Prisoner

by Jason Rezaian

  “He’s there with you now?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell him—”

  “Please convey my greetings to her,” Kazem, who was standing close to the receiver and listening to as much of our conversation as he could decipher, said.

  “He says—”

  She interrupted me, “Tell him I curse him every single day for all the lies he tells and the way he has destroyed our lives.”

  I was about to relay her message but paused.

  “You can tell him the next time you see him,” I told her, knowing that it would be sooner than she expected. “I gotta go, baby, I’ll see you in the morning. I love you.” We hung up.

  THE NEXT MORNING IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR WEEKLY FAMILY MEETING THERE WAS A KNOCK AT THE door. It was Kazem and Borzou, as promised. We quickly entered into a heated discussion about where we stood.

  “And what about the future and our lives here?”

  “That depends on you,” Borzou said.

  “Oh yeah?” I was frustrated. “On what?”

  “How you behave once you’re free. A lot of our former guests promise to behave, but once they get out they are influenced by the enemy to act against us. It would be a shame for that to happen with you. We all know how much you love Iran, J.”

  These fucking guys.

  “So we’ll be able to come back?” I asked, testing their grasp on reality.

  “Why not?” Kazem said. “It’s your country.”

  “She needs to leave with me or I’m not going,” I announced.

  “That is not in our control. We recommended that, but Judge Salavati did not agree,” Kazem lied.

  “What are you worried about?” Borzou wondered. “Surely by now you understand the fairness of our system.” We were back in the Twilight Zone.

  Kazem began a rant directed at Yegi about well-known cases of Iranians—some of them in the political system—who had been imprisoned and became vocal critics of the regime and others who had stayed quiet and came home after some time to live normal lives. He was preemptively, while he still had control of our lives, attempting to coerce us into a future life of silence.

  The meeting had gone on for three hours, which was unheard of. They allowed us another twenty minutes alone as a family after the dust settled. My team and I huddled.

  “Is this anything different than any of the other times they said I’d be released?” I wanted their view, because I had no perspective.

  “Hard to say,” my mom admitted.

  “Right,” Yegi added, “they have lied about everything.”

  ON FRIDAY, JANUARY 8, I CALLED HOME. YEGI WAS EXCITED. TWENTY-FIVE NEWS EXECUTIVES HAD published an open letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, demanding that everything within the U.S. government’s power be done to secure my release. It read:

  Dear Secretary Kerry:

  Journalism is not a crime. Yet Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian has been imprisoned by Iran since July 2014 for doing his job. Iran has never offered any evidence that even makes a pretense of justifying this imprisonment. We know you agree that Iran should release Jason and on behalf of our organizations and journalists around the world, we are writing to urge you to maintain your efforts to forge a path to that release.

  Americans are fortunate to live in a nation that respects the role of reporters and the tenets of journalism. As journalists, we understand how central an informed citizenry is to a well functioning democracy. The need for information does not stop at the water’s edge. Many of our organizations employ journalists who, like Jason, operate in countries, like Iran, that do not always hold a high regard for the free flow of information. We understand the risks involved, and accept them in fulfilling our commitment to provide Americans and audiences worldwide with the information they need to make informed decisions.

  At the same time, we depend on The United States and other democratic countries to stand behind the values that Jason represents. Independent journalism is recognized as a fundamental human right. Iran should recognize this, too, and free Jason. The United States has considerable leverage with Iran right now to press that point, and we urge you to continue to do so.

  The signers included friends, people who had interviewed me for jobs, producers I’d advised, the heads of some of America’s most important news sources, and very influential people who I’d never imagined would know my name, let alone sign a letter in support of my freedom. It was a smart play at the right moment. America—its media and its leaders—had leverage. They knew as well as I did that if I did not get out then, I’d probably keep sitting there for a very long time. I started to believe a little more that my dreams of freedom might actually be coming true.

  The next morning was a scheduled conjugal visit. Yegi and our lawyer had fought hard to access the many rights hidden inside Iran’s archaic Islamic penal code. One of these was the right to periodic lawful visits to maintain the sanctity—through regular consummation—of a marriage. Yegi had discovered that a marriage is religiously nullified if a man and his wife do not renew their vows with a carnal act at least every six weeks.

  It had taken many months of my lawyer waiting at the courthouse for Judge Salavati to see her, but her persistence had paid off. My lawyer argued that at least one of the other inmates at Evin Section 2A had the right to conjugal visits. Salavati retorted that he was accused of financial crimes, not ones against national security. But she pressed him on that.

  “You and I both know, Your Honor, that Jason hasn’t done anything wrong,” she told him. “At least treat him well so that when he’s released this won’t be any worse for the system than it already is.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Salavati said, relenting.

  When these visits happened it was a tiny reminder of what life could be. We had four hours to do with what we wanted, in a bizarrely furnished room just opposite where Yegi and I would have our glass window cabin meetings on Tuesdays.

  I would be strip-searched at first, but as time went on I was simply patted down. I would bring a towel and a bedsheet, and whatever sugary treats Mirsani and I had at the moment. Yegi has a sweet tooth.

  The room had a mattress on the floor, a small bathroom with a shower, and a dorm-style fridge. On the wall there was a sign advising us that there were no surveillance devices in this particular room, which led us to be certain that there were ample surveillance devices in that room.

  We didn’t really care, though. After the awkward first few minutes—Yegi checking me for signs of physical abuse or neglect and I assuring her I was intact—we were almost able to just be.

  It was a hard-won concession that was made begrudgingly. I knew they didn’t have to let us have that time, even if the law said they did. But they were trying to placate us the best they could. By then I understood that no matter how badly some people in Iran’s state wanted to hang me, they all knew that someday I’d be let go.

  My wife and I talked about so many things in those sporadic Saturday rendezvous. About our hopes and fears. And memories. This day was different, though, as possibility, anxiety, and a whiff of freedom loomed. We tried to savor it as the meeting inexplicably started going overtime. It had happened more than once that we were given an extra fifteen minutes, but more often we were gypped, sometimes by as much as an hour. But on that day no one came. Thirty minutes turned into an hour and an hour into two.

  “What’s happening? Why are they doing this?” Yegi’s anxiety, rightfully heightened by a year and a half of attacks on our psyches, refused to let her believe that we had simply been given extra time on that of all possible days. “I think they are going to try to keep me here when they let you go,” she remarked. “Jason, if you leave and I don’t come with you promise me you’ll do everything you can to get me out.”

  It sounded dramatic, but I knew we had to consider it. She was my wife; of course I would do whatever I had to to be reunited with her. I tried to calm her anyway.

  “It won’t come to
that,” I said, trying to reassure us both.

  For over a year my brother had held a very solid line to Yegi and my mom that, although he couldn’t confirm if anything was actually being done to get me out, any efforts in that direction would include Yegi as well. That was the promise. Our captors, though, always maintained otherwise.

  “She is an Iranian charged with crimes, and she must complete the judicial process,” was the nauseating answer we kept receiving.

  We were battered, but we were still breathing. I wasn’t sure how much more we could take.

  There was finally a knock on the door. The guard was back.

  “I totally forgot about you,” he said, flustered. “Don’t tell anyone or they will take me off your rotation.” He had always been good to us, an accomplice almost, but it was impossible that we would have slipped his mind for two hours.

  I SET THE ALARM FOR 5:25 A.M. YES, WE HAD A SMALL DIGITAL CLOCK. IT WAS ONE OF THE HOLDOVERS from a past resident.

  It was mid-January and President Obama was scheduled to give his final State of the Union. There was no guarantee that Press TV would broadcast it, but given the trend in recent months of showing major Obama speeches, it seemed likely enough. If I missed it I would only get the speech’s highlights as decided on by Iran’s state censors.

  Mirsani had told me the night before that he wanted me to wake him up, too. He never got up before eleven A.M.

  Part of me wanted to let him sleep, because I didn’t want to have to do a simultaneous translation from English to whatever the mutant hybrid language he and I communicated in should be called.

  But he adored Obama, in the way that only someone who has never lived in the United States can unconditionally love an American president. “Friend,” he would say, and put his hand on his chest whenever Obama appeared on the screen. “My friend.”

  It wouldn’t be fair to disappoint him so I made enough noise to rustle him out of sleep. After a couple of moments, he turned over, lifting his blindfold to see what was going on.

  “Obama starting,” I said in our caveman language.

  I turned on the TV and my anticipation quickly turned to a state of visceral fear. The news ticker was reporting that the IRGC had captured an American ship in Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf and that the sailors were being held in Iranian territory.

  Come on. You’ve got to be kidding me . . .

  All the hope for a swap that I had been led to believe was imminent seemed to suddenly and exponentially diminish. We knew that there were significantly more Iranians being held in American prisons than there were people like me in Iran. Maybe they were just trying to even out the numbers. Or maybe this was the IRGC trying to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing. Whatever it was, I was devastated.

  And then Obama came on and talked and Mirsani and I listened. The sun wasn’t up yet, and we were quiet. “I don’t know what he’s saying, but his voice is the best,” Mirsani said.

  I looked at Mirsani and put up two hands, palms up, and looked at him quizzically, as if to ask, “What do you think he’s saying?”

  It was one of the many routines we had developed with each other. This one we used in lieu of answering a question to which the asker already knew the answer.

  “He says: I am good. America is good,” he responded.

  “Exactly.”

  We laughed a little.

  I waited for some mention of Iran and hoped that he would talk about me, but also for the first time I thought that if there really was about to be a release, it might be better if he didn’t. I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what to think other than that there were some local signs pointing to my release and I wanted one from my commander-in-chief.

  After over a year when it seemed as if every one of his major speeches dealt with Iran in some way, now that the negotiations were finished it was almost not even worth talking about. After all, the deal was not exactly universally loved.

  “We built a global coalition, with sanctions and principled diplomacy, to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. And as we speak, Iran has rolled back its nuclear program, shipped out its uranium stockpile, and the world has avoided another war,” Obama said in his only reference to Iran. No mention of me nor the captured sailors.

  But the news of the captured Americans dominated Iranian TV coverage throughout the day.

  An IRGC general, Hossein Salami—how anyone reporting on Iran can say that name with a straight face, I’ll never understand—appeared on TV and talked about the sailors, who, he said, “were crying when they were being captured, but they later felt better after the IRGC forces treated them with kindness.”

  Afternoon and evening newscasts showed the shell-shocked American soldiers, including a couple of female ones, seated on the floor and being served a basic Persian lunch, supposedly displaying the culture’s legendary hospitality. Even to enemy trespassers.

  It seemed like a crisis was being averted. I was relieved, but at the same time I was furious.

  The nightly news quoted Iran’s foreign minister Javad Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry talking about how their new channel of communication that the nuclear talks opened helped defuse a potentially explosive situation. They talk every day and meet for many hours every month. Why am I still in prison?

  But I knew there was reason to feel as though there were steps being taken out of view. The nuclear deal was about to be implemented and even the IRGC, parts of which desperately wanted to see the nuclear deal collapse, was acting politely.

  “The Americans humbly admitted our might and power, and we freed the sailors after being assured that they had entered the Iranian waters unintentionally and we even returned their weapons,” Salami also said.

  The incongruity of the thing made me sick: an armed American military vessel illegally—by Washington’s own admission—entered Iranian waters, and Iranian authorities were announcing publicly that they had been “assured” it was unintentional in a matter of hours while I sat in prison for a year and a half for doing my job with Iranian state permission.

  Kazem arrived later that afternoon for my now-daily phone call.

  “Did you see the news today?” He was gloating.

  “I did,” I responded.

  “What’s wrong with you?” It was apparent from looking at me that my head had gone to a bad place. “You must be very happy. You are leaving,” he told me.

  “You sure?” I asked him, unsure.

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “What about these sailors?”

  “It is nothing. They were drunk and having fun in our water, but we showed them it is not a game. This is what happens when you allow women in your military,” he said with contempt and amazement.

  “So you don’t think this changes the trade?” I asked of the same guy who had told me multiple times that the most minor developments—a comment made by my brother on television or one of my own responses to an interrogator—had derailed an imminent release.

  “Why would it?” he replied nonchalantly. “Call your wife.”

  I dialed and when she picked up I could tell she was in good spirits but wound up. I asked her immediately about the sailors and she brushed it off as if it were meaningless.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s over,” she said.

  “I know they let them go.”

  “No, it’s over. All of it.” She was confident.

  During most of my time in Evin the most innocuous encounters had been cause for endless interrogations: a falafel I had eaten on a reporting trip in a contentious region of Iran or the word choice in an email to an old friend. Now, though, I was living in an alternate universe where suddenly even averted international incidents at critical moments in history were of no concern.

  I started to believe, just a little bit more, that the nightmare might actually be ending.

  15

  It’s Time to Go

  Those nights I wasn’t able to sleep. In that sense I had come full circle. All iner
tia seemed to be moving in the direction of the exit, but there was still so much between me and the door.

  I had already made some compromises that I didn’t like. After much deliberation, though, in my own mind and with my wife, I decided I would write the letter asking the supreme leader for forgiveness. If they had asked me to do that a year earlier I might have sat down and written a book about how sorry I was for committing all those crimes that didn’t exist. But I didn’t have time for that now. I had a life to get back to living.

  Instead I apologized for any mistakes I might have made. Kazem looked it over. “Do it again, J. Take out the ‘might.’” His English was improving.

  I wrote it again, asking for forgiveness for the “mistakes” I’d made. Everyone makes mistakes. I felt dirty but knew I’d get over it.

  On Friday, January 15, my in-laws were allowed to come with Yegi and my mom. I hadn’t seen them in almost a year. So this really must be it.

  Kazem entered the visiting room and we had a brief conversation. I told him they all had to be allowed to visit me every day thereafter. He nodded and agreed. He had called my in-laws’ house and told Yegi to bring the best set of clothes I had.

  On the way back to the cell he pointed to a duffel bag of my clothes sitting in a corner of the office I had passed through dozens of times on the sad march back to my cell. “Those are yours. You’re leaving tomorrow,” he said, but didn’t sound very happy about it.

  “I’ll believe it when I see Borzou’s face,” I told him.

  He just half-smiled.

  Back in the cell Mirsani could sense something was happening. We didn’t have enough vocabulary for me to explain all the moving parts. “God willing, good news,” I told him in our invented tongue.

  My mind raced. I remembered something that Yadoallah had told me, that when you get out of Evin, he had heard, you can’t sleep for the first week. I was getting a head start.

  The next day I was up before the sun rose. Could this really be it? Mirsani couldn’t sleep either. His mother and son were coming to visit that day. We sat down to a very early breakfast, which was his ritual ahead of seeing his family members who would make the five-hundred-mile journey from Jolfa by bus, overnight. Those were the only days he got up before eleven A.M.