Stranger No More

by Annahita Parsan

  I was put in a room, told to sit down and wait. The door locked behind me.

  I noticed the table was fixed to the floor. The chairs too. Barred windows were blacked out. Even the air tasted stale and trapped.

  The Sepah guard who came in didn’t introduce himself or try to get me on his side. He just sat opposite me and went straight at it.

  “Where have you been living?”

  “I’ve come from Sweden.”

  “How did you get there?”

  “We flew. My husband arranged it all.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why did he need to get out?”

  “I don’t know. He never told me. He just said we were leaving, and so I left with him.”

  “For Sweden.”

  “Yes.”

  “By plane.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you had a passport? And a visa?”

  “Yes. He arranged it all.”

  “But this passport you came in with, it wasn’t the same one?”

  “No, I lost the last one.”

  “You lost it.”

  “Yes.”

  It went on like that for an hour, maybe more. I knew my story was weak, and I knew that he knew it too. The more questions he asked, the further away from me the answers slipped.

  “I’m sorry,” I said at one point. “I’m very tired.”

  He stood up, chewing his lip as he stared at me.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re tired, and we need to go and do some investigating into this story of yours. You can leave for now, but report back here at 8 a.m. tomorrow. You understand?”

  I tried to brush aside everyone’s concerns when I got home, but it was impossible. I might have been out of the country for a long time, but even I knew the reputation that the Sepah had for brutality, especially against women. When I told them I had to go back the next day, my mother let out a cry.

  The same guard questioned me again on the second day. And on the third, the fourth, the fifth, and so on. Every morning I presented myself at the gate at 8 a.m. and was taken inside and down the corridor. About the only thing that changed was the interrogation room, but since they were all identical anyway, it made no difference at all.

  I would sit, sometimes alone, sometimes facing the guard, for hours. Every day at 4 p.m. I was released, always with the same instruction to return the next morning.

  I knew that I couldn’t let the guard know anything about Asghar. Siavash had left illegally, like almost every other refugee from Iran, but he hadn’t fled the regime. He had simply gotten himself smuggled across the border into Turkey because he was hoping for a better life. I was confident that the regime had nothing on file about him, and as long as the guard believed that it was with Siavash that I left, the damage would be limited.

  If he found out the truth, however, I knew that things would be different. There would be no more passes home at the end of the day, that was for sure. Not only had Asghar been labeled a plotter against the regime, but his activities in Denmark and Sweden in support of the Shah were bound to have been noticed. If the guard knew I was Asghar’s wife, I’d either be dead in a matter of weeks or jailed for the rest of my life.

  If I had ever had any questions about whether it was right to marry Siavash, those doubts completely vanished in Iran. Without Siavash’s name on my ID card, I would never have been allowed to return home at the end of each day’s questioning.

  The strain of keeping up the lie was starting to show. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, and I couldn’t even relax when I was at home; for the sake of everyone I loved, I had to keep the truth from them as well.

  After weeks of being questioned, something changed in the guard’s tone. He started sounding more menacing, dropping hints that after he was done with me I’d be sent somewhere far worse. He talked about how he wanted to keep me safe, how there were other people, powerful people, who had taken an interest in my case. If I didn’t help him, they would send someone else to do the job. “And you won’t like the way they treat you at all.”

  All along, whenever I wasn’t frantically reminding myself of the script I had decided to stick to, I was picturing myself crouched on the floor by the side of my bed, the Bible in my hands, prayers flowing from my lips. I tried to remember the nuns in the convent and the way I felt as I sat on the chair outside their meeting room. “Help me,” I prayed silently. “Jesus, help me.”

  When the guard finally snapped, slamming his fist on the table and shouting at the top of his voice, the guard reminded me so much of Asghar. His eyes locked on mine, and the veins in his throat throbbed. “We know you’re lying! We have no record whatsoever of any passport ever being issued to you and no visa either. We know you escaped illegally, and you’ll go to jail for that.”

  After the Sepah finally finished with me, I was told to report in a couple of weeks to a court near the airport. The location was different, but the routine the same, and for a few more days after my first visit I made the journey there every morning. I sat all day, waiting in yet another small, locked room, as the mullahs discussed my case away from me.

  In the end, their verdict was that my case was special and that I needed to visit a court in Tehran. “You did a bad thing by fleeing the country illegally,” the mullah told me as I stood, eyes down, before him. “The police will escort you.”

  At that, I was taken away. Handcuffs bit into my skin as I was pushed into a car and driven to the airport. I begged the officer sitting beside me to remove them, but he ignored me. Only when we walked through the departures hall together, attracting stares from everyone I passed, did he finally agree to undo them. It cost me $500, but it was worth every cent.

  In Tehran, I was told that I would have to wait for my case to be heard. I sat through a series of interviews with other guards and police officers. Each one asked the same questions about how and why I left and what I knew about Siavash.

  Eventually, they moved me on from the interviews, and I stood before the judge. He was a mullah dressed in the traditional black robes of an Islamic cleric. There was a Sepah guard beside me, a court secretary to one side, and a long bench behind me where five men in handcuffs and prison uniforms sat.

  I was terrified. I was at the end of all the courage and hope that had kept me going throughout weeks of questioning and waiting on my own in locked rooms. I was sleep-deprived, underfed, and worn out from reminding myself what to tell and what to withhold. I had barely seen Roksana since we arrived in Iran, and Khanoum was getting worse.

  I was crying so much that my coat was wet with tears. They were laughing. Everyone in the room was laughing at me.

  The mullah repeated his question. “Tell me one more time, why are you crying?”

  My plan to fly back and spend a week in the country I had risked my life to flee and then simply fly home again afterward seemed so foolish now. What was I thinking? Had I really believed that I could come and go as if Iran were like Italy or Ireland?

  The mullah had started off asking me about my life, about why I had left, and what I was doing in Sweden. He mocked me for fumbling my words and led the others in a chorus of laughter when I told him I was worried about my daughter, that Iran was no longer my home, and that I just wanted to go back to Sweden.

  “Oh, so you want to go back to Sweden now, do you?”

  More laughter.

  “And what is it that you so despise about our humble country? Are the men too dark for you? You prefer the fair-skinned man, do you?”

  He was playing to the crowd and loving it.

  That was when I started to cry.

  Their laughter increased. I didn’t care. Inside I was starting to do the one thing that I could. I said silent prayers, screaming them so loud that they filled my head. I remembered the lesson Khanoum taught me once, about how important it was to say, “Mohammed, help me” one hundred times.

  Jesus, help me.

  Jesus, help me.

 
Jesus, help me.

  Over and over I pleaded.

  This was my last chance.

  The mullah calmed the crowd, wiped his eyes, and laid out the facts for me. “For leaving the country without authorization—six months in jail. For falsely obtaining a passport—six months in jail. So that’s one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.”

  His words winded me. I felt Roksana and Daniel disappear. I thought about the bond I once feared had been severed between Daniel and me—the one that had grown back since we left Asghar. If I went to jail as the mullah said, I feared the bond would be cut all over again, and not just with Daniel, but Roksana too.

  I promise you, Jesus, if you help me I will follow you. I will do what the nuns do. I will give my life to serving you.

  The court was silent for a while.

  “Okay,” said the mullah, folding his hands across his chest. “How about I take off the jail time. You pay $1,000, you happy then?”

  I stared up at him, surprised but nodding frantically. “Yes, of course.”

  “Come here,” he said softly. “Be careful. Don’t cry. And when you get back to Sweden, you get me a visa, okay? I would very much like to visit you.”

  I swallowed whatever confusion and repulsion I felt and tried to smile. “Of course I will.”

  Dad and Hussein were both waiting outside the court. They looked shocked when they saw me walking toward them, but there was not time to explain.

  “I can’t speak,” I told them, looking for a taxi. “Let’s go first.”

  I handed over my paperwork and paid the $1000 fine at the bank, and then we went to the police station to pick up my passport.

  The clerk looked surprised when he came back from checking for it. “It’s not here. We sent it back to Isfahan.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “We didn’t think you’d be needing it.”

  I had been in Iran for almost three months. With two days left until my ticket home expired, I stood at the bus stop in Isfahan surrounded by my family. Roksana chatted happily in Farsi to her aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. I remembered how, when we arrived, she could barely string a sentence together. Somehow, while I had been held, questioned, and pushed around the country, she had become fluent. She had grown up as well.

  I cried as I hugged so many people. There was sorrow within me, knowing that I might never return again. But mostly there were tears of relief.

  Khanoum stood to embrace me. “Are you happy?” she asked as I held her tight. I couldn’t tell her any of the story that I wanted to, but I could tell her this much.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think I am.”

  As the bus engine started I watched Khanoum peel away from the crowd and come stand on the side on which we were sitting. Both she and I were crying. She had kept her promise. She had waited for me.

  When we pulled out, she took a few steps forward, one arm raised to wave us off. I watched her trip and fall. Several people ran to help. Soon she was lost within the crowd. Sadly, within less than a week she would pass on.

  It took three days before we could do it, but as soon as it was possible, I took Daniel and Roksana with me to a church in Stockholm.

  It was open but empty. None of us spoke as we lit candles at the back, or as we walked down toward the front and sat on a pew. Though the church was dark, the lights that shone within it were bright, bright enough to outshine all the darkness and fear and pain that I had known over the years.

  I felt free. I felt known. I felt happy in a way I had not experienced for far, far too long.

  I thought about all the pain and heartache I’d survived. I thought about the people along the way who’d been a ray of kindness in the middle of all the darkness: the officer’s wife in Turkey who had taken care of me and Roksana; the Roma woman at the refugee center who had offered me food and money to call home; the English-speaking strangers who had brought me the Bible in Farsi; Sadaf; Reza; Anna—all people God had used to watch over me as I searched for peace and safety.

  I thought back to the time in the convent. I thought about Sister Elisabeth and her joy-filled smile. I remembered looking through the half-open door, the sound of praying filling my ears.

  I shifted in my pew and knelt down. My eyes closed, I could feel Daniel and Roksana kneeling on either side of me. Even they didn’t know everything that had happened in Iran, and I had kept what I could of Asghar’s violence away from them, but Jesus knew. He knew everything.

  When I spoke, my voice filled the church.

  “We are Christians now. From now on, we are yours.”

  The joy remained, but pretty soon I had some practical problems to face. I had no money and no job, and I had an uncomfortable feeling that I had not heard the last from the regime or even the mullah in Tehran who had asked me to help him visit.

  So, with childlike faith, I prayed and waited expectantly for answers.

  They came quickly.

  Straight after leaving the church I started my search for employment, praying as I went. Within twenty-four hours I landed a job as a dressmaker. My boss was a Christian and the most generous and kind man I had ever met. Prayer, God reminded me, works.

  I prayed for a new home too. It took a little longer to see the answer to that one come to pass, but sure enough, within a few months, I was standing inside a beautiful old house that we really should not have been able to afford, giving thanks yet again for the ways in which God had provided.

  I began a new routine. After working in the day I would visit the house to carry on the job of stripping walls, sanding wood, and giving the rooms the first lick of paint they had seen in years. It took three months in all, but by the end of it we were able to move in. Daniel and Roksana finally had their own bedrooms, and there was even one for Sara, Siavash’s daughter who had joined us from Iran.

  Soon, my boss approached me with an offer of help that opened up new opportunities I had never dreamed would be mine. He told me that he thought I was a hard worker, that he wanted to help, and that, if ever I wanted to start my own business, he would let me take whatever material and tools I needed from his shop and pay him back when I could.

  My routine changed a little. Instead of picking up a paintbrush after work, I came home and carried on sewing. I made the kind of clothes that I saw on the well-dressed women of Stockholm, elegant dresses and classic pants. There was not a chador in sight.

  All this hard work meant that I had little time for other things. I went to church most Sundays, sitting at the back near the candles, letting the sounds wash over me. The air always felt richer in there, and I would leave at the end of the service grateful for the moments of still and calm in the middle of a busy week.

  Going to church was about as public as my faith got. I didn’t talk about my Christian beliefs with anyone, just as I didn’t talk at all about the rest of my life before returning to Sweden. Faith was private. I liked it that way.

  What I didn’t anticipate was to hear a knock on my door one Saturday morning and to find our elderly Iranian neighbors asking my family to join them for prayer later that evening.

  Ever since leaving Denmark I had tried to live far away from Iranian communities, and when we moved in to our tumbledown house I had no idea that the families around were anything other than good old-fashioned Swedes.

  I realized I was wrong soon after we moved. The house five doors down from ours was even bigger and more ramshackle than ours, and it was home to an old couple with gray hair, olive skin, and thick Iranian accents.

  At least she didn’t wear a chador. I had consoled myself every time we exchanged nods and smiles out on the sidewalk.

  But being asked to join them for prayer? That was an unexpected and unpleasant surprise. I had no intention of getting involved with any Muslims whatsoever, and I could feel the fear begin to inch up my throat.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Tonight we’re busy.”

  They smiled and left, and that was that. The rest of the day was give
n over to the usual mix of household chores and errands, and by the time the afternoon drew to a close I had put the invitation out of my mind.

  I answered the door later to the husband when he knocked early that evening.

  “Hello!” he said brightly, waving an envelope. “I wonder if you could help me? I have this letter from the government that I don’t understand. Could you translate it for me?”

  When I was done helping, he looked me right in the eyes. “We’re waiting for you to join us, you know. Come on!”

  This guy didn’t let up. I was done being polite and Swedish about it. I needed to change my defense. “Listen, mister, don’t talk to me about God. I’m not a Muslim, and I’m not interested in praying with you.”

  His smile didn’t waver. “Please, just come. Bring your family too. My wife and I would love to meet them.”

  Maybe the only way of getting rid of him was to play along. I swallowed hard and said that we’d be down in a few minutes.

  The sight of almost twenty pairs of shoes lined up on the porch outside the house made me want to turn tail and run. But it was the sound of the singing that came from within the house that compelled me to go inside.

  The melody was simple, almost like a ballad from my youth. It was the sound of warmth, of love.

  Inside the room was packed. People stood elbow to elbow, and the singing pressed deep within me. Some were crying, some praying with eyes closed. Of the rest, all eyes were on the words projected on the wall at the front. I only had to read a few lines before the sobbing started.

  When I come to you with a broken heart, you’re there for me

  When I come to you with a broken heart, you answer me

  When I cry for your cross, you hear and heal me still

  I had never seen or heard the words before—I had never heard Christians sing anything but the liturgy during a church service—but it was as if they had been written just for me. They were the prayer I had never been able to speak for myself, but which said everything I ever wanted to say.