Hajj Agha’s technique was to string together a series of seemingly reasonable assertions to reach a “logical” conclusion that, examined dispassionately, was simply wrong, divorced from reality. But in the isolation of prison and the interrogation room, I had to fight hard to avoid Hajj Agha’s conspiratorial mind-set.
Additionally, Hajj Agha’s friendlier approach was in some ways harder to handle than the long, exhausting question-and-answer sessions with Ja’fari. Hajj Agha lectured me; he tried to impose on me his (or the Intelligence Ministry’s) worldview. He once went into a long disquisition on the cold war. The United States and the West, he said, had brought about the downfall of the Soviet Union by undermining the fabric of societies in Eastern Europe. It had laid a trap, and the USSR and its East European surrogates naively fell into it. “Iran will not fall into the same trap,” he said.
But things did not always work out for the West, Hajj Agha continued. The Americans were defeated in Vietnam. Fidel Castro led a revolution in Cuba, Salvador Allende in Chile, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. True, the Americans had bled the Russians in Afghanistan and then supported and propped up the Taliban; but the Taliban turned against the Americans and had to be overthrown. Above all, the Iranian revolution and the Islamic Republic were “a thorn in the side of the Americans,” he boasted, “and Iran will not fall apart like the Soviet Union.”
For the West, he explained on another occasion, Islam is the ultimate enemy, and Iran is the the standard-bearer of Islam. The Iranian revolution restored Islam’s standing in the world. Islamic countries look up to Iran because it is not the lackey of the United States. On the contrary, it is the one country that defies America. So it went with Hajj Agha. To shore up my defenses, I thought of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag novels and of the spy novels I had read. I wanted to steel myself by recalling the interrogation techniques of police states elsewhere and the lonely men and women who had managed to survive them.
Hajj Agha and Ja’fari tried another kind of intimidation. One night I was woken up at eleven o’clock and summoned for interrogation. I had heard of all-night interrogation sesions and, full of trepidation, I dressed hastily and was taken before the two men. “We had nothing important to discuss,” Hajj Agha said, noticing my anger at being roused from sleep. “We were both working around the clock and thought we should continue our conversation with you. But it can wait till tomorrow.”
Back in my cell, I sat on my chair. Tears ran uncontrollably down my face. I had coiled myself taut in anticipation of a rough night. Now, I went slack with relief. What had become of me, I thought, that two heedless interrogators could upset me so? I looked up at the night sky through the bars of my cell: it was overcast, and I couldn’t see the moon or a single star. Even the sky was in mourning for me, I thought.
“HOW DO YOU KNOW OBAMA?”
One afternoon, in the middle of another five-hour session, Hajj Agha threw me off track with an odd question: “How do you know Obama?” he asked. Ja’fari had been grilling me about Iranians living and working in the United States, when Hajj Agha interjected Obama’s name, pronouncing it as if it began with a u, and with the accent on the last syllable—Oo-ba-Ma. For a moment I thought this was another Iranian I did not know. “Who?” I said. “Oobama,” Hajj Agha repeated. I thought for a moment. “Do you mean the senator from Illinois?” It was June 2007 and news of his run for president had reached me before I was taken to Evin.
“Yes,” he said. “When did you first meet him and how often do you go see him?” With Hajj Agha, I could sometimes joke. “Oh, on a daily basis,” I said. The truth was, I had never met Barack Obama. The only time I had even seen him was when I sat among several hundred people to hear him speak at the Council on Foreign Relations. I told this to Hajj Agha.
He was not convinced. He kept insisting that there must be something more, that I knew him. “He is not even my senator,” I said. Finally, visibly annoyed, Hajj Agha mumbled, “Obama made a statement about you and asked for your release.” I tried not to show my delight. In a conversation only two days earlier, Hajj Agha had greatly unnerved me when he said, in a mocking tone, “You have more friends in Iran than in America; and your Iranian friends are more harmful than helpful to your case. Nobody abroad really cares about you.” I now knew that I was not forgotten abroad. If Senator Obama had spoken of me, then Shaul and the Wilson Center must have begun to alert people in Washington to the urgency of my predicament, some of whom must be making an effort on my behalf. Hajj Agha continued to insist I must know Obama personally. “Why would he speak of Khanum Esfandiari if he does not know her?” he asked, referring to me in the third person.
I don’t think I persuaded Hajj Agha that Obama took up my case simply because I was an American citizen, but he had thrown me a lifeline. I broke my iron rule not to ask questions about myself. “Has anyone else spoken about me?” I asked. Hajj Agha reluctantly admitted that Hillary Clinton had also issued a statement regarding my incarceration, but he tried to be dismissive. “Well, you are a woman, a Democrat, and a feminist and you think she will win the election,” he said. “Why shouldn’t she talk about you?”
Back in my cell, I tried to factor the Obama news into my calculation of where I stood. I grasped at a thin glimmer of hope. But how much light was there? I knew that Shaul, with whom I had been allowed no contact since my arrest, would be doing everything in his power to get me released, that he would be making phone calls, seeking contacts, looking for influential international figures to intercede on my behalf, and that Lee Hamilton would do the same. But I also knew that in political cases Iran’s officials could be obdurate and impervious to external pressure, publicity, or pleading, which was why we had reserved asking for outside help as an option of last resort. In July 2000, ten Iranian Jews from Shiraz were tried behind closed doors on trumped-up charges of espionage and sentenced to long prison terms, despite an international outcry, the direct intervention of the European Union, and a promise to European ambassadors that the trial would be public and they could attend. Human-rights groups protested when prominent journalists such as Ganji were put on trial; but Ganji and his colleagues were sentenced and jailed anyway. And how long could meaningful publicity be sustained? Ganji and other arrested journalists, intellectuals, and politicians had merited a story or two in the American and European press and were then forgotten. Media reports about me, I thought, would suffer a similar fate.
I could not know, of course, that the story of my arrest and incarceration had become worldwide news and that my story had captured the public imagination. I was unaware that Shaul and Hamilton had taken part in numerous interviews, that leading American papers had condemned my arrest in their editorials, that I was the subject of commentary by columnists, and that European governments were intervening with the Iranians on my behalf.
In my isolation at Evin, I had focused all my faculties on the interrogation and was fighting desperately to avoid a trial. I could not permit myself the luxury or distraction of thinking of what Shaul and our friends were doing for me. I dared not hope because, psychologically, I feared a crushing disappointment. Hajj Agha had thrown me a lifeline, but I did not dare pull too hard on it lest it unravel in my hands—lest once gain my hopes would be shattered.
In July, the interrogations became far less frequent and were down to about two a week. Hajj Agha repeated that he was doing his best to end my ordeal. He would raise my hopes, then come back and apologize. A new “hurdle” had arisen, he would say; there was a gereh—“a knot”—to untie. Given all these knots, I thought, we could have woven a whole Persian carpet.
Hajj Agha once disappeared for a whole week. When he showed up again, he said he had a root canal done. “It was very painful,” he said. “I thought it must be that Khanum Esfandiari laid a curse on me.” I assured him this was not the case. “As long as I am in prison, Hajj Agha,” I said, “I wish you a long life. I don’t want to start all over again with another interrogator.”
It appea
red to me that Hajj Agha was marking time, but the prospect of a drawn-out stay at Evin was hardly comforting. Near the end of July and my third month in solitary, Ja’fari brought me a form to sign. It turned out to be a court order for a one-month extension of my detention—“It’s just routine, don’t pay any attention to it,” he said. I was crushed. The prospect of months and years in prison were unbearable to me. I sometimes even half hoped for a fatal heart attack and a quick end to my misery.
In my blackest moods, the unwelcome interrogations provided me with a form of healing. In the face of bullying and false accusations, I grew angry and defiant. I knew I must not let them break me.
8.
EVIN PRISON
FOR THE NEARLY FOUR MONTHS of my solitary confinement in Evin, my only human contacts were the guards, the interrogators, and the occasional prison doctor. I never once spoke to another inmate. I had no watch, until they returned mine two months into the incarceration. I learned to tell the time of day by the early-morning chirping of the birds, the changing of the guards, mealtimes, and the daily tempo of prison life.
Ward 209 was reserved for political prisoners and run by the Intelligence Ministry. It was located on the uppermost floor of Evin’s main building. The men’s block was to the left of the staircase. The women’s section faced the stairway and was separated from the men’s block by an iron door and a curtain. Though blindfolded whenever I passed through the door, I caught occasional glimpses of the men’s section when I was taken to the interrogation rooms or to the dispensary. The men’s cells stood along a long corridor, punctuated by doors leading to interrogation rooms, the one-room dispensary, and an enclosed rooftop terrace. Ja’fari once had me brought to this terrace for interrogation. He was recovering from knee surgery, the interrogation rooms on the men’s corridor were in use, and he wanted to avoid going up and down the stairs to the lower-level interrogation rooms. There was a similar terrace in the women’s section, but the men’s terrace was larger.
Along the men’s corridor, guards sat behind a couple of small desks at all hours, keeping watch as inmates were moved about. Initially refused reading material, I was envious of the guards sitting at their desks reading books and newspapers or watching TV.
On the women’s block, doors led in succession to the small rooftop terrace, the inmates’ bathroom, the separate guards’ bathroom, and a row of five or six prisoners’ cells. At the end of the corridor were the guards’ quarters: two rooms, one small, one large, facing each other. The rooms contained bedding, a refrigerator, a hot plate, and a television. The guards also had their own air-conditioning unit. The TV was in constant use. You could hear it all night long through the thick cell walls. We were forbidden to go near the guards’ rooms. Against the far wall, between the two rooms, was a chair for the guard on duty.
The wall opposite the cells had two barred windows, one of which contained an air-conditioning unit that served the whole block. There were also hooks where the guards hung their chadors, and pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Khamenei, the current supreme leader. Khomeini was frowning and fierce; Khamenei looked meek and mellow in comparison. The same two pictures appeared virtually everywhere you turned in Evin—in the interrogation rooms and lining the corridors. During my 105 days at the prison, I managed to avoid looking at either of the men. The harsh world they created and ran had turned on me and made me a prisoner. Their ubiquitous presence was more than I could bear.
The women’s bathroom consisted of a single shower and an Iranian-style toilet, a ceramic basin sunk into the ground. The inmates were supposed to clean the bathroom after use, but no one did. I couldn’t bear to use a dirty bathroom, and cleaned it each time, before and after I used it. On one occasion, the toilet was so disgustingly filthy, I complained to the guard, who made the previous user clean it. She took her revenge on me by complaining that I was being allowed more than the allotted time on the rooftop terraces. For a while I was limited to the regulation one hour a day, but once she left Evin, I had longer use of the terraces.
I never saw the other prisoners in the women’s block, but I could hear them—knocking on their cell doors to go to the bathroom, sometimes exchanging angry words with the guards. None of the other women inmates spent as long in solitary as I did; the usual stint was two or three weeks. I could tell when a new prisoner was brought in because the cover over the small opening in my cell door would be pulled shut. When I was in the corridor myself, a door left wide open to reveal an empty cell meant a prisoner had been released or transferred elsewhere.
PRISON DAYS
From the first day, I decided that if I were to avoid succumbing to despair, I had to impose a strict discipline on myself. I vowed not to show any weakness or slackening of will to my interrogators or the guards. The possibility of a show trial weighed heavily on my mind. I knew I had to be mentally strong, keep my wits about me, remain focused on the interrogations, and do everything in my power to thwart the fate the Intelligence Ministry was planning for me: a coerced confession, a trial on trumped-up charges, a lengthy incarceration. I avoided thinking about my husband, daughter, and grandchildren or about home—knowing the pain of missing them could cripple my ability to withstand the pressures of prison. When the traditional Iranian dish called adas polow—a mixture of rice, lentils, and raisins, a favorite of my granddaughters—was served, I refused to even look at it and sent it back.
At my request, a guard knocked on my door at six a.m. I got up, vigorously paced the length of my cell for an hour, and then showered and changed. I then had a breakfast of tea, bread, and cheese, or tea and a piece of fruit. After breakfast, I resumed stretching exercises, push-ups, and pacing until it was time to go out on one of the two rooftop terraces available to the inmates. While I exercised, I composed two books—not on paper but in my head. One was a biography of my paternal grandmother. As I paced and stretched, I rewrote, edited, transposed paragraphs, and tried out different chapter titles. The other book was a children’s story for my granddaughters. It was a fairy tale about a little Iranian girl, named Haleh, after me and their own mother. I sometimes imagined Ariana and Karenna, sitting on the beige couch in the library of their home, listening to my story, but I brushed the thought away. Thinking about my granddaughters could quickly drive me to despair.
After a lunch of yogurt and salad or fruit, and occasionally white rice and chicken, I would continue with aerobics and Pilates. Two large, water-filled plastic bottles served as my dumbbells. Counting repetitions helped me avoid brooding over the long imprisonment that stretched before me. Some days I would exercise for six hours or more. My persistent activity astonished my guards. Nothing in my previous experience had prepared me for Evin, but knew I had to avoid the listlessness that overtakes prisoners and to stave off depression, which lurked like a dark shadow in every corner of my cell.
At six I would shower again and change. I remembered a friend telling me that at her boarding school in England, everyone “dressed” for dinner. I also remembered in the film Out of Africa, Meryl Streep had even worn an evening dress and Robert Redford a tuxedo while on a safari in the African jungle. So, in grand style, I would put on an unironed but clean T-shirt and a fresh pair of wrinkled cotton pants and sit down and read between six and ten, taking time off only to eat a small meal of vegetables and yogurt.
For reading, I initially had only the Quran that was already in my cell and the one book I had with me when arrested, a recently published collection of letters written by a royal princess in the late nineteenth century—an interesting window into changing female sensibility. In the second week of my incarceration, one of the guards began to bring me books from the prison library, mostly on Shi’ism. I thought I might as well educate myself on the subject, but the books were dull, full of Sunni-bashing, written in a convoluted, heavily Arabized Persian, and often the work of semiliterate clerics. I begged for something more interesting, and received a hodgepodge of books: Kahlil Gibran’s collection of mystic
al poems, The Prophet, which I had read as a teenager; a Persian translation of Nostradamus; and several novels and travel books by the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis, also in Persian translation. I was bemused by the thought that the left-wing author of Zorba the Greek had fans in Evin Prison.
Later, Kian Tajbakhsh, the other Iranian American inmate, was allowed to share his books with me. He lived in Iran and had access to books from home. I was so pleased to read fiction in English again that I spent many minutes simply luxuriating in the feel of the first of his books, Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, in my hands before giving myself the pleasure of reading it. Tajbakhsh also sent me Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler, John Le Carré’s The Honorable Schoolboy, Kazantzakis’s England, and Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, a dark gothic novel, which mirrored my own black mood.
My only contact with nature came from the potted plants on the enclosed rooftop terrace I was allowed to use daily. No other inmate was allowed on the seven-foot-long terrace while I used it; no two inmates were even allowed to see each other. One day as I followed my habit of pacing its length, over and over, as fast as I could, I saw a white butterfly and I thought: I am compelled to be here; but what are you doing in this place? Another time, I caught a dandelion in the palm of my hand. “Take my love to Shaul and tell him to rescue me from this misery,” I whispered to it as I blew it away.
My Prison, My Home: One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran Page 17