My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir

by Zarah Ghahramani

  He knows this, of course. He knows that I am experiencing relief. Whatever I am feeling, at any moment, he knows. He has a job that engages his natural sadism. He has a job in the heaven of sadists. He is a happy man. Perhaps, in some tiny part of his mind, he loves me. Look at what I provide for him! The opportunity to gloat, menace, torture. And what a rewarding subject of sadism I am: terrified out of my mind, staring at him with eyes filled with pleading.

  “You don’t know what I mean when I say ‘the old Savaki,’ do you?” he says. I tell him that I don’t, although I know perfectly well. I am learning about my interrogator even as I sit here. I am learning to say only what he wants to hear. If he wishes to hear anything about my father, about my father’s politics, my father’s ambitions for Iran, then it will be he who will tell me, not the other way around.

  He studies me closely. Perhaps he thinks I am learning the rules a little too quickly. He makes a gesture with his hand, just a small motion, but it is dismissive.

  “Don’t play with me,” he says menacingly. “You are no match for me. Every day, I make people like you talk in this room. Some of them,” he adds, after a pause, “I send to the next life.”

  This is meant to further increase my fear. But oddly enough, I find myself laughing on the inside, as if my sense of humor demands some expression. I do not laugh aloud. That would be insane. That would end in punishment, or worse. People of this man’s sort have no capacity whatsoever for smiling at their melodramatic language, at their own silliness. But honestly, “some of them I send to the next life”? He sounds like an actor in a cheap soap opera.

  The reek of my interrogator’s breath wafts across the space between us. It strikes my face like a blow from a fist, and I feel my stomach begin to convulse.

  “What is your father up to these days?” my interrogator asks, settling into a new phase of questioning.

  “He runs his business,” I reply, which is the simple truth.

  “And his friends? His associates? Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He looks down at the papers on his desk, taking his time.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He makes some notes on the papers before him. He keeps his hand shielding the top of the sheet he is writing on, to prevent me from seeing anything. I recall all those goody-goodies in high school using the same strategy to prevent anyone from copying their precious answers. What does he think I will discover if I glimpse his stupid notes? That he can’t spell? That his handwriting is untidy? Just imagine if I had the courage or the madness to sneak a look at his notes and say, shaking my finger, “That’s not how you spell ‘traitor to the Revolution.’ Now write it out fifty times correctly.”

  “You don’t know who your father’s associates are? Is that what you expect me to believe?”

  “Yes.”

  He shakes his head in contempt, then repeats his question, and repeats it again, betraying his impatience with gestures and expressions of disdain. My head is beginning to throb. Why all these questions about my father? What does this have to do with me? Is it my father who is the real subject of the interrogation? I can’t think in any alert way any longer. And inside my head, a pleading voice is whispering, Please let me go, please let me go … When my friends and I heard of fellow students being picked up by the police and questioned in a room like this one I sit in now, how bravely we spoke about the way we would behave! As I stare at my interrogator, I recall myself thinking, only weeks earlier, Why, I will simply tell the truth, I will stand up proudly and shame the fools by refusing to cower, refusing to weep, refusing to tremble. Silently I censure myself: Oh, Zarah, what a child you were! Where is your pride now?

  “Tell me, what does your father think of Khatami?”

  “Khatami?” I ask, growing stupid with fatigue. Why is he asking about the nation’s prime minister, a man with the reputation of being a liberal, a man he no doubt hates?

  “What did your father think about Khatami’s election?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he vote for Khatami?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It is likely that this obese man with the melodramatic manner knows exactly for whom my father voted in the last national election. I doubt that he asks any questions to which he does not already know the answers. This game is exhausting me! How can I possibly answer? Can I say, “Oh, since you ask, my father hates the regime that you represent. When he listens to the news on the radio, he rails against the lies and hypocrisy of the mullahs. He believes that you and your masters are squeezing the life out of Iran. He detests your sanctimony, your corruption. And, as a matter of fact, he often compares the Iran of today with the Iran of the Pahlavi years. Maybe the shah’s regime was as vile and corrupt and cruel as you say, but not everyone who served the shah was a thug. My father is a good man. He would not have sat before a terrified girl and bullied her as you do. And his breath is not foul like yours, and he would never allow himself to become grotesquely fat like you.” I can’t say anything remotely like that. But how I wish I could!

  My first interrogation ends with these wearying questions about my father. The interrogator gestures to a guard. I am blindfolded once more. The guard nudges me to make me walk. I follow a long route back to my cell.

  Dear God, how I love this cell! It is dark and cold and the walls are damp, but I adore it! I sit and simply enjoy breathing. Then the fear grips me again. They have not finished with me, surely. They will blindfold me again, take me to that hideous man. Was this only the first time that I will sit before him, struggling to learn the rules of his ugly games? I already know the answers to these questions that have formed in my poor, weary brain: The first of many times, Zarah.

  I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it.

  4

  MY SENSIBILITY WHEN I was a child, as I have already suggested, was a pink-shoe sensibility. I loved pretty things, like bright red hair clips and my mother’s Kurdish necklaces and bangles. And I loved the under-the-counter Western pop music my sisters bought in the bazaars. This predilection was bound to make trouble for me in a country where a very stern version of Islam had been imposed. The odd thing was that I had no argument with Islam; on the contrary, I admired the beauty of its spirituality, its essential humanity, and, as an adult, I see Islam as a profound expression of the desire of human beings to embrace the divine. But in the Iran I grew up in, respect for Islam, admiration of its philosophical and spiritual core, was not quite enough. One was asked to practice superpiety. If I had grown up in a Calvinist state, in an orthodox Jewish state, in a fundamentalist Protestant state, in any state that insisted on a severe expression of belief, I would have faced the same problems.

  I was not a frivolous child, but I loved fun, I loved color, I loved the joy I could find in quite simple things, and I couldn’t make myself believe that my salvation depended on following an ironclad set of rules that had the effect of placing the thrill and wonder of being alive at such a remote distance from my natural appetites. With the home life I enjoyed, no wonder the life in the streets—at least that part of it under scrutiny by the mullahs, the police, and the Basiji (the regime’s youth militia)—puzzled and perplexed me, even while I made sure that I was not violating any public rules of dress and conduct. In the 1980s, the early years of the Islamic Revolution, there were few variations on basic black from the head downward for Iranian women. Girls below the age of eight were allowed more latitude, but after a girl’s eighth birthday, it was as if a state-appointed sentry had taken up a position outside her front door, ready to cast his gaze over the attire she set forth in each day, attire she discarded with relief when she returned home. The dress code prevented girls like me from doing what we yearned to do: sparkle in the sunlight.

  Despite my observance of Islamic protocols, I was not in fact Muslim. My father was a firm believer in Islam, without being a zealot, but my mother was from Kermanshah in the northwest o
f Iran, 250 miles from Tehran, a region that for thousands of years has been the home and sanctuary of Zoroastrians. When I was still very young, no more than five years old, my mother took me to Zoroastrian ceremonies of dedication and worship, where a flame burned as the symbol of the radiant light that is at the heart of all life in our world and beyond. I learned to honor the light, to join in the ecstatic dancing that creates a unity of soul and the life force, and to worship the beauty of all that lives and breathes. Even a child can begin, as I did, to feel the influence of her soul in her life, to understand its vitality. My father’s prayers at home, honoring Allah, had the same purpose. He, too, praised life and light and the soul. There was never any competition between religions within our household. My father respected my mother’s beliefs; my mother respected my father’s. My brothers and sisters and I considered it quite normal to live in a household where both Allah and Zoroaster were worshipped, not all that uncommon a state of affairs in Iran, where many Muslims (although not the fundamentalists) harbor a fugitive respect for the more ancient religion.

  I was permitted, at the age of six, to choose the religion I wished to practice, although I must concede that I would have been inclined to uphold my mother’s religious observance whatever it may have been, since I was so close to her and so admired her. Both Zoroastrianism and Islam were conscientiously explained to me, and after that, the question was simply, What do you think, Zarah? Which has the greater appeal? My introduction to Zoroastrianism was somewhat in the fashion of Christian children learning about Jesus for the first time. Jesus, for children, is the Best of All Good Guys: gentle, kind, forbearing. Zoroaster was spoken of to the children of his followers in rather this way, even though he was not a Son of God sent to Earth to redeem us all but someone who spoke for himself, and for the Light, and against the chaos of the Night. The emphasis was placed on what actually is a profound conviction of the religion, even though it sounds sugary: niceness or, more specifically, nice talking, nice behavior, nice thinking. I don’t feel inclined to elaborate on niceness, notwithstanding its shallow connotations to people outside the religion. Zoroastrians simply maintain that it is best to be kind, and that is exactly what I have come to believe.

  As a child, I felt utterly at home in the Zoroastrian community. I loved the costumes (really, versions of ancient Persian national dress: billowing silks of many colors, scarves, dainty slippers) and the celebrations of seasons. The temperament of the men, women, and children I met at celebrations added to the attraction. There was nothing hard-line about them, nothing dogmatic. Zoroastrianism is not a proselytizing religion (and that’s just as well; looking for converts to a religion other than Islam is punishable by death in Iran); its message of reverence for life is not so much broadcasted as demonstrated.

  My mother would speak to me of the Persia that once was (so far as she knew, of course, and one would have to allow for a certain amount of idealizing, since the Persian Empire and its lingering influence has been a thing of the past for over a thousand years) and of the persecution that had beset Zoroastrianism since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution. Her complaint, which became my complaint, was that the ancient religion of Persia had been suppressed not by Persians but by Arabs, and I suppose it can be argued that Islam is foundationally the religion of Arabic peoples. (Is this confusing? Perhaps I should point out that Iranians and Arabs are ethnically distinct peoples, Arabs being a Semitic people whose origins are Middle Eastern, and Iranians an Aryan people who migrated to the Middle East from the subcontinent and from Anatolia about four thousand years ago. The Muslim Arabs overran Iran almost a thousand years ago and imposed Islam on a people who followed a number of ancient faiths, including Zoroastrianism.) I must confess that this particular prejudice of Zoroastrianism has left me with a very Iranian disdain for Arabs, a little at odds with my belief in tolerance.

  Growing up as I did, I knew that all was not right when liberties I enjoyed at home vanished the moment I walked out our front door. A habit of questioning took root in me. Often the questions were voiced; I asked my father and mother why something was as it was. My father’s answers were emphatic and political; my mother’s were sometimes evasive and always cautionary, responses, I would argue, broadly in keeping with those of female and male parents down the centuries. My mother’s priority was to save her children from harm; my father’s priority was to highlight injustice. I didn’t have a priority; I merely felt puzzlement, sometimes bafflement. But as I grew older and became a student in high school, and then at the university, it was my father’s indignation that influenced me more than my mother’s caution.

  5

  I AM SITTING in my cell, petrified by fear. I begin to feel that I may be going mad, or even that I am mad already. How would I know? Who will say to me, Zarah, you are perfectly sane, don’t worry about it?

  I sit and stare at the door of the cell, at the slot through which the guard drops my blindfold when it is time for me to be escorted back to the interrogator. I stare at the floor. I stare at my feet. In my mind’s eye, I watch myself sitting there, thin and pale and trembling, my shoulders hunched. And this is the girl who poses such a threat to the nation?

  Even in this pathetic state, my mind is attempting to make sense of my situation, searching for comparisons.

  I am a cancer patient. My condition is terminal. I will suffer, then die.

  Is this the right metaphor?

  Is a better metaphor that of the nightmare? I am dreaming, and the dream is horrifying. Can I force myself awake? Can I discover that I am at home, in my own bedroom? Can I cry out to someone, to my mother? Will she come to my room, full of concern? Will she hug me, murmur endearments? No. I can’t wake myself. Whatever evil lurks in my nightmare, it will do with me as it will.

  Is this the metaphor I want?

  I try out other comparisons, each one dramatizing my helplessness. I think of the vastness of this prison, like a city. In each of its thousands of cells, a person like me is sitting and struggling to retain some self-respect or, more likely, like me, struggling not to retain self-respect but to locate the words that will save her, or him. What confession would these interrogators like to hear? Because I will confess. I will sign whatever paper is placed before me.

  The effort is too great. My mind lapses and drifts.

  I find myself listening to a story or, rather, watching a story unfold. I am in the story. I am five years old, out shopping with my mother. The war is raging in Iranian cities, particularly in Tehran; it is the mid-eighties. Food shortages leave shelves bare in some stores; at others, people stand in line for hours to purchase items that are difficult to find—vegetables, spices, cooking oil. It doesn’t matter how early you turn up at a store, others have arrived earlier. Some camp outside stores overnight, with pillows and blankets and hampers of food.

  My mother carries a large basket; her free hand has a firm hold of my much smaller hand. She must make sure she doesn’t lose her place in the line. It would be a catastrophe if she were to lose hold of me for a moment, then have to leave her place and find me. The store has only a limited quantity of rice to sell. If my mother misses out, it may be months before a new shipment becomes available. She would have to purchase rice on the black market, at ten times the price she can get it for today.

  The line becomes longer and noisier by the minute. The dawn is just beginning to lighten the sky above Tehran. People and cars now fill the street. The traffic fumes become more acrid, and the eternal blaring of car horns gathers volume. The women in the line—and the line is made up almost entirely of women—chatter like birds. I hear stories of grief; I hear happier stories of a relative returning from the battlefield with all of his limbs intact; I hear complaints of all sorts. I am used to this type of congregation of women, their voices never ceasing as they draw comfort from one another, offer consolation.

  My mother is chatting softly with another woman and at times whispering. My mother is shaking her head in agreement with what the
other woman is saying, probably some complaint about the government. As they talk, each keeps her eyes on the face of the other. It is intimate, important. “Yes, yes, I understand what you’re saying,” my mother murmurs, nodding her head. I am watching closely, listening closely, fascinated by this parliament of women. The crowd has grown so big that I am being hemmed in, and my grasp on my mother’s hand and hers on mine is becoming less secure. Suddenly there is some disturbance in the line, perhaps somebody trying to barge through, and just as a great flock of birds will rise and scatter briefly from fright, so the women of the line shriek and flutter and disperse before once again forming an orderly, communal shape.

  But my mother is no longer holding my hand.

  I am worried, then terrified, all within seconds.

  I am lost in the crowd.

  I can recognize many faces, but not that of my mother.

  I run from woman to woman in my panic, my heart aching with the need to be at the side of one particular woman.

  Rain begins to fall, heavy rain. In seconds my clothes and shoes are sopping wet.

  A voice in my head is telling me that what has happened cannot happen, my mother is somewhere close by, it is not possible for her to lose me, it is not possible for me to be lost.

  I picture the face of the woman who was talking to my mother, but I cannot see this face in the crowd, either. The rain is now so heavy that my hair is stuck to my head and face; and I am cold, cold, cold. The tip of my nose, my cheeks, and my ears are freezing.

  I begin to grow sick with worry about my mother, as well as about myself. When she is panic-stricken, her lips and hands tremble. I imagine how pale she must be, searching for me, how rapidly her heart must be beating. I am beginning to grow more distressed for my mother than for myself, and I burst into tears and throw my head back and howl. Strangers try to comfort me: “What is the matter, little one? Why so many tears?” But my mother has told me over and over, Never talk to strangers, go to a policeman if you become lost. Now, when the strangers try to help me, I cry louder than ever and back away, and the strangers think I may be mentally unbalanced and abandon me to my crying.