Camelia (29 page)

“You are very thin and beautiful,” is what I finally came out with. “How are you?”

She asked that I convey her greetings to Faezeh, who she'd heard
was modern and progressive. She seemed very interested in my views as a journalist about how Tehran had progressed under Khatami's reform programs. She was keeping in touch, via e-mail, she told me, with many young people in Iran and that sometimes she was so homesick she'd dial a number at random just to hear a voice speaking her language from inside her country.

“The roses are for you,” I said and held them out to her.

“Thank you.” She ran her hand over the petals and patted my shoulder. “They're beautiful, just like you. I'm pleased to see that Iran has such brave girls. I wish you success.” Then she took her leave and disappeared behind the wall, and Atabay escorted me out. I wondered, was I brave enough to return to Iran? Later, in prison, I'd think of how, in those few polite exchanges, I was risking my life.

My mother had made a
nazr
that if I emerged from Mehrabad airport safe and sound, we'd all make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad. She had implored me not to come. “You're making a mistake. I'm not opening the door for you. You don't understand how crazy Tehran is. It's not enough the nonsense
Kayhan
printed about you? Didn't you read that you're a monarchist and an American spy?”

I expected to return to New York within ten days. Despite my mother's, Jean's, and other friends' urgent warnings, I had been persuaded to return to Iran by the assurances of Golriz. She'd asked me to accompany and assist her in her work for the human rights organization on this short trip. I trusted her. Then she abandoned me three days after we'd arrived in Iran, when the Ministry of Intelligence agents showed up at my mother's door to take me to prison. Much later, people told me that while I was sitting alone in my cell, Golriz did nothing to help me and claimed that I had come to
America not as a reporter, but as a spy for the Ministry. It's not really very funny, but it is ironic: at the same time the Ministry was accusing me of spying for the Americans, in America I was being accused of spying for Iran. I have never forgiven Golriz or understood her motives. But I know that while she let me believe I would be safe with her, it was also my own choice to return. I wanted to be free to visit my country any time I wished. I trusted more than anything that I could return to the home that I had always known. I trusted that I would be safe among friends.

Among the pieces I was working on, I was especially determined to finish my article about Qom, to tell the story I'd begun before I left for Prague. I could find a newspaper in New York to publish my articles. I knew now that I couldn't continue to hope for their publication in
Zan.
The open atmosphere in the Iranian press had disappeared. Every day the judicial authority shut down another paper, and an increasing number of journalists were being dismissed or threatened. Newspapers no longer had the courage of those heady first few months after Khatami's election.

I spent half of the second day after my arrival in Qom. Then my mother, my sister and my niece, and I went to Mashhad to make the offering my mother had promised. My mother bought millet and poured it onto the ground for the doves. We put on chadors and went to pray for health and for the strength to stick together. How I had missed my family! I longed to have a satisfying, heart-to-heart talk with my mother and my sister but still hadn't found an opportunity by the time we got home the next day. We returned to Tehran at dawn, and Kati went home to her husband after she had dropped my mother and me off, exhausted from our excursion.

 

It was six o'clock in the morning when there was a knock at the door of our apartment. When my mother came in softly a few seconds later and stood over me, I knew what she was going to say.

“There are two men at the door. They say they have a letter for you.”

“I know. They've come for me. Keep calm.” I followed my mother, grabbing an overcoat from the rack and putting it on over my nightclothes. I coolly opened the front door, and the men said they had a search and arrest warrant from the Revolutionary Courts. They showed me the warrant, and I read it. I stepped aside and told my mother again to stay calm. They woke Kai Khosrou and got him out of bed and herded us into the hall, telling us to be quiet and sit still. They unplugged the phone and went into my bedroom. I could hear them keeping in touch with their headquarters by radio as they poured all my things, including books and family photo albums, into big bags. They took things from all over the house—from the kitchen, the dining room, from inside the silverware cabinets. They took my passport.

“Put on some pants,” they told me. I looked around my room. I looked at my suitcase lying open in the corner—I still hadn't even fully unpacked. I looked at the doll that my Modar-jan had bought me. In the hallway, my mother sobbed and said, “Where are you going to take her? Take me, too!”

“Hajj Khanum, you stay at home. You will be contacted.”

I leaned my face close to my mother's. “
Khoda hafez
, don't worry . . .
Khoda hafez
.”

I looked at the picture of my father on the wall as I walked out the door. There were a few more guards standing along the footpath. I sat in the back of the Peykan as they emptied the bags of evidence into the trunk. I could see even more men standing in the shadows of the trees lining our street. When they were given a sign, they too got into their cars. I turned and looked behind me, at my mother's flower boxes, at the lace curtains tied back in the windows. I knew she and my brother were watching us.

“Am I ever going to see my street, my house, or my mother again?” I asked myself.

One of the men sitting up front turned around and held out a gray canvas blindfold.

“Please put this over your eyes and lay down in the back.” I lay down, and they threw a blanket over me. Softly I said, “For God's sake, take me wherever you're going to take me. Just don't kill me.”

One day, right after I'd returned to my cell from the interrogation room, the guards were sent again to get me. “Your interrogator is here. Get ready quick.” I put on my chador and my stockings again and followed him up the stairs. What did he want with me now? Had something happened?

When we were back in the room, he asked, “Good, so you say you're ready to do whatever the organization needs. Do you want to become one of the nameless soldiers?” I nodded my head.

“Take these confessions by Manuchehr Mohammadi and his friend Qolamreza Mohajeri-Nezhad and read them. They are about their meetings with Reza Pahlavi. Mohammadi has not admitted to taking money from Pahlavi to start the student riots, and you must help us. He has been told that we have abducted one of Pahlavi's employees in Turkey and brought her to Tehran. You are Shiva Batmanqelich. When you're in front of Mohammadi, tell him that you were Reza's accountant and that you wrote a check out to him for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

He forced me up, still blindfolded, and to walk ahead of him and into another room as he spoke to me. Then I could hear another man talking to him, and someone behind me said, “Lift up your blindfold and look at the person in front of you, but don't look behind you.”

I lifted my blindfold. A blindfolded young man stood before me. He, like me, was wearing prison clothes. He was upset and was squeezing his fingers. I knew that this was Manuchehr Mohammadi.

A voice said, “Put your blindfold back on.” I obeyed, and that
same voice, coming now from another direction, said, “Boy, now you lift up your blindfold.” Evidently, Mohammadi was looking at me now. “Put your blindfold back on.”

“Very well, Khanum, did you recognize this gentleman?”

I launched into my role as instructed by my interrogator. I said that he was Manuchehr Mohammadi and that I had seen him in Washington and that I had signed a check for him from Reza Pahlavi. They asked Mohammadi if he recognized me. He cried and wailed that by God this was a lie—that this woman was a liar and that he had never seen me before, that he did not recognize me. He cried very hard.

His interrogator shouted at him and started punching him, and Mohammadi howled and swore at me. “Why are you lying?” I didn't know how to answer. They pulled me out of the room. My interrogator growled at me, angry that I hadn't acted well enough. He said Mohammadi hadn't confessed because he saw through me and understood that it was all a trick.

“Why did you beat him?” I couldn't stop myself from asking.

Surprised, he answered, “Beat? Who did we beat? He's crazy. He's always hitting himself. You have enough sense to know you'd better mind your own business.”

 

My senses were all there, and I
was
minding my own business. I was getting more positive signals from my interrogator as he listened to my confessions. I knew by rote now how to list my crimes, and I'd confessed to every one. Among my primary offenses were having relations with Reza Pahlavi and publishing Farah Diba's Nouruz greeting in
Zan
; having relations with an Israeli; working for the CIA at Radio Azadi in Prague; spying for a human rights agent in Tehran (meaning Golriz); seeking action against national security through attempts at interviewing Salman Rushdie; and seeking to harm the government of the Islamic Republic by inspiring fear and
dissent among the people by disseminating the black list. Among my secondary offenses were prostitution, wanton behavior, and alcohol consumption; Godlessness and spreading atheism to the blameless; making a mockery of Islam; and opposition to the
velayat-e faqih
.

“Any one of these crimes could mean execution. You should receive forty lashes for the crime of the consumption of alcohol alone. Now, what do you think should be done with you?”

Bravely I answered, “I'm going home—I know that these days are ending soon, and I will be set free.”

He laughed. “
Masha-Allah
, I like you, you're very cheeky. But I'm sorry to say I think the only way you'll be getting out of here is dead. How are you so sure you'll be freed?”

“I dreamed of a letter written to my mother that read ‘this is a letter from the Imam-e Zaman' and of my mother crying from joy.”

“Ha! Haven't you heard the saying ‘
khab-e zan chap ast
' (a woman's dreams deceive her)?” Then he pounded his briefcase against my head and said angrily, “When the imam comes to your dream, dirt on your head, he's coming to tell you to correct your path!” He quickly became calm again and said, “Probably the letter your mother received was news of your death. Don't be so optimistic.”

Love, like a wisp of fresh air from paradise, had been blown deep into the heart of this hardened man. I knew, even when he punched me, that he felt he was touching a delicate flower. His mood swings were harsh because this love confused him. He had given his whole life to the Imam and the war and the Islamic Revolution. The fires of love consumed this “man of God.” And they consumed me as well. I was really in love with him. With my whole being, I could feel my freedom though the halls of the prison, the halls that seemed to lead nowhere. The dream I meditated so long on sprang forth with boundless energy.

“The brothers who see you on the walkway say they have worked in this prison for twenty years, and they have never seen a prisoner
like you. They say you walk up the stairs behind me with your head held high.”

This was true. I hadn't broken. I looked at prison, at the difficult days of interrogation, at the contempt and the hunger, at the solitude and the suffering as a performance. A great performance—the performance of my life. But after three months, I was tired. I had sung all the songs I knew.

 

My interrogator was able to obtain the order for my conditional release through convoluted negotiations with high-ranking colleagues. I first had to be tried in a formal proceeding. The Ministry of Intelligence told the judge assigned to my case to enact certain formalities and to release me on bond. He was told that I was willing and able to work for the Ministry of Intelligence, and they wanted to start me on a trial basis. I would monitor other journalists inside the offices of various newspapers and report back to them. I signed all my confessions and filled out my
tak nevesi,
each page reading on top “Save Yourself by Telling the Truth.”

I was told that if I turned on the Ministry and revealed our secret agreements, I would be subjected to the worst punishments imaginable and killed.

The next step in my conditional release was for me to appear in a videotaped court proceeding. They wanted to shoot two different films. We rehearsed dozens of times as I read my statements off a script.

“It's not natural. You have to speak naturally.”

They explained that I could perform
taqiah
on the day of the shooting. I didn't understand and asked what
taqiah
meant.

“It means you must lie for the good of your religion. In your heart you intend to lie, purposefully, so your lies will not be seen as wrong by God, because it is for the sake of your religion.”

On the day that my rehearsals were deemed satisfactory, they gave me my old clothes back to put on, along with a chador I wore on top
of my scarf and overcoat. My interrogator brought me into a room and told me to take off my blindfold. The room was divided by a thick curtain. The camera lens stuck out through the seam of the curtain, and a table and a chair were positioned in front of its gaze.

“Sit in the chair and start the interview.”