Finally, he paused. “Move the bed.”
I stayed silent, my breath bottled up within me.
“Move the bed, now.” He shoved again. I opened my eyes and peered through the gap in the chador. The bunk was moving a little but holding fast for now.
He exhaled. “Next time,” he said. I listened to him leave, counting every one of his steps until I knew he was gone.
Click.
This time, the darkness brought relief.
When the lights were on I’d stare at the walls in the cell. They were covered in the names of different prisoners, as well as clusters of little vertical scratches, all arranged in rows of nine with a tenth line through the rest. I counted them carefully, looking for a clue as to how long we might be kept in there. Some added up to only a few weeks. Others were years.
I found a patch of wall and used a bit of broken wire from the bed to start my own tally of how many days we had been in the basement. Every day I added to it, I wondered how much more wall I would need.
After two days in the cell my milk came in again and I was finally able to feed Roksana myself. To my amazement, in all that time we were in the basement, she never got ill. Though there were fleas and filth all around us, not once did either of us get sick. She’d just lie on me, sleeping, feeding, or making gentle sounds of contentment and happiness. Sometimes I’d marvel that she would put up with such conditions. Then again, she’d spent the first nine months of her life within me, curled up in the darkness. Maybe curling up on top of me in the darkness now was the next best thing.
There was no bathroom down in the basement, but there was a single tap. If I banged my bars loud enough to catch the attention of a guard I could wash my hands in the slow trickle of cold water. I used that tap to wash my hands, Roksana’s tiny clothes, and even my pants as I wore them.
After so much washing, the fabric diaper I had been using eventually got so full of holes that it was no use at all. The only solution was to hold Roksana over an old milk bottle whenever the lights were on. She got so good at it that within a few weeks she would pee on demand.
Gradually I began to see that the other prisoners were not to be feared. Whenever I went to the tap to wash out some clothes I always made a point of offering to fill up the water bottles of some of the men in the other cells. They’d call me “sister” and thank me for my kindness. And when Asghar would disappear upstairs to get drunk, and I would start dragging the bunk across the floor, they’d shout their encouragement and jeer at the guard as he’d fail to push open the door.
It wasn’t just the prisoners who protected me. Even one of the guards came down the stairs one night just after yet another attempt to break into my cell. “That man’s thinking about you,” he said. “He wants you. He’s got a plan for you. Never go to the toilet alone, and never with him.”
Even knowing they were looking out for me, though, it took even longer than usual that night for the shaking to stop and the fear to subside.
I had been in the basement for almost eight weeks when a female guard—the same one that had strip-searched me when I first arrived on the fourth floor—stood outside my cell and told me to hand Roksana over to Asghar and step outside.
“Why?” I asked.
“We’re taking you for a bath.”
I had been asking to wash properly with hot water for some days, but the thought of leaving Roksana with Asghar did not sit right with me. Still, I was in no position to argue. Though the interrogations by Beautiful Hands had stopped, barely a day went by without someone from the basement being hauled out and returned, an hour or two later, his face a swollen mess of blood. The air itself was heavy with the smell of infection as open wounds were left to fester and old injuries added to by the guards.
“Get out now!” the guard barked at me. I had no choice but to obey, to walk ahead of her as she pushed me out of the basement and into the cold air outside. The light was so bright that it hurt, and I flinched and stumbled like some kind of wounded animal. Unable to see where I was going, the guard grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me into a car.
By the time I could open my eyes without the pain searing all the way back to my brain, the drive was over and I was standing inside a Turkish bathhouse. Just like in the dining room, the chatter of all the women stopped the moment I walked in. “She’s from the prison,” said my guard. Within minutes we were the only two left in the room.
The warm water felt good, even better than I had imagined it would when I lay in the darkness and felt the lice and fleas feast upon my blood. But even the luxury of being able to clean myself was not enough to quiet the questions that were causing me to panic inside. What was happening to Roksana while I was away? Why were they bathing me? Could I be sure that I was going to be taken back as soon as I was done? I stared at my bare body and noticed how thin I’d become. My body looked as though it belonged to a stranger who had lived far longer than I.
Again, the daylight was like acid in my eyes when I walked back to the car. And as I walked back down the stone steps and saw Roksana happily awake on Asghar’s lap, I exhaled most of the tension I’d held within me.
Most, but not all. When the guard left me, I prepared myself for the inevitable slaps that Asghar would deliver.
From the moment we had been moved to the basement, Asghar’s violence had been a regular part of life in the cell. If I joined in the singing that sometimes drifted across the basement in the darkness, he would tell me to shut up and slap me. If the men called me “sister” and thanked me for filling their water bottles, he would accuse me of being a whore and beat me. When I tried to warn him about the guard who tried to get him drunk, his anger flared up in an instant.
“That guard knows who I am,” he said. “He understands that I am a very important man in Iran. That’s why he respects me. That’s why you’re still safe.”
Now that I was back in our cell, I braced myself. Inevitably, I felt his hand groping about in the darkness for my hair. As soon as he found it, he pulled so hard that I could feel great clumps tearing from my scalp. His other hand caught my cheek with a fierce slap. Two more followed in quick succession.
“I’m kind to you, Annahita, but you don’t deserve it.”
The cluster of lines on the wall beside my bunk was growing. Each line represented another day spent in darkness, another day spent wondering how much longer we could be held like this. Another day listening for the warning signs that told me danger was about to strike.
But not every day was the same. Some lines had a story all their own. Like day sixty-two, when I made the trip to the bathhouse, or day eighty-one when a new prisoner was brought into the basement. He was a plumber and had helped one of the guards by fixing their heating at home. As a reward, the guard agreed to leave the lights on in the basement.
For three glorious days and nights, I could see everything. It didn’t matter that I could now spot the roaches on the floor—just being able to see for so long was a blessing, and I was determined to make the most of it.
Since Roksana was no longer able to fit into the clothes that we had brought with us from Iran, I decided to ask a guard for a needle, thread, and scissors. He agreed to the needle, but that was all.
“But I need the scissors and thread too.”
“Why?”
I held Roksana up. Her legs were poking through the holes I had torn in the bottom of her onesie. “I can make her a dress, but I need some scissors.”
The guard shrugged. “Maybe I can give you a razor.”
When he came back later that day with the razor, I’d already picked enough thread from the thick blanket that we used to cover Roksana. Using a zipper from an old dress, some felt from another, a large square of material from the pair of pants that were too ripped for me to wear, I settled down and worked non-stop for the next twelve hours. I was hunched over on the bunk, Roksana lying in my lap, staring up in fascination at the colors and textures of the material that danced above her.
Soon after I placed my one-hundredth scratch in the crumbling plaster next to my bunk, Asghar, Roksana, and I were joined by a new prisoner. Asghar slept through it all, but I watched, warily, as the guard pushed him in and he climbed up onto the one bunk that was not in use. It had been weeks since I’d had to drag it across the cell to prevent Asghar’s drinking partner from getting in, but I felt the old fear return as our cell was once more handed over to the darkness.
“Why are you here with a baby?” he said softly. I could tell from his accent that he was from Tehran.
I thought about staying silent, guessing that Asghar would not like me talking to a strange man. But after so long in the basement, I was starting to wonder how much worse things could get. So I told him everything. Almost everything. I told him about the Smuggler and the mountains and how we had been picked up by the guards on the border and how they had been so kind at first, but how things had soon changed.
There was silence after I finished speaking. “I’ve heard many stories of people dying in the mountains,” he said quietly. “And I’ve heard stories about other families in here over the years. One of them came in with two children but left with only one. Another time there was a woman in here, but she ended up getting killed.”
I could hear the tremor in my voice as I spoke. “How do you know about that?”
“They’ve got me in here because they think I’m a smuggler, but I’m not. I just import things from Germany and take them back home. But I’ve met enough people as I’ve driven to hear all about this place. You need to get out of here. You’re not safe.”
“I know. But how?”
“I can help.”
The next day, as the men returned from breakfast, Asghar and our new cellmate were talking under their breath about how dangerous the Hotel was for us. I was relieved that Asghar was listening to him, that it was clear that he respected and trusted him. The conversation died as soon as the guard came down to lock us in, but the whispers began again as the lights went out.
“I’ve paid my way out of here by giving one of the guards my trailer. I swear on my father’s grave that I will help you get out when I’m gone.”
I wanted to believe him, but instead of his promise filling me with hope, his description of the danger I was in filled me with fear. From that moment on, I no longer worried that the scratches in the wall might go on indefinitely. I was terrified that the guards might kill me.
When the guards came for him the next day, the man handed me a bag of pistachios. “I’ll do what I said,” he whispered. “I promise.”
Fifteen days after our cellmate left, the light clicked on, the lock sprung open, and a guard stood and delivered the words I had feared I would never hear: “It’s time to go.”
Minutes later, I was standing with Asghar and Roksana in the courtyard. Roksana was crying at the brightness of the late afternoon sunlight. In between comforting her and allowing my own eyes to readjust, I tried to look around and find out what was going on. “Where are we going?” I asked the guard, but he ignored me.
We were put in a car, along with two Afghan men, and were driven a short distance to a bus station. A few minutes later the five of us were sitting on the bus with two guards behind us, pulling out of town and heading for Istanbul.
Neither of the guards wanted to talk to us that much, but after a few miles Asghar did manage to get one of them to talk.
“When we get to Istanbul we’ll take you to register at a police station.”
“What then? Are we free?”
The guard smirked and shrugged. “You should get some sleep. It’s a long drive.”
It took almost a whole day and night in all. I slept when I could, but the combination of hunger and anxiety about what was coming next kept me awake most of the time. I tried to distract myself by looking out at the mountain ravines we edged around and the valley roads we snaked along, but my mind would never let me go too long without imagining what Istanbul might hold. Would the police station be just another gateway to prison, just as it had been when we first arrived in the country? Or would we really be free after all? Without any money, any papers, or anyone in the city we knew, who we could call on for help? How free would we really be?
It was getting dark again by the time we approached Istanbul. The sky above glowed orange from miles away, and as we drove down wide freeways and over tall bridges, I could see the city, so full of life, beckoning us.
It was a short, cold walk from the bus stop to the police station. The guards who had traveled with us told us to sit on a bench by the wall, talked briefly with an officer behind the desk, sparked up a cigarette each, and then left.
The two Afghan men were called up first. Asghar and I watched, trying to work out what was going on, but even though it was late the station was too busy and noisy for us to hear what they were being told. After signing some papers, one of them was handed a telephone and allowed to make a call before being sent back to sit near us.
“You, come here,” said the man behind the desk, jabbing a fat finger in our direction.
He had a file in front of him with two pages in it. Even though I had learned enough Turkish over the last few months to understand what he was saying, I had not yet learned how to decipher the strange script in which it was written.
He asked our names, dates of birth, and a few more basic details.
“Sign here,” he said, looking about him, as bored as any official I had ever encountered in my life.
“Okay,” he said, taking the sheets back after we had followed his instruction. “You can go.”
I looked at Asghar, hoping he understood what was going on, but he looked as confused as me.
“We’re free?” I asked.
The man had already cleaned up our papers and was opening up another file. “Yes,” he hissed, without taking his eyes off the papers in front of him. “Of course you’re free. Go.”
We went back to the bench. It was strange, but I didn’t feel elated or even all that relieved. I just felt tired. Exhausted, as if my body had reached the end of the longest walk it had ever done. All I wanted to do was stop for a while. I lay down and let all the lights and the noise and the warmth of the air wash me off to sleep.
“Get up!” The guard was shouting at us from behind the desk. “Go out!”
“Where to?” said Asghar.
“I don’t care where you go. You can’t stay here.”
I stumbled to my feet, feeling confused and unsure for a moment even which country I was in. Before we made it to the door, one of the Afghan men we had left the Hotel with called out.
“Do you need somewhere to stay tonight?”
Within minutes of walking into the house, I felt as though I could stay awake forever. There were parents and sisters and cousins and grandparents, all gathered to greet the two men from Afghanistan who had finally arrived home. There was food, music, and dancing, and the air was soon thick with cries of joy and celebration. The family welcomed the three of us as if we were their own, and as I watched it struck me that this was exactly the kind of party that Mohammad and I had wanted to throw to celebrate our first year of marriage.
Sleep came upon me that night like a winter fog, but when I awoke the next day I did not feel free or as if my days in the prison were behind me. There was still a blanket of foreboding over me, a lack of peace I could not quite identify. All I knew was that another stage of the journey was about to begin.
Even though the police had made it clear that we could go and that they didn’t have much interest in where we ended up, the choices ahead of us were limited. We could have asked to stay with the family awhile longer, but what would happen when their hospitality ran out? Could we really expect to find work and a place to live in a matter of days? Besides, four months in a Turkish jail had shown us just how the authorities viewed illegal immig
rants like us. Neither of us wanted to stay in Turkey any longer than we had to. Our best option was to declare ourselves refugees and hope that some country would help.
We got a ride from our hosts to the refugee center and spent the whole day waiting between interviews with different officials. By the time we were shown upstairs to a room with two beds, I was too tired and hungry to notice much more than the fact that there were clean floors and a light switch that we could control ourselves.
People stared when I sat in the dining room and started putting food into my mouth. I barely registered the taste of the meal or the looks of sympathy on people’s faces. When I had been weighed earlier in the day the nurse had looked concerned. I was barely ninety pounds.
A kind Roma woman visited our room early the next morning, bringing with her a saucepan of warm stew. It was hard to understand each other, but between us we knew enough Turkish for her to tell me that she was worried about how thin I looked and wanted to help if she could. She fussed over Roksana while Asghar took the saucepan and went in search of a spoon.
I thought about what she could help me with. Almost 150 days had passed since I had tried to force a smile as I said good-bye to Daniel in Isfahan. So far, I had been grateful that he had been spared the horrors of the mountain or the trials of the prison. But now, as I realized that those dangers were past, a deep, primal hunger awoke within me. I had to see my son again. I had to do everything I possibly could so that we might be reunited.
“Can I borrow some money?” I asked. “I need to phone my son.”
She smiled and handed me some liras. It was the first Turkish money that I had seen. I thanked her and quickly put it in my pocket before Asghar returned.
Stranger No More Page 10
