I'm Writing You from Tehran

by Delphine Minoui

  “So, just like that, it seems they’ve revoked your press pass,” he began.

  An expression of mocking irony flitted through his gaze. He added:

  “That’s not very nice … And do you know why they did so?”

  “Uh, no…,” I replied.

  “There’s surely a reason. Think hard.”

  A tense silence invaded the room. I didn’t know if my pass had been taken away because of a particular article or interview. For the last few months, the censorship office at the Ministry of Culture had been going over my reports with a fine-tooth comb. Rumor had it that each journalist had been appointed a censor whose role was to scan his or her pieces, translate them, and underline in erratic red ink those passages deemed litigious. The amputee boss stared at me unremittingly, without saying a word. A heavy silence crashed over us.

  “So?” he went on, sarcastic. “You really don’t know why?”

  “No,” I replied.

  In their eyes, they certainly weren’t lacking for reasons. In my head, I started reviewing the potentially questionable subjects I had worked on. Was I being punished for visiting Montazeri’s son? Or was it because of my escapade in the mountains? Or else my trip to the Basiji couple’s home?

  “You’re even less talkative than the last time,” he added coldly.

  He sank into his chair, caressing its arms with his nonmutilated hand. Then he changed his tone:

  “And yet, it seems that in the last four years, you’ve gained confidence. This country of your ancestors has become your own. Your vocabulary has improved. You travel a lot, you have new friends. You’ve even warmed up to your grandmother, it seems.”

  It was impossible to hide anything from him. He continued:

  “Do you like Iran?”

  “Yes,” I replied, without hesitating.

  “Would you like to stay here?”

  “Yes,” I repeated.

  He paused, continuing to look me straight in the eye:

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find a solution.”

  His voice had suddenly softened. It sounded almost friendly. As if he were trying to reassure me. Faced with my silence, he reiterated, in a compassionate tone, his desire to give me a hand. The reasons my press pass had been revoked were no longer important to him. He said that he found it all regrettable. A misunderstanding, certainly. A simple misunderstanding. He repeated again that I didn’t have to worry. That there was probably a solution. That he knew how much I loved Iran. After all, I was a hamvatan, a fellow citizen, and he was prepared to help me.

  “That’s what friends are for, Khanum Minoui, right?”

  Friends? I didn’t know how to respond. He had changed so suddenly. I didn’t see what he was getting at. He paused. A long pause. He straightened up, flashed me a fake smile. His gaze skimmed over the interrogation room door, double-locked. And that’s when he offered me his “deal”: the recuperation of my press credentials for a “favor.”

  “What favor?” I asked, breaking my silence.

  I had replied quickly. Too quickly. In a rush to recover my press pass, I hadn’t imagined what would come next.

  “A small favor to do for us, nothing at all … Just a small favor … The next time you go to Paris, bring us back a list of successful Iranians who live in France.”

  So, that was it: a simple inventory of well-known Iranians—dancers, photographers, doctors. I knew loads of them. Furthermore, their presence in France was common knowledge: Iranians of the diaspora stood out for their professional achievements. An hour spent surfing the Internet would be enough to draw up a list without much effort.

  “Okay,” I replied, naïvely, reassured by the simplicity of the request.

  He smiled. He seemed satisfied.

  “So, we’ll see each other again upon your return!”

  Then he led me to the door. He smiled at me. Again. The same fake, cold laugh. Then he put his hand on my wrist.

  “I’m counting on you, Madam Minoui.”

  “Good-bye,” I replied.

  It wasn’t until I arrived in Paris that I understood what he really wanted from me. A recruit! He saw me as a potential recruit … I had to be away from Iran to realize that his “deal” was nothing more or less than an offer to collaborate with the intelligence service. Immediately, everything became clearer. I better understood what Mr. Fingers wanted to happen. In that moment, Mr. Fingers had taken advantage of my weakness. He had grasped the fragility of my feelings. He knew I was enamored with the country that had been my home for the past four years. The names of successful men and women—theoretically, there was nothing confidential about that. But in agreeing to relay them to him, I would become one of them. A collaborator. And who knows what he would ask me to do next?

  When I returned to Iran a week later, the telephone rang. Right away I guessed who it was. Mr. Fingers told me to meet him the next day in the cafeteria of the same hotel. I had no choice but to go, unenthusiastically. He was waiting for me, smiling.

  “What about the list? Did you bring it for me?” he asked immediately.

  Not at all. I had come back empty-handed. I told him no, just like that, without thinking about the consequences. “No,” thinking of Emadeddin Baghi and all the brave freedom fighters who were paying the price for their commitment to democracy. “No,” thinking of their courage, which I lacked. To give in to blackmail would be to betray their cause. In my head, I repeated several times the phrase I wanted to spit in this man’s face: “A journalist cannot be bought. A journalist can only be endured.” Faced with his somber gaze, his brow furrowed with anger, I didn’t dare. I simply repeated, “No.” Without offering any further explanation.

  “What! You came back empty-handed!”

  He was furious. “You came back empty-handed.” When Mr. Fingers pronounced these words, referencing a well-known Persian expression, I had the confirmation of the blackmail I had almost given in to. Then he added, bluntly:

  “No collaboration, no press pass!”

  And he left.

  SO THAT’S HOW it was. After so many years of my trying to reassemble the missing pieces of the Iranian puzzle, your country no longer wanted anything to do with me. I fell ill, worse than I had ever been. An aggressive sickness, a whirlwind that emptied my stomach.

  The cramps started as I was heading home from the interrogation. At first, I tried to ignore them, telling myself it was just stress and fatigue. But the spasms intensified by the hour. Aggressive, vicious, relentless. I lay down on the sofa, thinking I would cure the illness with a long nap. Stars danced before my eyes, black holes, a chasm. I saw the floor lamp tremble, the walls teeter. I clung onto the cushions as if they were life preservers. The storm pelted down from every direction. My head was spinning, my fever rising. In my stomach, waves rolled in and rapidly rolled back … “Last name? First name? Age? Address?” Ouch … Always the same questions! “Madam Minoui, don’t pretend to be stupid. You know very well what we expect from you.” Chopped-off fingers pointed at me. They threatened me, clawed at me, flattened me … “No, no, I can’t, Mr. Fingers! I can’t take any more of your interrogations! What you’re asking of me is impossible. Impossible! I feel sick. Sick to my stomach. Sick in my conscience. Leave me alone!” More rolling waves. My gut. Spasms, nausea, wanting to vomit, to cough everything up, to … “Let me out! Let me out!” I’m suffocating, my body … I’m hot … Let me out of my body! “No, Madam Minoui, you won’t get out of here as long as…” What did I—but what did I do again? My head, my head … I’m drowning. “That’s blackmail, Mr. Fingers! Blackmail … Leave me alone! I don’t know anything! I can’t do anything for you!” Pain, my body is only pain … I’m thirsty! I need water. Quickly! Cold water.

  When I woke up the next morning, I was lying in the bathroom, one hand on my forehead, the other plastered to the tiles. Water was flowing from the tap in the sink. What time was it? How long had I been unconscious? What demon had inhabited me? I gathered my spirits and dragged my fever
ish body to the bedroom. Gripping the wall to lift myself up, I felt the spasms return. Even more intense. They tore through my abdomen. Between two convulsions, I managed to pull on my coat, tie my headscarf, and crawl to Dr. Rafat. He lived in my neighborhood, not far from Mohseni Square. Seeing me in that state, he immediately grabbed his large magnifying glass. Then he pored over his thick medical manual and announced his diagnosis: “Helicobacter. You have a helicobacter!” The scholarly word was written in black and white on page 102 of his big book, which looked like a medieval encyclopedia. He said I must have contracted it during a recent assignment in Afghanistan, when I took the road to Herat, after the fall of the Taliban. I had never heard of such a microbe, but the simple fact of being able to put a name to this strange pain reassured me a little. Once back home, I followed his “miracle diet” to the letter: grilled chicken to calm the gastrointestinal troubles, honey to kill the bacteria, and nothing else.

  But the little pest was stubborn. In the following weeks, the pain got worse. Day and night, it scraped through my stomach. Getting up was a challenge. Leaving my home, a pointless endeavor. Outside, life had become foreign to me. A ballet of shadows along the walls, disappearing behind doors, a dancing procession of bodies without faces, hands without fingers … “Last name? First name? Age? Address?” The more the questions piled up in my head, the more my body abandoned me. I felt vanquished. Powerless. Paralyzed. “The Persian language bears the insanity of the inaccessible,” the Iranologist Henry Corbin once said. For me, not only the language but the entire country was elusive.

  * * *

  I was disoriented. I thought I had finally mastered your country. I was too confident perhaps … Each reporting assignment was a dream opportunity to conquer a new city. The train had become my favorite mode of transportation. Sometimes, I took the bus in the middle of the night. I would stay with a local, in Qom or in Bandar Abbas. I was set on overturning the cliché of the woman reporter deprived of freedom. I had even convinced my editors in chief that there were so many other things than a nuclear Iran worth reporting on. I insisted that before worrying about the atomic bomb, we had to keep an eye on the social bomb. All those young people, women, intellectuals. My working conditions had also improved. Before my press pass was taken away, I had finally managed to live on my freelance salary. In my portfolio, I had just added Le Figaro to Radio France.

  Meanwhile, the Iranian Spring had turned to autumn. After the arrest of Emadeddin Baghi, it was now Abbas Abdi, a former hostage taker who had helped plan the storming of the American embassy, who wound up in Evin Prison. He was accused of having published a survey revealing that three-fourths of Iranians dreamed of closer Iranian-American relations. But I thought I had adapted even to that repressive atmosphere. Stories of intimidation and incarceration occupied my daily life. Fear became a companion like any other. I knew that the walls had ears, that I should never be too talkative on the telephone. That I had to refrain from mentioning dissidents’ names. That the magic word for wine was pomegranate juice. That meetings were always arranged by email. I knew that living in Iran meant anonymous phone calls, pebbles thrown in the middle of the night at your window, taxi drivers who acted a little too curious … I was even starting to get used to Mr. Fingers. His repeated interrogations. His prying questions. His big eyes and his fits of rage. I told myself that it was all part of the reporter intimidation kit.

  That last time, in the big, sterile hotel room, he had appeared under another guise. The executioner had become a “friend.” But under one condition. A “small favor, nothing at all” … Just a “small favor” … With his proposition, he had offered me Iran by way of horse-trading. Since when is the love of a country negotiable? In refusing this pact with the devil, I had made myself vulnerable. I was unemployed. Undesirable in the land of my ancestors. Deprived of the password that had previously allowed me to exercise my profession. “No collaboration, no press pass,” he had insisted. In my sickbed, his words mixed with pain. “You came back empty-handed” … “You came back empty-handed” … My stomach was still empty, too. In two weeks, I lost thirteen pounds. Instead of curing me, the diet prescribed by Dr. Rafat had hollowed out my stomach even more. On the phone, parents and friends begged me to leave Iran. I refused. Leave? That would mean failure. Go back to see the doctor? What use would that be! To listen to him say that my helicobacter is a bacterium that resists even honey and grilled poultry? No way. After a month of suffering, I surrendered to the evidence: I had caught “Iran Fever,” a tiny bit of your country had infected me like a bad virus. The illness ran through my veins, ate away at my insides. An incurable sickness that the best doctors would have been incapable of treating. I just had to learn to live with it. I had no choice.

  WHO WOULD HAVE believed, dear Babai, that our paths would end up resembling each other?

  Since I had caught Iran Fever, Papa called me frequently from Paris. Our conversations were always very brief. He didn’t really know what to say to me. My determination to stay in your country perplexed him—he who had left many years ago. One night, he begged me for the umpteenth time to return to France, and my suffering inspired these words:

  “Like grandfather, like granddaughter.”

  His comment caught my attention. Intrigued, I pushed to learn more. Papa took a deep breath. Then he confided in me that, before the revolution, the intelligence service had made a lot of trouble for you. Though he wasn’t usually talkative, he started to tell the very detailed story of the blackmail you yourself had been subjected to … It was a summer morning in 1961. Before getting into your black Cadillac, you had taken care to put on the elegant navy-blue suit you reserved for special occasions. You had paired it with a new silk tie to celebrate the good news: you had just been offered the post of minister of national education. After all those years in the civil service, you had certainly earned the recognition. But the prestigious promotion carried a peculiar, pernicious condition: to collaborate with the SAVAK, the shah’s secret police! This news was announced to you drily upon your arrival at the office. Obviously, you were shocked. The SAVAK! How dare they? You knew their repressive practices, you had heard about the torture in the prisons, their ways of getting people to inform on their fellow citizens, the disappearances … The notion was intolerable. Working with the SAVAK would mean renouncing your democratic convictions. Becoming a traitor to the cause. So you didn’t hesitate for an instant. In short, you refused the offer. You said no, preferring isolation to betraying your people. Even though, that day, returning home, you understood that your career was over. With the shah, that’s how it was. You were with him or against him. You knew that. But in your heart of hearts, you were proud of your decision.

  I hadn’t known about this part of your life. Among many others. While Papa was speaking, I stared at your photo sitting on my night table. You were wearing your signature black-rimmed glasses. In 2001, after Marie, your secret wife, had reappeared, I found them at the bottom of a dusty drawer while looking for a few more clues to solve the mysterious puzzle of your life. I put them on immediately, curious to know how you saw the world. Their lenses were so thick that a kind of blurriness obstructed my vision. I gave up understanding you then. I simply resigned myself to forgiving all your straying, seeing it as the weakness of a man with an oversize heart. I never would have imagined that they made you endure the same torments I was now enduring. That a half century later, your path would cross mine. Unbeknownst to us.

  Papa took his time recalling the rest of your past. It was the first time he evoked your memory in this way. He told me how you were born in 1911 under the Qajar dynasty. Your father, Bagher Minoui, an ambitious landowner, was from Isfahan, also known as Nesf-e Jahan, “Half the World” in Farsi. No place better illustrates the double identity, Persian and religious, of your country’s people than that city of roses and turquoise mosques. Before you were born, your parents had decided to move to the capital, attracted by a third facet of Iranian identity: modernity.
That race toward progress was instigated by Reza Shah, an ambitious monarch who, in 1925, put an end to the reign of the Qajar dynasty by imposing his own: that of the Pahlavi. You were only fourteen then. A teenager, you bore witness to the changes that he inspired in your country, sometimes too rapidly and too clumsily. Inspired by his Turkish neighbor, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Reza Shah constructed new roads and tunnels all over the place. And in a very controversial initiative, he imposed “Western clothing” on the men, while forbidding women to wear the veil. Your mother may have adapted to it, but your future wife’s mother, more pious and more traditional, was traumatized. Like her, numerous Iranian women cloistered themselves at home and stopped going to the public baths in order to avoid going bareheaded through the streets. Irony of history: years later, the Islamic Republic would set out, conversely, to hunt down the “unveiled.” But no one, at the time, could have predicted such a reversal.

  In 1941, Reza Shah would be dethroned in his turn by his own son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Under his reign, you began your career in civil service, after archeological studies that brought you back, for a time, to Isfahan, where you had the rare privilege of staying in the famous pavilion of forty columns, Chehel Sotoun, a true jewel of Iranian architecture. An astute observer of your country’s evolution, you didn’t hide your secular leanings, even if you were aligned with those who thought it possible to reconcile Islam, democracy, and tolerance. Concerned with authoritarianism, you would consecrate a part of your life to fighting in the name of human rights. Even if it meant paying the price.

  The process of casting you out began in 1956. Three years earlier, the shah, under pressure from the CIA, had dismissed Prime Minister Mossadegh, a fervent nationalist who overshadowed him by overtly criticizing the Americanization of the country. Drunk with power, Mohammad Reza activated his security apparatus and started to hunt down potential enemies—that is, anyone who did not share his views. You had never been associated with a political party. And years later, you would keep your distance from the revolutionary movements. But your outspokenness was seen as a problem. The Iranian security classified you as a specimen to watch over closely. Or to keep out of the way. They would decide on the second option, offering you that cushy assignment in Paris: representing Iran in UNESCO. You jumped at the opportunity, seeing it as the bit of freedom you desperately needed.