A DEATH IN THE FAMILY
Back in August 1995, when these seeds of reform where beginning to take root, Shaul, Haleh, and I were vacationing on the island of St. Martin. I received a phone call that my father had suffered a stroke and was in a coma. Both my sister, Hayedeh, and I rushed back to Tehran. We arrived in time to join Mutti at my father’s bedside, but he never regained consciousness to know we were there. I was at least grateful that he passed away quietly and without pain.
As a young bride, Mutti had accompanied Father on his travels through the Iranian countryside to gather plant specimens for his botanical studies. In some ways, Mutti came to know Iran, the hills and mountains, the northern forests, the desertlike areas of the eastern Kavir, and the small, green valleys that seemed to spring up magically among the brown aridity better than most natives. My father helped create a collection of Iranian plant life that is still used for research and study, and that formed the basis for the multivolume Flora Iranica, which he co-edited with his former Vienna colleague, Professor Karl Heinz Rechinger. A rare, previously unknown plant Father discovered bears his name.
My father never once considered leaving Iran after the revolution, even though several of his friends landed in jail and many others emigrated. When Saddam Hussein sent missiles over Tehran and many of the capital’s residents relocated temporarily to nearby villages, to the homes of relatives in the provinces, or to their summer homes along the Caspian, Father chose to remain with Mutti in their small house in Tehran. I never asked my father why, but he must have thought it unpatriotic to leave when the majority could not.
It was satisfying to him, I think, that even the Islamic Republic, which was dismissive of practically everything and everyone connected to the old regime, came to recognize his services to Iranian botany. Before his death, he was honored at a special ceremony, a hall in the research institute he helped create was named after him, and he was given a plaque for his long years of service to the country. This was the plaque that Ja’fari chose to ignore when he raided my mother’s apartment, looking for “incriminating evidence.” The minister of agriculture, along with several of his deputies, had even stopped to pay their respects at my father’s memorial service.
After Father’s death, I came back to Iran more frequently to look after Mutti. But with the election of Ahmadinejad in 2005, I made it a point on these trips to stay away from even mildly “political” people. I avoided journalists, politically involved intellectuals, publishers, women activists, and the like. My work in Washington no longer allowed long stays in Iran, and on such brief trips I wanted to spend as much time as possible with Mutti. She was growing frail and needed attention. Aware of the paranoia of the re-empowered security services under Ahmadinejad’s administration, I wanted to be extra careful. I couldn’t afford to jeopardize my ability to take care of my mother.
On this last trip, I had planned to be in Iran for only a week, and I spent almost all of my time with Mutti. On the night of my arrival, December 23, we went for Christmas dinner to the home of a friend, Shabnam. As a child, we celebrated Christmas at home, and Mutti and my father always threw a party for their closest friends, as they also did to mark the Iranian and Christian new years. A superb hostess, Mutti would lay out a great feast and open up all the rooms of the house to her guests. After my father died, she stopped putting up a Christmas tree; “not in your father’s absence,” she would say. She eventually stopped giving her Christmas party, too. But she loved Christmas, and she still liked me to take her to Churchill Street, behind the British embassy, where Christmas trees continue to be sold, as they had been ever since my childhood.
Shabnam didn’t observe Christmas herself, but she knew how much Christmas mattered to Mutti, and for the past few years it had become a tradition for us to spend Christmas at her house. She always asked three or four people to join us, and on that evening she had asked her sister-in-law and her two sons, who were visiting from the United States. Shabnam had put together a sumptuous dinner for the eight of us. She had decorated her table with pine branches and flowers. Christmas carols played on her CD player as we sat down to eat. Her cream of asparagus soup glistened in the candlelight like the white snow on the lit terrace. She served turkey stuffed with fresh fruits and Persian rice, without which no Iranian meal is complete. Dinner was followed by a selection of desserts: chocolate mousse, pomegranate jelly, and persimmon tart. We exchanged stories, laughed together, and stayed up quite late.
Mother and I went home by cab. It was a brightly lit, cold night; the reflections from the streetlights sparkled on the icy roads and sidewalks. I felt content, and so did Mutti; everything seemed so calm and lovely. As we entered the apartment, Mutti looked around and said to me in German, “So eine schöne Wohnung. Such a beautiful apartment. I wouldn’t trade it for anywhere else in the world.”
BEHESHT-E ZAHRA
I spent the next few days tending to Mutti’s affairs. I made sure everything in the apartment was working properly. I did some shopping for her. I took her to visit family and friends. I also accompanied Mutti to Behesht-e Zahra cemetery to visit my father’s grave.
Behesht-e Zahra is Tehran’s main cemetery. Already large before the revolution, it had grown huge since 1979. The population of Tehran had nearly tripled in this twenty-seven-year period. In addition, the Iran-Iraq War left hundreds of thousands dead. The large majority were buried here, in a special section of the cemetery set aside for the martyrs of the war. Other parts of cemetery were reserved for martyrs of the revolution, high officials of the Islamic Republic, athletes, and writers and artists. In a corner of the main cemetery is a section allocated to members of opposition groups, such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and the Fadayan-e Khalq, who had taken up arms against the Islamic Republic and died either by execution or in street fighting. Considered apostates, they were not allowed a proper Muslim burial. (In 1988, in the last weeks of the Iran-Iraq War, the MEK, armed and supported by Saddam Hussein, sent military contingents across the Iraqi border into Iran. The raid was quickly squashed, but in fear and fury, the regime executed at least 2,000 members of militant groups already serving sentences in Evin and other prisons. The government never admitted to these mass killings and, according to widespread reports, buried the dead in unmarked graves.)
Behesht-e Zahra was known for its “fountain of blood,” a pool with a fountain spraying red-dyed water to symbolize the blood shed by martyrs of the Iran-Iraq War. In general, though, the cemetery is well tended and pleasant, the long rows of graves separated by walkways, streams, and green spaces. As is the Iranian habit, families come here to place flowers or strew petals on tombs, to distribute sweets and feed the poor in honor of their dead, and to picnic among their loved ones.
Just before Behesht-e Zahra, but part of the cemetery complex, stands the huge mausoleum built as a memorial to Ayatollah Khomeini. The grandiose mausoleum, utterly at odds with the stark simplicity of Khomeini’s lifestyle, was built to resemble a mosque; four minarets flank a great hall topped by a massive golden dome. Inside are a marble floor, crystal chandeliers, and expensive carpets. The compound is surrounded by shops, restaurants, a cultural complex, a religious seminary, and resting places for visitors. The authorities hoped the mausoleum would become a center of pilgrimage for millions of visitors, on par with the great Shi’ite shrines at Qom, Mashhad, and Shiraz. Foreign dignitaries are taken there to pay their respects. The Iranian president customarily holds a rally once a year at the tomb of the Imam, as he is known in Iran. In reality, however, the mausoleum cannot compete with the older, traditional shrines that resonate with religious meaning for Shi’ites. But people do visit in large numbers. Families picnic on the grounds, and buses to and from the provinces stop to give passengers the chance to rest and pay homage to Khomeini.
MOTHER AT THE CEMETERY
Mutti visited my father’s grave once a month, with Modarress serving as her driver. I always accompanied her when I was in Tehran. We stopped at the flowe
r market just outside the gates of Behesht-e Zahra. I walked with Modarress among the hundreds of buckets of flowers sitting on the ground, and we picked the white and pink gladiolas Mutti loved. We drove off with the trunk full of fresh flowers, enough for the grave of every family member, the car redolent with their perfume.
Many decades ago, my late uncle, Gholam Hossein, had purchased a small mausoleum to house the family graves. My father, my paternal grandmother, two of my aunts, my uncle Gholam Hossein, and a cousin all were buried here. For my father’s grave, Mutti had chosen a plain black marble stone engraved with four words in German: In Treue und Liebe—in faithfulness and love. She had designated a space right next to my father for herself.
Modarress took the key from Mutti, unlocked the iron door, opened the windows to air the room, swept the floor, removed the old flowers and, as is customary, poured water and rose water on the graves. He helped Mother up the steps to the main landing, handed Mutti and me the flowers, and waited outside. Mutti stood before Father’s grave and whispered a prayer; I could hear her telling my father in German how much she missed him, asking him why he had left her, her folded hands reminding me of Dürer’s Praying Hands. It was one of Mutti’s favorite paintings, and whenever we were in Vienna together we went to the Albertina Museum to view it. Having covered Father’s grave with flowers, Mutti placed one more flower on each of the family graves, and stopped to say a short prayer in front of my grandmother’s resting place.
As always when at Behesht-e Zahra, I stopped briefly at the artists’ section of the cemetery, where I walked to the resting place of two people I loved, Karim Emami, who, along with his wife, Goli, were among our dearest friends. Karim had been especially close to Shaul, since they had both worked for the same newspaper organization early in their career. At the time of his death in 2005, Karim was one of Iran’s foremost lexicographers, editors, and translators. He had translated into Persian F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, John Osborne’s pathbreaking play Look Back in Anger, the Sherlock Holmes mysteries of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and much else. Just before his death he had completed work on a one-volume Persian-dictionary.
Even Karim did not escape Ja’fari’s attention. At one point during my interrogation, Ja’fari asked me how I knew Karim and what I knew about him. “But he is deceased,” I said. Besides, Karim, though interested in politics, was one of the most unpolitical of men. His life was devoted to his books, his translations, his fascination with words and their meanings. “Just write,” Ja’fari replied, paying no attention to my protest. As if it were not enough to pile up fat files of information about the living, the Ministry of Intelligence was also piling up fat files about the dead.
WAITING
My entanglement with the Intelligence Ministry meant I would never again feel safe in Iran, even at home. I could no longer carry out an unguarded conversation over the telephone. I believed the intelligence people were reading my e-mail. My nerves were always on edge. One evening, the doorbell rang and Mutti and I panicked at the sight of two men with bulky bags standing by the door. Mercifully, they turned out to be repairmen who had rung the wrong doorbell. After the raid, fearing microphones had been planted in the apartment, Mutti and I took to going to the bathroom and turning on the shower if we had something important to say to each other. I hated being cooped up in the apartment, but I was uncomfortable going out. Taxis made me claustrophobic. I could not shake off the feeling of being watched and followed. I found myself looking over my shoulder on the street and constantly checking the rear window of taxis in case I was being tailed.
Mutti and I became increasingly isolated. The small group of academic “insiders” who had generously tried to help me began to disappear from my life. Our Tehran University friend Nasser’s calls grew infrequent and then stopped altogether. Hadi, the academic who had selflessly spent the best part of two months trying to do something for me, returned to Tehran from Washington, D.C., but never telephoned. When I called Mostafa at his think tank to offer condolences on the death of his father, he hastily hung up. These people understandably feared they would come under suspicion themselves. A very old and politically savvy friend turned visibly ashen when I told him of my interrogation. An acquaintance who had boasted of his excellent connections in the Intelligence Ministry disappeared once he learned of my case. When I ran across him at a memorial service, he said, “Please don’t ever mention you know me. There is nothing I can do for you.”
Family members seemed full of undeserved reprimands. A distant cousin took me to task for my too-frequent trips to Iran. “You shouldn’t have come so often,” she snapped. Another cousin wondered why I hadn’t moved Mutti to the United States years ago, as if my mother were baggage I could just carry away and who had no will or preferences of her own.
AHMADINEJAD’S TEHRAN
I could no longer see the beauty of the landscape I had always loved. I saw only the gray ugliness of the streets, the piles of uncollected garbage, the potholes, the dirty water in the canals, the smog and the snarled traffic. I also could not help but contrast the elegance in which some of the city’s residents, including friends, lived with the rampant poverty and economic hardship evident everywhere. Life in Tehran was expensive, and prices were going up every day. I saw an old man walk into a dairy store to buy a single egg and shoppers who waited till late in the evening to buy the battered fruits and leftover bits of fatty meat. I often witnessed the morals police stopping young boys and girls on the streets and hauling them away. Not for the first time, I heard of vigilantes barging into a wedding party, leaving the bride and groom in tears at the wreckage of a celebration they had planned for months. The sense of excitement, the possibility of freedom I had sensed in the early years of the Khatami presidency were gone. Ahmadinejad’s morose shadow had fallen over the country.
Noting my despair, my cousin Elli suggested I leave the country illegally. Someone could be found to take me across the Persian Gulf in a boat. After the revolution, large numbers of people left the country illegally, crossing over into Turkey or Pakistan or traveling by boat and dhow to one of the Persian Gulf sheikhdoms. Initially the exodus was of people escaping the uncertain mercies of the revolutionary courts. Later, mostly young men made the crossing to escape military service during the Iran-Iraq War. These networks continued to operate, but they had shrunk dramatically.
I considered this option—but never seriously. I was being watched. The dangers of an illegal crossing were considerable. I could not picture myself trekking across mountain passes or crossing the Persian Gulf in a creaking boat. At bottom, I simply didn’t want to leave my own country like a fugitive. When I left, it would have to be on a proper passport, through a proper port.
GETTING A LAWYER—AND A PASSPORT
The most difficult time for me in this period of waiting came as Nowruz, the Iranian new year, approached. Nowruz coincides with the spring equinox. It is a moment of rebirth, and a time for family reunions, visits, and exchanging gifts. For a child, Nowruz was always a magical moment, and it never lost its special meaning for me. But this year, I only went through the mechanics of the festivities. “I can’t share in the joy and happiness around me,” I wrote Shaul. Our wedding anniversary also fell in the Nowruz period. It was hard to be away from Shaul. I e-mailed him on March 16: “Tomorrow is our anniversary. Forty-two years! I miss you very much and love you so very much. I thank you for the wonderful life you gave me. I learned so much from you. Every day has been a wonderful experience for me.”
There was also the now-vital precaution of getting a lawyer. My preference was for Shirin Ebadi. I had met Shirin before the revolution, visited her on some of my trips to Iran, and interviewed her for my book Reconstructed Lives: Women and Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Persistent, outspoken, feisty, and enjoying a degree of immunity from arrest due to her high international profile, she was not popular with the Intelligence Ministry or the revolutionary courts. I knew her and admired her down-to-earth, plainspoken
style, but I still hesitated to ask her to take my case. She had made a name for herself defending high-profile political dissidents in court. I had not been arrested or put on trial—yet. My retaining a lawyer like Ebadi might force the ministry’s hand, giving it even more incentive to manufacture a case against me and ram it through the court system. Furthermore, Ebadi had become an international figure when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, the only Muslim woman ever to receive such an honor for her work on human rights and women’s rights. By taking her as my lawyer, I might have alerted some of the foreign press, which we had thus far so carefully avoided as well as the U.S. State Department or prominent American officials. The Intelligence Ministry was trying to implicate me in a supposed American plot to overthrow the regime; it hardly made sense to provide fodder for their false allegations by involving the American government, which had precious little clout in Tehran. Reluctantly, I decided against contacting Ebadi for the time being.
Friends had recommended a couple of other lawyers. One of them was a woman in her fifties who had built up a lucrative practice before the revolution representing foreign companies. She agreed to see me, on the condition that I told no one. I took extra precautions for our meeting. Rather than calling for a cab, I picked up a taxi on the street and paid the driver not to take on additional passengers. I got off several blocks away from the law office and walked in and out of several stores. Once at the lawyer’s building, I pushed the elevator button for the wrong floor, then took the stairs to her office.
My Prison, My Home: One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran Page 11