Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series)

by Marina Nemat

  As frequently as once a week, military marches played through the loudspeakers, and it was announced that the army had won major battles and our troops were about to gloriously end the war with Iraq, but none of us really cared much about the war; not only because it had not touched Tehran directly, but because Evin felt like another planet, a strange world with incomprehensible rules that could condemn any of us to torture or death without any reason.

  One evening, as we were having our dinner of bread and dates, Sarah walked into the room, and, without taking off her chador, saying anything, or looking at anyone, went to a corner and sat down. I went to her and put my hand on her shoulder.

  “Sarah?”

  She didn’t look up.

  “Sarah, where were you? We were so worried.”

  “Sirus is dead,” she said in a calm voice.

  I tried to find the right words to say, but there were none.

  “I have two pens,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “I stole them. They don’t know.”

  She took a black pen out of her pocket, pulled up her left sleeve, and began writing on her wrist: “Sirus is dead. We went to the Caspian one summer and played on the beach with a beach ball. So many colors. The waves splashed…” I noticed there was more written on her arm. The words were small but legible. They were memories. Her memories of Sirus, her family, and her life.

  “Do you have any paper or anything?” she asked.

  “I’ll find you some paper. Sarah, where were you?”

  “I’m running out of room. Please, find me some paper.”

  I found her a piece of paper, but it wasn’t enough for her. She began writing on walls. She wrote the same things over and over about our elementary and high schools, the games we played, the books we read, our favorite teachers, new year celebrations, summer vacations, her house, our neighborhood, her parents, and all the things Sirus liked to do.

  When we finally had warm water one night, she refused to take a shower.

  “Sarah, you have to wash up. Whether you shower or not, the words will fade. If you wash up, then you can write again. You’ll smell really bad if you don’t.”

  “My pens are running out of ink.”

  “I’ll find you new pens if you shower.”

  “You promise?” she asked.

  I didn’t want to make a promise unless I was sure I could keep it, so I went to the office and explained the situation to Sister Maryam. I told her that Sarah didn’t write anything political; she only wrote her memories of her family.

  Sister Maryam gave me two pens, and I ran to Sarah, feeling like I had just found the world’s greatest treasure.

  When Sarah took off her clothes in the shower room, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Her legs, her arms, and her stomach were covered with tiny words.

  “I couldn’t reach my back. I’ll take a shower only if you promise to write on my back,” she said.

  “I promise.”

  And she washed the words off her skin. The Book of Sarah. Alive, breathing, feeling, hurting, remembering.

  About three months after my arrival at 246, my name was announced over the loudspeaker. My friends looked at me nervously. I put my shawl over my head with trembling hands.

  “I’m sure it’s good news,” Taraneh said, her eyes filling with hope.

  I took a deep breath and opened the door leading to the foyer. Sister Maryam was waiting for me in the office. I sensed she was worried.

  “Where am I going?” I asked.

  “Brother Hamehd has sent for you.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No, but don’t worry. I’m sure he just wants to see how you’re doing.”

  I put on my blindfold and followed another one of the sisters to the other building. I waited in the hallway until Hamehd called me. I followed him into a room. He closed the door behind us and told me to remove my blindfold. He hadn’t changed at all. His eyes were cold, dark caves. There was a torture bed in the corner, a desk, and two chairs. A lash made of black cable was hanging from the headboard of the bed. My breathing became rushed and shallow.

  “Marina, how nice to see you,” he said, smiling. “Sit down and tell me, how is life?”

  His words were like bee stings.

  “Life is fine,” I said, smiling back.

  “So, you took off on me in a hurry that night, remember? Did you ever wonder about what happened to the others who were with you?”

  My heart was beating so fast I felt like my head was going to explode. “I didn’t take off. Ali took me away, and I know exactly what happened to the others. You killed them.”

  There were bloodstains on the torture bed, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

  “I have to tell you that although I don’t like you, you do amuse me. Have you ever wished you had died with them that night?”

  “I have.”

  He was still smiling.

  “You know that your sentence is life in prison, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  If he lashes me, he won’t stop until I’m dead.

  “Doesn’t this bother you? I mean, you haven’t exactly had fun for the last couple of months, have you? Imagine it going on forever.”

  “God will help me through,” I said.

  He stood up and walked around the room for a minute and then came toward me and slapped my right cheek with the back of his hand so hard I felt my neck had cracked. My right ear was ringing.

  “Ali isn’t here to protect you anymore.”

  I covered my face with my hands.

  “Don’t ever say ‘God’ again! You’re unclean and unworthy of His name. I have to go and wash my hands because I’ve touched you. I’m starting to believe that a life sentence might be better for you after all. You’ll suffer for a long time without any hope.”

  There was a knock on the door. Hamehd opened it and stepped out. I was unable to think clearly. What could he possibly want from me?

  A man whom I had never met before came into the room.

  “Hello, Marina. My name is Mohammad. I’m taking you back to 246.”

  I looked at him, puzzled. I couldn’t believe that Hamehd was letting me go so easily.

  “Are you okay?” Mohammad asked me.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Put on your blindfold and let’s go.”

  He left me at the office of 246, where Sister Maryam told me to take off my blindfold as soon as I arrived. Sister Masoomeh sat behind the desk, reading something.

  “Why is your face so red?” Sister Maryam asked.

  Sister Masoomeh looked up.

  I told them what had happened.

  “Thank God I was able to find Brother Mohammad! He and Brother Ali are very close friends. They worked in the same building. I called and told him Hamehd had taken you. He promised he’d find you and bring you back,” said Sister Maryam.

  “You were lucky, Marina. Hamehd doesn’t need a good reason to seriously hurt people if he feels like it,” Sister Masoomeh whispered.

  “As you can see,” Sister Maryam turned to me, “Sister Masoomeh is not Hamehd’s best friend, but she has learned to bite her tongue. Even though she was one of the Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam, one of the hostage-takers at the American embassy, and she personally knows the imam, she’s had problems with Hamehd. The only people I know around here who can really stand up to Hamehd are Brother Ali and Brother Mohammad.”

  “Don’t worry, Marina. Now that Hamehd knows Brother Mohammad is watching your back, he won’t bother you again,” said Sister Masoomeh.

  Everyone at room 7 was happy to see me and wanted to know where I had been. But once they saw the swollen red mark on my cheek, they knew I only had bad news. I had no hope of parole, but I was not going to give up. This was what Hamehd wanted me to do. He had tried to crush my spirits and had almost succeeded. Almost.

  I thought about what Sister Maryam had told me about Sister Masoomeh. It was hard
to believe that she was one of the hostage-takers at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. I remembered watching the news about the hostage-taking on television when it happened. I had been worried for the hostages. They had families back home; people who loved them, needed them, and wanted them back. Their captivity lasted 444 days, and they were released on January 20, 1981. Now, my situation was much worse than theirs had been. They were U.S. citizens, and this meant that they were somebody. At least their government had tried to save them, and the world knew about the horrible thing that had happened to them. Did the world know about us? Was anyone trying to save us? Deep in my heart I knew that the answer to both these questions was no.

  I thought of the church constantly. I could smell the candles burning in front of the image of the Virgin, their lights flickering with the hope of being heard. Had she forgotten me? I remembered that Jesus had said that with the tiniest amount of faith we could throw a mountain into the sea. I didn’t want to move anything as big as a mountain; I just wanted to go home.

  On my birthday, I woke up very early. It wasn’t even time for the morning namaz yet. I was seventeen years old. When I was younger, maybe ten or eleven, I had dreamt of being this age. Back then, I believed that a seventeen-year-old could do anything. Instead, I was a political prisoner with a life sentence. Taraneh touched my shoulder, and I turned around. Her sleeping spot was next to mine.

  “Happy birthday,” she whispered.

  “Thanks. How did you know I was awake?”

  “By the way you were breathing. After all this time sleeping next to someone, you can tell if they’re really asleep or just pretending.”

  She asked me if my family celebrated birthdays, and I said my parents usually bought me a cake and a little gift. She said birthdays were very important in her family. They had big parties and showered each other with gifts. She and her sisters had a competition between them: they sewed garments for each other, and every year, the garments got fancier.

  “Marina, I miss them,” she said.

  I put my arms around her. “You’ll go home, and everything will be the same.”

  After lunch, Taraneh, Sarah, and a few of my other friends surrounded me. Sarah handed me a folded piece of fabric. I opened it. It was a quilted pillowcase. I gasped. It was beautiful. Each of my friends had donated a small piece of their clothes or scarves to make it. I recognized every single square. It was a prison custom to make small, sewn bags, which we hung from a hook under the shelf in our room to store our little personal items. I was the first one to receive a pillowcase.

  After dinner, we had a prison-style birthday cake made of bread and dates. I pretended to blow out imaginary candles.

  “You forgot to make a wish!” Taraneh said.

  “I’ll make it now: I wish for all of us to spend our next birthdays at home.”

  Everyone clapped and cheered.

  Two or three days later, it was announced over the loudspeaker that all the prisoners of the second floor of 246 were to put on their hejab and gather in the yard. Although we could go outside at specific times of day, this had never been mandatory. Everyone was worried. Once in the yard, we were told to stay clear of a marked area in the middle. Four armed, male revolutionary guards walked out of the building, escorting two girls. One of them was a friend of mine from our room, who was nineteen years old, and the other was from room 5. They had their chadors on and were told to lie down on the ground in the middle of the yard. One of the guards tied their wrists and ankles with rope. It was announced that they had had a homosexual relationship and therefore were going to be punished according to the laws of Islam. Everybody was horrified. We watched as two of the guards lashed the girls’ backs. Many didn’t look, covering their faces and praying, but I couldn’t close my eyes. I watched the lashes rising in the air, turning into a blur, slicing the air with their sharp, piercing cries. Then, a second of silence when one’s heart seems to stop, when lungs refuse to breathe. The two girls weren’t screaming, but I wished they were. Their small bodies shook with every blow. I remembered the terrifying pain I had experienced when I had been lashed myself. After thirty lashes, they were untied, managed to stand up, and were taken away. We were left behind to think about what had happened to our friends. Suffering is supposed to make us stronger, but we first have to pay the price.

  One day, it was my turn to help Sheida with her laundry. Washing cloth diapers in cold water was not an easy task. We had washed the diapers in the morning and had hung them to dry in the yard. Although everyone had to wait until the next day to collect their laundry from the clotheslines, Sheida was allowed to go outside in the evening. She walked a few steps ahead of me. It was spring and birds were chirping in the distance. The sun had just set, and the sky was a glowing pink. The five clotheslines were at the end of the yard, each tied to the bars of the first-floor windows, stretching all the way from one side of the yard to the other, covered with colorful clothes. Sheida disappeared behind the walls of fabric, and I followed her, using my arms to push dresses, pants, skirts, shirts, and chadors out of my way. Then I heard her scream.

  “Marina! Run! Get scissors! Hurry! Now!”

  I caught a glimpse of Sheida holding someone who was hanging from the bars of one of the windows. I ran to the office and banged on the door. Sister Maryam opened it.

  “Scissors! Now! In the yard!”

  She grabbed a pair of scissors from her desk, and we ran to where I had left Sheida. She was still holding someone. I realized it was Sarah. She had hanged herself with a short rope made of scarves. The rope was tied above the top horizontal bar of a first-floor window. If Sarah, who was short and small, had been even a little taller, she wouldn’t have been able to do this. Her body was shaking. Sister Maryam cut the rope. Sarah was breathing, but her face had turned blue. We stayed with her while Sister Maryam went to get the nurse. Sarah was unconscious. We talked to her and touched her face, but she didn’t react.

  Sarah was taken away again.

  I lost a little bit of hope with every passing moment. It was spring, and the air was light and carried the fragrance of blossoms. Life was going on outside the walls of Evin. Was I only a distant memory for Andre? Maybe he had forgotten me. Phones had been installed at the visitation area, and I had asked my parents about him. My mother had told me that he visited them all the time and was always thinking about me, but maybe they had said this not to upset me.

  Every day was almost the same as the one before, which made our loneliness and desperation even more difficult to bear. Each day started with the morning prayer before sunrise. Breakfast came in at about eight o’clock, and after that we had to watch the religious education programs on the television. We were allowed to read the available books, which were all about Islam, or walk up and down the narrow hallways. We hardly ever spoke about politics or our political involvements and activities before Evin. Some girls were known as informants. There weren’t many of them, maybe one or two in each room, so we didn’t risk saying things we didn’t want our interrogators to know.

  For about an hour a day, we could use the small courtyard that was surrounded by the building. We had to wear our hejab while out there, because male guards walked on the roof all the time and watched us closely, but it wasn’t mandatory to wear chadors in the yard; we could wear manteaus and head scarves. While outside, all we could do was to walk around in circles or sit by the walls and watch the slice of sky above us. That small patch of blue was the only part of the outside world we could see. It reminded us of the other place where we once used to live, where our homes were, and where we belonged. I usually sat by the wall with Taraneh. We leaned against its rough surface and watched the clouds as they disappeared out of our view and traveled to that other land. Imagining that we sat on a cloud and could steer it in any direction, we told each other about all the familiar places we could see from up there: the streets of our neighborhoods, our schools, and our homes, where our mothers looked out the windows and wondered about their daughte
rs who had been taken away.

  “How did you get in trouble and end up here?” Taraneh asked me one day as we soaked in the warmth of the spring sun, daydreaming about home. We had never talked about the events that had led to our arrests. The yard was filled with girls. Most of them walked around rather fast and in a purposeful manner, as if they had a destination. Black, navy, brown, and gray manteaus brushed against each other, and rubber slippers moved swiftly against the paved ground. I realized that what I saw sitting there was similar to the view of a beggar sitting on the side of a busy street, but my view was much more limited and more modest than a beggar’s view. At that moment, my world was like a roofless square building with two levels of barred windows that looked inside dark rooms, a world of young women walking in circles. It was like a very strange science fiction story: “The Planet of Imprisoned Girls.” I laughed.

  “What?” asked Taraneh.

  “It almost feels like we’re beggars sitting on a sidewalk on another planet.”

  Taraneh smiled.

  “Compared to us, a beggar is a king,” she said.

  “My trouble started the day I walked out of calculus class…”

  Eleven

  IN EARLY 1980, Abolhassan Banisadr became the first elected president of Iran. Before the success of the revolution, he had participated in the anti-shah movement for many years, had been imprisoned twice, and had then managed to flee to France and join Ayatollah Khomeini. There were hopes that he would lead Iran to democracy. However, as the school year of 1979–80 inched forward, I felt like I was sinking into darkness. Everything gradually changed for the worse. One by one, inexperienced, fanatic young women replaced most of our teachers. The hejab became mandatory, and women had to wear either long, dark-colored robes and cover their hair with large scarves, or they had to wear chadors. Political groups that had opposed or even criticized the Islamic government became illegal. Wearing ties, cologne, perfume, makeup, or nail polish was declared “satanic” and therefore subject to severe punishment. Every day before going to class, students were forced to line up and yell hateful slogans like “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”