by Marina Nemat
In early October 2006, I signed a six-month contract and began reading and translating prison memoirs. The task was emotionally exhausting—I was reading and writing about torture four to five hours a day. But I pressed on because I believed the work was important.
I had a few meetings with Professor M. and an ex–political prisoner from Iran who was working on the same project, and the project was going well. However, within two months it became clear that we would have to continue our work after I came back from my book tour: the amount of material to read was simply too large.
Shortly before I left on my book tour, Professor M. asked me if I could transcribe the names of about twenty-five-hundred women political prisoners executed in Iran’s prisons. This list was by no means a complete one. The names of many who lost their lives in Evin and other Iranian prisons have never been recorded. I hesitated a little before taking on this task. Twenty-five-hundred names … twenty-five-hundred lost lives. How many of those women did I know? How many were my friends?
Before every name, I paused and took a deep breath. After transcribing an unfamiliar name, I would stop a few moments and try to imagine what her owner had looked like. What colour were her eyes, her hair? Was her hair long or short? Did she have any brothers or sisters? Was she married? Did she have children or was she a teenager? What were her hopes and dreams?
Eventually, I came to a name I knew. Shahnoosh Behzadi. I read her name over and over. Up to that instant, I had somehow hoped that the news I’d heard in 1981 about her death had been false, that she had somehow survived and was living a happy life in a quiet, safe corner of the world. But those little black letters printed on a sheet of paper confirmed, with terrible finality, that she had died a horrible death at fifteen. Tears blinded me.
Shahnoosh Behzadi had been my classmate from the fourth grade on. We met when I transferred to Giv Elementary School, a Zoroastrian school for girls that accepted students of every faith.
On my first day at Giv just before the morning bell, I stood in the middle of the schoolyard and glanced around, desperate to find a familiar face. I knew that a few of my friends from my former school were supposed to come to Giv, but I had yet to spot one. A loud, moving sea of children surrounded me, and I felt overwhelmed. My heart pounded and sweat dripped down my forehead.
Suddenly, I found myself squeezed tight. I had no idea who was embracing me. All I could see was grey fabric and strands of curly, dark-brown hair.
“She’s so tiny and cute!” the girl said.
I tried to break free from her arms. Finally, she released me and I had a look at her. She was tall and thin. I later discovered that she was a Zoroastrian. With a motherly smile, she stroked my hair.
“You’re new here! What’s your name?”
“Marina,” I said breathlessly.
“What a pretty name!” she exclaimed, and turned to the friend standing behind her. “Fariba, her name is Marina. Isn’t that cute?”
Fariba nodded, smiled, and tucked her straight brown hair behind her ears. She was taller than I was but shorter than her friend.
“What grade are you in?” Fariba asked me.
“Four,” I responded proudly.
“Us, too!” said the girl who had hugged me. “We’ll help you with everything! Follow us!”
The bell rang, and when I gazed around me, I didn’t feel like a stranger anymore. I had friends: Fariba and—
The two girls had begun to walk away from me.
“Hey, wait! What’s your name?” I called after them.
The tall girl looked back and said, “Shahnoosh. Hurry up!”
I ran.
Shahnoosh was goodness. This is the best way I can describe her. She simply didn’t know how to be mean. She wasn’t what would be considered pretty, but she had so much love in her heart that it created beauty. I suspect she had a learning disability, because she struggled to keep up in class. Later, in high school, she asked me to help her with science and math. Tutoring her was fun, because she made me feel special and always told me that I was very smart. We never became best friends, but when I think of my school days, I realize that her presence made those days much happier. She always had a hug for everyone who needed it and befriended those who were the loneliest.
Revolutions take societies apart. When the Islamic Revolution succeeded, it changed everything, especially school. My generation had grown up with the old regime’s laws, which all of a sudden no longer applied. However, the new regime needed time to establish itself and write new laws. This short transition period lasted only a few months. During it, Marxist and Marxist-Islamist groups, which had been illegal during the time of the shah and had operated underground, surfaced and became popular in high schools and universities. I was in the eighth grade then and far too young to understand political groups, but many eleventh- and twelfth-grade students suddenly announced they were followers. Despite ideological differences, many of those groups had supported the Islamic Revolution, and had played a large role in its success. Their plan was to take over the country once the shah was deposed, but they failed. Marxist and Marxist-Islamist students organized political discussion meetings during recess, but I rarely saw Shahnoosh at any of them. She was probably the only person in school who remained more or less unchanged by the Islamic Republic. After a while I grew tired of those meetings. Even though I wanted and tried to fit in, I couldn’t. I was a devout Catholic and could get along with neither Marxists nor Islamists. Soon, I drifted away from all my friends and became so depressed that when the academic year of 1981–82 began, I refused to go back to school. Seeing my fragile emotional state, my parents decided to let me take a year off school.
In early fall of 1981 I heard from a young man at my church that Shahnoosh had been arrested and then executed. I simply could not believe it. This was impossible. Why arrest Shahnoosh? She was not politically active. Executed? It had to be a mistake.
Now, twenty-five years later, I sat with a list of the names of the executed on my desk. The list included Shahnoosh Behzadi. My beautiful friend.
IN 2009, another beautiful young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, was killed in Iran. Unlike Shahnoosh’s death, hers was captured on a cell-phone camera and broadcast on YouTube. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had just become the president of Iran for a second term. The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the Council of Guardians, which overseas elections in Iran, obviously favoured him. There had been many signs of irregularities and fraud during the election. Supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Ayatollah Karroubi, two reformist presidential candidates, filled the streets of Tehran and other large cities to protest. Such crowds had not been seen since 1979 and the days of the rallies against the shah. The people were shouting “Death to the dictator!” and “Where is our vote?” Basij (a civilian militia), Revolutionary Guard, and the police attacked the crowds and killed, injured, and arrested many. YouTube filled with images of violence. The clip of Neda Agha-Soltan’s death spread across the Internet and millions saw it.
A bullet hit Neda in the chest just below her neck, and she lost her balance and fell. In vain, people rushed to help her. A doctor present at the scene applied pressure to her wound and tried to slow the bleeding, but suddenly, blood spilled from her nose and mouth, her eyes rolled back, and she died on the sidewalk. Another innocent life lost. I watched the video only once, but it burned itself into my soul. I can play it over and over from memory, rewind, pause, or fast-forward it. She is wearing a knee-length black coat, a black head scarf, blue jeans, and running shoes. She has beautiful hands with long fingers. Perfect eyebrows. Gorgeous eyes. The shock on her face when the bullet hits her is unbearable. It is as if she wants to scream “Why?” but can’t.
MY MEMORIES OF SHAHNOOSH and all the friends I lost seethed in me as I travelled the world to speak about Prisoner of Tehran and the horrors of Evin. In strange hotels, when and if I fell asleep, I dreamed of going for walks on the shores of the Caspian with my prison friends. We cried and laughed, g
rieved and danced. In one of my dreams, Shahnoosh and I held hands and spun until we collapsed, laughing. Once we caught our breath, she turned to me, smiled, and said, “Happiness is our only revenge.”
Shortly after I returned from my book tour, I received a phone call from Professor M. I thought she might want to talk about my book—I had given her an advance copy to read. Or maybe she was going to ask me to sign another contract to continue the work we had started a few months earlier. But I was wrong.
“I can’t work with you anymore,” she said in a measured tone.
“Why?” I asked, puzzled.
She explained that her political friends, who were supporters of far-left Iranian political groups operating in exile, believed that I was a traitor, a tavvab, because I had broken under torture and married Ali. They were angry that I had shown no sign of remorse.
Remorse? For what? For being tortured and raped?
All the muscles in my body tightened. She had known my story when she had first approached me. My eyes filled with tears, but I held them back. I tried to say something, but words were swirling in my head.
“I see …” I managed to mumble.
“I have to insist that you do not mention in interviews that you have worked with me,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because some people say that I helped you write your book …”
“This is ridiculous! Why would anyone say that?”
“Well, some people think I helped you.”
“I helped you with your work—you didn’t help me with mine.”
“I just called to let you know this, okay?” She hung up.
I stood there in my kitchen, struggling to understand what had just happened. But I couldn’t get my mind around it. I had considered her a friend.
A few weeks later, I read a letter she had put on a website she had created. In it, she explained that she had come to know me after I was interviewed by CBC Radio and TV and a story about me was published in the Toronto Star. She also mentioned that after seeing and hearing the interviews, she had hired another Iranian-Canadian ex-prisoner and me for six months. This was exactly what had happened. I read on.
“During this process,” she wrote,* “I became more familiar with Marina Nemat’s political views, and it was obvious to me that her story of the prison was different from other published memoirs. In her interview with the Toronto Star (January 30, 2005), she had mentioned her ‘marriage’ with her interrogator and was not hiding it, and she had said that she would publish her memoir. To understand the difference between Marina’s experience in the prison and the ones of other women political prisoners, from the beginning [of the project] to the time that her book was published, I asked a few women political prisoners about her, but no one knew anything, and no one accused her of being a tavvab …”
Then she noted that after the publication of Prisoner of Tehran, a few ex–political prisoners said that I was a traitor. She added, “According to the criticisms [of a few ex–political prisoners] of Prisoner of Tehran, today, I have no doubt that Marina Nemat is a tavvab …”
I stared at my computer screen, unable to read any further. In Evin when interrogating me, Hamehd had called me a “dirty infidel.” He had told me that I deserved to die, that the world had forgotten about me, and that my execution would make it a better place. Now individuals who claimed to believe in freedom and democracy called me names and condemned me. But I would not become disheartened. I knew Shahnoosh was watching over me.
*Translated from the Persian.
Shaadi’s Card
My story was now in book form, yet a terrible urge impelled me to tell it again and again. A friend warned me that survivor’s guilt was driving me and it would eventually take over my life: I was running like a marathon runner with no finish line in sight, and in the end, I would die of exhaustion. Maybe she was right, but I was supposed to have died at sixteen; now I was overdue.
My publishers sent me around the world, and at almost every book signing, a few Iranians would ask me to sign my book for them in Persian. Some were ex–political prisoners themselves, and some had had a loved one imprisoned in Iran. After one event, a young Iranian woman broke into tears, telling me her mother had been a prisoner in Evin but had never talked about it. Another woman recounted that her brother had been severely tortured in Evin but had survived. He, too, was mostly silent about the experience. Amid the hugs and tears, I was always on the lookout for a familiar face, hoping to find my prison friends in the crowd, but this didn’t happen. It took a while for my friends from Iran to contact me, and the first contact came in an unexpected way after Voice of America’s Persian News Network did a TV interview with me in Persian in Los Angeles, California. It was broadcast worldwide, and phone calls and emails were accepted during the show. The kindness and support of Iranians from around the globe overwhelmed me. There were even messages from Iran sent by those who had satellite dishes and been able to watch it.
A few months after the interview, I received a large envelope from my publisher in the United States. I shook it over a table in my living room, and a small white envelope fell out. I looked at the sender’s name and froze: Shaadi Golzari. I read the name again and again, my heart beating faster. I ripped open the envelope to find a card from one of my best friends from elementary and high school in Tehran. She had never been arrested, but she had watched her friends disappear one by one. Now she lived in Los Angeles.
After Evin, I didn’t try to contact any of my classmates for many years, and I saw only one of the girls who had been in prison with me: Shahnaz. Her release had come a few months before mine. We had not known each other prior to Evin, but I had given her my phone number. She called me one day in Tehran and then stopped by for a brief visit. She had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Evin, and I had been very worried about her. I was amazed at how “normal” we both now looked. We chatted in my bedroom, its large windows looking out on a backyard that overflowed with roses of every colour. While I was in prison, my parents had moved in with a friend who had a large house, and my new bedroom was overwhelmingly pink. We sat in pink armchairs and sipped Earl Grey tea from gold-rimmed china teacups with pink roses on them. Shahnaz must have come directly from the salon. Every strand of her long straight black hair was perfectly in place. She was elegantly dressed in a tight black skirt and a blue silk blouse. Like me, she wore high heels, and I wondered if, after all the lashings she had endured, her shoes hurt her feet as much as my shoes did mine. We didn’t talk about Evin. She had a perpetual smile on her face that concealed the fear and worry I had always seen in her large, sad brown eyes. We each said “those days” maybe once or twice with a smile and a shrug. We were not ready to talk about the horrors we had witnessed. Our experience lived in us, and we were both aware of it, but we had decided to ignore it. However, her presence in my house spoke louder than any words ever could. She had come despite the fact that every second she spent with me transported her back to the trauma she wanted to forget. She had come to show me that what we shared and the friendship that had carried us through so much pain would remain a part of her, even though neither she nor I could find the courage to express our feelings. Before leaving, she hugged me, and I felt the same tremble in her body that I had felt as we embraced each other in Evin, listening to gunshots. She put on her black chador just before she walked onto the street through my front door. I never saw her again.
After Shahnaz’s visit, I went to the home of only one prison friend. She was still in Evin at the time. Before my release, she had asked me to tell her parents something she had been unable to tell them herself: that she had been sentenced to twenty years.
I don’t have a clear memory of the hour I spent with her family. I just remember looking down all the time. I wanted to tell her parents the truth, but I didn’t have the strength. How could I gaze into their eyes and say that their daughter would remain in prison for such a long time when I had been released? Except, I had
made a promise to her, so I told her brother-in-law as he drove me home. Devastated, he nodded and said he would break the news to the family.
Now a voice from the past was calling to me. Shaadi had written her telephone number on the card she had sent me. I phoned her immediately. The phone rang three times—an eternity—before she answered.
“Shaadi?” I mumbled. “It’s me, Marina.”
“Oh, my God! Wait … I might kill someone … God … I’m driving … on the highway … I’m pulling … over … hang on … is this really you, Marina?”
“It’s me … How are you?”
“I thought you’d never call! I thought you didn’t want to speak to me.”
“What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I want to speak to you? I just got your card. I phoned immediately.”
She told me she had sent the card to my publisher a few months earlier. It had taken my publisher a while to send readers’ letters to me.
She said she had read my book and was thrilled to find bits and pieces of herself in it. She remembered my room, my books, my balcony, the pencil case I sold Sarah, and my father’s blue Oldsmobile. To talk to someone I shared so many memories with was comforting. She was in touch with a few of our friends who had been in prison. Most of them still lived in Iran; after their release, they had managed to continue their studies, and then they had gotten married. I was relieved to hear they had survived. Shaadi had visited with some of them on a recent trip back to Iran. Not surprisingly, they hadn’t wanted to talk about Evin.
