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

by Maziar Bahari

  “I feel privileged to be in the company of Mr. Abtahi and Mr. Nabavi,” I said as I dressed, hoping to get any information about why I had been moved. I was shocked when Brown Sandals answered me.

  “I heard you’re going to be tried with them,” he said. “And they said that you need to get a haircut.”

  Outside the bathroom, a few other prisoners were waiting for a haircut. When it was my turn, a prison guard sat me down, kept my blindfold on, and, in a matter of seconds, trimmed my hair and beard.

  “Do you use gel?” he asked.

  This is amazing, I thought. They deny you your basic rights and then, when they want to put you on trial, they offer you hair gel.

  “Sure, I’ll have some,” I said.

  After my haircut, I was taken outside. I could hear dozens of other men being moved around as well. There was a cacophony of guards shouting orders, wardens looking for keys, and people asking where they should stand or sit down.

  I was eventually separated from the group and taken to a dark room; there I was asked to remove my blindfold. Before me was a breakfast of flat bread and cheese, and a small cup of tea. I was starving, but I could barely chew the food. Was it true that I was going to be tried today? Was I about to be killed? I felt the bread lodge in my dry throat.

  Suddenly, Rosewater was behind me, his hand on my shoulder. “You thought I was joking about your trial?”

  I couldn’t answer him.

  “You’ll have a trial today and then an interview,” Rosewater said. “Then I’ll suggest a sentence to your judge, based wholly on your performance. We need names today, Maziar. We need a lot of names.”

  I was left alone in the dark room for hours after that. I heard the call for morning prayers, but no one came to take me to the bathroom. I’d had two cups of tea and really needed to use the toilet, but I’d been told to sit in my chair and not move.

  After what felt like an eternity, a guard finally came for me. He put handcuffs on me and sat me in the back of a car, blindfolded. I was allowed to remove the blindfold only when we reached Chamran Expressway, about a mile south of Evin. There were three armed guards wearing civilian clothes in the car.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Sshhh,” one guard said. “You’ll find out soon.”

  It was the first time I had been out of Evin since my arrest six weeks earlier. I tried to absorb every scene and face I was seeing. I knew that I’d be back in my cell soon enough, and I was desperate to keep as many fresh images of the outside world as possible in the depository of my memory. Everything looked so bright: the colors were more vivid than I’d remembered, and I felt that even the wind was a colorful shade of blue. One of the guards’ cell phones rang.

  “No. Tajbakhsh is not with us,” the guard said. “We have Bahari.”

  Hearing the name Tajbakhsh felt like one of Rosewater’s slaps on the back of my head. What the hell?! I thought. Is Tajbakhsh still in Iran?

  Between 2003 and 2007, the Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh had worked for the Open Society Institute (OSI), an organization run by the billionaire George Soros that promotes democratic values in former communist countries and many other nations. Tajbakhsh had held this position with the official permission of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs until, in 2007, he was arrested by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and held for four months in Evin. His arrest and that of two other scholars were part of the first wave of incarcerations of those accused of fomenting a velvet revolution in Iran.

  The OSI’s role in the soft revolutions in Georgia, in 2003, and Ukraine, in 2004, was not a secret. The organization had offices in both countries, and in both had openly endorsed a move to a more democratic state. But OSI had never received official permission to open offices in Iran, and Tajbakhsh worked only within the framework set for him by the Iranian government. Nonetheless, at the time, Tajbakhsh was forced to make a television appearance in which he admitted to being guilty of working with Soros to undermine the regime. The other two scholars left Iran immediately after their release, but Tajbakhsh stayed in Iran. He loved his country and wanted to raise a family there, and he believed the assurances of the Ministry of Intelligence that if he didn’t get involved in politics, they would allow him to continue his job as an urban planner. I thought Tajbakhsh would have left the country immediately when he noticed that the situation was becoming more repressive. I later learned that after the election in June, the Revolutionary Guards had arrested Tajbakhsh in his house, in front of his wife and their two-year-old daughter.

  The Guards had chosen three people to connect the reformists with foreign governments. I was supposed to be the media connection, Tajbakhsh was the connection to foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and Hossein Rassam, a political adviser to the British embassy, was the connection to foreign embassies in Tehran.

  Part of Rassam’s job as political adviser was to meet different political figures in the country and write papers for the British embassy staff based on those conversations and his own analyses. Rassam had held that position for years with no interference, until two weeks after the election, when he was arrested and charged with espionage. By arresting the three of us and parading us in front of television cameras, the Guards hoped to convince Iranians that the postelection unrest had been provoked by foreigners.

  Rassam was going to be tried on a later day, but Tajbakhsh and I were among the first to be put on trial. I was taken to the Imam Khomeini Judicial Complex, in central Tehran, and led to a small office in the back of the building. As I followed the guard, I caught a glimpse of Tajbakhsh in a smaller room across the hall. He was sitting at a small table with Rosewater, going through a series of notes. I was surprised to see Rosewater there, and his presence confirmed one of my fears: that he was a high-ranking member of the Revolutionary Guards, responsible for high-level prisoners. I wished for the chance to speak to Tajbakhsh, but knew it would not come. He was being guarded by several men.

  One of the guards in the room where I was taken had been part of the team who had raided my house and arrested me. He’d been in charge of keeping an inventory of my confiscated DVDs and equipment.

  “How are you, Mr. Bahari?” he asked with a smile. “How is your mother? Have you seen her since that day?” I thanked him and said that she’d visited me a few days ago.

  “Mr. Bahari’s mother is a very strong woman,” the guard told another man. The mention of Moloojoon’s name made me really proud. There was a newspaper lying on the table, and I managed to read one headline before the guard grabbed it: something about the dangers of swine flu for pilgrims in Mecca.

  “I guess the swine flu is a real problem,” I said to the guard, hoping to distract him so I could focus on watching Rosewater and Tajbakhsh in the other room. From what I could hear, Rosewater was telling Tajbakhsh what to say.

  Rosewater glanced up and caught my eye. “Don’t look!” he yelled as he jumped up and ran at me. I lowered my head, preparing for his punch. Instead, he leaned over me and moved his jacket so I could see his gun in its holster.

  “Do you know him?” Rosewater asked, referring to Tajbakhsh.

  “Not personally,” I said. “Is it Kian Tajbakhsh?”

  “No, it’s my aunt!” he answered.

  Rosewater told the other guards in the room to leave. “Listen, Maziar,” he said. “There are dozens of former ministers and members of parliament in the courtroom right now. They’re all admitting to their crimes and dishing the dirt about each other. Why do you think you’re so different from them?” He ran his fingers through my gelled hair. “Nice haircut,” he said. “It will be such a pity if the last time your mother sees her beautiful son is on television.” Then he slapped me hard on the head.

  “Listen, you bacheh khoshgel”—you pretty boy—“you either name everyone on the list I gave you and apologize to the supreme leader for breaking his heart, or you’re going to be sentenced today and executed a few days from now.” He slapped me on
the head again and opened the door. “It’s your choice to live and see your mother, or die for Mousavi and Rafsanjani.” He shut the door behind him.

  I was eager to know what was happening inside the courtroom. I would later learn that the reality was far more absurd than anything I could have imagined. The “trial” was the first in a series of show trials that the Islamic government would stage after the election. A number of sources told me that the trials were produced on Khamenei’s direct orders, meant to show the strength of the regime and disgrace the reformist leaders who were paraded in front of the press in their prison uniforms.

  The scene was something out of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Stalin himself had staged similar show trials, in which a couple dozen high-ranking former Communist Party officials were put on trial for treason and allegedly planning to assassinate Comrade Stalin. The difference was that the culprits in Stalin’s courts had clear, albeit fabricated, charges against them; the incrimination procedure was thorough. In Khamenei’s version, the charges could be anything from possession of a satellite television, to throwing stones at the Revolutionary Guards, to being in contact with the CIA. The Guards had collected more than a hundred prisoners of different backgrounds and political affiliations under the same roof. There were former ministers and parliamentarians, as well as a number of young kids who had done nothing more than attend a demonstration. It seemed as if everyone had been arrested for the same reason: to show the widespread nature of the fetneh—the sedition, as Khamenei called the postelection demonstrations. But there was not enough time to try each prisoner, leaving the prosecutor to read a long statement that sounded like the same propaganda and nonsense the Iranian people had heard too many times before.

  I realized that I was not going to be tried on that day. I was part of the post-trial show. The Revolutionary Guards had decided to stage a press conference with four supposed leaders of the velvet revolution: Mohammad Atrianfar, a former security official and deputy minister of interior who had also been in charge of a number of reformist newspapers that had been shut down; Mohammad Ali Abtahi; Kian Tajbakhsh; and me. Tajbakhsh and I were told to sit in the courtroom as Abtahi and Atrianfar were taken behind a podium for the press conference.

  It was difficult for me to watch Abtahi and Atrianfar during their press conference. I had interviewed each of them several times. Once jovial and chubby, Abtahi looked defeated and broken. He was less than half of his previous size. With a lifeless expression in his eyes, he made scathing comments about Mousavi and Khatami, and explained why the reformists had failed to gain widespread popular support and so had had to stage a velvet revolution. Abtahi’s basic point was that the reformists did not understand how much Iranians admired Khamenei and, as a result of this miscalculation, devised misguided strategies to gain people’s votes before the election or overturn the results after the election.

  Atrianfar took a different approach: he spent a significant amount of time praising Khamenei’s greatness. A clever type who knew how to switch sides, Atrianfar understood that all tyrants are susceptible to flattery, and so he compared Khamenei to Imam Hossein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and one of the most revered figures of Shia Islam. Atrianfar then likened himself to an enemy of the imam who later joined Imam Hossein’s army.

  My turn was to come after lunch. We ate chicken kebabs and drank doogh, a salty yogurt drink similar to lassi, inside the courtroom. Rosewater told me to look down during lunch. He then gave me his drink, saying he had to watch his blood pressure. “Names, Mazi, names,” he reminded me. Before the interview, Tajbakhsh and I were given dress shirts to change into.

  I knew what I had to do. Watching Atrianfar’s shameless praise of Khamenei had convinced me that I should follow him, and instead of naming names, as Rosewater wanted me to, I would offer my apologies to the supreme leader and repeat the paranoid but general theories Haj Agha, Rosewater’s boss, had outlined about the evil Western media.

  When at last we were up in front of the cameras, I remained as quiet as possible throughout the press conference and allowed Tajbakhsh to do most of the talking. We both concluded by saying how sorry we were to have made mistakes and asked Khamenei to forgive us. Afterward, Tajbakhsh and I gave our shirts back and put on our prison uniforms. We exchanged sorry looks. We were two broken men.

  I was separated from Tajbakhsh and led back to the car that would take me back to prison. I hadn’t named any names. I knew what awaited me.

  · · ·

  A short time later, I sat quietly in my chair in the interrogation room. Rosewater walked over to me. From beneath my blindfold, I could see that he still had his formal shoes on. He stood in front of me for a while, then walked away. Then I could feel him standing behind me. He punched my shoulder so hard that I immediately felt my right hand go numb.

  “You will be executed within the next twenty-one days,” he said. I knew that twenty-one days from now was the start of the holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast and no execution can be carried out.

  Rosewater punched my shoulder again. I could feel the impact of his ring on my bone. “I will make sure you die before Ramadan, Mazi,” he said. He stood in front of me and grabbed my nose with his fingers. “But I will also make sure that I smash your handsome face first.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was a hot early August day, and we were in one of the interrogation rooms where there was no air-conditioning. That always put Rosewater in a bad mood.

  His first question surprised me: “Who is Pauly Shore?”

  Those unfamiliar with Mr. Shore are not missing much. He’s a B-list actor who played a high school outcast, a college party animal, and an unemployed male stripper in a series of comedies in the 1990s. I, along with ten other pathetic souls, was a member of the Pauly Shore Alliance on Facebook. I had joined the group with a friend, as part of an inside joke.

  “Why?” I replied.

  Up to that day, except for the Daily Show interrogation, Rosewater had asked me only about politicians and journalists. He placed a piece of paper in front of me. At the top he had written Describe your connection to Pauly Shore. “I want to know everything there is to know about him.”

  Where does one start? I wrote down that Shore is a comedian and was in a series of comedies I had watched while at university. I named a few of his films: Encino Man, Son-in-Law, and Jury Duty.

  “Everyone you know seems to be a comedian,” Rosewater said. “We’ll investigate this Pauly Shore.” I wondered which lucky fellow in the Revolutionary Guards would be assigned that crucial task.

  Rosewater wasn’t finished. “What is your connection to Anton Chekhov?” Despite its absurdity, I’d sort of expected this question. I was a member of two fan clubs on Facebook: Pauly Shore’s and Anton Chekhov’s. My inquisitors were really grasping at straws here.

  “Anton Chekhov is dead, sir,” I answered. “He was a Russian playwright who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”

  “Was he a Jew?” Rosewater asked angrily.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “He sounds like a Jew to me,” he said impatiently.

  “Well, in Russian, ov denotes belonging to a place. It is similar to zadeh in Persian.”

  Rosewater was silent.

  “But I don’t know. He could be Jewish. Many Russian writers and intellectuals, as well as revolutionaries, were Jewish at that time.”

  “And many of them were Zionists. Herzl was a Russian,” Rosewater said, referring to Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement.

  “He was Hungarian,” I replied and immediately regretted it. I didn’t want to sound defiant, but sometimes his idiocy was too much to bear. And anyway, at this point, what did I have to lose?

  “Oh, really?” He grabbed my neck from behind and squeezed with all his might. “You know so much about the Jews, don’t you?”

  He put a blank piece of paper on my chair and slapped the back of my head. �
��Write down everything you know about Anton Chekhov and don’t write koseh she’r, bullshit!” Rosewater exclaimed. “We’re going to investigate every Zionist you know, Mr. Maziar. We’re going to show you that despite what you may think, we are not stupid. We know that your Chekhov was Jewish and that you are a Zionist.”

  After, presumably, Rosewater found out that Chekhov was not Jewish, he did not bother with any more questions about people with surnames ending with ov. That included my Israeli friend David Shem-tov. I don’t think you can find a more Israeli name than Shem-tov, but I could just imagine the Revolutionary Guards researchers saying to each other, “Chekhov, Molotov, Shem-tov, they are all the same!”

  I had grown up listening to anti-Israeli propaganda on Iranian television, but it was only in Evin that I discovered the real depth of the Islamic government’s hatred, paranoia, and lack of understanding of Israel, and of Jewish people in general. The Iranian government claims Israel is its main nemesis. If the United States is the Great Satan, Israel is the “Even More Devious Satan.” I was coming to understand that Rosewater, who was likely being fed anti-Israeli propaganda on an hourly basis, believed every conspiracy theory pertaining to the Jewish people. To Rosewater, a Jew could not be an ordinary person. To him a Jew meant a Zionist, a spy—someone who has no other occupation than conspiring against Islam and Muslims. I don’t think he had ever met a Jewish person in his life. But he thought that he knew everything about the Jews and Israelis.

  “Write down the name of every Jewish element you’ve ever met in your life!” he demanded one day.

  I took the pen. In the West it is not customary to ask about people’s religious affiliations. It will be very difficult for me to answer your question because I cannot guess the religious background of every person I’ve ever met in my life.