Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival

by Maziar Bahari

  Chapter Ten

  It was the middle of the ninth night when Blue-Eyed Seyyed opened the door to my cell. “Get up! Specialist time!” he barked. I had had trouble falling asleep the previous night and as I fumbled with the blindfold, my body felt heavy and exhausted. Rosewater was waiting for me at a different door than usual, and did not offer his typical hello. Instead, he grabbed my arm and yanked me brusquely away from the prison guard. With his hand firmly on my arm, he pulled me down what seemed to be a path, with trees on both sides. Evin is near the mountains and so the nights there are cold, even in the summer. Tonight was particularly chilly. I welcomed the cold air; it helped wake me up and clear my head. I could hear Rosewater breathing heavily. The fact that this was not our usual routine worried me. I thought I should find a way to talk to him.

  “I’m sorry if you don’t get much sleep because of me,” I said with a smile. I expected one of his sarcastic responses. But he sounded serious.

  “The fun is over!” He pushed me harder with every step. “Islamic kindness is over.” His breath was heavy on my neck. “You little spy, we will show you what we can do with you. You are going to see what we are capable of.” He shoved me inside a room where people were speaking in hushed tones. The smell of sweat, feet, and rosewater was strong.

  Rosewater sat me down and pushed my head close to a table. “Keep your head like this,” he said.

  A few moments later, the room erupted in a cacophony of greetings.

  “Salaam, Haj Agha!”

  “Hello, Haj Agha!”

  Typically Haj Agha is a term of respect used for someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but among Iranian officials, it signifies seniority. Haj Agha took my hand.

  “Salaam, Mr. Bahari. Do you know why you are here?” He sounded like a high-ranking Iranian official.

  “No, sir,” I answered. “I’m still not even sure why I was arrested in the first place.”

  “Well, we know exactly why you’re here,” Haj Agha said.

  “But, sir—,” I said, raising my head to speak. Rosewater’s beefy hand forced it back toward the table.

  “I told you to keep your head down!”

  “Whatever you do, keep your blindfold on, Mr. Bahari,” Haj Agha said. “Do not even open your eyes.” He was giving me this warning, I thought, because he did not want to be recognized. Maybe I was correct, and he was a regime official.

  “Is the car here yet?” Haj Agha asked someone in the room. Then he addressed me again. “Mr. Bahari, you’re suspected of espionage. You have been in contact with a number of known spies.” He named a few of my friends, mostly Iranian artists and intellectuals in exile. “A car is coming to take you to the counterespionage unit. There, you will be interrogated more … shall we say, aggressively? Sometimes up to fifteen hours a day. We are done playing games with you. It is time for you to talk.” I could sense him moving closer to me. “Our agents there are prepared to subject you to every tactic necessary. The investigation can take between four and six years.” He paused. “If you are found innocent, you will, of course, be freed and we will offer you our apologies. But if you are found guilty, you could be sentenced to death.”

  My heart sank with every word. This was the end of my magical thinking.

  This prison, these people, these questions—this would be my life for the foreseeable future. I tried to quiet my mind, but I felt as if the earth had opened and I was being swallowed by it, powerless against everything. The black velvet blindfold became damp, and I didn’t know if it was with my sweat or my tears.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Haj Agha asked.

  A cup of tea? “Yes, please. Thank you.” I could barely get out the words. I was lost in thoughts about my mother, about Paola, about our unborn child. How could I have put them in this situation? I felt the beginnings of a migraine creeping slowly up the back of my neck.

  “Unless …,” said Haj Agha.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you would be interested in a deal, Mr. Bahari.”

  “A deal?” I felt the blood move through my body again. Of course. I knew exactly what kind of a deal he wanted to make. I thought of all my friends who had been forced to confess on television. They were all freed eventually, and the dream of being with my family again was my only consolation as I remembered their tired and broken faces as they’d read their scripted confessions.

  “Yes, a deal,” said Haj Agha. I could hear the smile in his voice. “We believe in Islamic kindness, Mr. Bahari. I’ve heard that Mrs. Paola is pregnant. Is that true?”

  Hearing Paola’s name come out of this man’s mouth made me want to jump up and strangle him. “Yes, sir,” I said, through gritted teeth.

  “How many months?” he asked.

  “Five months.”

  He went on, speaking about the benevolence of the Islamic system and how the supreme leader regarded all of us, even the mischievous ones, as his children. But I was not listening. I was thinking about Paola, and about my father. I could hear Paola’s words: Come home, Mazi. We need you. That was where I wanted to be. I wanted to spend my life with Paola and our baby, away from these hypocritical bastards and their “Islamic kindness.”

  I had tried to be a balanced reporter. I was in favor of democracy and human rights, but I had always tried to present the point of view of the Iranian government in my work, to the point that I’d even been accused of being an agent of the government. All I was asking was to be left alone, to do my work in peace. But instead the Revolutionary Guards had jailed me and were tormenting me. To my horror, I was disillusioned with my country. We deserve this, I thought. This regime, this close-mindedness. Everything that is wrong with this country, this nation has brought on itself.

  In that moment of despair, I wished that these bastards had been hanged by their turbans, that the people had the guts to take arms against these monsters. I wanted to leave Iran and never look back. I felt betrayed by my own country, by my own people. I just wanted to be back with Paola.

  My violent thoughts horrified me. I hated myself for feeling this way about Iran. I shut my eyes as tightly as I could. I could see my father sitting at the head of the table shaking his head, chastising me. “Please, Baba Akbar,” I implored him in my thoughts. “Please let me be with my family.” I looked my father straight in the eye and said to him, in my head, “I’m not going to name names. I will harm no one.”

  Then I took control of myself and addressed Haj Agha. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t like to talk about my family. I would like to know what kind of a deal you have in mind.”

  “I can understand your emotions, Mr. Bahari,” Haj Agha said in the most melodramatic tone imaginable. “We do not want to harm you. We do not want your wife to raise the child alone. I do not want your child to grow up an orphan. Is it a boy or a girl?”

  I forced myself to answer his questions as diplomatically as I could, trying to keep from him what we both knew was true: my family was my main vulnerability. “We don’t know the sex yet. In fact, we were planning to find out together this week, but instead I have the privilege of being in your presence.”

  “And you have a mother who has lost two children and her husband in the past four years,” he went on. Each time he mentioned Paola, my mother, my sister, or my brother, I felt as though a knife were twisting in my body.

  “The deal you mentioned, sir? Could you explain, please?”

  “Mr. Bahari, you’re a well-known filmmaker and journalist. In fact, I saw you last month on television talking about the art of documentary filmmaking.” He was referring to an interview I did with Iranian state television in May 2009. “Young people are tired of old faces. They need to hear from people like you.” He paused. “Don’t you agree?”

  “You are very kind, sir,” I said. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing special. We just want you to speak about your experience of working with the Western media and its role in the velvet revolution,” he
said. The term “velvet revolution” originated as a way to describe the peaceful revolutions that had brought down socialist dictatorships in Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and Georgia from 1989 to the early 2000s. Khamenei had accused Iranian reformists of being “velvet revolutionaries,” which, according to him, meant being a stooge of the West.

  “But, sir, I don’t know anything about it.” I was desperate to make a different deal. The thought of condemning my work and my colleagues on television repulsed me.

  “That is fine, Mr. Bahari,” Haj Agha said benevolently. “We will work on it together.” He explained to me, in careful detail, the role the West had played in creating and encouraging the demonstrations after the elections. The media, he said, was a major factor in this, and a big part of the capitalist machinery. I was to explain how a velvet revolution had been staged—by foreigners and corrupt elites, using the Western media—and how only the wisdom and munificence of the supreme leader had thwarted this latest attempt.

  “Do you agree with my points, Mr. Bahari?”

  I had tried my best to listen to what he was saying—knowing that I was about to be used to shore up an illegitimate government that I abhorred—but I was distracted by thoughts about Paola. What was she doing right now? How was she feeling with the pregnancy? Were she and Khaled in frequent communication? “Of course, sir,” I said automatically.

  “Good. Then you can repeat this information in front of television cameras tomorrow,” Haj Agha said.

  Our conversation was interrupted by the morning call to prayers from the courtyard. It must have been around five A.M. I could hear the other people in the room stand and gather their things to pray.

  Haj Agha wanted to wrap things up. “Well, Mr. Bahari, I have a few pages of notes for you. You can practice in your cell.” He pushed several pieces of paper toward me. “I suggest you read these words carefully so you can repeat them as naturally as you can.” He grabbed my hand and held it. “You’ll have a haircut tomorrow, and a shave.” Before saying good-bye, he made his last point.

  “If it doesn’t look natural, we will not broadcast it. The counterespionage unit is always ready to greet you.” He let go of my hand. “Have a good night, sir.”

  · · ·

  Jafaa. In Persian, this very poetic word refers to all the wrongs you do to those who love you. According to Haj Agha, I was guilty of jafaa against Khamenei. Now I was to repent. But it wasn’t Khamenei’s forgiveness I needed for what I was considering doing. It was everyone else’s: all the people I loved.

  I moved to a corner of the cell and curled myself into the fetal position. I screamed into my blanket, trying to muffle the noises so no one would hear me. My father and my sister had not been high-ranking members of the Tudeh Party, and they had not worked for the media. They had never been forced to confess. They had endured years of imprisonment—as painful and torturous as it was—with their integrity intact. I needed their help.

  I called in my mind for Maryam. “Maryam joon, you are a ghost, why don’t you come and help me?” I cried. I shook with pain and anger. I was a coward. I was weak. I was going to confess.

  “Just don’t name names, Mazi jaan,” I heard my father say. “No one believes in the koseh she’r”—the bullshit—“that you’re going to say.” I smiled. How I missed my father and his swearing. “Everyone knows that these bastards will do anything to force you to confess,” my father said. “Just say whatever they want and get out of here as soon as you can.”

  I got up and began to pace the room. I was so tired. My steps were slow and clumsy. Six forward. Six back. “I have to sleep,” I told myself. I couldn’t allow them this—I couldn’t become a zombie.

  Instead, I lay down, closed my eyes, and carried the green carpet of my cell to our bedroom in London. There, I placed it on top of the bed I shared with Paola. When I opened my eyes, she was in the living room, wrapping Christmas gifts. I walked as silently as I could into the living room and stood there for a few moments, watching her. Her long hair was tied into a messy bun.

  She was startled when she turned to find me standing there. “Gosh, Mazi,” she said. “You scared me. What are you doing?”

  “The strangest thing just happened to me,” I told her.

  She stopped wrapping the gifts and turned to me, a look of concern on her face. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I realized something just now. I have a huge chip on my shoulder.”

  “What are you talking about? No, you don’t.”

  “No,” I said. “I really do. I think I need your help.”

  “What do you mean? A chip on your shoulder about what?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, walking toward her. “Come here. Feel it.” I put my hands around her waist and extended my right shoulder toward her so she could see the bump under my sweater.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Get it off, though.”

  She smiled at me with a look of amusement and curiosity as she slid her hand under my sweater and pulled out the small jewelry box holding her engagement ring. When she looked back up at me, there were tears in her eyes. Before long, we sank onto the green carpet together, and though it took many hours of lying there, holding each other as tightly as we could, we finally fell asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  I had come to find breakfast the best part of my day. Every sip of tea was like an escape, and I spent a lot of effort trying to make the cup last as long as possible, while also keeping it from becoming cold. It was a very delicate balance. That morning, as I sipped, I waited to see what would be served with the thin lavash bread given to me in a plastic bag: jam or cheese. The guard slipped the plastic bag through the lower slot. Today it was cheese.

  I again read the handwritten notes Haj Agha had given me. He apparently had a lot to say about velvet revolutions. The gist of Haj Agha’s argument was that such changes of government could not happen without the help of the Western governments, especially that of the United States, and the financial help of rich Zionists. It seemed that Haj Agha didn’t understand that by comparing the green movement in Iran with the revolutions in Eastern Europe, he was essentially saying that the Islamic regime was a dictatorship like the former totalitarian socialist states. Though it’s true that the CIA and MI6 had been involved in changing regimes in a number of countries during the Cold War and it’s likely that they did whatever they could to help the dissidents in Iran, it was absurd to blame millions of people’s disenchantment with their government on foreign intelligence agencies. Demonstrations such as the ones I’d witnessed sprang from the people, not from outside. Anyone on the streets of Tehran after the election would have known just how spontaneous—even leaderless—the protests had been. But Khamenei claimed that they had been orchestrated by foreigners. He and his ministers wanted to maintain the fallacy that the people had reelected Ahmadinejad. The legitimacy of their government depended on it.

  Haj Agha was quite sure that the Western media had been the main vehicle used to provoke the demonstrations, and that reformism, both before and after the election, had been fabricated by the West. To him, the green movement was driven by Westernized urbanites trying to bring decadence and moral corruption to Iran, and they couldn’t have done anything without the support of the West, especially Americans. Everything he said echoed a familiar fear of the regime. Khamenei liked to warn Iranians about a “cultural NATO” as threatening as the military one—a network of journalists, activists, scholars, and lawyers who supposedly sought to undermine the Islamic Republic from within.

  Though I knew my testimony was intended to prop up a despised regime, I told myself that I could talk about Haj Agha’s idea of velvet revolutions generally, without hurting anyone. As I was taken outside for my hava khori, or a short walk in a courtyard between two high walls, which I was afforded for an hour each day, I thought that I could even embellish and exaggerate his concepts so that they would sound more ridiculous. That way, when people heard
or saw the confession, they would know it was coerced.

  When my hava khori was over, I was called inside to the communal guest bathroom for a haircut and shave. The man who cut my hair had a round face, thick glasses, and a short beard. His prison uniform was the same as mine.

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “I was arrested after the demonstrations,” I answered.

  He told me that he had heard the news of the demonstrations and arrests on state television in his communal cell. The state TV called the demonstrators terrorists, and said that only those who caused death and destruction had been arrested. The barber seemed to believe everything that was said on television.

  “You don’t look like a killer,” he said. “Did you throw Molotov cocktails at the police?”

  “I’m a journalist,” I said. “I didn’t attack anyone. Why are you here?”

  “Five kilos of heroin,” he answered nonchalantly. The majority of prisoners in Iran are drug smugglers.

  I knew that possession of more than a kilo of narcotics could lead to a death sentence. “Five kilos of heroin and you’re still alive?” I marveled.

  “Yeah,” he said, as he trimmed my sideburns. “There were ten of us. All neighborhood friends. So they divided the sentence between us and none of us were sentenced to death.”

  The journalist in me was very curious. “Why did you smuggle drugs? Couldn’t you find another job?”