My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir

by Zarah Ghahramani

  You bastards!

  And what is the fate of those who have no friends in high places? Those who cannot prevail on Gholam to temper his methods? Those who can’t pay the money, or can’t provide those treats that the people along the line so crave? The new refrigerator, the dishwasher, the gigantic television set, the tickets to Paris? Iran has a punishment market, so it seems, where the torment of a young woman can be traded for a washing machine.

  “I thought you were gone for good,” Sohrab calls down to me.

  “I went to court.”

  “Are you going home?”

  “They said I will, but I don’t believe it. They said I can’t go to the university anymore and I can’t write anymore.”

  “Do you write?”

  “A little.”

  “I wouldn’t read it. It’d be rubbish.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I know you people. You think you can make everything beautiful. You think you can make Gholam into a rosebush. What a waste of ink!”

  “He smelled like a rosebush today. He came to court.”

  “You deceive yourselves. You tell yourselves children’s stories. You make me sick.”

  “You’re in a funny mood!”

  “A club comes down on your head and you burst into tears. But you stood right under the club. I despise all of you. I despise you especially.”

  “Oh, shut up. Shut up and fuck off.”

  “Princess! I’ve never heard you swear before!”

  “Well, get used to it.”

  “Say it again.”

  “No.”

  “The little lamb is turning into a wolf. Well, Evin has done you some good, after all.” I have nothing to say to Sohrab for the rest of the day. I hate it when he’s sarcastic.

  I SIT ON my blanket and try to imagine what sort of life I can have now. I can’t study, I can’t write. I can be a checkout chick, something like that. As long as I don’t talk to the customers. As long as I don’t make any subversive comments about the soap someone is buying, or say that one brand of toothpaste is better than another. As long as I stop thinking altogether and just say “Good morning” to everyone and nothing else. As long as I read nothing except the approved newspapers and magazines, full of stories about the wicked enemies of Iran and the wicked things they are up to. Do you know, some of these wicked nations that want the Revolution of the Iranian people to fail actually torture people? That’s right, torture! Oh, they must be very wicked people to do that!

  I’m trying to forget that my bladder is full. I know that the new woman guard is on duty, the one who wants to sleep with me, according to Sohrab. I shut my eyes and try to imagine that I am a dry sponge, able to soak up gallons and gallons of water. But it is of no use. I have to put out the green slip.

  And she comes to take me to the toilet right away. She must have been standing out there waiting. Such dedication! She’ll go a long way in her career.

  “Did you think about what I said?” she asks me as soon as she opens the door.

  “I’m not a druggie.”

  “Everyone does drugs. Don’t be foolish.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  She takes my hand and holds it as we make our way along the corridor. I don’t make an issue of it. If I don’t get to the toilet soon, I am going to pee in my pants. She waits outside the door of the cubicle. I have my blindfold off, which is permitted, so long as you have it back on once you exit. I hate the thought of her listening to me pee, but I can hardly tell her to go away. Usually the guards stand outside the entrance to the toilets and spare you any embarrassment.

  Without warning, the guard pushes the door open and stares down at me. I am too shocked by her appearance to scream; I simply stare back. She’s much younger than I’d thought, only about thirty. She’s skinny and short, much shorter than I am, which is another surprise; I’d thought she was tall. She’s obviously from the south, with her dark complexion. But the truly shocking thing has nothing to do with her age or height but with the horrible deformity of her face. It’s flattened, as if all the raised features have been burned off or sliced away, then poorly repaired with surgery. She is allowing me to stare. Because of her deformities, it is impossible to tell if she is smiling or scowling.

  I’ve come to my feet and stand before her, probably with horror written all over my face. She reaches forward to take hold of my shoulders, or maybe to embrace me. Even at this moment, I challenge myself to refrain from showing any disgust at her features, but I have no hope. I push forward with my hands, using all my strength, knocking her backward out of the cubicle and off her feet. I run into the corridor.

  Oh, and here is yet another shock for me, for this is the first time I have seen the corridor with my true vision, rather than my guesswork radar vision. It is far, far bigger than I thought, brightly lit, all in black and white, and with cameras everywhere on the walls, peering down like insects. The corridor I am in runs before me and behind me forever. Hundreds of doors open off it, and at intervals intersecting corridors head left and right. I am frozen where I stand by the sheer scale of Evin. This is not simply a prison. This huge, swollen fortress for the isolation of killers and thieves and prostitutes and embezzlers and drunkards and protesters is itself a city, with another city surrounding it, and the fortress draws people from the city outside through its gates to fill its cells as if the stream of the inducted is its lifeblood. My friends are in here somewhere. In a week of searching, how would I find them? I can’t even begin to figure out the way back to my own cell.

  And so I stand where I am, incapable of moving a muscle. The whole place is silent—no shrieking, no sobbing, nothing at all. Now I hear the guard approaching me. I turn and stare at her—at the face that barely exists, the face that reveals nothing except its hideousness. She walks straight up to me and pulls the blindfold over my head. Then she slaps me on the face, and it is a hard slap—hard enough to make my ears ring. Despite the ringing, I can hear someone running toward us.

  “What is it, sister?” It’s the voice of a man.

  “She pushed me in the toilet and tried to run away. She’s lost her senses.”

  The man grabs my face and holds it, with his fingers digging into my cheeks. “Little bitch,” he says, and squeezes harder. My lips and nose are bunched together.

  He starts to pull me down the corridor with my face gripped in his hand but then seizes my shoulder instead and drags me so rapidly I can barely keep from falling. I hear my own cell door opening—I know its sound—before I am thrown through the air, landing half on the floor and half against a wall. The throw has somehow wrenched my blindfold off. The guard kicks me where I lie, aiming for my stomach but not connecting. He heaves me to my feet and punches me while holding me upright. I can’t support my weight and collapse. The guard lets me fall, then bends over me and beats me with both fists. The blows land on my face, my shoulders, my chest. Some vestige of my vanity remains, and I writhe to deflect the blows to my face, particularly to my mouth and teeth. I want to keep my teeth at least. I can’t manage that for very long and instead struggle to crawl away, until I am jammed against the wall with no further place to escape to. The guard keeps drawing back his fist and ramming it into whatever part of me he can reach. My whole body feels like a deep, throbbing bruise on which more blows land, and more.

  In my writhing, I glimpse the woman guard standing just outside the cell door watching. If she is gloating, I can’t tell. I am trying to plead, but I’m not permitted to finish even one word. The pain is the worst I’ve ever known. I can hear another sound, a shrieking sound that includes my name and a torrent of swearwords. It’s Sohrab, screaming his lungs out.

  The guard steps away from me, I think to catch his breath. I try to get to my knees, perhaps imagining that I can run away. The guard takes a big step across the cell and is over me again, punching with renewed energy. My last image before I faint is of the woman guard at the door. She is standing with both boots together
, as if at attention.

  I come to with my face flat against the floor. Perhaps only a short time has passed since I fainted. The man who was beating me has gone, I think. I’m trying to raise my head but can’t. Pain is coming from so many parts of me that I am confused, unable to test any one place with my fingers to see if there is a cut or a break. My eyes won’t open properly, and what vision I have is blurred by my lashes. Breathing seems to make the pain worse. I try holding my breath, but that’s worse still. Something is badly wrong with me.

  “Wake up! Talk! Can you hear me?”

  Who is that?

  “Talk to me! Can you hear me?”

  It’s Sohrab. I don’t even attempt to answer him. He keeps saying the same things over and over. I want him to shut up.

  I try a small movement, just turning onto my side to relieve the ache in my chest. I brace myself for a flood of pain, but it doesn’t come, or not in a flood at least. I lie still and think about my next movement. I lift one hand, wishing to feel if my teeth have been broken, but this movement brings the wave of pain I’d expected before. I pause, then persist. I’ve tried feeling for my teeth with my tongue, but it doesn’t work. I think I have bitten into my tongue, and it hurts too much to make it move. I’ve got my fingers up to my mouth. I part my lips a little and touch. My teeth are there.

  With tiny movements, I’ve gotten my body into a position that is the least painful of those I’ve tried. I can’t close my eyes properly, so I settle for a blurry, almost closed compromise.

  Sohrab is still shouting.

  “I’m okay,” I try to call, then have to put my face sideways and let blood ooze out. I get my hand up and wipe the blood from my nose away. I can’t tell if my mouth is bleeding or if the blood from my nose is running into my mouth. Probably both.

  “Talk to me! Can you hear me?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Can you hear me?”

  I attempt to make Sohrab understand that I’m okay again and again, but I can’t make my voice carry to him. Perhaps the words I’m saying sound like moans and groans. So for I don’t know how long, I’m slurring out the words “I’m okay,” and Sohrab is shouting down to me, “Are you okay? Can you hear me?” The whole attempt at communication becomes an added torment to me. Then I hear the door to my cell open, and all the difficulty I have had trying to make a loud sound disappears, and I scream.

  The woman guard stands outside the door, just as she was standing before I fainted. I can only see her silhouette.

  “Would you say no if I was pretty?” she asks.

  I can’t even begin to find the will to answer her.

  “I said, Would you say no if I was pretty?” There is a threat in her voice.

  I’m trying as hard as I can to say no to her, because I think that might be the right answer.

  “I was prettier than you before they bombed our street. I got burned then. My family died. I have no friends.”

  Why on earth is she telling me this? Is she insane?

  “I would’ve gotten you something good. But all you say to me is no. All you say is ‘Get away from me!’ Don’t you?”

  How in heaven’s name does she expect me to reply to her? She has just finished watching the guard beat me black and blue, and now she wants to tell me her life story?

  “You think you can pick and choose, don’t you? You can’t pick and choose in Evin. You’re not pretty anymore. You look worse than me. Nobody would want you now. Not even Gholam would want you now.”

  She’s crying, I think. Her voice is shaking.

  “I hope they keep you here forever,” she says. “When you beg me for something to kill yourself with, I will have nothing for you. You’re like all the others. I hate all of you.”

  She remains standing there, crying. Or if she’s not crying, then she must be trembling with rage. I can see her outline shaking. I don’t feel sorry for her, if that’s what she’s hoping. I want her to drop dead.

  She shuts the door at last and is gone.

  “Talk to me!” Sohrab calls.

  WHEN I WAKE in the morning, my breakfast is waiting on the tray. I didn’t hear them slide it under the door. I get to my hands and knees and force myself across the floor, but every movement I make sends pain shooting through me. It amazes me that my body can report pain from so many distinct places! In the night, it was all like one great block of pain, but now each part of my body—my fingers, my knees, my ankles, my hips, my shoulders and neck, my backbone—sends a different message. I have thickened everywhere—thick tongue, thick eyes, thick face; my limbs themselves feel thick and throbbing, and my lips are so thick that I can see them sticking out when I glance down.

  I swallow the food without chewing anything and tilt my head back so that I can pour the water straight down my throat.

  “Talk to me!” Sohrab shouts.

  “I’m all right!”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes!”

  “Talk to me!”

  I let him go on calling but make no more attempts to call back to him. It’s almost as if he’s trying to add to my misery. He’s not, I know that, he’s worried, but I’m sick of him.

  I lie flat on my back on the rancid blanket and by fractions of an inch make my eyelids close.

  I think: If they really were going to send me home, they’ll change their minds now.

  I think: All those cells!

  The water I have just poured down my throat has gone straight to my bladder. I will have to put the green slip out. My pain and misery make me sob, but there are no tears, just an unbearable stinging in my eyes. Enough! Can’t I even swallow water without inviting more pain?

  I push the green slip under the door with my foot and wait for the blindfold. I want to tell them that there’s no need for it—I can’t see anything.

  The blindfold is dropped in through the slot, and I struggle to get it over my head and eyes. I have to use the backs of my wrists to push it into position because my fingers won’t bend sufficiently.

  The door opens, and someone grabs my arm and hauls me upright. It’s not the woman. It might be the guard who beat me last night. He supports me down the corridor.

  “I don’t feel sorry for you,” he says. “You asked for this.”

  Back in my cell, I try to plan ways in which I can kill myself if more punishment comes along. It’s an important mental project, working out a means to end it all, but at the same time it’s futile. There is no way, unless I could bash my head against the wall hard enough to fracture my skull, but that’s very unlikely. Nothing in here to hang myself from. I can’t stab myself to death with a spoon. If I tore a piece of my blanket and jammed it down my throat, would that choke me? But how would I tear the blanket? You need hands and fingers and strength in your muscles to do that.

  The only blessing I have is that the pain makes me pass out every so often.

  Sohrab at least has stopped calling down to me. He’s screaming about Leila again, how he intends to strangle her with his bare hands when he gets out.

  Night comes. Evening prayers. In the cells all over Evin, people are kneeling in prayer. The guards are kneeling in prayer, too. They are all praying to honor the same God.

  I nurse my pain all through the night. I don’t faint now. The fainting is finished.

  In the morning, after Azan, the cell door opens. It’s the woman guard with a male guard, not the one who beat me. The male guard gets down on his knees and starts punching me as hard as he can. He pulls my hands away from my face and aims punches at my mouth. He uses his elbow to gouge my chest and stomach. I don’t scream. I try as best I can to shield my face. I can hear Sohrab shouting at the guards. “Leave her alone, you assholes!”

  “That’s enough,” says the woman guard. “Let’s go.”

  The guard stops beating me immediately. He’s not as motivated as the guard who first beat me.

  I am lying so still that I can’t be sure whether I am alive or dead. This might be exactly t
he way people feel when the life leaves their bodies. Not a single motion. But what about the pain? The dead wouldn’t have to endure pain, or what would be the benefit of death?

  Sohrab calls down to me, “How is the little champion?” He’s making a pun on my name, Ghahramani, which means “champion.” It’s a weird thing, but these latest blows to my face have freed my mouth a little. Maybe it will be worse than ever in a few minutes, but just for now I can open and close my jaw. Is it the adrenaline?

  I push myself up to a sitting position with my back against the wall.

  “Sohrab?”

  “So you’re alive?”

  “No.”

  “Do you mean you’re dead?”

  “Yes, I’m dead.”

  Sohrab laughs in delight. This is the sort of comment that he loves.

  “Little champion!” he says.

  “Not a champion. This fight isn’t fair. I won’t win this one.”

  He laughs again, even happier with this comment. He has something else to say, something complicated, but my respite from pain is over. It comes into my face and my rib cage with such ferocity that I fear I will split open.

  I pass out.

  The rest of the day passes with me coming to, attempting to move, then fainting again. It happens maybe four or five times. No matter how bad I feel, if food is waiting for me on the tray, I crawl over and push it into my mouth, and I drink the water. I don’t understand why I do this, unless it’s a type of primitive urge of the body to repair itself, overruling my lack of interest.