by REZA KAHLILI
The violence kept creeping closer to our home. One day, a cab dropped me off across from our house. I saw a Land Cruiser with the Komiteh logo there and this immediately made me nervous. The coming traffic kept me from crossing the street to the other side, raising my anxiety. Was Somaya in some kind of danger? As I waited, a motorcycle with two riders crept up alongside the Land Cruiser, and I saw the man on the back of the motorcycle throw a grenade through an open window of the car.
I flung myself to the ground as the car exploded thirty feet in front of me, raining debris and glass on me. I jumped to my feet as the motorcycle sped down a narrow alley. Among the dust and explosions, I ran to the Komiteh car and looked inside. There had been four men in there. Blood was splattered throughout the inside and three men were in pieces. One man, I believe it was the driver, actually managed to get out. He was severely disoriented, but through some odd effect of blast physics, his only injury was a bloody hand. In his other hand, he held a machine gun.
Somaya had heard the commotion and rushed outside along with many of our neighbors. She saw me by the destroyed car, my face covered with dust from the blast and with some drops of blood on my shirt. She rushed to me with tears.
“Reza, are you okay? What happened to you?”
I let go of the man I’d helped to the sidewalk, asking a neighbor to call for help. Then I took Somaya into our home. She was terribly frightened and I knew I needed to calm her down and let her know that we were going to be okay.
I just wasn’t sure how I was going to manage that.
7
EVIN PRISON
ON JANUARY 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, Imam Khomeini ordered the release of the American hostages. Americans celebrated this and saw it as the end of one of the most disturbing chapters in their history. Iranians of all ideologies celebrated as well. Khomeini’s followers rejoiced in this final slap in Jimmy Carter’s face, knowing that the hostage crisis had a great deal to do with his defeat, and seeing it as retribution for his support of the shah. They believed that sending the Americans home was a way to punctuate Khomeini’s triumph over the world’s biggest superpower. For other Iranians, including my family, the release of the hostages allowed us to hold out hope for better relations between the U.S. and our country. Perhaps, we thought, Khomeini was now ready to begin dealing diplomatically with the rest of the world and Iran could escape from its self-imposed isolation.
I worked every day at my office training Guards members in the use of computers. This work was challenging and it kept me busy. Although I saw Kazem at work all the time, Naser and I had not been in contact for quite a while. Marriage consumes time, love consumes attention, and war consumes both. Naser had Azadeh, who unfortunately hadn’t helped blunt his increasing political activism, I was content to nestle in with Somaya, and Naser and I just never found the opportunity to get together. The three “battlefields” in Iran left a pervasive strain among all of us, but despite this, I reveled in the time I had with my wife. She was so full of energy and so loving that I found it possible to forget everything else when I was with her. For me, Somaya was the antidote to war.
“I want us to have three children,” she said one afternoon as we sat in her garden.
“Why three and not two or four?”
“This way I can spoil them all.”
I laughed at this. “You can only do this with three?”
“Three is the perfect number, Reza. Let me tell you how it works.” She settled back in her seat, drew her legs under her like a little kid, and put her hair back in a ponytail. “You always adore your oldest kid because it is your first one. The third one is your favorite because you know he or she will be the last. So you spoil both of these. And you spoil the middle one because you don’t want him to feel neglected.”
Her reasoning brought a huge smile to my face. “Then three it is,” I said, delighted that this would make her happy.
The phone rang and I got up to answer it. “Three spoiled kids,” I said as I rose. “I hope I’ll still get a chance to spoil my wife as well.”
I winked at her and went into the house.
My mother was on the line. Her voice was frantic, pulling me immediately away from the reverie I’d just shared with Somaya. She was so upset that I couldn’t understand her.
“Mom, what’s going on?” I said nervously. “Are you okay?”
She sobbed and then gained a modicum of control over her emotions. “Reza, you have to do something. Naser, Soheil, and Parvaneh have been arrested.”
I felt a chill to the depths of my soul. “Arrested?”
“Davood has not heard from them for a couple of months. He does not know what to do. They are in Evin Prison, and he can’t visit them.”
My knees started shaking and my entire body went numb. Fear raced through me. I had heard the stories about Evin Prison. Everyone had. If Naser and his siblings were there, they were in horrible straits.
I grabbed my jacket to go to Davood’s house. Somaya came in at that point, saw my panic, and rushed toward me.
“I’ll be back soon” was all I could say before I headed out the door.
When I got to their house, I found Davood and his wife, Mahin khanoom, hysterical.
“Reza jon, I know I should have called you earlier, but I didn’t know what to tell you until now. We just learned that they’ve put Naser, Soheil, and Parvaneh in Evin.” His shoulders shook and I thought for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to keep speaking. The next words that came from his mouth were strained and halting, as though he could hardly bear to utter them. “They pounded on our door in the middle of the night and grabbed my children from their beds.” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair. “I’ve been looking day and night to find out what happened to them.”
Mahin khanoom had been crying while Davood spoke. Now she wailed. “God damn these shameless animals. They took my Parvaneh and my sons.”
Everything about this seemed surreal to me. “I don’t understand why they took them,” I said, though I, of course, had an inkling of why they’d come for Naser. It made no sense to me that they would have taken the two younger ones as well, though.
“They took them for no reason,” Davood spat. “Reza jon, please do something. Get my children back. They are innocent.” He grabbed my arm. “They are in prison, Reza! Prison!”
“I’ll do everything I can, Davood jon.”
He squeezed tighter on my arm. “It has been two months. Two goddamn long months! Reza, I have to see them. I need to know how they are doing. I want them back home.”
I couldn’t understand why he didn’t let me know sooner. Even if he didn’t know where his children were, he should have let me know they were gone. Was he distrustful of me—in spite of all our history—because I was with the Guards? Could he have possibly thought that I would side with the monsters who had stolen his children and my friends?
“I will talk to Kazem immediately, Davood jon. We will do everything we can. I promise.”
“I need to see them,” he said mournfully. “Please.”
I rushed to work the next day, planning to catch Kazem as soon as he arrived. When I got to his office, though, he was already standing behind his desk reading some files. I told him the news and his face blanched. But his eyes showed no sign of surprise. It was as though he’d been waiting to hear this from the moment Naser started throwing his support behind the Mujahedin.
Regardless, Kazem stopped what he was doing immediately and started making phone calls. It took him some time, but he finally came to me with a name, Haj Moradi, to contact inside the prison.
The next morning, I picked up Davood in my car. He was nearly senseless with anxiety. I could barely reconcile the man sitting next to me with the one who’d led us in song and dance for so many years. I had no reference point for what he was going through. Considering how the simple prospect of discussing having children with Somaya had caused me so much joy, I could only
imagine how eviscerated Davood felt by the crisis he now faced.
Evin Prison sits at the foothills of the Alborz Mountains in the northern section of Tehran. A tall redbrick wall surrounds it. There is nothing architecturally appealing about this compound. Its design had one obvious purpose—to strike terror in the hearts of those who approached it.
Things grew more ominous as we approached and heard the roar of a mob. Several hundred people had gathered in front of the huge iron gates. They were shouting and chanting, demanding to see their family members. Some of the women wailed in agony. As Davood and I got out of the car and tried to push our way through, the guards fired their machine guns into the air to quell the crowd. This led to immediate chaos, with people scattering, yelling, screaming, and running for cover. I grabbed Davood and brought him closer to the wall. We stooped down, covering our heads. I told Davood to stay pressed to the wall as I went inside to secure our visitation pass.
I entered a small office and approached the guard behind the desk. I showed him my card, and after he checked my name with the list of scheduled appointments for that day, he nodded and gestured me in. I noticed a tall tree in the courtyard as I went into the prison. From somewhere in my subconscious, an image flashed before me of Naser dangling from that tree with a noose around his neck. My trepidation increased a thousandfold.
I met Haj Moradi in the prosecution wing. I introduced myself and told him that Kazem sent his greetings. Then I watched in silence as Moradi called another prison guard and said with little emotion in his voice, “Take care of Brother Reza and see to it that his request is arranged.”
Haj Moradi handed the guard a folder, presumably containing information on Davood’s children. This man took me to a ward on the back side of the prison, one of the several buildings that segregated prisoners by the nature of their offenses. He told me that my brothers in the Guards’ Intelligence Unit operated this one, where political prisoners were held. It was a nondescript space, clean and devoid of personality. I actually found some comfort in this. Unlike the outside of Evin itself, this ward didn’t seem designed to intimidate.
But then we got inside the main hallway. Despite the Guards’ best efforts to keep the prison clean, the stench of body odors and dank sewage assaulted my face and crawled up my nose. At first I heard no sound, which made the smells that much more overwhelming. Then distant screams and pleas for mercy cut through the silence. They echoed through the hallway from a floor below us. Moments later, I saw a line of blindfolded prisoners being led to a room. By this point, my palms were sweating and my heart was pounding.
The guard told me to wait in the hall while he arranged my visit with Davood’s children. The sounds and the smells continued to swirl around me and I felt dizzy and aghast.
Moments later, I stared straight into the abyss. A group of armed guards emerged from a doorway. With them, a dozen teenage girls struggled barefoot down the hall. I went numb as they passed in front of me. These children seemed broken both mentally and physically. I could see that some were in shock. Some had tears rolling down their swollen faces. Others had blood caked on their skin. The rest seemed hopeless and resigned, an expression one should never see on someone so young.
I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel more miserable than I felt in that moment. Until I realized that one of the faces was Parvaneh’s. This stunned me so much that I fell back and had to brace myself against the wall.
The guard who had escorted me to this spot emerged then and I approached him instantly. I pointed to Parvaneh, pleading with him, “That’s Davood’s daughter and he’s here to see her.”
The man took my arm, pulled me aside, and whispered, “The order for execution is already in effect. Nothing can be done.”
“But she is innocent.”
This meant nothing to him. I wanted to rush forward, grab her, and pull her to safety. I wanted to plow through the guards imprisoning her and steal her from this hellhole. But before I could make a move, Parvaneh just lowered her head, totally defeated, and turned away. She never even acknowledged my presence. I have no idea if she knew it was me or if she just saw another tormentor when she looked into my eyes.
Tears welled up and I said a silent prayer, feeling damned by my helplessness. I stood paralyzed. Within minutes, dozens of gunshots echoed through the hallway from the distance. I heard a rush of birds in the courtyard flapping off toward the heavens.
And I screamed silently.
When the peal of the gunfire ended, the Azan, the call for the prayer, blared over the speakers.
“Allaho Akbar, Allaho Akbar …”
The guard who had just paraded Parvaneh and other girls in front of the firing squad joined others in his group in their praise of God.
“Allaho Akbar…. Ash-hadu anna la ilaha illallah…. Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan-rasool Allah…. Hayya ala-salat…. Hayya alal-falah…. Hayya ala khair al-amal…. God is great…. I testify there is no God but Allah…. I testify that Mohammad is Allah’s messenger…. Haste for prayer…. Haste for deliverance…. Haste for good deeds. …”
I forced myself to complete the arrangements for Davood’s visit with his two remaining children. As instructed, I waited in a room in the prosecution wing, trying to make sense of what I had just seen, trying to believe that any hope remained. At last, a guard led in Naser and Soheil, and my heart dropped lower than I thought possible. Naser was hunched over, his arms hugging his rail-thin body tightly, trying to preserve body heat. His clothes hung loosely, mocking him. His face was so gaunt that his cheekbones seemed to be protruding obscenely. He was only twenty-six years old, but white streaks coursed through his jet-black hair. None of those streaks was there the last time I saw him, and I tried to force myself not to think about what had caused them.
Soheil limped in behind him, looking just as broken and dragging his foot as he walked. A livid scar stretched from his lower jaw across his neck. Again, I tried to avoid thinking about how he developed the scar and the limp, but it was becoming increasingly impossible not to imagine the torture inflicted on people I’d known and loved most of my life.
Straightening out the collar on my uniform, I marched past my escort in the hopes of gaining a few private moments with Naser. The guard lifted his hand to stop me.
“Baradar, you have to stay here.”
I glared into the man’s eyes. He must have seen the fury and desperation in my eyes, because he wilted back, allowing me to approach Naser.
My dear friend’s bloodshot eyes engaged me for the first time since he walked into the room.
“Naser, I am here with your father. He will be here shortly. What have they done to you?”
I’m sure Naser realized that he did not have much time to talk to me. He leaned close and whispered through tears, “Reza, please get Parvaneh and Soheil out of here. I can’t watch them being tortured anymore. This is unimaginable hell in here. These bloodthirsty animals raped Parvaneh in front of me. They made me watch as they twisted Soheil’s ankle around in a circle. How can God allow this? I pray for my death every second. I can take all the torture they do to me, but I can’t stand seeing what they’re doing to my innocent brother and sister any longer.” He paused for a moment, trying to gather his emotions. Finally, he continued, unable to stop his tears or the tremor in his voice. “I cannot forgive myself for not being able to protect my family. I don’t know how I’m going to face my father. Reza, please get Parvaneh and Soheil out of here.”
I put my hand around his head and pulled him close, whispering in his ear, “I will get them out, Naser. And I will get you out, too. I’ll do anything for you. I promise.”
The others in the room, including some of my fellow Guards, watched as our foreheads touched, but I did not care. I needed to offer Naser whatever comfort I could, even if it were only momentary release from the barrage of pain his jailers had been inflicting on him. I could not tell him that his little, blameless sister had only minutes before been paraded in front of me
and then sent to her execution while I stood by helplessly. I held Naser close to me for a moment longer and then, as if sleepwalking, I walked back through the prison to retrieve Davood.
“Naser and Soleil are there to see you,” I said when he looked up at me.
When I brought Davood into the room, I saw an expression on his face that will live in my memory for the rest of my life. It was an expression that said that he’d lost all faith in humankind in an instant.
“Bebakhshid, Baba jon, bebakhshid.” Naser and Soheil said these words together, apologizing to their father as though they were somehow at fault.
Davood melted into tears at that point. I thought I’d seen grief before. I even thought I’d experienced it when my father and grandmother died. But what I witnessed here—the grief of a father anguishing over his broken children—was far beyond anything I’d ever witnessed or felt.
Davood took both of his boys into his arms, and for ten minutes all he could do was cry. No questions; no words. Just crying as they hugged in a circle. I stood to the side, waiting to escort Davood back out.
One of the guards walked toward me and informed me that the visit was over. I gently reached under Davood’s arm, telling him it was time to go. As we left, I took one last look over my shoulder at Naser. I tried to convince myself that I would find a way to help him, but the self-exhortations seemed hollow.
As soon as we left the room, Davood grabbed my sleeve and pleaded, “I have to see Parvaneh now. Please take me to her.”
Telling myself that I was doing something merciful, I didn’t let Davood know that his little butterfly had already flown off. Choking back tears, I said that the jail allowed only one visit, and then put my arm around his shoulder to guide him out. He allowed me to lead him, too weakened to do anything of his own volition.
We made our way past Evin’s iron gate. Hundreds of people were still outside, but the earlier show of force by the prison guards had subdued their spirits. As we reached the car, Davood turned to look back at the forbidding building.