“This is such a relief!” she exclaimed. “I never thought people like you would be in a detention center.”
She was a law student who earned her school expenses by giving skin and beauty treatments. After she leased space for a shop, her landlord made sexual advances toward her. When she refused him, he cashed her postdated deposit check ahead of the date they had agreed on. When the check was rejected by the bank, the landlord had her arrested. She was engaged to be married, and was grateful that her fiancé and her family were supporting her and working for her release. Even so, she was embarrassed and frightened at what might happen next. We began to pray for her. By now, our prayers were a familiar sound to our fellow prisoners, but somehow this time was different. As we continued, the other inmates stopped talking—one by one—and started listening, until our voices alone echoed off the walls of the cell block. When we finished and said “Amen,” everybody else said “Amen” too.
The Vozara Detention Center had become a church.
Tannaz was the only prisoner who still shied away from us. She was the one who had told us that God would forgive promiscuous sex but would never forgive the worship of Jesus. I had seen her watching us as we prayed and talked with the others. Now, for the first time, she approached us. She was crying.
“What happened?” one of the prisoners demanded as the girl came closer. “Do you think their prayers aren’t so worthless after all?” Without a word, Tannaz sat down in front of us.
“Would you like us to pray for you?” I asked.
“Yes, please,” she said. “Pray that I would be freed soon and have a good life from now on.” I took her outstretched hands and prayed for her until dinnertime, when a guard arrived with the big dish and everyone waited patiently while Marziyeh served up the meal on little plates of bread.
I noticed the Korean woman crying in a corner and asked if I could help her. Struggling with the language barrier, she explained that she had a newborn child and her breasts were full of milk. Because she couldn’t nurse, they were very painful. The pain reminded her of how much she missed her child, and how hungry he must be by now. She also said she was still hungry. Marziyeh hadn’t eaten yet, so she gave the young mother her portion.
It’s hard to imagine a justice system worthy of the name that considers it essential to national security to separate a mother from her newborn baby over a visa problem. A regime that fears people like this is on very shaky ground.
Around midnight, I was awakened by the arrival of an attractive, athletic woman. The guards brought her to our cell so she wouldn’t be as afraid. She had been skiing in the mountains with her boyfriend when the basiji stopped her and said her hair was not properly covered according to Islamic law. When the boyfriend confronted them for criticizing her, they were both arrested. She hit one of the basiji, who lodged a personal complaint against her on top of the other charge.
After daybreak, there were more comings and goings. Leila’s husband arrived to pick her up, leading to whoops of joy. I thought she would literally fly out the door. As she headed for her freedom, Marziyeh and I reminded her of the promises she’d made to visit a church.
A group of half a dozen or so women came in together, very provocatively dressed and wearing heavy makeup. They were madams, arrested on the street for soliciting customers for their girls. One was a very aggressive lesbian who was immediately attracted to Marziyeh, eyeing her as she walked up and down the hallway to get a little exercise.
“Oh sister! What a piece of meat!” she exclaimed to her friends. “Honey, I’m sleeping with you tonight.” When Marziyeh tried to ignore her, the woman made suggestive moves and did a little dance in front of her.
Fortunately for us, none of the madams ended up in our cell for the night, though I was awakened more than once by the sound of two of the women in the throes of lesbian passion. These were people who needed God desperately.
Sadly, most divorced or widowed women in Iran are destined for a horrible life. They have no legal rights, their families disown them, and the government gives them no encouragement or assistance. These women reminded me of our ministry to prostitutes in India, where the Hindu religion also enslaves women. One of our two home churches, a group we called Mary Magdalene, was for poor, divorced, or widowed women, who out of desperation had turned to prostitution to stay alive. Life was very difficult for them because many had young children and very few options for employment. Rather than offering assistance, the regime made the situation worse by forcing women to marry men they didn’t love, forcing them to stay in abusive relationships, and making it almost impossible to get a divorce. The government used the façade of religion as an excuse to treat women like toys or commodities, such as with an officially sanctioned temporary marriage, or sigheh, which might last only an hour.
On Saturday, it was off to court for most of the prisoners, as usual. The skier was released on bail. Sharareh and Tannaz left the cell block and never came back. Two of the madams were summoned and the rest stayed with us. As we got to know them a little, we learned that some were in the sex business because they enjoyed it, some were saving money so they could stop doing it one day, and others had stories all their own. The aggressive lesbian was a transsexual who had been born a boy and sold himself for sex to make enough money for a sex-change operation. Now a woman, she seemed very satisfied with her new life. Another of the group had been raped as a young teenager in a house where she worked as a maid. When she found out she could get paid for sex, she loved the work for a while, but then came to hate herself for what she was doing.
“But how else can I survive in this country?” she cried. “I’m so tired!” All we could do was pray for her.
After Masomeh and the transsexual returned from court, the two of them got into a loud argument. We still weren’t sure we had the whole story on Masomeh, the martyr’s daughter who had set up her boyfriend to be arrested and lashed by the basiji. She started talking with the transsexual about her relationship with her boyfriend, claiming that she loved him so much. After listening for a minute, the transsexual asked if the apartment where they were caught was at a certain address. Masomeh said that it was.
“Six months ago, your boyfriend was one of my customers!” the transsexual crowed. “We went to that apartment, and he paid me 100,000 tomans to have sex with him!” Masomeh had said earlier that she’d bought the boyfriend a car and other expensive gifts. Now the truth was about to come out. She turned absolutely white. “He told me everything he had, including his car, was his to begin with, not presents from you!” the transsexual continued. “You weren’t wealthy, and you weren’t being generous. He was the wealthy one, and you had him arrested so you could take everything from him!”
Normally brash and outspoken, Masomeh was struck dumb by this exposé of her past. “I have to go to the toilet,” she said, and left the room. Later, we learned she was having an affair with the judge in her case. He knew she was guilty of defrauding her lover; but in exchange for her sexual favors, the judge forced her boyfriend to marry her, and then sent him to prison so that Masomeh could keep his property and she and the judge could continue their relationship. This is not an uncommon situation. A different judge had offered to release one of the madams on bail if she would give him her phone number.
Marziyeh
Cleaning the floors and toilets had become an everyday routine for us. The change in hygiene and the improvement in the way our meals were served, small as they were, made a big difference in the comfort of our temporary home. One day, I even convinced one of the guards to take a little money from me to buy some cake and juice for everyone. It was the only relief we had from bread and cheese in the morning and lentils and rice the rest of the day.
Every morning, we also cleaned the hall in front of the guards’ office. One day, a kind-looking middle-aged woman came to the cell block while we were cleaning and asked us why we were at Vozara.
“We’re in jail for our faith in Christ,” I explain
ed.
She was the custodian, hired to clean the whole detention center. She admitted that, until that moment, she had never even been to our cell block. Perhaps tinged with guilt, she gave the floor a few halfhearted strokes with a broom and then said, “I hear you pray for everyone here. Could you pray for me?”
“Do you accept the way we pray?” Maryam asked.
“How do you pray?”
“We are Christians. We pray to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.”
“Okay, so you’re Christians,” she answered. “What difference does it make? I accept Jesus. Just pray for me.”
We promised we would.
Late that night, a young girl, very thin and addicted to crack, came in. She was injured or sick, and crying in terrible pain. Though it was after midnight, I went to her cell.
“Why are you here?” the girl asked. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Because I wanted to sit here with you,” I said. I took the girl’s head in my lap and stroked her hair. She was younger than my sister, Elena. I prayed silently until the girl fell asleep, and then sat with her a long time so as not to wake her.
Early the next morning, the girl sought me out and asked, “What kind of prayer did you pray for me last night?” I told her I had prayed for Jesus to heal her.
“I became so calm,” she said, “and my pain is much less.” Maryam and I told her that if she trusted Jesus and tried to change her ways, the Lord would always be willing to help her.
A woman in her forties arrived, whose husband was a pilot in the air force. They lived on a military base outside the city, and every aspect of their lives was monitored by the government: mobile phones, text messages, visitors—absolutely everything. The authorities knew more about them than they knew about themselves. Her elderly father had stomach trouble that he treated by drinking a little wine, even though alcohol is strictly forbidden by Islamic law. Because the family was under such close surveillance, it was impossible to buy wine without being seen, so they grew grapes and made their own. A neighbor saw the wine in a cabinet at their house and alerted the authorities. With the pilot and his family arrested by the basiji, the neighbor hoped to be promoted to the pilot’s position. The woman was worried about her husband and also about their two young children. After she heard our story, she asked us to pray for all of them.
When a guard came for Maryam and me the next morning, we assumed we were going back to the police station or to the Revolutionary Court. We walked outside in handcuffs, but instead of the usual police car or van waiting for us, there was a taxi, and beside it stood a man who introduced himself as Mr. Yazdani. We didn’t recognize him, but hoped that our sisters had sent him. Mr. Yazdani carried a dossier in his hand and seemed to know something about us and our case. “We’re going to see what we can do to get you released in time for New Year’s,” he said. That certainly sounded encouraging!
On the way to the Revolutionary Court, he asked us why we couldn’t accept Mohammed and Jesus both. “That’s what I do,” he explained matter-of-factly. “It’s a shame that girls like you have been caught in this type of situation.”
When we arrived at the courthouse, the driver told us the total fare. He insisted the police hadn’t paid him. Mr. Yazdani hadn’t planned to pay him, so I paid him.
Maryam and I waited in an outer room while Mr. Yazdani went in to talk to our judge, Mr. Sobhani. As we waited, we started talking, and eventually we were laughing. A young female guard came over to see what we were laughing about. We had simply gotten the giggles, and once we started, we couldn’t stop. The young guard started giggling, too, and was soon red-faced and laughing as hard as we were. Just then, the office door flew open and a stern-faced Judge Sobhani came stalking out.
“Are these girls your prisoners or your friends?” he barked at the guard. She quickly stopped laughing and scurried to a chair across the room. After the judge disappeared back into his office, the guard resumed her conversation with us. She was a university student and very interested in Christianity. She wished us good luck and said she would find a Bible to read.
The door opened again, and Mr. Yazdani came out looking very dejected. “Mr. Sobhani doesn’t want to see you today,” he said. There was no one else waiting to see the judge, but he had been offended by our laughter. He tended to be far more lenient with prisoners who flattered him and begged for mercy. Every time we had seen him, we had seemed confident and courteous. This aggravated him, and therefore he declined to see us.
It was nearly midnight by the time we returned to Vozara. A new prisoner lay on the floor in front of our cell, a teenager addicted to crystal meth and going through withdrawal. She was nearly comatose, unable to stand and seemingly unaware of what was happening. One of the guards was kicking her.
“Get up! Get up!” she yelled. “Get in your cell, you stupid trash!” The girl was completely helpless. The guard kicked her into our cell like a pile of old rags.
The next morning, I woke up with a terrible pain in my abdomen. Some kidney problems I’d had in the past were flaring up again, thanks to the stress, bad food, and cold floors. I called for the guard to unlock our door so I could go to the toilet, but my cries went unanswered. By the time the guards came to open the cells for the morning, I had wet myself. I feared I might be losing control altogether and hoped the problem would not be with me from now on. When the door was unlocked at last, I washed my clothes in the sink and wore my coat while they dried.
With the New Year’s holiday approaching, most of the prisoners were called and set free that morning, leaving only a few of the madams, the young addict from the night before, and Maryam and me. Though the girl still seemed dazed and uncomfortable, she was better than when she’d come in. When we asked how we could help her, she said only a few words before starting to cry. Her voice made a strange, weak, raspy sound. As we comforted her, she told us her story.
She was so addicted to meth that she ate some of it, which had damaged her windpipe and vocal cords. Her family had tried to help her, and she was able to give it up for a while, but recently relapsed. She walked through Tehran looking for a treatment center until a kind man picked her up, gave her some money, and dropped her off at a hospital. The hospital staff told her they weren’t a detoxification center and sent her away. Walking the streets again, she had asked some policemen for help. Instead, they beat her and drove her to Vozara.
“There’s no one on earth who can help me,” she said through her tears.
“The Lord will help you,” I assured her. “He will not answer your cry for help with kicks and punches.” Maryam and I told her a little about our lives and our Christian walk. “Trust God. Go to a church when you get out, and they will help you.”
The girl’s expression changed from despair to bright hope. “I will go to church, and I will never touch drugs again,” she said with confidence. I held her while she cried, gave her a little money, and wished the Lord’s blessing on her.
By the end of the day, every prisoner except the two of us had been called to court, and all but one had been released on bail. The pilot’s wife was the last one to go, and she was sent to prison. We were left in the cell block completely alone.
We walked down the hall together, going into each cell and remembering the women we’d met there. By law, prisoners were to spend no more than three days at the Vozara Detention Center, yet we had now been there for two weeks. During that time, we had witnessed to dozens of women we never would have met if the authorities had followed the usual three-day rule. What a miracle it was that we’d been able to meet and encourage so many women. What man meant for evil, God used for His good and His glory. The people who arrested us thought we were suffering in misery. In fact, we had shared the gospel more openly behind bars than we had ever been able to do on the outside. Even two guards who had been especially rude to us apologized during that last day for the way they had acted, and they asked us to pray for them.
Now, as we entered each cell,
we prayed for all the people who had been locked up there. We hoped they now had their freedom, that we had been faithful witnesses to them, and that they would continue to listen for the spirit of Christ moving in their hearts. Then we started thinking about the women who would be locked up there after we were gone. How could we reach out to them? There were damp places on the walls where little chunks of plaster had fallen off. Using these pieces of plaster as chalk, we wrote Bible verses and Christian messages all over the walls, and on the ceilings where prisoners could read them as they fell asleep. We prayed aloud and sang songs until late in the night. All alone in an underground prison cell, we shared a joyous celebration of faith.
The next day—March 18, 2009, in the West—was known as Esfand 28 in the Muslim world, one of the last days of the year 1387. Maryam and I went back to the Revolutionary Court and waited outside the magistrate’s office while Mr. Yazdani went in to talk to Mr. Sobhani again. This time, the magistrate gave us an option for gaining our freedom, knowing it was impossible for us to carry it out. If we could come up with two hundred million tomans ($100,000) per person by five o’clock that afternoon, he would release us on bail until our case went to trial. Otherwise we were to be transferred immediately to Evin Prison. Prisoners have to be offered bail before they can be transferred to Evin, so the court had to go through the motions, even though we couldn’t possibly arrange for that large of a payment on such short notice.
Our families owned property that they could pledge in order to get the money, but on the afternoon before one of the biggest holidays of the year, all the banks would be closed and our sisters could not collect the necessary documents. We knew we’d never get it back, even if we were acquitted. Christians typically forfeit all of their property in cases like ours.
Captive in Iran Page 8