My Life as a Traitor: An Iranian Memoir

by Zarah Ghahramani

  I don’t have to worry about finding a way to kill myself. If they beat me again, I know I will die. If I could do anything to avoid another beating, I would without a second’s hesitation. The woman guard from the south with the burned-away face, whatever she wants to do she can.

  ON THIS THIRD day since the first beating, I find I can sit up against the wall without fainting. I always sit facing the door. If it begins to open, I intend to say a prayer for my mom and my dad and my brothers and sisters, then give in and it will be over.

  On my last two visits to the toilet, I haven’t seen the woman guard. I have seen both of the male guards who beat me, though. They don’t mention anything about the beatings. It wouldn’t surprise me if they have forgotten.

  My lips are healing, and I can see a little better. My tongue stings, but I can move it in my mouth. My fingers are almost as good as new. I keep touching my teeth with my fingertips, assuring myself that they are there. If it should happen that I get out of here and get better, I want to be able to smile at people and hear them say, “Well, you still have your lovely smile, I see!”

  “WHEN ARE YOU going home?” Sohrab asks me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What will you do if you have to stay here?”

  “I’ll die.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “I know.”

  “Many people believe that, Zarah. There are people here who wanted to die five years ago.”

  “What did you think when you knew you would be here forever?” I ask. I don’t really care what he thought, but the sound of his voice helps me to let go of the bleakness and despair inside me for a short time.

  “I wish I had killed a few of them before I ended up here. It would’ve given me pleasure to think of them dead and know that it was because of me.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “I would be worried for my family. My mother would die.”

  “People forget you after the first sunset.”

  “Don’t you dare say that!”

  “It’s true. Alas.”

  He has made me angry. If I could get at him, I’d slap his stupid face.

  “Maybe people forgot about you because you’re mad. My mother and father will never forget about me. Never in a million sunsets. You don’t know what it’s like to have a child you love. Nobody can forget their daughter or their son.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I stay silent for a time. I hate Sohrab for thinking that about my dad and mom. If I couldn’t think of them, I would have nothing. Even though they’re not here, they are keeping me alive as surely as if they were spoon-feeding me with soup and bathing me with warm water.

  “That’s something they haven’t taken away from me,” I say to Sohrab when I’m ready. “I believe in my mom and dad. Forever.”

  “Princess,” he says, “they don’t care about your mom and dad. They don’t care about anything. Nothing.”

  “They cared about my ideas. That’s why I’m here. They care about what I say and what I write.”

  “No, Zarah. Your ideas are of no interest to them. They put you in here because you were disobedient. In a week or so, they might change their mind about what people can do and can’t do. All that matters is that you do what they say, whatever it is. That’s good enough for them.”

  “People have been killed in here for their ideas,” I tell Sohrab hotly. “How dare you say they don’t care!”

  “Nobody kills anyone because of ideas,” he says. “You kill people because you realize they don’t need to be alive any longer. That’s all.”

  I refuse to go on with the conversation. Sohrab apologizes, but I don’t answer him. I have nothing to say that can counter his cynicism, but I know he’s wrong. Or if what he says is true, then okay, but other things are also true. I lie still with my eye on the door, thinking over all the things that have happened in the last two years. The memory I am most content with is that of listening to the filmmaker (whose name cannot be used here) when he came to show one of his movies to students like me who’d been shouting in the street. After the movie—Deep Breath, it was called—someone in the audience told the filmmaker that nothing would be changed by making movies about our problems, that much more was needed.

  The filmmaker said that there was a time while he was studying cinema when it was illegal to have a VCR at home and that he had to buy one exactly in the way people buy drugs. He had to be able to see movies from all over the world if he was going to make movies himself. His parents called the Basiji, to tell them that their son had a VCR. At that time, he said (and he was talking about the years just after the Revolution in 1979), people could think in only one way. And so filmmakers like him ended up in jail, and writers, too, and artists, and businessmen, and academics. But when they got out of jail, these people persisted. They made their movies, they wrote their books, they gave their speeches, they opened their businesses that sold things such as VCRs. And so things changed a bit, the filmmaker said, and so now there is not just the one way of thinking; there are one and a half ways of thinking, and one day there will be two ways, then two and a half. And the guy in the audience who’d said that changing things with movies was a waste of time said, “Or maybe we’ll go from one way of thinking to less than one way.” The filmmaker said, “Maybe. But do it anyway. Make the movies, write the books.”

  In the night, I hear Sohrab calling for the guard to take him to the toilet. He doesn’t bother with the green slip; he just shouts out. I hear him coming back from the toilet, laughing and swearing at the guard, calling him an asshole. And I think, Oh, God, no! I know they will come and beat him, and they do. There are at least two of them beating him, and he shrieks with laughter while they go about it and screams abuse. “Assholes! Stupid cunts!” I put my hands over my ears and make as loud a sound as I can to block out the beating and swearing, and by the time they are done with Sohrab, I am a quivering wreck.

  “Not bad,” says Sohrab, still heaving. “I exhausted them that time. Did you hear?”

  “Of course I heard, you imbecile! I hate you! You’re sick!”

  “You think so?”

  “I hope you die one day when they’re beating you!”

  “Might happen.”

  “You should be in a mental hospital!”

  “In a mental hospital? I thought I was!”

  I can’t stand him in this mood. Sometimes I love him and want to take care of him and tell him stories, and sometimes, like now, I want them to take him out and shoot him.

  24

  I SLEEP FITFULLY, knowing that tomorrow is the day I am supposed to be freed. My ability to keep track of time in here has improved over the weeks. So, tomorrow. But will they keep their word? Will they release me, as they said they would? I mustn’t let myself believe that honor has anything to do with their thinking. I must make these past twenty-nine days count for something more than pain and humiliation. I have seen my enemies up close. I know things about them I didn’t know before. I must never forget what I know about my enemies. My life is precious to me, but it isn’t precious to them. The world itself is precious to me, but the world isn’t precious to them. If I awake on a spring day and dress and walk out under the trees and see the patterns of sunlight shifting on the ground, I feel a joy that makes me want to smile at every stranger I see. But they don’t see the sunshine, and spring means no more to them than another season of enforcing their will, of rewarding the obedient and punishing the disobedient. And they feel no desire to smile at strangers. A stranger to them is no more than a person whose allegiance has not yet been studied and cataloged. They save their smiles for those who have no questions to ask, for those who pass Evin and think to themselves, God approves.

  I lie wrapped in my blanket, feeling the bruised and damaged parts of me for small signs of healing. I touch my lips with my fingertips, gently test my eyelids and the swelling below my eyes, move my tongue to see if the stinging
is less than it was, reach down and pat my rib cage, flex the muscles in my legs, and judge the protests coming from the purple shapes that show the darker impressions of the guard’s knuckles. Five days after the beatings, I can walk and talk and see, and no bones are broken. “Could’ve been worse,” I say, and grin in spite of myself, for I am beginning to sound like my madman, who is such a connoisseur of beatings.

  Very early, when morning prayer is barely over, I hear a sound at my door. I flinch and wait. I haven’t forgotten my promise to myself—that if they come to beat me again, I will pray quickly, bless my mother and father and brothers and sisters, and die. But the door doesn’t open. Instead, a bundle is forced through the slot and falls to the floor. I remain where I am, still expecting something more, something worse, but a count of one hundred passes without the door opening. I go to the bundle and spread it open. They have given me back the dress I wore when they brought me here, just a plain black cotton dress, almost ankle length. I kneel with the dress pressed to my face, and my tears begin to flow. I can smell myself on the fabric! I can smell the person I used to be! Oh, it goes to my heart like a blade! It’s Zarah, that poor, foolish girl whose life was all laughter and kisses and daydreams and hopeful petitions! Oh, God, just remembering her makes me want to slap her face and tell her to wake up! Oh, Zarah, you silly thing; you poor, stupid, lovely girl!

  My face soaking wet, I pull on the dress and smooth its wrinkles. Then I stand at the back wall and wait, the blindfold around my forehead, ready to pull it down over my eyes.

  A guard hits the door with his fist—the signal to cover my eyes. He will wait two minutes, then open the door. I call up to Sohrab, “Are you awake? I’m going home.” He answers right away; I think he has been waiting.

  “Safe journey,” he says.

  “I’ll put flowers on your mother’s grave. Marguerites, like you said.”

  “That would be good. Thank you.”

  “I’ll remember you!”

  “Until sunset,” he says, and laughs.

  The guard opens the door. He takes hold of my arm and says, “Let’s go.” At the elevator, he hands me over to someone else, I don’t know who, the voice is not familiar. But he may have seen me before, whoever he is, because he says to the guard, “Haven’t you been feeding her?” and chuckles. He turns me around and quickly binds my wrists behind my back with what feels like a plastic strip.

  I am taken down to a car, just as I was six days ago, when I went to court. Once we are in the car, the man who has been escorting me says, “Lie down,” and so I do, flat along the backseat with the top of my head jammed against the door. There’s a second man in the car, probably the driver. He greets the man who is in charge of me, then I am left in the backseat while the two of them sit in the front.

  It soon becomes obvious to me that we are not traveling the same route we took to court. I can hear more traffic sounds, many more, and the early-morning shouts of people in the street. The voices are just those of ordinary people. I hear a man calling out the price of his pretzels, and another man crying out, “Back it in! Not forward, not forward!” I hear a mother scolding a child about something or other, and the cursing of drivers, and horns sounding impatiently. It is as if the world is seeping back into me, soaking down into places that have been arid for a month.

  The car travels slowly for a long way, lurching in and out of the traffic and stopping and starting again. I get thrown around, not having my hands free to steady myself. My nose is pressed into the vinyl of the upholstery.

  After what seems an hour or more, the car breaks free from the traffic and accelerates. One of the men in the front seat, the driver, says, “Thank God for that!” and the other, the man in charge of me, says, “It’s worse every year. They’ve gotta do something.” And the driver says, “Not in our lifetimes, hajji!”

  Now the car is speeding along what must be a highway, judging by how smoothly we are traveling. Wherever they are taking me, it is not to my father’s house. We could have reached my father’s house in twenty minutes from the gates of Evin. Of all the possibilities for our journey’s destination, a grave in the wastes outside of Tehran seems to me the most likely. Before my prison days, I heard rumors of cars and trucks being seen in the wastes for no reason, and of areas closed off, perhaps because they were dumping grounds for dead troublemakers. I found those rumors hard to believe then, but I don’t now. Anyway, if they intend to shoot me, that is the best of the possible outcomes. Transferral to another prison is one of the worst.

  If I am put into another prison, I will find a way to kill myself. I won’t wait days and days to do it—I’ll be as quick as I can. I write a letter in my head to Mom and Dad, in case this should be the end of me. I tell them both how much I’ve been missing them, and thank them for my life. Because Mom has a strong belief in rebirth, I tell her that I will be somewhere waiting, but I feel embarrassed to be going on in this way. Still, it is for her, and haven’t I always found sweet things to say just because that’s what she loves?

  After a long period of no traffic noise and no conversation between the driver and the man in charge, the car starts to slow down. The driver says, “Here?” and the man in charge grunts. The car comes to a halt, and both doors open. I hear a sound I can’t identify at first, then realize that one of these two men is urinating on the ground right outside the back door. He must be having bladder problems, because he keeps stopping and starting and groaning.

  The door against which my head is jammed opens, and my head is left dangling. The man in charge says, “Okay, get out.” I struggle upright, then feel with my foot for the door opening. Now I’m standing, unsteadily, all of my bruises throbbing from my having lain awkwardly on the seat. I can feel fresh air on my face. The plastic strip on my wrists is cut, and my hands fall to my sides. I hear the two car doors thud shut; I hear the engine start. I am baffled—more baffled than fearful. What in heaven’s name is going on?

  The car starts to roll away, crunching what must be the stones on the side of the road. Then it stops again, and a door opens. Once more, the sound of urine splashing on the ground. Either the one who didn’t pee before has decided he must relieve himself, or the one who groans when he pees is finishing off. I hear the groan I heard before. A voice calls, “You want me to drive, hajji?” There’s no answer. The door slams, and the car drives away.

  I wait where I am, standing completely still. I wait until I am absolutely certain that the car has gone. I hear no other cars at all. I hear nothing but the rush of the cold wind. I reach up and pull off the blindfold.

  The vastness of the empty land around me makes me gasp. I am nowhere. A paved highway stretches a long way ahead. Looking back the other way, I can dimly make out a gray smudge in the sky that must be the smog of Tehran. Not a building to be seen, not even a shack. The pale blue sky is gigantic—it stretches so much farther than I recall from the past. Dry hills the color of bone stand away to the west. I shield my eyes and blink up at the sun, then turn slowly in a circle. The land is blank.

  I begin to walk back in the direction of Tehran. It will take a long, long time to walk the distance. If I hear a car, I will hide, although where I would hide is difficult to say. Being free again is not what I’d thought it would be. I had imagined that I would leap like a lamb in a paddock and shout at the top of my voice. But I have no desire to leap, no desire to shout. I feel exposed and wish the road had trees along the side so that I could duck in and out of cover. I am still carrying my blindfold. Hated though it is, I can’t throw it away. I clutch it tight in my fist and march into the wind, holding my head scarf in place with one hand.

  When I hear the first car approaching from behind me, my heart stops, and muscles all over my body tense. It speeds past without the slightest acknowledgment, a bright red car, brand-new. I glimpse a woman in the passenger seat with her hair uncovered: the driver’s trophy-wife or girlfriend, exercising her freedom where there are no Basiji or policemen to make a fuss. Cars
come from the other direction, heading away from Tehran, and each time they approach me, I tense up. The people in the cars must think me a malnourished peasant girl, probably crawling with lice and with bad teeth behind cracked lips. I have seen girls who looked as I do now when I’ve been driving out in the countryside with Behnam. I always thought, Poor thing! and then chastised myself and said, It is only by God’s grace that you are not her.

  My long, dogged march brings me to the first buildings I have seen this day. I stop to gaze down at the few ragged shops and shoddy dwellings of concrete brick. I know where this is. This is Ekbatan, the most outlying suburb of Tehran. For the first time in a month, I have my bearings. The map of my life begins to reemerge from the drabness within me. Colors grow more vivid; blurry lines now stand distinct. I have driven through here with my father, and with Behnam. I have looked with pity at the dreariness of this street that seems to me now a grand boulevard, as welcome a destination as the famous boulevards of great cities I have yet to visit.

  I walk until I see a phone booth just to the side of the road. I have no coins and will have to ask passersby for the money to call my father. I stand on the sidewalk practicing smiles so that my hideous appearance will be less of a fright to those who might come along. Down the road, I see an old man approaching slowly, with two loaves of bread under his arm and a newspaper in his hand. He glances at me, and I offer him my grotesque smile. He stops and gazes at me with puzzlement in his eyes. I can imagine how shocked he must be at my appearance. When my head rubbed against the inside of the car door as I was being driven here, scabs were torn away, and trickles of fresh blood have dried on my forehead and cheeks. And the old man must be studying my bruised eyes, my broken lips, my sticklike wrists and dirty hands.