My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir

by Zarah Ghahramani

  There is a saying that has its origin in the poetry of Byron, “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ’Tis woman’s whole existence.” The Persian equivalent would be “Woman’s love is the flight of a bird, man’s the roar of a lion.” Whatever the yearnings and hopes of these young women at one stage of their lives, I fear that, at the moment the flame touches their garments, love to them is what Córdoba is to the traveler in García Lorca’s poem “Song of the Horseman”:

  Córdoba.

  Distant and alone.

  Black nag, giant moon,

  and olives in my saddlebag.

  Even if I know the roads,

  I will never get to Córdoba.

  With the plain, through the wind,

  Black nag, the blood moon.

  Death is looking at me,

  From the towers of Córdoba.

  Oh, such a long road!

  Oh, my valiant nag!

  Oh, death awaits me

  before I get to Córdoba!

  Córdoba.

  Distant and alone.

  My cousin’s body, dressed in white bandages except for her lips and eyes, made me so furious that, when I saw her husband weeping at the hospital, I didn’t know if my pity could subdue my anger. “Do you know what has happened to your friend?” he asked me, torn apart by pain. Did I know what had happened to my friend? Yes! She was married when she was a child. She was a wife when she was a child. She was an object of lust when she was a child. She had her daydreams dismissed forever when she was a child. She had the spring of life within poisoned at its source. She had her soul thieved from her. But could I say this to her husband? No. If he were capable of understanding what I might have said, he would not have married this child to begin with. So I wept with him, regardless of my anger, then returned to my cousin’s room. Again, the smell of her cooked body.

  That day of the visit to my cousin, I was scheduled to play basketball with my team. Basketball was my great physical consolation for the maddening things my mind was doing to me. How I loved to play! I loved the camaraderie with my teammates, the affection I felt for our coach, and, yes, the lust for victory in a field of endeavor where victory—simple, satisfying—was at least a possibility! So I went to play basketball after going to the hospital, hoping that the vigor of the game would get the image of my cousin off my mind for a time. But it wasn’t like that. I walked onto the court in a state of rage. I didn’t talk to anyone, except to shriek at them whenever I or they missed a pass. Sima, our coach, took me out of the game and wouldn’t let me back on the court. I waited until I thought everyone was gone. Then I took the ball and ran up and down the court, over and over, firing the ball into the wall and howling. When I was at last too exhausted to continue, I stopped and changed into my street clothes. It was then that I noticed Sima sitting by herself in the stand. She was watching me patiently. I didn’t say a thing to her, just grabbed my bag and walked out into the streets of Tehran.

  It took ten days for my cousin to die. I wept for the whole of those ten days, but when it was announced that she was dead, I sighed with relief and my eyes stayed dry.

  11

  THE INTERROGATOR NUDGES me toward the chair. I can feel the edge of the seat against the backs of my legs. He pushes down on my shoulders, and I sink to a sitting position. This is the first interrogation since my hair was shorn. I am especially anxious, not knowing what further torment might follow. Is there a list of punishments ? Has it all been worked out scientifically? The list might commence with verbal abuse, then graduate to physical abuse, humiliation, shearing—then what? More ancient methods of torture? Does the interrogator have implements at his disposal? If so, I will tell him anything he asks me. I have already made this agreement with myself. I have conceded that I lack the bravery or the conviction to endure anything of that sort. I have forgiven myself in advance.

  The interrogator has nothing to say for a time. He lets me sit in silence. He isn’t circling me, as he has done on other occasions. As far as I can tell, he is simply watching me from his chair on the other side of the desk. Just being stared at in this way is obviously calculated to create tension. Every nerve in my body is exhorting me to prepare myself for something, a slap or a punch, but it is not possible to make this preparation when I can see nothing. I am beginning to learn the thinking behind everything the interrogator does. This in itself is a form of paranoia. I can’t believe in the innocence of any action. For all I know, the interrogator might be sitting in front of me thinking of what he had for dinner, or picking his nose, or wishing he were somewhere else, maybe watching a soap opera on television or even reading stories to his children, if he has any. But I can’t help attributing a motive to every single innovation of his approach. Perhaps I credit him with more brains than he has.

  “What an insistent mom you’ve got!” the interrogator says out of the blue. The first thing I register is that this is not the fat man but the other one, the one whose face I haven’t seen. Then I comprehend that he is talking about my mother. It sickens me instantly that he should feel himself entitled to refer to my mother in the familiar manner as “mom.” It is as if someone preparing to rape me should have the temerity to refer to what he is doing as “making love.”

  “My mother?”

  “Yes, your mom comes here every day. She begs the guys at the gate for news of you. We tell her we’ve never seen you, never heard of you.”

  I think words that I can’t utter—vile, disgusting creature—but I keep my mouth shut not out of fear of punishment but because such a response is what he is looking for. I am trying to control my anger. I can see with perfect clarity in my mind’s eye what my mother would look like pleading at the gate of Evin for news of me—her eyes wet, her lips pale as they are when she is full of anxiety, her beautiful face distorted. And here it is all over again—my wretched naïveté, my stupidity. I sit here expecting something bad, but it never occurs to me that they will use my mother’s misery as a weapon of torture. Can I ever, ever, ever learn that these people will use anything in the world to cause me pain, that they don’t draw a line anywhere? What has to happen to me before I can get it through my head? Do they have to cut my throat before I comprehend their malevolence?

  “Because she knows that I’m here?” I ask softly.

  The interrogator barks a single-syllable laugh. “But you aren’t here, are you? No one is here.” Then he laughs more freely, probably because of the appalled expression on my face. My hatred for him at this moment is so intense that images flash through my mind of his face. I see the face of a baboon, then that of a jackal. I see lips flecked with spittle. I see rotted stumps of teeth like rocks in the desert. I see eyes devoid of shame, like those of some ancient whore plying her trade in the grimy streets of Gonrok in West Tehran. This is what I’m reduced to: melodrama.

  “I need some information from you,” the interrogator says with no special emphasis, as if we were in an office and there was just a small matter to be cleared up. He puts a series of questions to me, all concerning the recent student protests at Tehran University that I took part in, protests that focused on the dismissal and imprisonment of two professors, one of them a favorite of mine who taught a version of Iran’s history unacceptable to the regime. How do I find out about them? Who informs me and the other students when a meeting is to take place? Do we have secret passwords?

  Then he begins to ask questions about discussions at the meetings. His questions are highly detailed. He appears to know exactly what was spoken of. He knows who opens the meetings, who makes suggestions. He knows what those suggestions were. His information is so accurate that he in fact has no need to ask me questions. His purpose is to let me know that what I thought was a secret kept by no more than four or five people is not a secret at all. He wants me to ask myself who the spy in our group is. And that is exactly what I do. Or is it possible that other members of our group have been picked up, interrogated, and that all of the details he is using now co
me from one of our number? Even as he nags at me with his questions, I study mental images of faces. Was it her? Was it him? Not one of them would say a thing, I’m certain. Not one of them would break down, even under torture. But is this true? I am myself ready to capitulate if the pain becomes too great. Why should I believe that the others are so much stronger?

  “Did he ask you to cancel the classes?” the interrogator asks.

  “Who?”

  “That son of a bitch who was kicked out of the university, did he make you do it?”

  “My professor?” I ask.

  “Yes, the bastard who brainwashed you all, the one who was teaching you crap. That one.”

  “You’re the one talking crap, not him.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. Within a split second, I repent. I will recant instantly if he demands it.

  I hear his chair scrape on the floor. He is on me, grabbing my neck from behind. He shakes me, then pushes me forward. I topple from the chair and, as I fall, awkwardly strike my chin on the edge of the desk so that the flesh splits open. Even as I hit the floor, I can feel blood flowing.

  “Bitch!” he says. “You talk shit, nothing but shit. You’d better learn to shut up, fool.”

  It’s a struggle, but I manage to get to my knees. I feel for the chair, put it upright on its legs, then sit on it, facing what I hope is forward. I touch my chin, feel the raw cut. The blood oozes over my fingers. “Shit, shit, shit,” I hiss.

  “Is that what you learned from him? Being a hard-ass bitch? Yes? Before I get angry, answer my question. Did he ask you to cancel the classes?” he says.

  “No, he didn’t!”

  “How did you inform everyone? How did everyone know that there would be no classes that day?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer wretchedly. “I suggested it at the meeting, and everyone agreed. That’s all.”

  “How would all the students know about it? The ones who weren’t at the meeting? How would they know?”

  “They just tell each other, we never make any announcement, never write anything down. They just told each other, that’s all.”

  “Is that right?” he says. I am about to say yes when he slaps me across the face.

  The split in my chin widens, and the blood streams down my throat. I’m whimpering now like a child. “Please take me to my cell!”

  He doesn’t answer. Instead, he begins a relentless series of questions, some of which he asked before, some new. Who was in charge? Who organized the cancellation of classes? How frequently did I meet with my friends? The questions come at me so rapidly that I can’t keep up. Sometimes when I think I am answering one question, I realize that the interrogator has moved on to the next one. I am falling into a trance, unable to keep straight in my head what it was I really did in the protest movement and what I am being accused of. What is true and what is a lie are merging in my mind, but worse than that, it all seems hopelessly unimportant. Where is my conviction? Have I ceased to believe in anything? I haven’t even got a firm sense of myself as a human being. All my body is capable of is recording pain, and my mind is like some crude, primitive device that can register only exhaustion. I answer yes to whatever I’m asked. Did I cancel the classes? Yes, I canceled the classes. Was I instructed to cancel the classes? Yes, I was instructed to cancel the classes. Yes to anything you ask, yes, yes, yes.

  Then, into the fog of pain and self-disgust, comes a much more vivid fear: that the split on my chin will become infected in this feculent place. I will not be given any medical treatment, the wound will suppurate, I will become deformed and ugly, I will no longer be a pretty Persian girl, people will pity me, boys will avoid me, I will never marry. How powerful my vanity is! My world is toppling into ruins around me, and the only thing I can think of is my pretty face!

  “Can I please go to the toilet?” I ask, but the interrogator persists with his questions. I am becoming drowsy, as if the interrogator were a hypnotist, one who relies on not the repetition of a visual image but the repetition of sound.

  I continue to answer like a metronome, wondering how the interrogator can be bothered believing me. Can’t he see that my brain is shutting down? In my drowsiness, I think of the time I cut my right arm as a child and had to have the wound stitched. The doctor said, incorrectly, that I would not be able to use my right hand anymore, that I would have to write with my left hand. My father was away on a trip, and both my mother and I knew how upset he would be when he came home and saw me marred in this way. I was his pet, his favorite, his princess. And, sure enough, when he came home he was maddened by the idea of me being hurt and distressed; he took me against his chest and patted me for ages, murmuring words of love and comfort. Here I sit, sick with fatigue, sustaining myself in the very limited way I can by recalling the tenderness of my father while at the same time relinquishing any pretense I had of honest conviction. What I really want is for my father to walk through the door, pick me up, and say in his most commanding manner, “You will leave this child alone from this point on. I will not permit you to harm her again. I will not permit you to ask her one question more. She is my child. I am her father.”

  A further age passes before the interrogator calls the guard. I am being taken back to my cell. I ask the guard to let me use the toilet on the way. I wash my chin at the sink, lifting my blindfold to do so. But I make sure not to look at my reflection in the mirror. My ugliness would destroy what little self-esteem I have left.

  Back in my cell, I sit thinking of Ali Reza in the cell above. And what I am thinking is this: Ali Reza is the spy. That is why he was put in the cell above me. That is why he is forever questioning me. It is Ali Reza. I address him in my mind with the harshest words I can summon. I excoriate him. I call him a coward, a jackal. But then it dawns on me that this is exactly what the interrogator wants me to think. He wants me to doubt everyone. What a playground my mind is for these people, these torturers! They pull my thoughts apart, put them back together in a way that amuses them. Maybe Ali Reza is thinking the same thing about me. Maybe all the people in our group are doubting all the others.

  At this moment, I am glad that Ali Reza is not calling to me. He must be away at interrogation, or if he is the spy, then he must be away reporting to his masters, receiving instructions. I detest myself for my distrust, but now that it has been switched on by the interrogator, I can’t switch it off.

  I must sleep. It’s important.

  As soon as I close my eyes, I hear a groan from Ali Reza’s cell above. I attempt to ignore it, but it is repeated. Finally I stand up and place myself as close to the fan grille as possible.

  “Ali Reza, it that you?”

  No response.

  “Is that you, Ali Reza? Hello? Ali Reza?”

  “Who the hell is Ali Reza?” a voice answers. It is not Ali Reza’s voice. I stand in silence, perplexed. A few minutes ago, I didn’t want to hear from Ali Reza, now I feel bereft that he is not where he should be.

  “I’m in the lower cell,” I whisper. “Who are you? Why are you moaning?”

  “Because I want to. What’s it to you?”

  Such a rude person! Who on earth is he?

  “I just had a long interrogation,” I tell this ill-mannered man. “I’d be able to sleep if you’d keep it quiet.”

  “So sleep, it’s none of my business,” he says.

  “I can’t if you keep moaning!” I say.

  “I’ll moan as much as I want,” he says. “Prison isn’t for you, Father, is it?”

  “Father”? What on earth is the matter with this moron?

  “Fucking bitch, I don’t know what she wants from me,” he mutters and goes on muttering. I’m listening in amazement. This guy is a genuine lunatic. He’s oddly fascinating to me. I hear him shuffling around and abusing me ceaselessly, as if in the space of a few seconds I have become a great burden to his existence. And what in God’s name has become of Ali Reza? Does his disappearance confirm my doubts about him? Or should it quash t
hem?

  “Hey you,” I whisper, “whoever you are, I’m as unlucky as you, believe me. Why can’t you just be nice? I promise I won’t even say hello to you anymore, but you should stop moaning, okay?”

  “What have you done to be interrogated? Are you one of the protesters? A Communist, are you?”

  He doesn’t appear to understand the rules of clandestine communication. He talks as loudly as if he were hailing me from across the street.

  “I don’t know who I am anymore, maybe someone like you.”

  “Are you here because of a check, too?” he asks.

  “What on earth are you talking about? Do you mean checks like bank checks?”

  “None of your business,” he says.

  “God, just go to sleep, okay? And you’re right. It’s none of my business.”

  He starts moaning again. It sounds as if he’s calling someone’s name, but I can’t understand him properly. I’m too tired to listen any longer. I crawl under my blanket on the floor and close my eyes.

  “Leila! I’ll kill you when I’m free!” he yells.

  I shut my ears to his craziness and fall asleep.

  When I wake, I hear the madman kicking on the door of his cell and screaming obscenities at the country’s political leaders, at Khamenei, Rafsanjani, Khatami. It’s as if they are his personal enemies rather than his political foes. An outburst like this can have only one ending, and, sure enough, within a minute I hear the guards thudding down the corridor above and crashing open the cell door. I doubt if so much as a second has passed between the opening of the cell door and the beating. I hear the thud of blows landing one after another, the shrieks of the madman and the grunts of the guards. I can’t tell what they are beating him with, maybe truncheons or maybe their fists. I curl myself into a ball under my blanket and jam my palms tightly over my ears. It makes no difference. The beating goes on and on and on. If it wasn’t for the madman’s shrieks and gasps, I would think him dead. Dear God, didn’t he know that this would happen?