Our two faithful sisters, Elena and Shirin, came to the detention center every day, in case we were taken somewhere. They followed us to court or to the police station to exchange a few words and slip us something to eat or drink while we walked from the car into the building. Today they were behind the police vehicle when our driver had a minor accident. While we waited in the van for the police to sort everything out, we had a solid hour to talk to them—by far the longest conversation we’d had since our arrest. One small luxury we enjoyed was trimming our fingernails for the first time in two weeks!
After being taken to the police station to get some forms, we were shocked to discover we were headed to Evin Prison. It was hard to believe that we were about to enter one of the world’s most notorious prisons, imprisoned only for our faith in God.
Elena and Shirin waited at the prison entrance to say good-bye and wish us well. We hugged and cried and promised to pray for each other. Then we walked through the tall, imposing entrance gate with “Evin Prison” written across the top, out of the spring sunshine and into another world.
CHAPTER 7
EVIN, OUR CHURCH
MARYAM
The entrance to Evin Prison was on a hill. A few guards standing around kept people from stopping or gathering there. In contrast to the huge front gate, the door we passed through next was small. The first little room inside led to two reception areas, one for men and one for women. We went through the women’s entrance into a tiny office with broken-down furniture and a box of dirty, smelly chadors.
A chubby woman with glasses sat behind a small metal desk. “What’s your charge?” she asked.
“Christianity,” we answered.
Her brow furrowed in disbelief. “I’ve never heard of someone being brought to Evin for Christianity,” she said suspiciously. “You probably did something else. You were probably advertising and promoting your faith.”
“That’s correct,” I said. “We spoke to people about it.”
“I told you!” she said with a note of triumph. “Your charge is participating in political activities against the government.”
We said nothing. It seemed like every time someone mentioned our offense, they described it differently. We had not seen a written copy of the allegations against us, nor had we been allowed to speak to an attorney. We later learned that the official charges were “acting against state security” and “taking part in illegal gatherings.” They couldn’t legally arrest us just for being Christians, according to Article 23 of the Iranian constitution: “The investigation of individuals’ beliefs is forbidden, and no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief.” News of this constitutional guarantee would have come as quite a shock to many of the country’s policemen and law enforcement organizations, not to mention its citizens.
We handed over all our possessions to the woman behind the desk. She searched us and ordered us each to put on one of the filthy chadors. Fortunately, we had gotten used to such horrible smells at Vozara that we could at least tolerate these. The woman led us past a beautiful green courtyard with flowers and trees that was evidently used by the staff as a break area; it looked more like a park than a prison. No doubt visitors were impressed by it. After waiting a few minutes in another office, we were fingerprinted by a man wearing black cotton gloves. It would be haraam—sinful—according to Islamic law, for him to touch the bare skin of a woman he didn’t know. (The long list of haraam offenses includes everything from murder and premarital sex to eating pork or getting a tattoo.) With our hands blackened by the ink, we had our photos taken again. Someone entered our names and information about our “crimes” into a computer, which spit out white identification cards for each of us. We were now officially prisoners of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A guard led us out a back door into the main prison yard, which was huge and covered with so many red brick buildings it looked like a town. After a ten-minute walk, we arrived at the women’s prison block. Our guard rang a bell, gave our cards to the young woman who opened the door, and left. We were called one at a time into a small room, where we had to strip naked and submit to the indignity of a full body search. They ordered us to squat and stand three times. When Marziyeh challenged this instruction, they made her squat and stand six times. Though the women who searched us looked and acted like guards, they were actually prisoners. As we soon learned, the inmates did most of the work inside Evin, which made life easier for the guards and staff and gave certain prisoners the chance to earn special favors.
After we dressed, we were led up a long flight of stairs to an office outside the cell block, where women prisoners were coming and going. Some were leaving with their luggage for a New Year’s holiday parole with their families. Others were being released, hugging each other and saying good-bye. A clerk called our names and held up our two cards.
“What did you do?” she demanded.
“We are Christians and we promoted our faith, so we were arrested for activities against the regime.”
“Why did you do such things to yourselves?” she asked in a gruff voice.
Another guard led us to Ward 2. She opened a door and gestured through it to the hallway beyond.
“Ask for Mrs. Mahjoob,” the guard instructed as she locked the door behind us. “She’ll tell you what to do.”
Mrs. Mahjoob was well dressed, with small eyes and simple makeup. She was the prisoner in charge of Ward 2, keeping order among the inmates and acting as a point of contact between prisoners and prison staff. Ward 1 was for drug offenders. Ward 3 was for prisoners with mental problems—and as the newest and cleanest part of the women’s prison, was usually the only part shown to visiting inspectors or other outsiders. Ward 2 was for everyone else and was divided into two parts: women accused of murder or prostitution were downstairs; women charged with fraud or crimes against the state were upstairs.
“What have you been charged with?” Mrs. Mahjoob asked.
“Believing in Jesus,” I said.
“Come over to this room until I decide where to put you.”
There were six cells upstairs in Ward 2. Mrs. Mahjoob led us to a room that was already so crowded there was scarcely room to sit. It was about fifteen-by-twenty feet and jam-packed with eight triple-bunk beds. Women who didn’t have a bed slept on the floor. Under the lowest bunk in each set were three or four wicker baskets, one for each person in the room, the only personal storage space the prisoners had.
There was a loud rumble of conversation among so many women in such a tight space. Some were knitting. Others were talking or sleeping. One or two were climbing in or out of the upper bunks, which took some effort because there were no ladders. Still others were coming and going to “the shop,” a tiny window down the hall where prisoners bought supplies, snacks, and little luxuries from the prison commissary. The commissary would be closed for the New Year’s holidays in a few hours, and women were rushing to stock up.
As newcomers, we were showered with questions about our lives and the charges against us. “You have become apostates,” one woman said harshly after we told her our charges. “This is very dangerous.”
Someone in the room yelled, “Look at them! They’re not crying. Newcomers always cry for an hour before they settle down.”
Another woman shouted back, “Political prisoners don’t cry, because we haven’t done anything wrong!”
“Don’t worry,” the woman who had mentioned crying said, “we’re all political prisoners in this room.” She introduced herself as Tahereh. She and eighteen others had been arrested on their way to visit their children in Iraq. The children (and likely their mothers, too) were members of the mujahideen, loosely organized opposition groups that had repelled the Soviet army in Afghanistan with help from the American CIA and were now fighting for ethnic autonomy in Iran. Their children lived in Ashraf City, a mujahideen refugee camp near Baghdad that had been under US control but had recently been handed over to the Iraqi government
. The women had not seen their children for years and decided to travel to Iraq as a group. They were arrested at the airport and brought to prison.
While Tahereh was talking to us, one of her friends offered us cups of tea. It tasted wonderful! It was the first we’d had since our arrest. The mujahideen women were the most welcoming and generous of all the inmates we met that day.
“Perhaps you would like to have a shower,” Tahereh suggested diplomatically. “Come, I’ll show you.”
Perhaps we would! We hadn’t bathed or even brushed our teeth in fourteen days. Other women gave us shampoo, towels, and combs, and a woman named Sepideh led us to the bathroom, where several women were washing dishes in the sink. There were six showers, very dirty and matted with hair that stuck to our feet. The water was like ice. But for the first time in two weeks we felt relatively clean.
Mrs. Mahjoob was in our room when we got back. “You can stay here,” she informed us. “All the other rooms are too full.”
We found space to sit on the floor in front of a plastic shoe rack along one wall. Some of the women with lower bunks allowed their friends to sit on their beds; otherwise people found a spot wherever they could. The door at the entrance to Ward 2 was locked, but women could move freely among the six cells, the bathroom, and a small room with four telephones and the little window for commissary purchases. We would have liked to buy a few things, but we had no way to pay for them. When the guards took our money at check-in, they were supposed to give us commissary vouchers. We hadn’t received them yet, so we’d have to make do with whatever the prison gave us until the holidays were over, along with any help our fellow inmates might offer.
A loudspeaker crackled with the names of several prisoners, who jumped up to report to the office. Would they be released? Paroled? Taken to court? Executed? Every inmate both loved and dreaded hearing her name called—loved it because of the hope that she would be released from Evin Prison, dreaded it because the news could also be devastating. In this case, all the women called learned they were to be set free. They screamed and jumped with joy, accepting the congratulations of all the others. Then they gathered their few possessions and disappeared through the door.
A woman who sat next to me, knitting, stared at me for a moment. “Why have you converted to Christianity?” she demanded. “My mother is a Christian and my father is a Muslim. I follow both religions equally and am a member of a church. You’ve made a great mistake by leaving Islam.” When I started to tell my story, she looked down at her knitting, refusing to make eye contact. “You made a mistake,” was all she would say.
I overheard two women talking about Marziyeh and me.
“What is their crime?”
“Converting to Christianity.”
“That isn’t a crime! They must have done something else. Everybody who comes into this prison says, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’ If they’d done nothing wrong, they wouldn’t be here.”
This woman seemed extremely upset and angry, and I soon found out why. She was a widow who taught kindergarten to support her two children. She had been behind bars for two years because her brother had written a bad check on her account to settle a debt. When the check bounced, she was arrested. He promised every day he would work to get her out, but instead he did nothing. She missed her two children and had thought she would be granted New Year’s parole to see them, but her request was denied. She hated her brother for destroying her life.
She started to cry. “I don’t even say Muslim prayers now! I’m angry with this God who does not command any justice. I do not believe in this God!” Her sobs grew louder as she spoke.
I asked if Marziyeh and I could pray for her. Her grim and angry expression softened into a broad smile. “Yes, of course,” she said gratefully. We prayed for her peace as the tears continued to flow. After we finished, she thanked us profusely.
I heard a clattering sound and someone shouting, “Dinnertime! Dinnertime!” A pot of food appeared as the women prepared to eat. In addition to Mrs. Mahjoob, who was in charge of all of Ward 2, each room had an inmate leader who assigned sleeping space, settled arguments, reported problems to the guards, and collected and served food for that room. Our room leader was Mrs. Pari, a plump, middle-aged woman with extremely heavy makeup, black hair, and an unusual accent. Her most noticeable feature was her heavy, black, painted eyebrows in the style of the Reza Shah era or Hollywood movies of the 1940s and ’50s.
“Finally, we have succeeded,” Mrs. Pari announced as she brought in the food. “We kept asking Mr. Sedaghat for eggs and potatoes, and here they are!” A cheer resounded off the concrete walls. Mr. Sedaghat was the prison warden. Perhaps in honor of the holidays, he had granted their request. Mrs. Pari looked at Marziyeh and me. “You brought luck to the ward,” she said. “We’ve waited months for this.”
The women had their own dishes, stored in the wicker hampers under the beds. By now, they all had plates in their hands and had lined up for this special treat. As Marziyeh and I tried to fold sheets of newspaper into makeshift plates, an elderly woman who had been watching us quietly ever since we arrived spoke up. “I have some extra plates in my basket. You’re welcome to them, and you can sit here in front of my bed to eat.”
Each woman received one egg and one potato. We received the smallest potatoes in the pan. “You are newcomers and haven’t been deprived of good food as long as we have,” Mrs. Pari explained. If only she knew! But we took our portions without complaint.
The woman who gave us plates later told us that when she and her two sons sold a piece of land, there was a problem with the title. When another man claimed the property was legally his, this woman was charged with trying to sell something she didn’t own and sent to prison. She called us her daughters and asked us to call her “Mommy.” After dinner, she gave us the rundown on all the long-term residents of our room. She was part historian and part town gossip.
Marziyeh and I went for a walk along the corridor to get more familiar with our new surroundings, weaving our way through the crowd waiting for the telephones and on to a quieter part of the hall. “Hello,” a voice said. We turned around to see a woman in her early thirties with long hair that was prematurely gray. “My name is Silva Harotonian. Some friends told me there were two new Christians here. I’d like to get to know you. I’m a Christian too.”
Her honest, open approach made us suspicious. Was she a plant to extract information from us? Had the authorities sent her to get the names of our Christian friends? Ward 2 had surveillance cameras in the ceiling of every room, including the toilets. We were constantly monitored and thus wary of anyone who seemed unusually friendly. We said we were in prison for believing in Jesus Christ.
“I can’t believe that,” she replied. “How can they put somebody in prison because of their faith?”
Without going into too much detail, I said we were accused of activities against the regime. Sensing my hesitancy, Silva shared her story with us.
“I am Iranian, but my family heritage is Armenian,” she said. “I went to Armenia about a year ago to work for International Research and Exchange, an American charity. I helped offer Iranian experts in mother-and-child health care the opportunity to travel to the United States and consult with their counterparts there. I often traveled back to Iran to meet with Iranian applicants for the program. I was introduced to Drs. Arash and Kamiar Alaei, widely known for their work on AIDS and international health.
“My last visit ran far longer than I expected. In June 2008, the security police came to my apartment in Tehran and took me to a hotel for questioning. They told me they had been following me for months, recording every move with a security camera. I didn’t think they had any problem with my work. In fact, the Iranian government had invited IREX employees to Iran a few years earlier, though this was during the era of the reformist president, Khatami.
“After spending the rest of the day answering questions, I asked the police if I could attend a friend’s wedding l
ater in the evening. ‘You’re not going anywhere for some time,’ they replied. So that night, instead of celebrating with my friend, I was brought here to Evin Prison.”
She went through intense interrogation the first few days and was kept in solitary confinement. “They demanded I confess things that weren’t true. For example, they wanted me to say that the Alaei brothers were leading the programs I was handling at IREX. But it wasn’t true and I refused to say it.”
Three weeks ago, she had been transferred to Ward 2 and was now very happy to meet two Christian girls. Her story won us over; we believed her.
Throughout the evening, the loudspeaker announced the names of people who were being set free. By 10:30, the bed above Mommy’s was vacant. Knowing that Marziyeh’s back had been bothering her for some time, I took a spot on the floor so she would have a better chance to get some sleep in the bunk. Around that time, the lights were turned off, except for a small spotlight in each cell, though the individual rooms were not locked.
After midnight, a group of mujahideen women were released, which freed up some additional bunks in our room.
“You’re lucky,” one of the women told me as I climbed into a newly vacated bed. “Most people have to sleep on the floor for the first week or so.” After sleeping on the floor at Vozara for the past fourteen days, even a thin and dirty mattress in Evin Prison felt like a cloud.
I woke up to the sound of yelling. For an instant, I had a flashback to our first days at Vozara, when Leila welcomed the morning by screaming for a cigarette. But now it was Mrs. Imani—a young, thin, jumpy woman who read the Koran and fingered her worry beads for hours at a time—screaming over use of the telephone. Each inmate was allowed to use the phone once a day. Established prisoners received more minutes than new arrivals, and those with longer sentences got more time than the rest. Prisoners could sell their time to other inmates, usually for snacks from the commissary. Mrs. Imani spent every moment possible on the phone every day, trading for some of the time, badgering inmates out of more, and simply taking it whenever she saw a chance. Whenever a phone was available, she wanted to put it to good use.
Captive in Iran Page 9