My Prison, My Home: One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran

by Haleh Esfandiari

  I firmly refused to be hospitalized. I didn’t want to be in the hands of Intelligence Ministry doctors who would have a free hand in treating me. “I know what you think of us,” the doctor replied, reading my thoughts. “But I am a physician. I don’t care on what charges you are here. I have taken an oath to look after the health of my patients, and I don’t want to be accused of negligence.” He made me write down and sign a statement attesting that I had refused hospitalization. After this, my biweekly medical checkups stopped. Perhaps they wanted to teach me a lesson, or perhaps the prison doctors wanted to avoid responsibility if my condition further deteriorated.

  The next day I mentioned to Hajj Agha that I had rejected the offer to go to the hospital. “The news of my hospitalization would have created a big uproar abroad,” I told him, suggesting I had done the Intelligence Ministry a favor. He was unmoved: “We are not afraid of an uproar. We weighed the consequences carefully before we arrested you. We are ready to pay any price. We have to look after our own interests.”

  Nevertheless, on that July evening, the doctor’s passing mention that Web sites were writing about me raised my spirits—but only momentarily. I tried to imagine a major campaign on my behalf, but then quickly dismissed the idea as improbable. No Iranian political prisoner had received sustained press coverage. I didn’t think my case would be any different, even with the efforts of Shaul, the Wilson Center, or Shirin Ebadi. My release was not imminent, and my isolation and solitary confinement were continuing with no end in sight. As my hopes for an early release had receded, both deliberately and unconsciously, I had constructed a protective shield around myself: by not unduly raising my hopes, I avoided the letdown that was sure to follow. I quickly put the doctor’s comments out of my mind and returned to my cell.

  CALLING MOTHER

  Two or three times a week, at the end of every interrogation, I was allowed to call my mother on Ja’fari’s cell phone. This was Hajj Agha’s idea. Ja’fari would ask me the number—even after twelve weeks, he couldn’t manage to remember it—dial it, and hand me the cell phone. If his cell phone battery was low, he would use one of the many phones placed along the corridors. These were available to prisoners under fewer restrictions than I. I was instructed to be brief, to limit myself to pleasantries, and to speak to Mutti only in Persian, never in German. I adhered to these rules, not wishing to jeopardize the phone calls, which meant so much to Mutti—and to me. Mother would pick up the phone at the first ring. It was obvious she hardly left the house, lest I telephone and she miss the call. I could never call over the weekend because Ja’fari and Hajj Agha, spending time with their families, did not conduct interrogations Thursdays and Fridays. My telephone calls were always monitored, and I assumed my mother’s telephone at home was tapped.

  My telephone conversations with Mutti never changed and hardly ever lasted more than a minute or two. I asked after her health and she asked after mine. She would try to boost my spirits by telling me that everyone was doing their best to put an end to my ordeal; and I took note, even as I reminded myself none of this effort was doing me any good.

  On one or two occasions, I told Mutti that I had dreamed of my father and my paternal grandmother. In prison I often dreamed of the dead, perhaps because I had tried so hard to push the present—home, family, friends, the prison—from my mind. As a child, my superstitious nanny used to say that if the dead talk to you in a dream, it means they want you to join them in the next world. Even as I was dreaming, I fearfully imagined that if my grandmother talked to me, it meant my death was imminent. But Mutti’s reaction was strikingly different. She said, “Your father and grandmother were the kindest people in the world. They are with God and they are watching over you. It means you will get out of prison soon.”

  There were a number of times when I tried to convey to Mutti more important messages. One of these I dubbed the “tsunami affair.” In a telephone conversation with Shaul before my arrest, I told him yet again of my certainty that I would be arrested and taken to Evin. Shaul said: “If they take you to prison, I will unleash a tsunami in the press the likes of which they have never seen.” Several weeks into my incarceration, fearing I had been forgotten by the outside world, I remembered that conversation and wanted in some way to convey to Shaul that the time for the tsunami had come, that he must get the media to focus on my plight immediately. On the phone to Mutti, I said: “Tell Haleh not to forget to make my usual contribution to the tsunami victims.” I was sure Mutti would repeat this unusual message to Shaul, who would understand the reference.

  The next day, Hajj Agha asked me please not to use code words such as “tsunami” over the telephone. I went into a long spiel about the contribution I had made to the Indonesian tsunami victims. He clearly wasn’t taken in. “Please don’t use foreign words and don’t speak in code,” he said.

  A WALKING CORPSE

  I genuinely did not want Mutti to visit me in Evin. I thought the sight of me—my face thin and sagging, hollows under my eyes—would kill her. I was a walking corpse; even size-zero pants hung loosely on me. In any case, Ja’fari had told me to tell my mother to stop coming to the prison gate with fruit, medication, and clothing. Food and medication from home was not allowed, he insisted. I also concluded that the Intelligence Ministry understood very well that if a photograph of my mother was published abroad—bent over her cane, barely able to see, slowly making her way and carrying a bag of fruit to Evin’s grim gate—it would cause a sensation.

  Yet I was desperate to see Mutti, to make sure she was all right. I asked Hajj Agha whether I could go home for a weekend. This was not an unusual request. In past years, I recalled, imprisoned journalists Akbar Ganji and Emadeddin Baghi had been allowed weekends home. In the 1990s, Tehran’s former mayor Gholam Hossein Karbaschi had been briefly let out of Evin to attend his daughter’s wedding. (In the bizarre ways of the Islamic Republic, Mohseni-Eje’i, the infamous judge who had presided over Karbaschi’s trial and had unjustly sentenced him to a long prison term, attended the wedding, too.)

  Ja’fari noted that these three men had been tried and sentenced before they were allowed home visits, but Hajj Agha agreed to ask permission for a home visit from his superiors if I could guarantee none of the neighbors would find out. I could give him no such assurance. Mother’s apartment building was small, the neighbors all knew one another and noticed comings and goings in the building, and a caretaker was on duty at all times. Hajj Agha suggested an alternative. “We have a number of safe houses around Evin,” he said. “We can move you and your mother to a safe house, where you can live together and keep each other company.” The idea of living in a “safe” house belonging to the Intelligence Ministry made my skin crawl. I imagined hidden cameras, listening devices, Intelligence Ministry minions monitoring our every move. “I absolutely refuse,” I told him. “My mother would never agree.”

  By the end of July and my third month in prison, I had resigned myself to the reality that there would be no family visits. I learned much later that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had asked for and had been refused a visit. Relations between the Iranian government and the ICRC were strained, and the Intelligence Ministry may have not wished me to learn of the extensive coverage I was receiving in the American and European press. I had hoped at least for a visit from the Swiss ambassador, who was supposed to look after American citizens in Iran, but that didn’t take place, either.

  THE “INTERVIEW”

  On my very first day at Evin, Hajj Agha had hinted that my release would be expedited if I gave “an interview” explaining what I knew of the American agenda for regime change in Iran. He cited the example of Ramin Jahanbegloo, the philosopher and scholar who had spent four months in Evin on fabricated charges of acting against the interests of the state and who “at his own suggestion” had given an interview to the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) on the very day he was released from Evin. “Three weeks later, we allowed him to go to India and re
sume his work,” Hajj Agha pointed out. He returned to the “interview” idea on several occasions. Now, four weeks later, during an interrogation, he informed me that the “interview” would take place on the following Thursday.

  I had always loathed seeing political prisoners paraded on television to parrot what they had been told to say. I hated seeing decent men and women struggling to retain their dignity in such undignified circumstances. And I knew that under the Islamic Republic taped interviews were spliced and tailored to suit the regime’s propaganda purposes.

  Nevertheless, Hajj Agha was insistent on my doing an “interview,” and I believed I had nothing to hide: I could only repeat on film what I had been telling Hajj Agha and Ja’fari for the past six months. Hajj Agha made clear which subjects he wanted me to talk about. In addition to a brief biography and a description of my working career, he instructed me to describe the way foundations in America and Europe operate, the reasons they gave fellowships to Iranians, the networking that takes place at conferences and meetings organized by these institutions, and the “revolving door” that allowed individuals in America to shuttle back and forth between government service and work at foundations and think tanks. Hajj Agha obviously had his own agenda. But I believed I could cover all these subjects truthfully and without violating my own sense of integrity.

  When it came to the Soros Foundations, one of Hajj Agha’s favorite topics and about which I knew nothing, I told him I could only repeat what he and Ja’fari had told me, making clear the information came from them. Last, Hajj Agha said that I could mention that I missed my family and hoped to be reunited with them soon. I would not actually be interviewed, he noted. There would be no questions. I was to simply talk before the camera for about an hour.

  The preparation for the “interview” had its farcical side. Ja’fari suggested I wear something more colorful than my black robe and scarf, and use a bit of makeup. I had to laugh—inside. That same evening the guards brought me a pile of documents on the Soros Foundations, its Open Society Institute and on George Soros himself—material evidently downloaded from the Web and translated into Persian by the Intelligence Ministry—so that I could “bone up” on these subjects before the filming session.

  On Thursday morning, Hajj Khanum appeared with my purse, which I had not seen since it was taken from me the day I entered Evin. She also handed me lipstick and a powder case. “These belong to the girls,” she said. “The gentlemen want you to wear makeup.” I used my own face powder and lipstick. I also retrieved my watch from my purse and determined not to give it back after the interview. I put on my black robe and scarf. I had washed them so often the cloth was faded and threadbare. Ja’fari was waiting by the iron door for me. He told Hajj Khanum not to accompany us. But, as if protective of me, she ignored him. Blindfolded again, I followed the two of them down what seemed like three flights of stairs into a large room.

  It was full of men, some sitting, some standing. A few rose to their feet when I walked in. I could feel the tension in the air. I noticed a bearded, disheveled man sitting behind a desk. A young man with sleek black hair, tight jeans, and a T-shirt was manning one of the two cameras. I was told to sit on a sofa facing him, next to a potted plant. A vase of flowers sat on a coffee table in front of the sofa. My days were spent in solitary confinement in a bare cell, but I was to be shown to the world in a comfortable, living room–like setting. Ja’fari sat on a chair across from the sofa, but out of the view of the cameras.

  I was amazed at how calm I felt. I had brought a few notes with me and had divided my intended remarks into four sections: my background and my work in Iran before the revolution; my work in the United States, including teaching at Princeton and employment at the Wilson Center; the activities of think tanks and foundations in America and Europe; and what I had been told by my interrogators regarding the Soros Foundations and velvet revolutions.

  After a voice test, the cameras began to roll. I had no sooner started—“I am Haleh Esfandiari. I was born in Iran. I am a sixty-seven-year-old grandmother living in the United States”—than the disheveled man stopped the cameras and went over to whisper in Ja’fari’s ear. Ja’fari scribbled a note to me: Be sure to mention the Soros Foundations and the women’s movement in Iran, he said. The cameras rolled once more, and I began to speak again, covering each of my four broad topics. Twenty-five minutes into the taping, with the cameras stopped again, the man came over and sat on a chair next to the sofa. He obviously was not getting what he wanted. He wanted velvet revolutions, intellectual networks, and American plots. He told me to talk more about “the conferences, especially the conference organized by UCLA.”

  The Intelligence Ministry was obsessed with a conference organized by faculty members at UCLA and the Greek government that met twice a year in Athens. Hundreds of scholars from America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, including Israel, attended. The Intelligence Ministry was convinced that scholars coming from Iran were recruited and indoctrinated in some fashion at this very conference.

  Hoping to prolong the break in the taping, I tried to tease the bearded man now sitting uncomfortably close to me. “In the Islamic Republic, you shouldn’t be looking at me, and I shouldn’t be looking at you,” I said. He wasn’t amused and growled back, “We have no problem looking at you.” The taping continued.

  At one point, I saw Ja’fari frantically gesturing and pointing at my scarf, and I pulled my scarf forward. He continued to gesture, and I realized he wanted me to push the scarf back, not pull it forward. I laughed out loud. Here I was, accused of endangering state security, yet my interrogator wanted to make sure that I looked “modern” and, like the young women on Tehran’s streets, casual in the way I wore my Islamic dress. During the rest of the session, Ja’fari continued to remind me, fingers jabbing at his own hairline, to keep my scarf well back on my head.

  I finally noticed Ja’fari pointing to his watch, and eagerly brought my remarks to an end. My voice broke when I began to say I hoped to rejoin my family soon. We had to do another take of these last sentences. With the taping over, tea was served; but after an hour of this charade I felt drained and exhausted and was impatient to leave. I signaled to Ja’fari and we walked out. Back in the ward, I wanted to shower. I had done my best under the circumstances; I had implicated no one; I had spoken no untruths. But I felt soiled and tainted by the whole affair.

  Still, I thought, my family and friends would see how I looked and what these people had done to me. At one point in the interview, I deliberately said, “In the five months I have been here…,” hoping my family would deduce when the taping session had taken place. I also expected Shaul would realize that the language I used was frequently not my own. For example, a new term, shabakeh-sazi, had been coined for “networking” and had become fashionable in intellectual circles in Iran; but I had not heard it before or ever used it myself. Shaul knew I was not in the habit of talking of “discourses” or of “velvet revolutions.” I hoped he and others would know this was the vocabulary of my interrogators. I also expected that friends and those familiar with the ways of the Islamic Republic and police states would know that the “interview” was staged and coerced.

  Hajj Agha had led me to believe I would be released once the “interview” was done. But four days passed and nothing happened. I concluded I had been deceived; I felt like a moron. I berated myself for having trusted Hajj Agha. I paced my cell in anger and frustration. I banged my cell door behind me when returning from the bathroom or the rooftop terrace. The guards, sensing my anger, kept well away from me.

  Hajj Agha disappeared for a week after the taping. Ja’fari told me he was on a trip, but I thought he was ashamed for having lied to me. When he finally returned to the interrogation room Hajj Agha said the interview “was not what the gentlemen expected.” Nevertheless, he claimed, “I am doing my best to get you released, but the Americans don’t make it easy for you. They didn’t allow any visits to the families of the Irbil five.�
� The “Irbil five” referred to five Iranian officials who had been arrested in Irbil, Iraq, by the American military forces in January. They had been held incommunicado for more than five months; neither Iranian officials nor their families had been given access to them. I was dismayed that my case was being linked to them. I was a private citizen. The Irbil five were Iranian officials in a war zone. Still, I thought: No family visits allowed by the Americans? Why is the United States acting like the Islamic Republic?

  Several weeks later, Hajj Agha informed me the “interview” had been broadcast on July 18 and 19, alongside tapes of Kian Tajbakhsh and Ramin Jahanbegloo. Tajbakhsh was still at Evin. Jahanbegloo had been released from Evin a year before, after spending four months in solitary confinement. I assumed he had been taped when in prison, but I had no sense of how the three “interviews” had been put together or in what form they had been broadcast.

  A few days after the broadcast, Hajj Agha came to Evin fuming. Jahanbegloo, now at a research center in India, had given an interview to the Spanish newspaper El País and had described the broadcast as a page out of Stalinist Russia and George Orwell’s 1984. I listened quietly as he continued his tirade: he had vouched for Jahanbegloo the previous year when he was in Evin; he persuaded his superiors to release him and let him go abroad; now look how ungrateful he turned out to be. Hajj Agha failed to say that Jahanbegloo had to put up his in-laws’ apartment and his mother’s house as security before he was let go and that these properties could be expropriated if he was summoned and failed to show up. I felt no interest in what Jahanbegloo had said or done, but I felt crushed that Hajj Agha said nothing about my release.