Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series)

by Nemat, Marina

  At noon, the voice of the moazzen traveled through the neighborhood from the mosque, inviting the faithful to prepare for the second namaz of the day. We performed the ritual of vozoo, the washing of hands, arms, and feet, and when finished, I stepped out of the bathroom to find Ali’s mother waiting for me, holding a white silky bundle in her hands. She handed it to me: a beautiful prayer rug she had made herself. I felt enveloped by her kindness.

  Ali’s parents had a namaz room. Except for the thick Persian rugs that covered its floor, the room was completely bare. There, facing Mecca, each of us unrolled our prayer rug and stood on it for prayer; mine was delicately embroidered with silver and gold threads and beads. Ali’s mother must have spent hours making it.

  After the prayer, Akram set the dining table with the best china, and we sat for a lunch of eggplant and beef stew with rice. I managed to swallow some. We had tea after lunch, and as I was sipping my tea, I noticed that Ali’s mother was looking at me thoughtfully, as if she had something important to say but didn’t know where to start. I looked down.

  “Marina, there’s something about Ali, I’m not sure if you know,” she finally said. “Has he told you that he was a prisoner in Evin during the time of the shah?”

  I was shocked. “No, he’s never told me.”

  “SAVAK—the shah’s secret police—arrested him about three years and three months before the revolution. I was devastated,” she said. “I didn’t think he’d survive. He was very dedicated to the imam and hated the shah and his corrupt government. I was expecting them to arrest Mr. Moosavi, too, but they didn’t. But Ali was gone. I knew he was being tortured. We went to Evin and asked to see him, but for three months they didn’t let us. When we were finally allowed a visit, he looked terribly thin and frail. My beautiful, strong son.”

  Tears slowly fell down Fatemeh Khanoom’s face. “They released him about three months before the success of the revolution. They hadn’t told us they were letting him go. That day, I was right here in the kitchen when I heard the doorbell. It was a cloudy fall day, and the yard was covered with leaves. I ran to the door and asked, Who is it? There was no answer. And I knew it was him. I don’t know how, but I knew. I opened the door, and there he was. He smiled and embraced me and we couldn’t let go. He felt so thin. I could feel his bones under my fingers. And his smile was different. It was weighed down and sad. I knew he’d seen terrible things. I knew the sadness in his eyes was there to stay. He went right back to his life, but he had changed. The pain he carried with him never completely went away. Sometimes, I heard him walk around the house all night. Then, a few months ago, he came home from work one day, packed a bag, and went to the front to fight the Iraqis. Just like that without any explanation. I was shocked. This wasn’t like him. Don’t get me wrong; his going to the front didn’t surprise me; he’d been to the front before, but the timing was strange. I knew something had happened, but he didn’t tell me what it was. And for the four months he was away, I hardly ever slept. Finally one day, they called and told us that he’d been shot in the leg and was in the hospital. I thanked God a million times. When I went to see him, he smiled at me like the old times, like the little boy he used to be, and told me that something wonderful had happened to him. I first thought he’d lost his mind.”

  So Ali had been a prisoner in Evin and had been tortured. Maybe this was one of the reasons why after I was lashed and he took me to the solitary cell, he asked me if I needed something to help with the pain and he arranged for the doctor to come and see me. Maybe he had done this because he had suffered just like me.

  After the revolution, he wanted revenge, so he began working in Evin. During the first few months after the revolution, most Evin prisoners were former SAVAK agents, and he had his chance to get even with them. An eye for an eye. They weren’t only enemies of Islam, they were his personal enemies. But things changed. Those who had fought alongside him during the time of the shah, the Mojahedin and the Fadayian, were now being arrested. I was sure that at the beginning it wasn’t too difficult for him to justify their arrests; his former cell mates and their followers had become the enemies of the Islamic state, and as Khomeini had put it, they were the enemies of God and His prophet, Mohammad. Ali had been raised a devout Muslim, and he would follow his imam to the death, but he probably began to see that what was now being done in Evin in the name of Islam was wrong. However, because of his devotion to his religion, he had difficulty accepting this truth and didn’t know how to deal with it. His faith had blinded him, but, maybe because of his personal experience, he would sometimes see the situation from the perspective of the prisoners. And his parents were proud of him for being in the front line of the battle against the enemies of Islam. For them, his being an interrogator was one of the most honorable things a Muslim could do. For them, all that happened in Evin after the revolution was completely justified; they were protecting their way of life and their values. After all, they believed this was a war between good and evil.

  After we cleared the table, Ali’s mother asked me if I knew how to cook.

  “I do, but not as good as you and Akram. I’ve learned from cookbooks. My mother didn’t like having me in the kitchen.”

  “Would you like to help us with dinner? We have to start right away. Agha—the mullah—will be here at five o’clock, and we’ll eat after the wedding.”

  I helped them around the kitchen. Akram and I diced and sautéed onions, fresh parsley, chives, and other herbs. Ali’s mother chopped the beef and boiled the long-grain rice. She had already marinated chicken pieces in a mixture of yogurt, egg yolks, and saffron. We made some khoresh-eh ghormeh sabzi—a beef and herb stew—and tachin—a mixture of chicken, rice, yogurt, egg yolks, and saffron.

  Mr. Moosavi, Ali, and Akram’s husband, Massood, came home at about four o’clock. Ali’s mother pushed me into the bathroom, saying I had to take another shower because I smelled of onions.

  After the shower, I put on the white Islamic manteau, large white scarf, white pants, and the white chador Ali’s mother had left for me on the bed. Soon, there was a knock on the bedroom door.

  “Marina, it’s time,” Akram called.

  I opened the door and stepped out without giving myself time to think. Ali was already sitting by the sofreh-yeh aghd. I sat next to him, wondering if anyone had noticed how badly I was shaking. The mullah entered the room. He chanted a few sentences in Arabic, which I would have been able to understand if I could concentrate. Then, he asked me in Persian, “Fatemeh khanoom-eh Moradi-Bakht, are you ready to take Seyed Ali-eh Moosavi as your wedded husband?”

  I knew it was customary for the bride not to answer this question the first time it was asked. The mullah was to wait for an answer and, not receiving one, repeat the question twice more. I said yes the very first time. I just wanted to get done with it.

  After dinner, Ali and I drove to the house he had bought for us. He took my left hand, which had been resting on my lap, and held it tight until we arrived. This was the first time he had touched me like this.

  As I stepped into my new house and my strange new life, I promised myself not to look back and not to think of the past, but this was a difficult promise to keep. Ali led me to our bedroom, where gifts had been piled on the bed.

  “Open them,” he said. “Some are from me, and the rest are from my family.”

  There were many pieces of jewelry, crystal bowls and glasses, dishes, and silver-plated platters. Ali was sitting on the bed beside me, watching me as I opened them.

  “I’m your husband now, you don’t need your hejab anymore,” he said.

  I wished I could hide somewhere. He pulled at the large scarf covering my hair. I reached back for it.

  “I understand your discomfort, but you really don’t need it. You’ll get used to me.”

  He undid my braided hair and ran his fingers through it.

  “You have beautiful hair. It’s soft as silk.”

  He put a necklace around my neck an
d a bracelet around my wrist. I looked at my wedding ring. It had a large diamond shining on it.

  “I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you,” Ali said, wrapping his arms around me, kissing my hair and my neck. I pushed him away.

  “Marina, it’s fine. You know how long I’ve waited for this. You’re finally mine, and I can touch you. There’s no need to be afraid. I won’t hurt you. I’ll be gentle, I promise.”

  He unbuttoned his shirt, and, frozen with terror, I closed my eyes. Soon, I felt his fingers undoing the buttons of my manteau. I opened my eyes and tried to fight him, but his weight pinned me to the mattress. I begged him to stop, but he said he couldn’t. He ripped off my clothes. I screamed. His bare skin touched mine, and the strange, unfamiliar warmth of his body pressed on me. He smelled of shampoo and soap. I gathered all my strength and struggled to push him away, but it was useless; he was too big and strong. Anger, fear, and a terrible sense of humiliation twisted, turned, and rose inside me like a storm that had nowhere to go, until I had no energy left, until I accepted that there was nowhere to run, until I surrendered. It hurt. The shocking pain wasn’t the same as the pain of being lashed. When I was being tortured, I had managed to maintain a sense of authority, a strange kind of power that physical torment could never steal away. But now, I was his. He had me.

  I cried all night. My insides were burning. Ali had his arms around me, holding me tight. Before dawn, he rose for namaz, and I stayed in bed.

  He sat on the edge of the bed beside me and kissed my cheek and my arm. “I have to touch you to believe that you’re my wife. Was it painful for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It will get better.”

  I fell asleep after he left the bed; sleep was my only escape.

  “Breakfast is ready,” he called from the kitchen at about eight o’clock. The sun was shining through the sliding doors. I got up and opened them. A breeze swept through and brought in the song of the sparrows. The backyard was beautiful. The geraniums and marigolds were in full bloom. I felt as if I were living someone else’s life. The next-door neighbor called her children in for breakfast. It was a perfect summer day, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but I wished for snow to cover the earth; I wished for its cold and honest touch to embrace my warm skin. I wanted my fingers to lose their sense of touch in deep frost and ache. I wanted all the shades of green and red to disappear under the weight of winter and its shades of white so I could dream and tell myself that when spring came, things would be different.

  “There you are,” I heard him say from behind me. “Breakfast is ready, and your tea is getting cold. There’s fresh bread on the table.”

  I was in his arms again. “You can’t imagine how happy I am,” he whispered in my ear and told me that the first time he had seen me, I was sitting on the floor in a hallway, but unlike all the other women who were wearing black chadors, I had covered my hair with a beige cashmere shawl. Although he could see that I was small and slim, I had my back straight against the wall, looking taller than all the others around me. He said that with my head tilted toward the ceiling and my lips moving slightly in what seemed like a prayer, I had been calm in the middle of a world of fear and despair that surrounded me. He said he had wanted to look away, and he couldn’t.

  For the next few days, he pampered me to the point that I felt uncomfortable. I had always taken care of myself. I didn’t want to be treated like a child. The girl I used to be was gone. I was a married woman. I couldn’t hide under my bed as I used to. Maybe Ali was my cross and I had to accept him. Or, at least, I could try. I just wished he would leave me alone in bed. Every time he took off his clothes and touched me, I begged him to stop. He sometimes listened and sometimes didn’t, telling me that I had to get used to it, that this was an important part of being married and that if I stopped resisting him, it would hurt less.

  Finally, about a week after our wedding day, I rose from bed at dawn and decided to try to live my life and stop feeling sorry for myself. What was done was done, and I couldn’t change it. I began by cleaning the house and making breakfast, and I told Ali that I wanted him to invite his parents and his sister for dinner. He thought I had lost my mind and told me he didn’t think I knew how to cook. I told him I did, and he gave in.

  “Okay, I’ll call my parents and my sister,” he said. “Then we’ll go grocery shopping, and Marina?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For trying.”

  My heart felt a little warmer than it had in a very long time. I started working on dinner right after lunch. Ali was gone for a couple of hours, and when he returned, the house was filled with the smells of lasagna, beef and mushroom stew, and rice. I had just begun working on an apple cake. He came into the kitchen and told me that the smell of food had made him hungry. He wanted to know if my mother had taught me how to cook, and I told him that my mother was not patient enough to teach me anything; I liked to cook, so I had learned from cookbooks. He offered to make us tea and poured some water into the samovar. Then, after putting some loose tea leaves in a china teapot, he came toward me. I was breaking an egg into a bowl. He still terrified me. Every time he stepped close to me, every time I felt his breath on my skin, every time he touched me, I wanted to run away. He held my face in his hands and kissed my forehead, and I wondered if I was ever going to get accustomed to his touch.

  Ali’s parents, Akram, and Massood came and were all pleased with everything I had prepared. Ali’s mother had a little bit of a cold, so after dinner and dessert, I made her some tea with lemon and brought her a blanket so she could rest on the couch. Akram came into the kitchen to help me with the dishes.

  “Dinner was delicious,” she said with a forced smile. I could feel the discomfort in her voice; she was trying to be kind to me, and I appreciated it.

  “Thank you. I’m not a good cook, but I tried. I’m sure you can cook a lot better than me.”

  “No, not really.”

  Silence filled the space between us. I began putting the leftovers in the fridge.

  “Why did you marry my brother?” she suddenly asked.

  I looked straight into her eyes, but she looked away.

  “Has your brother told you anything about what happened between us?” I said.

  “He hasn’t told me much.”

  “Why don’t you ask him then?”

  “He won’t tell me, and I want to hear it from you.”

  “I married him because he wanted me to.”

  “That’s not enough.”

  “Why not? Why did you marry your husband?”

  “My marriage was arranged. My parents had made an agreement with my husband’s parents when I was a child that I should marry their son as soon as I was old enough. You’re from a different kind of a family, a different culture. If you didn’t want to marry him, you could have said no.”

  “Why do you think I didn’t want to marry him?”

  “I just know. A woman can sense these kinds of things.”

  I took a deep breath. “Don’t forget that I’m a prisoner. Ali threatened me that if I didn’t marry him, he would hurt those who are dear to me.”

  “Ali would never do anything like this!”

  “See, this is why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you wouldn’t believe me because you love your brother.”

  “Will you put your hand on the Holy Koran and say that he did this?”

  “Yes, I’m telling the truth.”

  She dropped in a chair and shook her head.

  “This is terrible! Do you hate him for it?”

  I didn’t know what to say. This was not because I didn’t want to tell the truth, but because I realized I didn’t exactly know the true answer to this question. A few days earlier, I would have said, with conviction, that I hated him. But I wasn’t so sure anymore. Something had changed, not fundamentally, but slightly, and I didn’t understand why my feelings toward Ali were now differen
t. But I had every right to hate him.

  “No, I don’t know. I did hate him, but not anymore. Hatred is a very strong word.”

  She looked into my eyes.

  “Did you also convert to Islam because you had to?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you didn’t really mean it?”

  “No, but don’t forget that I only told you because you insisted on knowing and I didn’t want to lie. It’s all over now. I’m a Muslim, I’m your brother’s wife, and I’ve promised to be faithful to him and I will. I don’t want to talk about it. What’s done is done.”

  “May God give you strength,” she said. “I know how difficult this must be.”

  “At least it’s good to know that someone understands.”

  An honest, effortless smile brightened her face.

  “How long have you been married?” I asked.

  “Seven years.”

  “Do you love your husband?”

  Surprised, she looked at me as if she had never considered her feelings toward him.

  “Love is such a strong word,” she said with a laugh, staring at her wedding ring, tracing its sparkling diamond with a finger. “I think it only exists in fairy tales. My husband is good and faithful to me, and I live a comfortable life. I guess you can say I’m happy, except…” Her gaze drifted away, and I recognized the nostalgic pain that loss leaves behind. It made my heart sink.

  “Except what?” I whispered.

  “I can’t have children,” she said and sighed as if this was the most difficult sentence she had ever spoken. “I’ve tried everything. In the beginning, everybody kept asking me if I was pregnant, but after a couple of years, they gave up. Now, I’m just the woman who can’t have children. But as I told you, my husband is good to me. I know how important it is for him to have a son, but he’s told me that he won’t marry another woman.”