“What’s interesting is that you are sometimes soft and kind like a brother, and sometimes as harsh as a disciplinarian father,” I said. “I think that is an amazing achievement.”
Rosewater laughed. “It’s my art,” he said, with obvious pride. “Your art is making films and writing. My art is being a proficient interrogator. The only difference is that I use my art to help our holy system and you use it against God and the supreme leader.” I sensed him settling into the chair. He went on for a while in this vein, and when he finished speaking, he instructed me to get up, turn my chair to the wall, and remove my blindfold. I sensed that he was preparing to beat me again.
“I know that on a personal level, I have a lot of shortcomings,” I said. “I know about the weaknesses and faults in my character and behavior.”
“Example?” He couldn’t hide the anticipation in his voice, and we both knew where this was going. He was dying to hear more about Thai women and oil massages. He was hooked. I spoke without interruption for hours about how shameless it was of me to receive massages by naked Thai women. How depraved I believed myself to be when I felt a pair of perfumed, perfectly shaped breasts on my back.
Of course, I’d never actually had a sexual Thai massage. My improvised monologues were based, instead, on years of watching pornography on illegally imported Betamax and VHS tapes in the 1980s and reading and rereading Persian translations of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, La Ronde, Madame Bovary, and dozens of other romantic and erotic novels as a teenager. In that school chair in an Evin interrogation room, I felt that I was back in high school telling my classmates intertwined stories of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde in order to make myself popular. I remembered making the turn-of-the-twentieth-century story even more lecherous to pique my friends’ interest. Like those high school students, Rosewater remained mostly quiet, except for a few questions here and there, to clarify the images in his big, horny head.
The next day, he had more questions for me. “Mazi, is it true that one can go to the Champs-Élysées street in Paris, grab a woman’s hand, and have sex with her anytime he wants?”
“Sir, you’ll be arrested within a few seconds and charged with rape,” I explained. “I’m sure no one does that.”
“Why not?”
“In the West, a woman can call the police even if you touch her hand,” I said.
“But wait a second,” Rosewater objected. “One of our lecturers at the university who’d spent so many years in the West and received his PhD degree from a Western university told us that people behave like animals in the West. That you can live with a woman without being married to her.”
“Sir, there’s a difference between living with someone you’re not married to and jumping on anyone you desire on the street, like an animal,” I said as respectfully as I could. “Marriage is a symbolic gesture for many people in the West and also legally entitles you to certain things, but I know people who’ve been together for decades and are not married. Yet in terms of being faithful, they’re more dedicated to each other than any married couple.”
“I can’t believe it,” Rosewater said. “So why did you marry your wife?” Once again, I felt extremely grateful that Rosewater believed I was married. If he knew that I lived with Paola and, worse, that she was pregnant and we were not married, I could be accused of having an illegal affair.
“Because both her family and my family are very traditional,” I lied. “Neither of us could even think about living together without first being married.”
“It must be liberating not to be bound by traditions,” Rosewater said. I wasn’t sure if he was testing me or was genuinely distilling his frustrations.
“Well, we are always trapped by our traditions wherever we go,” I answered. “It is like a virtual cage we take around with us.”
“It is not a cage, Maziar,” Rosewater chuckled. “But I often wonder how people live without any religious values. You may feel free and happy in this world, but what about the hereafter? How would you be able to answer God about all the sins you have committed in this world?
“Every time I think about life in the West, my whole body trembles,” he went on. “How would I be able to control my desires, how would I control my relationship with my wife? It must be hell to live in such a decadent environment.”
I had often wondered why Rosewater had chosen to be an interrogator. Maybe, I thought, the answer lay in the fact that in his head, freedom was synonymous with sin and punishment. Could it be that he felt safe only in a restricted, claustrophobic environment?
· · ·
One day, after many hours of asking about different aspects of life in the West, Rosewater returned to a subject he’d only briefly mentioned earlier in the interrogation.
“Have you spent much time in New Jersey?” he asked anxiously.
“Not really,” I said. “Maybe a few days.”
“Why is New Jersey so famous?” he asked.
Is it? I wondered. “I’m not sure it is famous,” I said.
“Really?” He sounded embarrassed about his lack of New Jersey knowledge. “People who go to America are always saying, ‘New Jersey this, New Jersey that.’ ”
“I really don’t know, sir,” I said, in my best it’s-okay-not-to-know-about-New-Jersey tone of voice. “It’s a state like any other state in the U.S. It has nice places and not-so-nice places. Many people who work in New York live in New Jersey.”
“Is it because it’s nicer?” Rosewater asked.
“It’s more affordable,” I said, thinking that making a scathing comment about New Jersey could lead him to beat me. “But New Jersey is full of nice places. It is even called the Garden State.”
“And the health system?” he asked. “Is it better than other places in the U.S.?”
“I’m really not sure, sir,” I answered apologetically. “I really haven’t spent much time there.”
“And Jews?”
Where did that come from? I wondered. “What about the Jews?”
“Are there any Jews in New Jersey?”
I knew that by saying that there were thousands of Jews living in New Jersey I might be subjected to more beatings, but the prospect of bursting his Jew-free bubble was very tempting. “Sir, there are Jews living all over the United States. They are American citizens. There are thousands if not millions of Jews living in New York and its surrounding areas, including New Jersey. So I think there must be a lot of Jews who live in New Jersey.”
Rosewater paced the room. “Ajab, ajab,” he said, almost as if speaking to himself. “I wonder why.”
I couldn’t understand why he was fascinated with New Jersey, and later in my cell, as I designed my crossword puzzles, I thought there were two possibilities. The first was simply that certain foreign names sound exotic to Iranian ears. As a child, I’d been enthralled by two places: Massachusetts and Connecticut. I’d never understood why, but they’d always sounded like fascinating places to me, and I’d made sure to visit them during my first visit to the United States, in 1988. The second involved an absurd U.S. law that bans Iranian diplomats working at the United Nations from traveling more than twenty-five miles from their offices on Third Avenue. Many diplomats live in New Jersey, and maybe Rosewater had had a conversation with an Iranian envoy. This, among so many other things about Rosewater, would forever remain a mystery to me.
· · ·
Sunday, September 13, 2009, was a hot day. The air-conditioning, though hardly cooling my cell, was making more noise than usual. I hadn’t been beaten for a few days, so I was feeling well, and walked briskly during the morning’s hava khori. Around the time of noon prayers, after I’d done more than fifty push-ups and was on to my sit-ups, Brown Sandals interrupted me.
“Mr. Hillary Clinton, get ready for your specialist after the prayers,” he said before passing my blindfold through the slot.
I sprang up from the floor, toward the door. “What? Hillary Clinton?!” I yelled, struggling to make myself heard o
ver the clatter of the air-conditioning.
“Yeah, she’s been talking about you a lot lately,” Brown Sandals said knowingly. “Does she know you personally? Huh? You sheytoon, naughty boy?”
I didn’t answer. I sat back down on the floor and continued my sit-ups. I had grown so sure that I’d never hear good news again, and I wanted to kiss Brown Sandals for giving me the best piece of news I’d had since I’d arrived. There must be a massive campaign going on for me, I thought. Otherwise, why would the American secretary of state mention an Iranian-Canadian? “Mr. Hillary Clinton!” I said aloud as I counted the number of sit-ups. One hundred and twelve, one hundred and thirteen, one hundred and fourteen. “Mr. Maziar Hillary Bahari Clinton!” Two hundred and eighty-three, two hundred and eighty-four, two hundred and eighty-five. The possibility that Hillary Clinton was speaking publicly about me gave me an energy unlike anything I’d ever felt. Four hundred and thirty-eight, four hundred and thirty-nine, four hundred and forty.
“I’m not alone!” I shouted in my head. I continued my sit-ups and continued to count: Six hundred and eighteen, six hundred and nineteen, six hundred and twenty! I’d never done as many sit-ups in my life before being called Mr. Hillary Clinton. I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my groin. I lay back and raised my hands as if I’d won the marathon in the Olympics.
· · ·
After the noon prayers, instead of having lunch, I was taken to the interrogation room. Rosewater didn’t sound happy. I was desperate with hope that he, too, would mention Hillary Clinton to me. He started slapping my head even before he sat me down.
“Where did you meet your wife?” he asked. I’d already told him several times that Paola and I had met at a lecture in London, but he wasn’t interested in my answer. “I’m sure an intelligence agency introduced you two to each other. Otherwise, why would an English woman marry an Iranian man? Also, you should know that she’s making very derogatory comments about Iran and Iranians in her interviews with the media.”
I felt my heart skip a beat. “She’s doing interviews with the media?” I blurted, willing myself not to break out into the relieved, nearly maniacal laughter I felt building up inside me.
“Yes, it’s despicable. She talks too much,” Rosewater said.
What incredible news. Combined with Brown Sandals’ Mr. Hillary Clinton comment, I finally allowed myself to believe what I’d been praying for since the day I’d been brought to Evin: Paola was successfully advocating for me. She and I had frequently talked about the possibility of my arrest. I had even joked about it with her, although she would frown whenever I did. “Seriously, Mazi,” she’d say, “if you are ever arrested, I will make such a fuss that they will have to release you.”
“She’s insulting our nation, our people,” Rosewater yelled. “If you have any dignity as an Iranian, you will tell your wife to stop talking about you.”
Before I could respond, Rosewater had grabbed my arm and was dragging me down a hallway lit by fluorescent bulbs. Standing me before a gray pay phone attached to the wall, he lifted my blindfold and told me that it was time for me to call Paola and tell her to stop talking. I wanted nothing more than to speak to Paola—to hear her voice, to listen to her breathe. But at the same time, I didn’t want the call to happen like this—out of the blue. Paola is a very emotional person, and I feared that being pregnant might have made her even more sensitive. What if the shock of hearing from me harmed her or the baby? I had not been able to protect her or our baby since I’d been taken away, but this was my chance. I randomly dialed a wrong number.
“She’s not answering, sir,” I told Rosewater.
“Hmmmmm,” he said from behind me. “That’s not good.”
“No, but perhaps you might allow me to call my brother-in-law so he can ask my wife to wait for my call tomorrow.”
Rosewater agreed, and after I made a very brief call to Mohammad, he took me back to the interrogation room. He went over what I had to tell Paola the next day, not knowing how much hope he was giving me. He particularly didn’t like the fact that Paola had written to the Italian government—her mother is from Italy—asking Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to intervene on my behalf. I was so proud of Paola at that moment. “She’s asking that bald bastard to help you,” Rosewater said with derision. “What can that baldy, that member of the Mafia, do for you? Tell her that we’re a sovereign nation. We have a lawful country. The Roman Empire is dead,” he continued, marking each sentence with a slap. “The British Empire is finished. And the American Empire is dying. I want you to make her understand that her comments only make your life more complicated.”
Back in my cell that day, I felt Paola’s presence right next to me. My love for her grew deeper than ever as I sat in the corner of the cell, applying pressure to my temples with my index fingers—trying to stave off the migraine I felt creeping up the back of my neck. I couldn’t get Rosewater’s words out of my head: Paola was talking too much. She was getting attention for my cause. And as Brown Sandals had suggested, Hillary Clinton was aware of me.
Maybe I was going to survive.
· · ·
It’s difficult to say why you fall in love with someone, but I knew that one of the main reasons I loved Paola was her staunchness: her no-nonsense attitude, her strong principles, and her deep commitment to her family. When it comes to family matters, she just gets things done. When we were first together, my priorities had been all over the place, which had occasionally led to a battle of wills. Paola’s mother is hot-tempered, and Paola inherited much of her fiery Italian nature. During some of those arguments, we could be quite nasty to each other.
As I dialed Paola’s number the next morning, I remembered her tears after one of our silly fights. I felt homesick and guilty. I couldn’t forgive myself for having been cruel to her. It was crucial to me that she sense that I was healthy—strong, even—and unscathed by the isolation and terror of almost three months of imprisonment.
“Hi, Mazi, hi, hi,” Paola said when she picked up, as if wondering what her first words should be. Despite my best intentions, the moment I heard her voice, I could no longer control myself, and tears rolled down my cheeks. Rosewater hit me on the back of my head. “Mard baash!” he said. “Be a man!” He then pressed his head against mine to eavesdrop on what Paola was saying, even though we were speaking English and he couldn’t understand us. I wanted to beat his big head to a pulp with the receiver, but I didn’t dare move even the slightest bit, fearing that he would stop my conversation. I had so much to say to Paola, only I couldn’t find the words. “I love you,” I uttered between bursts of tears.
Paola was calm and strong. “The whole world is thinking about you, Mazi,” she said. “Everybody cares about you.” Her words were as reassuring and calming as my mother’s. It was almost as if she, too, had experienced decades of arrests and imprisonments in her own family. “We will get you out of prison, Mazi,” she told me.
“Tell her about Berlusconi and not giving interviews,” Rosewater said, shoving a note into my hand and pushing my blindfold up so I could read it.
Again Paola knew exactly how to avoid answering my question about her letter to Berlusconi. “Let me think, let me think,” she said innocently. “I don’t think I’ve written any letter to him. I’m fine. I’ve been to the doctor a few times and everything’s fine. I swim and walk every day.”
When Maryam died, Paola and I had agreed to name the baby Marianna Maryam if it was a girl, to reflect Paola’s Italian ancestry and my sister’s name, but we hadn’t decided on a boy’s name. Since the Leonard Cohen dream, I had decided that I wanted to call the baby Leo if it was a boy.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked Paola.
“I haven’t found out yet. You’ll be home soon.” She paused, and I thought I detected tears in her voice. “I’m waiting for us to find out together.”
“But I have to know, darling,” I told Paola. “I had a dream and want to call the baby Leo if it’s a boy.”
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Rosewater was getting impatient. “Have you told her that you’ve made mistakes?” he wrote on another slip of paper.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Mazi,” Paola reassured me. “I know that the call is monitored, but no one thinks you’ve done anything wrong and everybody’s supporting you. Everybody!”
Hearing this news, I felt the weight lift from my chest, and for the first time in weeks, I could breathe normally again. A prisoner’s worst nightmare is thinking that he’s been forgotten, and Paola’s words reassured me that this idea—which had plagued me for weeks—was false.
“Please find out if it’s a boy or a girl,” I said to Paola as Rosewater reached toward the phone to end the call.
I tried to say “I love you” one more time, but the line had already gone dead.
“I love you!” he mocked as he handed me back to the prison guards.
But his words didn’t touch me the way they had over the last several weeks. That night, as I rolled one blanket into a pillow and lay down in the darkness and silence, I envisioned the day when I would finally get to see Paola again. I had so often entertained this thought while alone in my cell, or during interrogations, but doing so had always been painful. The experience had been very much like the weeks and months after Maryam died, when I would fall asleep praying for it all to be different—for the chance just to see her again.
But that night, as I pictured holding Paola’s hand, and kissing her pregnant belly, the thoughts felt different: they no longer felt like a hopeless fantasy.
“I’ll get home to you,” I whispered into the darkness. “I will.” I wrapped the second blanket tightly around my body, and for the first time in weeks, I slept through the night.
· · ·
Ramadan ended on September 19, and the weather in Tehran turned cooler. Rosewater no longer had to fast, and he wasn’t suffering from the sweltering summer heat. He started to leave the window of the interrogation room open to let the breeze in, and I often tried to bring my chair as close as I could to the window, where I could breathe in the cool mountain air. Rosewater would sometimes join me near the window, where he’d stop asking questions and begin to sing—always religious songs in praise of the family of the Prophet Mohammad. That always put him in a better mood.
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