myself. Men and women had formed separate queues, and every half hour, five men and five women were called, but because most visitors were female, I still had a large crowd before me. If I were not allowed to see Chia by five, I would miss my chance for the month. The young Ahwazi girl kept stealing glances at me. She sat on the floor, half closing her eyes in exhaustion.
I sat down next to her. “Would you like me to braid your beautiful hair?” She had spoken to her mom only in Arabic, and I wasn’t sure how much Persian she knew, but she nodded. The girl sat on my lap. I looked at her mother to seek her approval, but she was too preoccupied with her thoughts to notice. I grabbed a tiny comb from my purse and started brushing the child’s soft hair. The repetitive brushstrokes and gentle tugs must have soothed her as much as it did me, because before long her head was on my chest and she was snoozing. She reminded me of Chia at her age.
Hours passed. The elderly in the long lines complained about chest pains and leg cramps. The more able-bodied started fighting over places in the line.