THERE WERE TWO of them. Two men with brown hair, haggard features, squared shoulders, backs glued to their chairs. When I arrived, they didn’t budge. They just stared at me. I lowered my head, mechanically readjusting my headscarf. The palm of my hand on my chest, I let out a faint “Salam.” They didn’t reply. Their eyes spoke instead. They dissected my movements with an inquisitive gaze. The walls of their office were an immaculate white. So white that you could hear the echo of silence in them. On the ceiling, an insipid fluorescent light. The thick curtain hanging in front of the only window emitted a musty odor. Outside, a young soldier in uniform stood guard at the door. As if we were in a courtroom.
“Sit down,” the taller of the two ordered me.
I immediately recognized the voice of the anonymous man on the telephone by his timbre. This was the man who had refused to give his number to Mamani, the strange caller who had insisted on seeing me. I had imagined he would be smaller, or maybe fatter. In the middle of the large wooden desk that separated us lay a thick folder. I saw my name inscribed in Latin letters. What did he want from me? He hadn’t explained over the phone the reason for my summons. He had simply given me this address: “Department of Foreign Nationals, Villa Street, downtown Tehran.” I didn’t ask anything else, thinking it was a simple administrative formality. Now I regretted that. In that cramped room with no natural light, I felt like a small mouse cornered in a trap.
“State your name,” he commanded.
“My name?”
“Yes, your name.”
“But … you know it already,” I replied, looking at the thick folder.
“State your name.”
I remained silent. I didn’t see what he was getting at.
Unperturbed, he raised his voice:
“Your name! It’s part of the proceedings.”
“What proceedings?”
“State your name! We’re the ones who ask the questions here, not you!”
His voice turned shrill. He was speaking in an English tinged with a strong Persian accent. Back bolted to my chair, I didn’t know how to react.
“So, Khanum Minoui, cat got your tongue?” he sneered, opening my file.
I said nothing. What right did he have to speak to me like that? I stared at his hands as he flipped through the documents. One detail struck me immediately: his left hand was atrophied. He was missing two fingers. Lost in the war? Or in a street fight? This single detail made him even more menacing.
He continued:
“What do you think of Khatami?”
“Of Khatami?” I replied, unable to tear my gaze away from his hand.
“Yes, you heard me. Khatami!”
What did the new president have to do with this conversation? Flabbergasted, I replied:
“The youth seem to like him.”
“And you?”
“Me?… I don’t really have an opinion on the matter.”
“And the Supreme Leader, what do they think of him?”
“Uh…”
“You went to the protests. You saw things, you reported about them on French radio.”
I didn’t know how to respond. The man with the missing fingers was annoying me with his questions. His accomplice didn’t say a word. I searched his eyes, hoping to find a sign in them, some comfort, if not an explanation for my summons. He stared at me with a neutral, insipid smile. I stayed silent.
“So, you’ve decided not to respond? You’re much more talkative in your reports!” my interviewer continued.
At these words, I understood. I saw what was playing out. The two men seated opposite me had nothing to do with the “Department of Foreign Nationals.” They weren’t there to verify the validity of my passport. Nor to see whether my stay in Iran was going smoothly. These two shady men were interrogating me. They worked for the intelligence service! The same service that had beheaded the liberal intelligentsia leadership the previous year. I shuddered. My Iranian journalist friends had often spoken to me about these men of the shadows. They were used to receiving this kind of summons as soon as their reporting crossed a line. But why me, still a novice in this country where I was only just taking my first steps? How had my name ended up in their files?
Curt and aggressive, their questions increased in intensity. Did the youth have a reason to protest? Why had my father left Iran? Did I feel Muslim or Christian? Who were my friends, my interpreters, the activists I hung out with? With each evasive response, the interrogation sped up, the questions becoming even more specific, more cutting. Did I have a French passport or Iranian? What had I studied in school? Why the hell had I returned to Iran?
To this last question, I replied without hesitation:
“Because of my family. The desire to connect with the country of my grandfather.”
I thought this a noble reason, an explanation that would appease the one who’d asked it. But this type of personal account held no interest for him. He looked me right in the eye before launching into a deluge of “advice” given in an indifferent tone. I shouldn’t believe what the young Iranians told me. They exaggerated when they said they were disillusioned by the regime. Contrary to appearances, the population was “proud” of its Islamic Republic. Each year, more and more Iranians commemorated the anniversary of the revolution. Isn’t that right, Khanum Minoui? You were there. You were able to see the situation, the real situation.
Yes, I was there. And I hadn’t observed that at all. In February, when the Iranian theocracy had celebrated its twenty-year anniversary through organized parades, I had been able to observe with my own eyes that the onlookers who had shown up revealed themselves to be more interested in the street vendors selling slippers and bras than in the speeches by the leaders of the regime. The youth, conspicuously absent, instead chose to attend the concerts of the first pop music festival, sponsored by Khatami’s reformist friends. I wondered what expression the man with the mutilated hand would have made upon seeing the superstar Khashayar Etemadi, in an imitation leather Perfecto jacket and dark sunglasses, set the cardboard stage on fire, guitar glued to his blue jeans, his fan club of starry-eyed girls at his heels.
“Perhaps you were too busy with your report about satanic music?”
It was as if he had read my mind! Clearly, this man was up to speed on everything: my outings, my meetings, my interviews. He knew the smallest details of my life. He had read and listened to all my reports, knew I was obsessed with Iranian cinema. He even knew about my quarrels with Grandmother. From a list that he rolled out on the table, he started to read aloud the names of my new acquaintances, of my best friends.
How had he found all this out? Was my telephone tapped? Were my comings and goings under surveillance? Who had spoken to him about me? Was it Masoud Dehnamaki, one of the leaders of Hezbollah, the regime’s enforcers, suspected by the students of having organized the dormitory clampdown? During the riots, this elderly veteran of the Iran-Iraq conflict had agreed to see me despite his hatred for the Western press. In an office filled with sandbags and cases of mortar shells, an atmosphere of war that he cultivated like a garden, he extolled to me the virtues of the “Islamic Revolution.” In his eyes, it was in danger. It had to be saved. For him, Khatami was in the process of selling off the imam’s sacred legacy. He was a pawn of the Great Satan. The enemy within had replaced the enemy without. We had to get back on the right path. Squash the protesters. Stop the revolt before it was too late. The message was clear. And I had left the interview perplexed.
As the man with the missing fingers continued to run through the list of my acquaintances, he stopped at a name.
“Niloufar,” he said, distinctly pronouncing every syllable.
Niloufar! The echo of her name ricocheted off the white wall.
“Your friend Niloufar,” he continued. “How did you meet her?”
I frowned. I was starting to get fed up with this little game of riddles.
“You know very well whom I’m talking about.”
Of course, I knew whom he was talking about. But what did he want? And why her? Was it because of the cannabis she grew on her balcony? Her brazen lifestyle? The numerous admirers who attended her clandestine parties? No, the private life of the “godmother” of the youth was the least of his concerns. What he was interested in were her political affiliations, her role in the protests, her foreign contacts … In the end, I didn’t know all that much about Niloufar. She had always put others first and was rather discreet about herself. And even if I had known her CV by heart, it wasn’t my place to tell. He insisted; I resisted. He kept insisting; I mumbled a few words. He insisted once more; I clung to my silence. He raised his voice; I tried my best to keep calm, but anxiety started to take over. I couldn’t stop thinking about the sinister practices of the secret police: mysterious disappearances, torture, assassinations. Was I also at risk of ending up at the bottom of a hole?
Suddenly, silence. Probably in accordance with one of their old intimidation techniques, they abruptly stopped their questioning. Silence, another form of psychological torture. I glanced at my watch. I had been there for two hours. The other interrogator still hadn’t said a single word. That’s when he started to speak.
“Don’t worry, azizam—my dear—we’re not going to eat you. You’re like a sister to us. After all, you’re Iranian. And Shiite. With us, you can feel at home.”
He snickered. Then he continued in the same friendly tone:
“Basé, digé, that’s enough for today. Your turn now, if you have any questions for us.”
“With whom do I have the honor of speaking?” I asked naïvely, still stupefied by the deluge of questions.
“That’s top secret!” the lead interrogator cut me off before pointing to the door with the index finger of his atrophied hand.
The door! And so the ordeal was over. I hurried out before they could change their minds, avoiding looking at that hand that so disturbed me.
LEAVING THE INTERROGATION, I immediately felt how much I missed you. Disoriented by the avalanche of prying questions, I felt like an orphan. In that moment, I wished I could talk to you, nestle in your arms. Outside, Villa Street was drowning in sunlight. I had to squint to readapt to the natural light. I blindly cleared a path for myself through the traffic. Someone yanked on my sleeve. I jumped and turned around. It was a kid, hands black with grime, angelic face, a canary on his shoulder. He was holding out small envelopes like party favors. They were Hafez poems. How extraordinary! In Iran, Hafez was everywhere, even in the middle of traffic. So present that he had the singular gift of creating rainbows in the darkest moments. I rummaged in my pocket and held out a small bill to the young beggar. Then I chose an envelope at random and opened it.
But I was completely incapable of deciphering the poem’s verses. I had been running after the news so much that I still hadn’t found time to improve my weak Persian, to go beyond the few words that you had belatedly taught me from your hospital bed. Overwhelmed by my reporting, I relied on an interpreter to conduct interviews, to help me hastily write articles in university bathrooms, to do live radio broadcasts. Like an automaton, I jumped from protest to protest without taking the time to digest the information unfurling at full throttle. How many students had disappeared? Dozens, hundreds, thousands? Pressured by the pace of news, I could not get all their names, their ages, the color of their hair. A dead person with no name is easier to deal with.
I hadn’t liked the way my interrogators had so insistently mentioned my friend Niloufar. Where was she in all this chaos? We hadn’t spoken since Forouhar’s assassination. I had to find her, clear up this mystery. Once at home, I tried to call her. No answer. I refused to think the worst. I clung to an image of her in Nice, sipping cold soda water and mint syrup on the shore. The city of her student years, where in 1992 she had defended her thesis on sex-based discrimination in Iran. I said to myself that maybe she had decided to go back there for summer vacation. Spur of the moment, that was her way. But the mint syrup scenario rang false.
One morning, I decided to jump in a taxi and head toward the mountains in the north of Tehran. Once past the ancient palace of the shah, I showed my driver the side street that cars had to sneak down to get to Niloufar’s place, one of those rare winding alleys where the traditional two-story buildings had survived the real estate development frenzy of the Niavaran neighborhood. I had walked down that path so many times, day and night, that I could have done it with my eyes closed. Kids were playing soccer in front of the white building. A fleeting sign of life rapidly snuffed out by the thick, leaden silence that came, suddenly, from beyond the large gate. In a last surge of hope, I pressed the intercom button. Once. Twice. Three times … I looked up at her window. The second-floor curtains were drawn. On the balcony, the pots of geraniums were empty. The cannabis leaves had dried up. I felt terribly alone. Niloufar, like Forouhar, had probably paid the price for that ferocious war being waged by reformists and conservatives with daggers drawn. She had disappeared. Without a trace.
* * *
A few days later, the campus uprisings were nipped in the bud, crushed by the security forces. The official numbers were three dead, three wounded, and fifteen hundred arrests. Unofficially, the numbers were more alarming: at least five killed and hundreds wounded. Not counting the many anonymous people who, like Niloufar, had disappeared in utter silence, and of whom there was no news. At the start of the school year, the situation grew even darker. Accused of being moharebs, enemies of God, four protesters were condemned to death. Among them, Ahmad Batebi, a young man with medium-length hair whose “crime” was having made the cover of The Economist, a bloody T-shirt in his hands. The first symbols of an ever-expanding Iranian revolt, the four would eventually be liberated after long and painful years of imprisonment.
The protests hadn’t mobilized every student; far from it. There were a few thousand rebellious students out of the million enrolled in the universities. However, they would forever transform the campuses. As a result of the revolt, the protesters secured the resignation of the chief of police. The minister of culture and higher education, Mostafa Moin, quit in solidarity with the movement. In the following months, universities, although under strict surveillance, became the new epicenters of demands. Each decision by the Ministry of Justice led to a new sit-in. Roundtable discussions were held in the auditoriums. In the cafeterias, pamphlets circulated under the tables. Deprived of their favorite newspapers, the students launched their own zines. A press agency made up entirely of students, ISNA (Iranian Students News Agency), established its headquarters behind Enghelab Street, a short distance from the University of Tehran. Between classes, the youth would take up their pens to unleash their anger. A few months later, in February 2000, members of Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat, the main student association, launched into politics by running in the legislative elections. Along with the reformists, they won the February 18 elections in a landslide.
For the conservatives, the defeat was hard to swallow. After Khatami’s accession following the presidential election of 1997, and after the municipal elections of 1999, won largely by his partisans, Parliament was slipping away from them. Their vengeance would be even more formidable. And merciless. Two weeks later, Saeed Hajjarian, one of the closest advisers to the president, narrowly escaped death. Hit in the middle of the street by two bullets from an assassin on a motorcycle, this central figure of the reformist faction fell into a long coma and later woke half-paralyzed. The participation, at the beginning of April, of about twenty journalists and distinguished intellectuals at the German conference “Iran After the Elections” only exacerbated the anger of the regime’s henchmen. Upon their return from the Berlin conference, the participants felt the hammer of conservative justice descend upon them. The unluckiest among them received several years in prison after a sham trial aimed at shutting up liberal voices. In the coming days, I would also learn of the arrest of Emadeddin Baghi, the journalist for Tous. At issue were articles pointing the finger at
certain leaders of the regime for the Chain Murders of autumn 1998. In fact, the extremists had it out for Baghi in particular. For them, he wasn’t only a dangerous dissident, but above all a “traitor” to be brought down. He had outraged them by renouncing the religious ideology that he had once gobbled up, like so many others, in the sacred city of Qom, the “cradle” of the revolution, where a wind of change was also ruffling turbans.
QOM, CURSED CITY … Qom, capital of mourning and tears … Qom … A name easily breathed in a single syllable, like a powerful mantra. Its avenues, which run perpendicular to one another, are dull and monochrome. Its alleys, narrow and dusty, make it seem like a medieval city. Its buildings, with their flat, badly maintained roofs. Nothing filters through from behind the closed doors of the madrasas, the Quranic schools. Their thick facades keep in the tiniest sound, the slightest murmur. In that impenetrable city, even the inhabitants carry their own walls. Walls not of stone but of fabric. The netting of turbans, of cassocks, veils, and chadors. Appearing out of nowhere, around the bend from a mosque, women draped in black are half shadows, half phantoms. Silhouettes of invisible humans: no shoulders, no arms, no legs, no chest, no backsides. As if they are wearing their own premature deaths. Their chadors like sarcophagi. Their bodies shapeless, asexual burdens they drag through the maze of alleyways … Qom … Never had a city inspired so much aversion in me.
That morning in April 2000, I followed the decrepit walls of the holy city, starting at dawn and sweeping the dust of medieval sidewalks with my black veil. I groped through this maze of mosques. I had come to question the religious scholars about the political crisis, but upon my arrival, I collided with one more wall: that of Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, the bête noire of Iranian students, the man who, a few years later, would throw a caricaturist friend of mine in prison for depicting him as a crocodile. I was particularly interested in his role in the repression. The muzzling of students. The assassination of intellectuals. He was known for advocating for violence to “punish” those who “didn’t respect Islam.” For being the mentor of ultraconservatives. I absolutely had to meet him. Yet the interview was canceled at the last minute. Despite the persistent efforts of his secretary, Mesbah-Yazdi refused to see me. He didn’t like the press, let alone the Western media. Condemned to wander around while I waited for my next meeting, I roamed from neighborhood to neighborhood. Around the corner from a religious school, I went down a back alley swarming with people. Always the same shadows. Veiled women. Turbaned mullahs. The same closed doors. The same faces, a hue of sadness … Qom, a tomb with no way out.
I'm Writing You from Tehran Page 7