When he was ready to leave for that visit around eight A.M., I wondered if I’d ever see him again. We had become extremely close but not touchy. He hugged me, though, for the first time and wished me luck. Based on so many months of negative reinforcement, I told him I’d be there when he got back.
I didn’t know how to fill the time so I just started doing hundreds. I worked up a sweat. Around nine thirty the old-man guard came along and told me I was going to court.
I met Kazem by the security checkpoint, blindfolded. He told me to step up and sit in the van. We drove for a minute or two. We were going to meet with a representative from the judiciary, a box-checking bureaucrat from the prosecutor’s office for prisoners’ affairs who would conduct an exit interview about my treatment, all but confirming that I really was going to be released.
“Is there anything you would like to report?”
“Well, despite being held for a year and a half without due process, being held well over the legally allotted period of time for investigation, and being denied all my basic rights, I don’t have any real complaints,” I reported.
“So no mistreatment?”
“I have not been physically tortured, but they’ve done everything else to me,” I told him matter-of-factly. And after a pause, “So I’m leaving?”
“This is just a procedure that we do when someone asks for a pardon. I can’t make any promises about the outcome, but God willing, something good will happen.”
KAZEM AND BORZOU SHOWED UP AT THE CELL FOR ONE LAST BALL-BUSTING.
“You have to do an exit interview with state television,” Borzou announced. “It’s part of the contract.”
“Let me see the contract,” I told him.
“There’s no contract,” Borzou said. “It’s just part of the deal.”
“Well you know what else is part of the deal, right?” I replied, motioning to his surgical mask.
His eyes smiled back at me devilishly, as they often did. If this was all an elaborate plan to get me to beg for mercy, only to tighten the screws even further, they were going to very extreme measures.
“Okay, J,” he said, and took me around a corner into one of the adjoining interrogation rooms, closing the door behind him. He looked nervous but excited. He pulled the mask off to reveal the face of a middle-aged guy with a big Iranian nose and dimples. His smile reminded me of someone. I thought about it for a second. He was a cross between Jerry Mathers—the Beaver—and Joe Camel.
We’d crossed another imaginary threshold between me and the door. I was getting excited but knew I needed to stay calm, remembering the advice I’d gotten many months earlier from the good prison doctor. “If you stay here for ten years don’t get too upset about it, and if you leave tonight don’t be too happy.”
Take it easy, baba, I could hear my dead dad saying right behind me, just as he did when I was a restless four-year-old.
I WASN’T LEAVING WITHOUT GOING BACK TO OUR CELL ONCE MORE.
I entered our compound knowing it would be to say goodbye to Mirsani if he was there. The door opened and he was waiting outside in our yard. I was wearing my wedding suit. This was really it.
He looked at me, smiling. “Azad?”—Free?—he asked.
I nodded.
There had been so many false promises for both of us and this was the first sign that our hope was warranted. I was still nervous and I was happy. But I was also sad, and worried for my friend. He didn’t deserve this. No one does.
We hugged again and he started to cry, but he was smiling. I had cried often—sometimes daily for weeks on end—since we met sixteen months earlier, but he only cried when we met and when we said goodbye.
“I’m so happy,” he said through his tears. I know he meant it. He was probably the most honest person I’ve ever met.
They led me away one last time to the infirmary for a final checkup. The doctor took my blood pressure and looked at my ears and throat. I had to sign that I was being freed in physically good shape.
He weighed me. I was down forty-three pounds; this was the lightest I’d been since I came out of solitary. I’d dropped five stress pounds in that last week alone. I knew I’d probably never be that thin again, and I was fine with it.
Next I was led to the office where I’d been processed and had mug shots taken on the first night. It was where they stashed all of a prisoner’s belongings. My pants and shirt—several sizes too big now—and a nearly brand-new pair of brown Ecco shoes were returned to me. I slipped them on and even they felt baggy on my feet.
The deputy warden who was handling this part of my release told me it was customary for outgoing detainees to write a letter to the prison staff. Sort of like signing a guest book, as he explained it, but I took it to be more like a suggestion box. “If you want the world to stop criticizing you,” I wrote, “give people their rights. Especially access to a lawyer. It’s the law.” Even after all this time I knew that most of these guys still believed they were doing God’s work.
Finally it was back to the room where we would have our family meetings.
“What are we doing here?” I asked the guard.
“You’re waiting for your ride to the airport.”
I sat alone for what felt like a very long time. Finally Kazem arrived.
“Hi, J,” he greeted me.
“Hi. What’s happening?” I asked.
“Your flight is late. We will go soon,” he said.
“What is it? Bad weather?”
“Yes,” he lied.
Now that it was all over I thought I might get Kazem to talk, just a little.
“So what was this all about?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean why did you do this to me?”
“It’s very complicated, J, but you were in a lot of trouble and we saved you.”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Do you know we found a video on your computer of very bad things?”
“Oh yeah? Like what?”
“It was Mr. Rouhani’s family. The women of his family in no hijab and they were saying very bad things about our system.”
I thought about how ridiculous that sounded for a second and instead of getting in a debate I asked my interrogator, the person most directly responsible for my pain and suffering, “Have you seen it?”
“No,” he admitted. “But I heard it is very bad.”
I was far past the stage when these sorts of accusations would get me agitated so I just sat and listened.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, but when Rouhani learned of this film his people planned to kill you. We had to convict you and keep you here to save you from them. You knew too much.”
It was as though he was cramming multiple story lines from different spy movies into one convoluted plot. It was par for the course.
Then Borzou arrived.
“Wow, it’s a real goodbye party,” I announced.
“We’re going to miss you, J,” Borzou said in his friendly voice, which always put me on the defensive.
“I bet you will,” I said.
“Who will we talk to and learn from?”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone new.”
“Not like you, though. Someone who will tell us about America.”
I thought about their ideological rants and my attempts to answer. I, for one, wouldn’t be missing any of it.
BY DUSK ON JANUARY 16, 2016, THE WHOLE WORLD WAS REPORTING THAT I WAS FREE, BUT really, that’s when the final and decisive battle over Yegi and me was being fought.
I was exhausted and a little giddy but scared. Learning to live with constant anxiety is not a skill I would wish on anyone. We had decided that if Yegi was not going to be allowed to leave with me, my mom would stay in Iran until she was able to go. It was the best insurance policy we could come up with, knowing that our hands were tied.
Still, Ali had been telling Yegi for months that any deal to get me out would include her, too. That had been repeate
d to me so often that I didn’t doubt it.
When we left for the airport night had fallen. Borzou walked with us to a van. Everyone else got in and he and I stared at each other for a long minute.
In the back of the van I was instructed to put on my blindfold one last time. We drove the same path to the exit as we had every time I was taken to court. I couldn’t believe there would be no hopeless return within several hours. I had been conditioned to see it as an endless loop.
Kazem sat next to me in the back of the van. I tried to pump him for as much information as I could. Where am I going? Which flight? When will my wife join me? Why can’t she come now?
“We will do everything we can for your wife to leave very soon,” he promised. Not only had he lied to me so many times in the previous year and a half, so much of what he said was a full and exact 180 degrees from the truth that I was nervous.
“Jason, do whatever you like when you are free,” Kazem advised me. “Write your story and exaggerate it if you have to, but only to make it sell. Whatever you do make sure you get paid.” My pious interrogator, who perceived himself as fighting a holy war against infidelity and Western influence, was telling me to “get that money.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell my story, but I’ll only tell the truth,” I said.
“Good. I know. But if you have to give me horns like a monster that’s okay, do it.”
I still wanted to punch him.
We pulled into Tehran’s ancient airport and drove to a building away from the commercial terminals. I had been to Mehrabad so many times over the years, but the only time I had been to any part of the airport not designated for normal passengers was when Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer—two of the American hikers—were released in 2011. The entire Tehran press corps—domestic and foreign—was there that day. I desperately hoped that in my case there wouldn’t be a live news “event.” As much as I’d hoped for cameras at my court dates to document the injustices I was experiencing months earlier, I was already trying to ease back into a life of anonymity, or at least one in which I controlled how I interacted with the world.
No such luck.
We pulled up to a building that was built for presentations. At the big glass doors there were two bright lights and a camera crew. A mini red-carpet ceremony without the rug just for me.
I got out of the van and the camera focused on me. A state television journalist whom I recognized began asking me questions and I just walked past. In ideologically driven systems propaganda opportunities always trump everything else.
I entered a cavernous marble hall lit up with bright fluorescents but freezing cold. There were high ceilings, ornate and uncomfortable chairs, and massive framed portraits of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei high up on the walls, as there are in most public spaces in the Islamic Republic. I had seen this place on TV before; it was where the Islamic Republic welcomed foreign dignitaries. I had seen video of Putin in this very room.
Kazem and several other agents of the IRGC, all of them in surgical masks, made a makeshift shield around me while the state television crew set up for a shot across the room. In my wedding suit, a lightweight one meant for spring, I was shivering with cold in a room where you could see your breath. Adrenaline coursed through me and I was more alert than I ever remember being before or since. I was getting out.
A couple of minutes later my mom was allowed in the room and we shared a few moments of private conversation. I could see that she was exhausted but staying strong, as she always did, for me.
“Please, Mom, take care of my wife,” I pleaded. “Don’t leave her behind.” I had failed for all these months to take care of Yegi, a very rare promise that I couldn’t keep.
“Don’t you worry, honey, I’m not going anywhere without her.” My mom had put her life on hold for her family so many times before. I hated making her do that again, but this story wouldn’t end until we were all reunited outside of Iran. We said goodbye, unsure of when we’d meet again, but I was confident knowing that, with Mom on the ground, no one would suffer any fate worse than what we’d already experienced. That’s what I told myself.
Mom walked out and Yegi came in. She was excited, anxious, happy, and scared.
“Do whatever you have to do to get me out of here. Keep fighting,” she pleaded.
“Baby, I’m your husband. There’s no me without you,” I said, trying to calm her.
“I know, I just don’t trust these animals,” she said.
We sat for a few moments, holding each other tight, not knowing when we’d be together again, and also just freezing cold. But very quickly the television news crew descended on us, lights, camera, microphone. The camera rolled and I just shook my head.
“Don’t cry, baby. Don’t give them the satisfaction,” I told her. She realized it was wise to stop.
“How does it feel to be free, ma’am, and to experience the compassion of our Islamic system?”
“This is not freedom,” Yegi said. “You’ve ruined our lives.”
Then they turned to me.
“Mr. Jason, this is your opportunity to tell the world how well you have been treated and how much better we are with prisoners than the United States.” I sat silently, becoming agitated, but he kept going. “Please tell the world about your treatment in Iran compared to Guantánamo.” Seriously, this again? Now? But he wasn’t finished. “Yes, and about the treatment of blacks in America by the police.”
On their own those were valid points, but I wasn’t his fall guy.
“Is this mandatory?” I shouted. “Are we forced to do this?”
And with that, the cameras turned off. I destroyed their scene. The crew withered and receded. But I kept yelling for a few seconds. Yegi calmed me. We were the best team.
A few minutes later the cameraman, a guy in his late twenties with longish hair and a hipster’s beard, approached me. I recognized him from a hundred press events I’d covered over the years.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “It’s just our job.”
I shook his hand, accepting the sentiment but understanding far better than he ever would that he and everyone like him were partners in the survival of the thousand-headed beast of hypocrisy that is the Islamic Republic of Iran. Long before I changed my clothes way back on that first night in Evin I’d known it was going to take many years to root that out.
Yegi was worried about my blood pressure and I promised I would calm down. I had learned to turn my emotions on and off, and right then I powered down. If we weren’t going to see each other for a while, I needed to give her a positive parting image. We sat, huddled together, holding each other in that cold room. There was nothing private about the setting, but for a moment it was just us.
“We’ve made it this far,” I told her. “You saved me.” Although there were also much bigger forces than us involved, nothing I had ever said was truer. “Soon enough we’ll be laughing about the whole thing.” My wife just smiled. It was time for her to go, and when she left we hugged for a long time. I kissed her high on the cheek where there was a single tear. “No more crying, okay?” She nodded and left.
I paced that room, freezing. Kazem came to me and said, “J, someone is here to see you. We don’t want to let him in, but it is your choice. He is from the embassy of Switzer-land.”
“Yes, I would like to see him,” I said, understanding that this was the first moment during my entire time in custody that I was being treated as an American.
I sat in a corner and watched a very sturdy man with a cleanly shaven head wearing a great suit glide across the room in my direction, and at first I was skeptical.
“I’m Julio Haas, Swiss ambassador,” he told me. It was a piece of information I had no way of verifying, but I took it on faith. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“Cold.”
“Where are the others?” he asked. “You are supposed to be three and you are only one.”
Who is he talking about? “You mean Amir Hekmati and
Saeed Abedini?”
“No, I just came from them. I mean your mother and wife, they are supposed to be here,” he told me.
“They have been saying for weeks that they aren’t coming. That they will come separately.”
“Jason, I have been involved in this negotiation for fourteen months. Your wife is going with you. This has always been the case.”
I was relieved, confused, and irate. Kazem. Messing with me right up until the end.
“What happens now? Will it all fall apart?” I had been conditioned to assume the worst.
“No, it’s too far along,” he said, trying to calm me. “It may take some extra minutes, but we will fix this. I have my instructions and I promise you that plane is not leaving without all of you.”
“How are they? Saeed and Amir?” It was good to know that I wasn’t going through this alone.
“They are together and they are okay. Doing better than you.” He rose. “Give me a hug. This is almost over.”
The Swiss man whom I’d just met squeezed me and left.
A moment passed and Kazem, who was hovering the whole time, came back to me.
“What did that man say to you?” he asked.
“He told me everything, you liar,” I said, trying to maintain calm. “He told me my wife is leaving with me and that has always been part of the deal.”
“No, J, your wife was never part of it. This man is no one. He is just trying to make himself a name. Don’t let him destroy everything we’ve done for you.”
I wanted to grab Kazem and choke him. That is all I wanted to do. But I didn’t. I just laughed. I had nothing else to give. The absurdity had become unbearable.
“Don’t talk to me anymore,” I told him. “You should just leave.”
“Come on, J.” He was groveling but still trying to keep the upper hand. “We haven’t much time. You must go now.”
“Go where? I’m not leaving without my wife and mother,” I said.
“J, we explained to you that your wife will leave very soon. We will try to help her,” he said feebly.
Prisoner Page 24
