These debates helped to take my mind off my continuing sickness—a severe sore throat and chest infection, as well as the backache and headaches I had suffered off and on for weeks. A trip to the clinic in Ward 209—not actually a clinic, but just a room with a bed—yielded another round of ineffective antibiotics. The pills weren’t even in a container. The “doctor” scooped a handful from the table behind her and handed them to me.
When Munis and Mahtab were praying a few days later, I asked them why they covered themselves to pray. “If you believe God is your creator, don’t you believe He is closer to you than your skin? Why cover yourself up from someone who is already in your heart?”
“It’s a sign of respect and part of our faith,” Munis explained. “Otherwise we don’t have to do it.”
“But has God asked you to do this?” I said. “And has He asked you to speak to Him only in Arabic? Can God not understand you in Farsi? Do you really have to bow to Him five times a day? Can’t you pray to Him whenever you want?”
Munis couldn’t answer these questions, and they upset her. Seeing her agitation, I apologized and let the matter drop. That night, Mahtab came over to me and said, “Your conversation with Munis made me think a lot. You’re exactly right, and I wonder why I never thought of these things before. You prayed to your Lord for me and it really made a difference: I felt much more relaxed. The routine, obligatory prayers I say as a Muslim are rituals, clichés, nothing but habits that have no benefit. I’m going to stop doing namaz prayers and pray with you instead.”
Even though Mahtab’s new routine made Munis uncomfortable, Mahtab was true to her word. She and I prayed together daily, sometimes skipping break time in order to pray instead.
MARYAM
As the days passed, the guards in Ward 209 grew curious about Christianity, just as some of the guards in Ward 2 had. One of them surprised me one day by asking out of the blue, “Who is this Jesus, anyway? Some new fake leader who tries to convince people to follow him? It seems like there’s another one every day. I heard a while ago that a man in a distant village claims to be in touch with ghosts and spirits and has attracted quite a crowd. Why have you young girls lost your senses and decided to follow some nut like that? It’s a pity, is it not? In any case, whoever this Jesus Christ is, he’s a very dangerous person to put you in this position.” I knew that any explanation would fall on deaf ears, but I prayed that Jesus would open this woman’s heart to the truth.
In our cell, Fereshteh spent hours every day reading the Koran and using her prayer beads. Her strict views of Islam prohibited her from accepting any new ideas about God. And yet she acknowledged an emptiness inside. “Our religious leaders have made a mess of Islam,” she said. “Because of that, many people have deserted the religion and lost their faith.”
She and I had already shared long conversations about Islam and Christianity. I had prayed for her, but now I decided to remain silent and let God touch Fereshteh’s heart however He thought best. The next day, I made a foil cross and gave it to her. She put it next to her pillow. “From now on, every time I go to sleep, I’ll pray with this cross in my hands,” Fereshteh said. She also became keenly interested in the subject of baptism.
“Before you can do that, you must believe in Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior,” I explained.
Fereshteh hung on every word and wanted to know more. “Could you sing your hymns louder?” she asked. This from an inmate who had flinched at the slightest word when I first arrived, fearful that the guards would crack down on us. “I hear them when you’re praying and enjoy them very much.”
I happily taught her “Christ Beside Me,” “Come Down, O Love Divine,” and others. Fereshteh was an eager student, learning the songs quickly and singing along with me. It was a wonderful way for both of us to keep our spirits up. Still, there were times when even singing couldn’t distract me from the pain in my ear that had continued ever since my infection. My hearing was only partially restored, and headaches and dizziness still came on without warning. One afternoon, when I became too dizzy to stand, Fereshteh called for a guard to take me to the clinic. I put on my headscarf and a blindfold and went to the clinic.
After a cursory examination, the doctor said, “You have a ruptured eardrum. It will heal in time. Your headaches are caused by stress. I will give you some medicine.”
The “medicine” turned out to be one of the prison clinic’s all-purpose remedies: sleeping pills. After two days of this “therapy,” I veered between a fog of semiconsciousness and deep sleep. One morning, when the guard came in with breakfast, I stood to take the plate and fainted, falling backward. Fereshteh later told me that the crack of my head against the wall was so loud that the guard put down her tray and rushed over to check on me. After that, the clinic sent even stronger pills. After taking them for only a day, I told the guard that I wouldn’t take them anymore. The guard agreed, but made me sign a statement saying I had refused the medication.
The rules demanding quiet, coupled with the fact that prisoners always wore blindfolds outside their cells, created a powerful sense of isolation. The only breaks in the day were meals, trips to the toilet, and a one-hour period spent in the larger room with the clear skylight. Marziyeh and I kept up our clandestine communication, leaving tokens to each other behind the sink, and we deepened our friendships with our cellmates.
The next time I saw Marziyeh was on visiting day, about two weeks after our transfer to Ward 209. After being blindfolded and taken separately from our cells, we were brought outside to wait for a ride to the visitors’ hall. Out in the courtyard, where we were allowed to remove our blindfolds, we discovered we were standing only a few feet from each other. We nodded, speaking only with our eyes, but one of the guards saw us and shouted, “No talking, you two!”
I was overwhelmed with joy at seeing and feeling the sun after being locked up in a six-by-six-foot cell for two weeks. It was so wonderful! The process of leaving Ward 209, waiting for the car, driving to the visitors’ hall, and waiting again to be escorted inside, took hours. At last, we were allowed to spend fifteen minutes with our sisters. We sat in adjacent cubicles, with Shirin and Elena on the visitors’ side, separated from us by a glass wall. We could see them only inches away, but could not touch them, and we had to use the cubicle telephones to talk. Guards stood close by to listen in on our conversations.
Marziyeh
When Elena saw me during the visiting time, she was shocked at my appearance. After two weeks in a windowless cell, I was as pale as a ghost. But at least I was clean and well fed, and had even managed to trim my eyebrows using strands of thread. Because we had so little time to visit, she and I talked at a furious pace. I told her only a little about the conditions in Ward 209, because I didn’t want her to worry. And then I shared an amazing story with her.
“One morning about five o’clock, I was awakened by someone shaking my legs,” I said. “I had a strange, vibrant feeling that it was the Holy Spirit. This had happened before and made me very happy. Because Mahtab and Munis were still asleep, I sat on my pallet singing songs of praise to the Lord for the peace He had given me. By the time they woke up, I had already arranged our breakfast of boiled eggs on the softe [a plastic tray about the size of a newspaper, which we used in place of a table in the cell]. They were surprised and asked why I was up so early. I said, ‘I don’t know. I just feel as if the Holy Spirit is with me.’”
As I told my story, Elena’s eyes lit up. “Do you know what day that was?” she said with excitement. “Pentecost!”
I was completely astonished. It made me very happy to know that the Lord hadn’t forgotten about me and that the Holy Spirit had filled me with a new sense of His presence on that special day.
Once I had given my brief report, Elena did most of the talking, bringing me important news.
First, our faithful and hardworking lawyer, Mr. Soltani, had not given up on us. He had continually tried to get inside Evin to visit us and to get
our signatures, which would give him legal permission to represent us in court. For his dedication and commitment, he himself had been arrested and was now an inmate in Ward 209. How ridiculous! For defending the human rights of political prisoners in Iran, for standing up to the false arrest and widespread abuse of those prisoners, he had now joined their ranks! (He was sentenced to twenty years and forbidden to practice law. As of November 2012, he is still in prison.)
The second important news was that we were not the isolated, anonymous inmates we thought we were; thousands of people were praying for us and working for our release. The first indication we’d had of any of this was Mr. Mosavat’s remark at our interrogation that one of our sisters had been interviewed by Voice of America. In fact, through the efforts of our friends, along with people we didn’t even know, our case had been taken up by Amnesty International. A press release on April 8, 2009, identified us as prisoners of conscience, “detained solely on account of their religious beliefs.”
The press release mentioned our illnesses and the crowded conditions in Ward 2 of Evin Prison. It also quoted Article 23 of the Iranian constitution, which says, “The investigation of individuals’ beliefs is forbidden, and no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief,”3 and Article 18.1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (to which Iran is a party), which states, “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.”4
The Amnesty International document noted that “evangelical Christians . . . often face harassment by the authorities. Converts from Islam can risk arrest, attack, or the death penalty. Conversion from Islam (apostasy) is considered as forbidden under Islamic Law, which requires apostates to be put to death if they refuse to reconvert to Islam. There is no specific provision in the Iranian Penal Code for apostasy, but judges are required to use their knowledge of Islamic Law to rule on cases where no specific legislation exists in the Penal Code. A new version of the Iranian Penal Code is currently under consideration by the [Parliament] and prescribes the death penalty for those considered to be apostates.”5
Amnesty International encouraged appeals to the Iranian authorities for our immediate and unconditional release, along with contact information for writing to the director of the Human Rights Headquarters of Iran, the head of the judiciary, and Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.
Elam Ministries, the London-based organization that sponsored the theology conference in Turkey where Maryam and I first met, was also publicizing our case. They had provided us with support and the New Testaments we had distributed before our arrest. Now they were trying to help us win our freedom.
Furthermore, friends and strangers by the hundreds had sent us cards and letters of encouragement in prison. Of course, we had not received a single one and knew nothing of their existence until this meeting with our sisters.
The world was watching how the Iranian government treated us, and it made the authorities very nervous. God had sent an army of Christians to help us, and we didn’t even know it!
Elena was convinced that our transfer to Ward 209 was a sign that our case was about to be closed and we would be released. As the visit ended, my spirits soared. So much encouraging news! So much to be thankful for! Nothing could ruin the joy of the moment; not even being blindfolded, separated again from my sister and Maryam, and returned to my tiny, sunless cell.
CHAPTER 14
“EXECUTE US!”
Marziyeh
During our two weeks in Ward 209, we had not been interrogated a single time. That relatively peaceful period ended a day or two after our visit with our sisters when Maryam and I were called in separately for long, intense interrogations of six to eight hours each. Much of the time, the questioners, usually Mr. Mosavat and Mr. Sedaghat, asked us the same questions that they and others had been asking for months: “When did you convert to Christianity? Who do you talk to about it? Do you hold church services in your home? Where do you get your Bibles? Who are the people on this list? Who are the people in these photos? We’re so sorry to have to keep you here; are they treating you well? Do you have any complaints?”
When I entered the interrogation room, Mr. Mosavat offered to let me take off my blindfold. “No, thank you,” I said. “I am quite happy right now, and I prefer not to see your face.”
I voiced my anger at being separated from Maryam when we returned to Ward 2 after our first interrogation, but added, “I must thank you for this kindness, because you have enabled me to talk about Jesus Christ with even more people.”
“I didn’t order you to be sent to separate floors, only separate cells,” Mr. Mosavat fumed. “There must have been a mistake. Those people are so stupid!”
I sat silently for a moment before clapping my hands loudly in applause. “That was a very good show. Thank you for that, too.”
“Miss Amirizadeh, it would be a complete waste of your young life and your beauty to remain in this prison. I advise you to stop insisting on your faith, recant your statements, get your freedom, and then go have fun and enjoy life.” Clearly, he was used to having the upper hand, which was essential for making prisoners afraid and for making them say or do whatever he wanted.
“Thank you very much,” I replied. “I was just waiting for you to order me to go have fun and enjoy life.” I was determined to let him know that I did not believe his lies and was not falling prey to his manipulations. Humor and sarcasm were the defenses I had at hand, and I wielded them with confidence.
A few days later, I was interrogated again—hours and hours of the same questions, plus a few surprises. This time, there was a third man in the room, but he was a stranger to me. The room smelled of expensive cologne.
“Do you have relationships with men?” Mr. Mosavat asked me.
“What do you mean by ‘relationships’? If you mean do I have a boyfriend, the answer is no.”
“Are you saying you have no contacts with any men? Have you never gone to a coffee shop with a man?”
“Excuse me. I am a woman who has lived on her own for ten years. Of course I’ve gone out with men and may have sat with them in coffee shops as part of my socializing with other people. That is a really stupid question.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“That has nothing to do with any of this.”
“You’re right, it’s irrelevant. I’m just curious.”
MARYAM
When my turn came to be interrogated, Mr. Mosavat offered to let me remove my blindfold. “I don’t mind it,” I said. “I’d rather not see your face.” I had no way of knowing that Marziyeh had said the same thing.
“You must take off your blindfold!” said another voice in the room. It was Mr. Sedaghat, the official in charge of Ward 209. I untied the blindfold and put it aside.
“Did you know you are now the subject of a website?” Mr. Mosavat asked. “Who are you using to write about your arrest?”
“No one. I know nothing about any website.” This was true. The news was a total surprise.
“It’s interesting you have never heard of this website,” Mr. Mosavat said. “It’s a Christian website. Ninety percent of its stories are lies. Now when someone logs onto it, the first thing they see is pictures of you and your friend.”
“What did you expect?” I shot back. “That Christian organizations would praise you for arresting us? It’s your own fault. Obviously, the church will react to this situation and publish news about it.”
“We have no problem with people reading the Bible.”
“Then why have you banned it from the bookshops?”
“Who is your pastor at the moment?” Mr. Mosavat demanded.
“Jesus Christ is my pastor.�
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The questioners again went over my statements from the police station when Mr. Rasti had written both the questions and the answers. When I was shown some of this information, I objected strongly.
“This says that the police found eight hundred Bibles and thirty thousand CDs in my house, all gift wrapped, and that I drove around Iran distributing them. When Mr. Rasti said I didn’t need to read the answers he put down, he assured me, ‘I’m not going to lose my life in the hereafter by writing lies on your behalf.’ That man is a liar. I deny what he wrote.”
Mr. Sedaghat positioned his body inches from mine, his foot resting on the leg of my chair. His huge beak nose made his sinister face even more unattractive.
“Look at me!” he ordered. I looked into his threatening, hate-filled eyes.
“What do you think will happen if we’re forced to release you?”
I remained silent.
“I believe you know two people named Haik and Dibaj very well. You may have heard what happened to them.” These two men, who had been held for years by the regime, died violently under mysterious circumstances after their release.
“So you’re threatening me?”
“Not threatening you, just telling you what could happen later. Don’t think you can be freed and go home just like that. Your apartment may catch fire. You could be involved in a car accident. Do you think these interrogations are the only power at our disposal?”
“I understand what you’re saying,” I said, my voice steady. “But I believe the times of our birth and death are in the hands of God alone. It may be God’s will that we die in a fire or a car wreck. But it’s good that you said what you did. Now if we’re killed outside this prison, our friends will know you’re responsible.”
“You’re not worth killing at the risk of our careers and reputations,” Mr. Sedaghat snapped. “But there are fanatics out there prepared to spill your blood for the cause of jihad, and we cannot stop them. From the Muslim point of view, you are an apostate. They are free to shed your blood, and the court will judge their actions as justified.”
Captive in Iran Page 17