In the middle of the day, one of the guards, a woman in her mid-twenties, called us over to the hallway door and spoke to us through the bars. Instead of calling us by name, she called us “the Christian girls.” She had started treating us with kindness and acted more gently toward us than did the other guards. She looked afraid, glancing from side to side as she talked.
“I have heard from some of the prisoners that you pray for them and your prayers are answered,” she began. “Something bad has happened in my life. Could you please pray for me?” Maryam said we would be honored to pray for her. We held her hands through the bars and prayed aloud. She began crying softly, and when we finished, she joined us in saying, “Amen.” We said a few words to her about Jesus, but she was afraid to stay any longer. “If your God answers me, I will go to church and I will read the Bible,” she promised.
“I don’t like this job, but I need the money,” she added. “I’m in prison, too, just in a different way. The detainees come and go, but I’m stuck here day after day, month after month, in this horrible underground hole.”
She went back to the office, but returned a little while later with a plate of pasta and two spoons. “I know you two haven’t eaten the food,” she said. “This is for you.” We ate it gratefully. When we finished, she brought us a whole jug of water. What a miracle not to be hungry or thirsty for the first time in days.
As the afternoon wore on, prisoners began returning from court. We heard that the GoldQuest sisters had been released on bail and that Sayeh had been transferred to social services. Some of our acquaintances returned to the cell block while others we never saw or heard from again, and there were new arrivals constantly.
As incredible as our unexpected lunch had been, we got another big surprise at dinner. When the guard came in with the usual pan of lentils and rice, instead of sliding it across the floor to where the inmates waited to dig in with their hands, she shouted for the women to stand back.
“Nobody touches the food except Marziyeh,” she barked, “because her hands are clean. Marziyeh will serve the rest of you.”
I was stunned—the “unclean” Christian being chosen to handle everyone’s meals—but I quickly stepped forward to do as the guard had said. Using one piece of bread as a utensil and another as a plate, I scooped up a helping and handed it to the woman nearest me, continuing in turn until everyone had been served. After dinner, Maryam washed the pan so that we knew it would be clean for tomorrow. It wasn’t easy, but we found it was possible to establish a small island of decency, even in this hellhole.
MARYAM
The culinary surprises continued the next morning, when a guard brought all the prisoners breakfast: a small bag of bread and cheese, one bag for each two prisoners. We never knew why the meal routine suddenly changed, but I hoped it was because the guards were beginning to see us as human beings. We had refused to act like animals, so maybe they decided to treat us accordingly.
After breakfast, Marziyeh’s name and mine were the first ones called. Instead of returning to the Revolutionary Court as we expected, we were again taken to the Gisha police station. There we were separated, and Marziyeh waited while I went in for another interrogation with Mr. Rasti. A young female guard was also in the room.
Mr. Rasti invited me in with a smile and asked me to be seated. Could this be the same police officer who had been so rude and threatening before? Who’d had us hauled off to the Revolutionary Court in handcuffs?
“I hope you are well,” he said in a friendly way. “Have you had any problems the last few days?”
“No,” I answered. “Everything is fine. I have no complaints.”
Mr. Rasti tried to hide his surprise and went on. “It’s a shame for you to be locked up in a place like Vozara. We keep rough people there who have a lot of problems.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “They’re all human beings, and they didn’t always have these problems. We must look at their past and see what caused them to do what they did.”
Mr. Rasti smiled. “Are you advertising Christianity in there, too?”
“Of course! We’re speaking to every person you send us, especially the young girls. They are desperate for help, so we help them by praying for them.”
“I guess it’s not so bad for you in there after all,” Mr. Rasti said. He shuffled through the contents of a file folder in front of him, selected a sheet of paper, and held it up. I could see it was in my handwriting. “Is this a list of people you’re working with?” he demanded. “How do you know them?”
“Those are people we needed to pray for every day. I made a list so we wouldn’t leave anybody out. We’ve never even met most of them.”
“A notation here says, ‘in hospital.’ Did you visit this person in the hospital?”
I had, but I wasn’t going to admit it.
The questions went on. “Did you visit this list of cities?”
“No, we made the list to pray for them.”
“Did you prepare people to become Christians?”
“If they asked questions, we answered. As Christians, we want to share the Lord’s truth with anyone who wants it.”
As the same old questions dragged on and on, my mind began to wander, and I enjoyed the view through the big window behind Mr. Rasti’s desk.
He held up a notebook. “This book is filled with names and addresses and phone numbers. Are these people Christians?”
They were, but I was not about to say so and risk their lives. “No. These are our friends, and most of them are Muslims. You can check if you like.”
“Was your apartment used as a church? Did a group of Christians use it as a base?”
If you only knew, I said to myself. Marziyeh and I had spent hundreds of hours praying and reading the Bible with our friends. We hosted two home churches, one for young people and another especially for prostitutes. Often we met together twice a day to encourage and uplift each other. When we weren’t feeding people spiritually, we were feeding them physically, filling the table night after night with good food to share as we talked about Jesus and His power in our lives. So many people had given their hearts to Jesus in that unassuming little place. If only the regime could realize how eager young Iranians are to experience Jesus. Many are desperate to escape but feel there is no way out. The rules of Islam are forced on them against their will. Several of these young people, when they first met Marziyeh and me, could scarcely imagine a Lord in human form who sacrificed Himself for them, a Savior who loved them unconditionally. That knowledge made them almost delirious with joy and thanksgiving. They loved Jesus because He first loved them. They readily chose Christianity over Islam. But they were not free to choose a new belief system. To leave Islam for Christianity was to risk torture and death.
“No,” I answered confidently. “Our apartment has never been used as a church.”
“Don’t you think you’re taking Islam away from our youth?”
“No. I don’t want to change anyone’s mind about their faith. I don’t want to take Islam away from anyone. I only want to give young people a chance to choose their own religion. Is there a problem with that?”
Mr. Rasti ignored my question and plowed ahead with even more of his own.
Marziyeh
While Maryam was being interviewed, I waited in another room, handcuffed and praying. One of my two guards approached me hesitantly.
“I know why you’re here,” he said. “I want to know why you became a Christian.”
I recognized him as the officer I’d seen on the day of our arrest, the one who had told me there must be a mistake and there was no problem with my car registration. Evidently, he knew nothing about the scheme to trick us into coming to the station. As I shared my testimony, the young man listened eagerly.
“I pray Islamic prayers every day,” he whispered. “I believe in the Lord and in Christ, but not the way you do.”
“This is something the Lord is trying to reveal to you,” I said. “If you
ask Him, He will help you to understand.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Jesus says, ‘Seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.’2 You need a heart that seeks truth, and the Lord will reveal the truth to you.”
The other guard came over to where we were sitting. “I heard everything you were talking about. If you will answer some of my questions, I will believe in Jesus. How is it possible that a human being could be the Son of God? How could a person be the Lord?”
I explained the Christian idea of God in the flesh to him, but he was skeptical and kept challenging me.
“Do you believe the Lord can do whatever He wants?” I asked.
“Yes, I believe that.”
“Then ask Him to explain it to you, since my words are inadequate. These are truths that only the Lord can reveal to people in their hearts. It isn’t a matter of arguing or reading a book. If you really want answers, pray to the Lord in your own language—it is not necessary to pray only in Arabic—and ask Him to show you the truth.”
The first guard was delighted with this advice, but his partner was still unconvinced. “If you sincerely want the truth and pray for it,” I said, “the Lord will show it to you. But if you just want to argue, you’re wasting my time and your own.”
At that moment Mr. Haghighat came into the room and the conversation abruptly stopped.
After more than two hours, another guard came to take me for my interview. Maryam and I passed each other on the stairs.
“It’s all right,” Maryam said reassuringly. “We’re not being tortured. Just tell the truth.”
That’s an odd thing to say, I thought. One of my problems in life is that I can’t lie even when I need to.
In Mr. Rasti’s office, he offered me a seat. “I’m so sorry to have to put you through this again,” he said apologetically. “It’s just that those are the rules.”
I could not believe my ears. What happened to the curt, disrespectful Mr. Rasti I had met before?
“We found pictures on your laptop that were taken in Korea,” Mr. Rasti began. “What is your relationship with the Korean church?”
“We were in Korea visiting a friend. While we were there, we went to a festival for women, organized by the church.”
“Did you visit other churches there?”
“It is common for Christians to visit various churches when they travel.”
“We know you operate a house church because we found these notes for a speech.”
“Those are my notes for a Bible study,” I replied. “You’ll see I write about disappointments and difficulties, and the challenge of trusting the Lord during hard times, but that faith is the key to success. Is any of that incorrect?”
Mr. Rasti ignored my query and continued a long series of questions about photos, names, and other information he had learned from going through my private things.
Fortunately, no one had discovered any more information about the trip Maryam and I had taken to South Korea, where Christianity is thriving. Through a series of friendships, we had been invited to a leadership conference there, where the other participants were pastors’ wives or other kinds of church leaders. We were just two Christian girls from Iran—it was a miracle we were there.
South Korea was clean and prosperous, and its Christians enthusiastic and compassionate. They showed their faith not only with words but with deeds as well. What a contrast it was to India, where we had gone to share the message of Christ with prostitutes and learn how to minister to them. Fortunately, the Iranian authorities never found evidence of this work either. We were with a Christian ministry there that sometimes bought child prostitutes in order to rescue them. When we visited red-light districts where young prostitutes lived, we had to travel with bodyguards. It was a dangerous, filthy place. Many of the people had AIDS. Some prostitutes asked us to pray for them in church, which we were honored to do. We also spoke to a Christian congregation there and handed out Indian Bibles in the shops.
After my interrogation, I was reunited with Maryam and we compared notes on our sessions. We wondered why Mr. Rasti had behaved so differently toward us today than in the past. We were taken to a dirty, dark cell under the stairwell and left alone.
Later, a short, young, beautiful girl joined us. When we explained the charges against us, she asked us to pray for her. She had been married for six months. Whenever she refused to have sex with her husband, he tied her hands and feet and raped her. She escaped to her parents’ house and filed for divorce. But under Islamic law, only the husband can seek a divorce. Legally, she could not get a divorce without her husband’s consent. Still, she stayed with her parents and got a job.
One day, she accepted a ride to work with a male colleague. Her husband, who had been following her, alerted the basiji and had her arrested, claiming she was cheating on him with the man who gave her the ride. Even though the husband had no proof to support his charge, the word of a man officially carries twice the weight of a woman’s testimony in Islamic court. She would remain in prison until she agreed to go back to her abusive husband (if he would take her) or until he agreed to a divorce.
Another prisoner came in, a slim girl with short hair, whose name was Sharareh. She had been arrested for drinking and dancing with some boys at an amusement park. There were wounds on her body where the basiji had hit her. One of the basiji had held her head down in the car so passersby couldn’t see her through the window. Someone had also held her hands and feet. “Your body is so nice,” her captor had said. “Why do you force us to beat you? Why don’t you relax and let me sing you a little lullaby so you can fall asleep in my arms?” Though it was illegal for her to flirt with boys, it was evidently all right for the basiji who arrested her to flirt with her—even as they were beating her.
MARYAM
It was nearly midnight by the time a guard named Mrs. Najimi came to take us back to Vozara. During the time when Marziyeh was being interrogated, I’d had a run-in with this guard. After my own interrogation, I had worried about Marziyeh and started praying for her out loud. Hearing the prayers, Mrs. Najimi had run into the room shouting, “Shut up! I don’t want to hear your voice anymore! If I hear you once more, I’ll come in here and strangle you!” Shocked and tired, with my resistance at a low ebb, I had dissolved in tears.
Now when Mrs. Najimi saw me, she said, “Maryam, are you all right?”
I assured her that I was fine.
“We’re going back to Vozara,” Mrs. Najimi continued, in a conciliatory tone, “but take your time, darling, and don’t worry.” Just as with Mr. Rasti, Mrs. Najimi’s attitude and treatment of us was completely different than before. She went through the motions of following the rules but treated us with compassion and courtesy. She handcuffed me to Marziyeh and took us to the car. As we rode, she asked, “Why did they arrest you?”
“For being Christians.”
“And what’s wrong with that, my darling?”
“You’ll have to ask Mr. Rasti.”
“Something really bad happened to me this afternoon,” she said haltingly. “I had an argument with my boss and he humiliated me. It left me crying the rest of the day.” She was silent for a minute, and then turned to me again. “My darling, please forgive me for the way I treated you. I was nasty to you today, but I didn’t mean it.” She asked both of us about our faith, and we answered her questions all the way to the detention center.
Time and again, I was discovering that even the employees of the Iranian regime—guards, soldiers, police officers, court officials—yearned for the truth of Christ in their hearts, but feared to ask about Him because of the harsh punishment awaiting those who seek the truth.
When we arrived at Vozara, we couldn’t be admitted because the guards had forgotten some papers. While the driver went back for them, Mrs. Najimi waited with us. She told us she lived in a poor area of the city and traveled hours each way to work every day. She didn’t like her job, but her father had cancer and it
was the only way she could make money to take care of him. She asked us to pray for her and her father. “I hope you will soon be free and that you have great success in your lives,” she said, and gave me a big hug.
When the driver returned, we went down to our cell block, where everyone had waited up to learn what had happened to us: Masomeh, the martyr’s daughter; Sahar, with the short hair; Tannaz, the flirtatious young girl from Mashhad; and others, along with several new prisoners, including a Korean woman whose visa had expired. She didn’t speak Farsi, but she could speak a little English and a little Turkish, and so could we, so we were able to communicate. She was a Christian, and when she learned we were Christians, too, her face lit up with happiness. She asked to sleep in our cell, which was already crowded with other women, including Masomeh and Sahar, who all wanted to be near us like little frightened girls around their mothers. We made room for our new Korean friend and welcomed her in for the night.
CHAPTER 6
CELEBRATION OF FAITH
MARYAM
The next two days, Thursday and Friday, the court was closed, which meant Vozara was crowded and busy because new inmates kept arriving and nobody left. The first new prisoner we saw was a young woman who was very well dressed and seemed afraid of everyone around her. Her first experience behind bars had been watching Leila—who was back from Evin after only a short stay—go through her morning routine, screaming for a cigarette. It’s little wonder the woman was frightened. When others approached her, she turned away and remained silent. Marziyeh and I introduced ourselves and answered the woman’s questions about why we were there.
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