The plane landed, and we took a cab to see the city. The sunlight, which wasn’t filtered by air pollution or humidity, was so intense it felt alien and hostile. The road connecting the airport to the city was in surprisingly good shape, splitting the flatness of the landscape like an old scar. In downtown Zahedan, small stores stood on both sides of narrow streets, and men and women wearing traditional garments—loose, baggy pants and long shirts for men, and ankle-length hand-embroidered dresses and loose scarves for women—filled the sidewalks. I had never seen a camel up close, and here, standing by the road, a camel was slowly and patiently chewing on something, watching the traffic with its large, bored eyes that seemed to have seen it all. In newer, more prosperous neighborhoods, large houses were built with high-quality bricks, but as we traveled north, buildings became smaller and were mainly made of mud bricks. At the northern borders of the city stood tall, rocky hills that seemed to have holes in them like openings to caves, and the cab driver told us that people had dug out those caves to live in them. I saw a group of barefoot boys running after a torn plastic ball under the sizzling sun, laughing. The cab driver asked us the reason for our visit, and Andre explained to him that he was to teach at the university.
“The shah built the university here,” the driver said, “and it has been very good for us. Now well-educated people come here from Tehran and other big cities to teach our kids and the other kids who come here from faraway places,” the driver said.
In March 1987, Andre and I put our belongings in our car and started our thousand-mile journey toward Zahedan. After a couple of hours, our small, yellow Renault 5 seemed to be alone in the world. Through the open windows, the hot wind whipped against my face. A sea of sand danced over the road in golden waves, and a little further toward the horizon, the earth vanished under the mirage of a quivering, silver ocean. For hours, the landscape didn’t change and the road didn’t curve. Sometimes, when we stopped to stretch our legs, I realized how quiet the desert was without the constant hum of the car. By the sea, even on a calm day, one could always hear the murmur of the water, and in a forest, even if all the animals had chosen not to make a sound, one could hear the leaves brushing against each other. But here, silence was absolute. At sunset, the sun dissolved into the sizzling, red end of the earth, and the night came slowly and silently, cooling the burning wind. I felt like I could touch the brilliant stars that filled the night sky with their tiny, pulsing bodies. Here, there were no reflections or echoes, a land so remote and forgotten that it seemed beyond the reach of time.
The University of Sistan and Baluchestan had built a residential area for its lecturers within its grounds. The houses were not luxurious but well built, comfortable, and clean. We had all the necessities of life. But here, tap water was heavy with minerals and wasn’t drinkable, so two or three times a week, we had to drive to the water purification plant, which was about ten minutes away, to fill up large containers with drinking water.
Andre was very busy with his job. He was either teaching, or when he was home, he was preparing for his classes and correcting papers. The solitude and silence of the desert helped me push my past away. All day, I did ordinary things like cleaning and cooking, and when the work was done, I did it all over again. I rarely listened to the radio and didn’t turn on the television or read any books. There weren’t any books left for me to read, but strangely, I didn’t miss them. I was simply exhausted, like a marathon runner who had run for hours, had managed to crawl through the finish line, and had finally collapsed. My mind only did the things it had to do. It reminded me to do my simple duties: the laundry was always done, the floors were spotless, and the food was on the table at the right time.
Andre had wonderful colleagues at the university. We sometimes got together with them and their families, and they were all very kind to us. They didn’t know anything about my past, and I could chat with them about new recipes and decorating ideas.
The war had not touched Zahedan, which was quite far from the Iran-Iraq border, but the missile attacks on Tehran and seven other cities continued. I called my mother almost every day to make sure they were okay. Although it was good to sleep through the night without random explosions threatening to blow you into pieces, I felt like a traitor. I begged my parents to come stay with us in Zahedan for a while, but my father refused, saying he had to go to work. I asked him to at least let my mother come, and he said there was no need to worry; Tehran was a very large city, and the chances of getting hit by a missile were very slim. Then, my mother called me one morning.
“Maman, you okay?”
“I’m fine. I came to stay with Marie for a few days. It’s safer here.”
Marie lived in a high-rise condo building, not too far from my parents’ apartment in Tehran. This didn’t make sense.
“Maman, what are you talking about? It’s safer here in Zahedan. Tehran is not safe, no matter where you are.”
“Trust me. It’s better here.”
“Maman, tell me what’s going on right now, or I’ll get on the next plane and come and find out for myself.”
“Our street was hit yesterday morning.”
My parents lived on a small court. If a missile had hit their street when my mother was home, I couldn’t understand how she wasn’t hurt.
“Where did it hit exactly?”
“First house on the corner.”
Four houses down the street, and she wasn’t hurt?
“Their house is gone. Now it’s just a big, dark hole as if it was never there. I didn’t really know them. They were quiet people, our age. The man was at work. His wife and his grandson were killed. Two people going by in a car were killed, too. A few of the neighbors were hurt but not seriously. There was hardly anyone home; people were either at work or had gone shopping.”
I tried to imagine the scene my mother had just described, but I couldn’t.
“The man came home, and his family was gone,” my mother continued. “There’s only a hole. Just a couple of minutes before it came, the siren sounded. I was in the kitchen on the phone with your Aunt Negar. She said, ‘There goes the siren. Hang up and go somewhere safe.’ I squeezed myself between the fridge and the cabinet. And it came. It was loud. Boom! I thought I had exploded. But then, it was dead quiet, like I had gone deaf. I came out. There was glass everywhere. Some of it had turned into crunchy dust. And the larger pieces were lodged in the walls like arrows. The house was standing, but it was a mess. I found pieces of your closet door in the front yard.”
The war finally ended in August 1988 when I was about four months pregnant. The government of Iran accepted a UN Security Council resolution, and a cease-fire was announced between Iran and Iraq. No one had won. More than a million people had been killed.
In the mid-to late 1980s, the Mojahedin-e Khalgh organization gathered about seven thousand of its members in Iraq to fight together with Saddam’s army to weaken the government of Iran. I couldn’t understand how the Mojahedin could stand beside a man like Saddam who had butchered so many Iranians. Soon after the cease-fire, the Mojahedin, who were based in Iraq, attacked the province of Kermanshah in western Iran, believing they could gather enough support to topple the Islamic regime, but the revolutionary guards easily defeated them. Many of them were killed, and the ones who survived retreated to Iraq. After this, hundreds of Evin prisoners who had been accused of sympathizing with the Mojahedin were executed.
I felt very sick for the first three months of my pregnancy and was frequently vomiting, but, from the fourth month on, I felt better. The baby was growing. I soon began to feel it move inside me and the experience made me cry, because I realized I loved it even more than I ever thought possible. I wanted to give Andre a healthy child.
My mother had offered to come and stay with me for a few days when the baby was born. The baby’s crib was ready, and its little clothes were neatly folded in the closet.
I went to the hospital for an ultrasound at the end of my eighth month.
Zahedan was a small city and my gynecologist happened to be there when my ultrasound was being performed. The baby’s head was too big. The gynecologist believed that the baby was hydrocephalic, a serious condition in which water accumulates inside the skull of the fetus. The radiologist who performed the ultrasound, however, believed that the large size of the head wasn’t enough to assume hydrocephalus. There should have been other signs, which were absent. I lay on the bed listening to the two doctors arguing about my baby.
“We should just drill a hole in its head and take the baby out; it’s not worth a cesarean section,” the gynecologist said.
Andre and I had had enough. I was scared and angry. I wasn’t going to let my baby die, not ever again. I wanted to go to Tehran to get a second opinion, but my pregnancy was too advanced, and the airline wouldn’t allow me to fly. Driving all the way to Tehran was far too risky. What if the baby decided to come in the middle of nowhere?
One of Andre’s colleagues had a friend at the airline’s office, and using his influence, he managed to buy us tickets. We were soon on our way to Tehran, where one of my cousins got her gynecologist to see me.
I went straight to the hospital from the airport. The doctor ordered another ultrasound, and after it, I was told that the baby was fine—it just had a big head. But a natural childbirth wasn’t recommended, so we set a date for a cesarean section: December 31, 1988. I wasn’t completely relieved. What if they were wrong? I desperately needed to hold this baby here, in this world. I needed to feed him and hear him cry. I needed this new life to be safe inside me, to be born, and to live.
Our son, Michael, was born on December 31, 1988. When I opened my eyes after the operation, I was in a lot of pain, felt nauseous, and my mouth was dry and bitter. Andre told me that the baby was fine. As I held my son in my arms, I thought of Sheida and her sadness after sending her son home to her parents. Now I understood how terrible she must have felt.
Ayatollah Khomeini died on June 3, 1989. He had been suffering from cancer and had just undergone surgery. People had known his death was imminent. I was sitting on my bed in Zahedan, breast-feeding Michael, who was about five months old, when I heard the news on the radio. The announcer was crying. My two years in Evin flashed in my mind. The revolution was supposed to be the end of Evin, but it wasn’t. Instead, it strengthened the prison’s silent horror and made it far bloodier than it had ever been. Khomeini was responsible for the terrible things that happened behind those walls. He was responsible for the deaths of Gita, Taraneh, Sirus, Layla, Mina, and thousands of others. But somehow, I wasn’t happy to hear he was dead. In a way, I pitied him. What was the point of placing judgment on a dead man? I was sure that like Ali, he wasn’t all evil. I had heard that he enjoyed poetry and was a poet himself. He had changed the world, but no one was going to realize the depth of his impact until history had a chance to look back and analyze his actions and their outcomes from a safe distance. I prayed for the souls of those who had lost their lives after the revolution to find peace and for their families to find courage and strength to continue their lives and make Iran a better place.
Michael had fallen asleep. He was a beautiful baby. He had no idea that a man named Khomeini had changed the lives of his parents, and I wondered how Khomeini’s death was going to affect us and Iran. Many believed that the Islamic government would not survive his death, that a power struggle between different factions of the government would bring an end to the Islamic Republic.
On the day of Khomeini’s funeral, a scorching hot day, an ocean of about nine million people all dressed in black spilled onto Tehran’s streets and funneled onto the highway that led to Behesht-eh Zahra cemetery. We watched the coverage on television. I had never seen such a large crowd—no one had. They cried, wailed, and slapped their chests the way the Shia mourn their martyrs. All I could think of was the innocent, young lost lives of the revolution, of Evin. But the mourners didn’t seem to care about that. Khomeini was their imam, their leader, and their hero, the man who, in his signature defiant and unwavering way, had stood up to the West. “But why do they love him so much?” I tried to understand. Was their hatred of the Western world so deep that they didn’t mind their innocent children being imprisoned and murdered? Maybe their relationship with him had nothing to do with love but was a fearful and awestruck admiration for a man from a poor family through whom they had found power and authority to stand up to a world that had bullied them for a very long time.
The crowd surrounded the truck that carried Khomeini’s wooden coffin. Everyone wanted to take a piece of his shroud, to catch a last glimpse of him. The truck seemed to be drowning in the black crowd. Security forces struggled to keep the mourners away by spraying them with water from fire hoses, but it was useless. Under a veil of mist, dust, and heat, a helicopter’s roar muffled the screams and wails as it neared the truck and landed in front of it. Khomeini’s coffin was taken out of the truck to be moved into the helicopter, but the crowd got hold of the coffin, and it broke. Hands reached out and tore pieces of the white shroud, and one of Khomeini’s legs became visible. His body was finally placed in the helicopter, which had to bob up and down to free itself from the people who were dangling from its skids.
A few hours later, a more organized attempt was made to put Khomeini’s body to rest, and this time, it was successful. A few army helicopters neared the site. A metal casket was taken out of one of them. Khomeini’s shroud-covered body was removed from it—in Shia tradition the body is put in the ground with only a shroud—and was finally buried among the country’s thousands of martyrs.
Months went by, and the Islamic regime survived Khomeini’s death. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took Khomeini’s place as the Supreme Leader of the country. He had already served as president for two terms. The reign of terror continued. The number of arrests decreased, not because there was more freedom, but because everyone knew the high price of speaking against the regime. The ones who dared to speak up were usually silenced immediately. Women went through “better” and “worse” times. Every couple of months, the revolutionary guards tightened their grip and showed no tolerance toward makeup or imperfect hejabs. Then came a period of a few weeks when one could get away with wearing lipstick and a few strands of hair showing.
Although Andre and I knew we would never be safe in Iran, we had not been able to leave the country. When I was released from Evin, I had been told that I wasn’t allowed to leave Iran for three years. The restriction wasn’t automatically lifted because the three years were over. I first had to apply for a passport. The passport office would give me a letter to take to Evin to ask for permission to leave the country. Andre wasn’t allowed to travel abroad until he had completed his three years of teaching in Zahedan. My situation was more complicated, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I tried.
I applied for a passport and was denied, as I had expected. I took the letter they gave me at the passport office to Evin. There, I was told that I could leave the country only if I paid 500,000 tomans—about 3,500 American dollars—as a deposit to guarantee my return. If I returned within a year, the money would be refunded. If not, it would go to the government. At the time, Andre’s salary was about 7,000 tomans a month—about sixty American dollars. We didn’t have enough money.
I asked my father to lend us money. To help them out, we had paid half of my parents’ rent even after moving to Zahedan. My father had sold the cottage and had twice as much as I needed in the bank.
“Papa, I’m only asking you to lend us the money,” I said to him. “I’ve never asked you for money before. As soon as a free country accepts us and we find a job, we’ll gradually pay you back.”
“Do you think it’s easy out there?” he asked. “Life is difficult. How do you know that you’re going to make it?”
“I know it, because we’re hardworking people, and because God is great. He’ll help us.”
My father laughed. “Let me tell you a little story,” he said. “Two fishermen se
t out into the sea in a small boat. It was nice when they left the shore, and the waters were calm. Once they got far into the sea, the weather changed. They were soon caught in the middle of a big storm. ‘What do we do now?’ one of them asked the other as their boat was being tossed around. ‘We have to pray to God to save us because He’s great and powerful and can get us out of this mess,’ said the other. ‘God might be great, dear friend, but this boat is certainly small,’ said the first one, and they both drowned at sea.”
I couldn’t believe what I had heard. Although he didn’t know all that had happened to me in prison, he knew that I had been a political prisoner and that I didn’t have a future in Iran. I had to live in fear, and, because of my political record, I wasn’t allowed to go to university. I needed his help, and he was capable of helping me, but he denied me.
“You care more about money than you care about me!” I said. “I told you that I’ll pay it back and I will. I wouldn’t be asking you if I wasn’t desperate.”
“No,” he said.
I finally had to face the bitter truth about my father: he would never make any sacrifices for me. I didn’t know why he was the way he was. All my life I had felt a distance between us, but I had always ignored it, believing that he was simply not the kind to show his true feelings. I couldn’t remember his showing love or affection toward anyone, not even to my mother or my brother. All my life, from the corner of my eye, I had watched fathers who loved their daughters and openly expressed their feelings, fathers who would make tremendous sacrifices for their children. I had dismissed the thought that my father was different. I had always pretended that he was kind, generous, and loving.
I thought of Mr. Moosavi. I knew I could pick up the phone and call him, and I had no doubt that he would give me the money Ali had left me. But I didn’t want to do that; I needed that part of my life to be over. I wished my family would treat me the way Ali’s family had. But I knew my wish would never come true.
Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series) Page 27
