Then They Came For Me (21 page)

“Why is this American dressed like a spy, Mr. Bahari?” asked the new interrogator.

“He is pretending to be a spy. It’s part of a comedy show,” I answered.

“Tell the truth!” Rosewater shouted. I couldn’t believe it. He honestly seemed to believe what he was saying: that a spy had come to Iran and filmed me for a segment that had appeared on television. From the way he was speaking to me, I drew the conclusion that he was acting tough to impress the other man, who I assumed was his boss. “What is so funny about sitting in a coffee shop with a kaffiyeh and sunglasses?” he demanded.

“It’s just a joke. Nothing serious. It’s stupid.” I was getting worried. “I hope you are not suggesting that he is a real spy.”

“Can you tell us why an American journalist pretending to be a spy chose to interview you?” asked the other man. “We know that you told them who to interview for their program.” I had given Jason and Tim a number of names of people I thought they’d be interested in. Others Jason had interviewed—a former vice president and a former foreign minister—had been arrested a week before me as part of the Revolutionary Guards’ sweeping crackdown.

“It’s just comedy,” I said, feeling weak. I asked them to listen to the content of the interview. In it, I said that Iran and America had many things in common, like fighting drug trafficking and Al Qaeda. At the end of the interview, I concluded that George W. Bush’s infamous statement about Iraq, North Korea, and Iran being the “axis of evil” was as idiotic as Iranians going around and burning the American flag.

Rosewater pulled a chair over and sat in front of me. “Keep your head down,” he said. “Do you think it’s also funny that you say Iran and America have a lot in common?”

I had to give a careful answer. “Sir, all I’m saying is that Iran needs America for its security as much as America needs Iran for the security of its troops and its interest in the region. We are living in a world where nations cannot live in isolation and prosper. Aren’t we all interested in the prosperity of our country?”

“Why do you care about U.S. interests?” asked the new man.

“Don’t you know,” added Rosewater, “that Imam Khomeini called America the Great Satan?”

They didn’t let me answer.

“The imam also asked, ‘Why do we need to have a relationship with America?’ ” Rosewater’s boss said.

“America cannot do a damn thing!” Rosewater said, repeating one of Ruhollah Khomeini’s favorite phrases.

It was as if the two of them had been rehearsing this anti-American rant for months. They seemed to be enjoying it.

“Do you know why you told that spy about common interests between Iran and America?” asked Rosewater’s superior.

He seemed to have an answer ready, but I had to defend myself. I thought of my father, who could communicate with anyone. “These men are weak, Maziar,” I heard him say. “Appeal to their emotions. Gain their sympathy.”

“Sir,” I began, “many people die in plane crashes in Iran because the Americans do not sell spare parts from old Boeings to Iran, and Iran has to buy worthless defunct Russian planes. It saddens me to see so many of our compatriots die every year. We are an independent nation. Having relations with America doesn’t mean that we must be American slaves. Venezuela, Syria, Russia, and China do not agree with the U.S., yet they maintain diplomatic relations. And sometimes they even cooperate with America. I advocate an equal relationship between Iran and the United States. A relationship based on mutual respect.”

“And you want us to believe you?” the boss said.

“Mutual respect!” Rosewater mocked me.

“Mr. Bahari, the only reason you are searching for a common ground between Iran and America is that you want to find a way for them to infiltrate our country,” the boss concluded.

“We have kicked them out through the door and you want to bring them back through the window,” Rosewater added, finishing his thought.

“
Ahsant!
Bravo! Well said,” Rosewater’s boss declared.

Bravo for what?
I thought.
For being a brainwashed moron?

Rosewater finally said, “ ‘Tell America to be angry with us and die of that anger!’ Do you know who said that?”

“Yes, Martyr Beheshti,” I said. Mohammad Hossein Beheshti was the first head of Iran’s judiciary after the revolution. Anti-regime terrorists killed him and several other officials in a bombing in 1981. I knew Beheshti’s family. His son, Alireza Beheshti, had been a Mousavi adviser for years, and I had met with him a few times during the campaign. He’d been arrested a few days before I had.

“I find it ironic,” I added, “that you quote a statement from the heyday of the revolution while you have arrested the son of the man who said it.” The ridiculousness of using
The Daily Show
as evidence against me gave me enough courage to argue with my interrogators. “With all due respect, revolutions, like people, have to grow up, gentlemen,” I said.

Rosewater was taken by surprise. He grasped my left ear in his hand and started to squeeze it as if he were wringing out a lemon. As the cartilage tore, I could feel the pain, like a slow fever, inside my brain. Rosewater let go of my ear and then whispered into it, breathing heavily. “Didn’t you hear what the judge said?” It felt like my ear was broken. “I am your owner. This kind of behavior will not help you. Many people have rotted in this prison. You can be one of them.”

“Mr. Bahari is wise,” the other man said. “He will soon realize it’s in his own interest to cooperate with us.”

The man with the creased pants said something else to me as he left the room, but I didn’t hear him. My ear was ringing with pain.

·   ·   ·

A few minutes later, as I walked once again under the darkness of the blindfold from the interrogation room to my cell, I was hit hard by the thought that I might not be leaving anytime soon.
How will I survive here?
I asked myself. As my father used to say: “You can prepare yourself to go to prison, but when you get there, all you can think about is
How can I keep from shitting in my pants?
”

The guard locked the heavy steel door behind me. I removed the blindfold and passed it through the slot. I was coming to understand the routine.

Routine. It was, my father had said, one of the worst parts of prison. As I put my hand to my ringing ear, I thought I felt my mother’s soft fingers pressing the lobe tightly. I was eight or nine again, and she was gently scolding me. I had just returned from my friend Reza’s house, where I had gotten into trouble, again. The truth was, whenever I visited my friends I felt different, and lucky. I could see that none of the colorful conversations we had around our dinner table happened in their houses. There were no expletives used, and no one reminisced about their time in prison, where there were famous poets and musicians there to commiserate with. Instead, their fathers spoke politely about their work and school or, if they really wanted to communicate with us, about soccer or movies.

On this day, over lunch, Reza’s father had been telling me and some other kids about a recent trip to the zoo, imitating different animal sounds. The man was treating us like children. Even though I was a child, that didn’t mean I appreciated being treated like one. In our house, children would listen in on adults’ conversations. I never thought that a conversation about politics,
business, or prison was beyond my understanding. Reza’s father’s story bored me. “Is it right that animals choose their mates in the spring?” I interrupted. “Choosing mates” is a semipolite way of referring to sex in Persian. “Did you see them doing it?”

I’ll never forget the look on his face. He dropped the spoon onto his plate. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, it seems that we have an impolite boy in the group,” he said, shaking his head and looking me in the eye. My friends started to laugh. They were used to my wisecracks at school, where more often than not the teacher asked me to stand in the corner as punishment. Reza’s father immediately took me home. When we got to my house, he asked if my mother would come to the door, and then sent me inside.

My mother came up to my room a few minutes later, where I was reading a book. “Where did you learn that term?” she asked me.

I told her that I had heard my father say “Fuck you” to someone and then I’d asked Maryam what “fuck” meant. She said it meant choosing mates. My mother gave me a bewildered—although not wholly disapproving—look. “Well, you shouldn’t repeat what you hear at home to other people. Our house is different from others. Some of your friends’ parents will not like to hear you repeat the things we speak about in this house.” She then lovingly grabbed my ear. “Okay?”

It is not unusual for Iranian parents to tell their children to lie to strangers, especially in a political family like ours. From an early age, I had learned to live a double life. There was my life in the house, where I was exposed to ideas about the corrupt system that was ruling the country, and another life in which I was supposed to conform to what Iranian society expected of me. Sitting in my cell, I realized that this education had prepared me well for my current experience. From the moment I’d first smelled Rosewater, I’d known that I had to conceal my true self and my feelings toward him and his regime.
Now I would have to pretend that the arrest had changed me and that I would become a supporter of the regime, a hypocrite like most of its supporters. I would have to go along with his paranoia that the whole world has only one objective and that is to bring down the Islamic Republic, because trying to convince him otherwise was hopeless. Agreeing with what he said and somehow giving him enough to make him feel he’d achieved something in his interrogation with me was my only chance of getting out of this mess and joining Paola in London in time for the birth of our child. The difficult part would be doing all that while keeping my dignity and without naming names. As I struggled to fall asleep in my tiny cell, I wondered if that was possible.

It was the middle of the ninth night when Blue-Eyed Seyyed opened the door to my cell. “Get up! Specialist time!” he barked. I had had trouble falling asleep the previous night and as I fumbled with the blindfold, my body felt heavy and exhausted. Rosewater was waiting for me at a different door than usual, and did not offer his typical hello. Instead, he grabbed my arm and yanked me brusquely away from the prison guard. With his hand firmly on my arm, he pulled me down what seemed to be a path, with trees on both sides. Evin is near the mountains and so the nights there are cold, even in the summer. Tonight was particularly chilly. I welcomed the cold air; it helped wake me up and clear my head. I could hear Rosewater breathing heavily. The fact that this was not our usual routine worried me. I thought I should find a way to talk to him.

“I’m sorry if you don’t get much sleep because of me,” I said with a smile. I expected one of his sarcastic responses. But he sounded serious.

“The fun is over!” He pushed me harder with every step. “Islamic kindness is over.” His breath was heavy on my neck. “You little spy, we will show you what we can do with you. You are going to see what we are capable of.” He shoved me inside
a room where people were speaking in hushed tones. The smell of sweat, feet, and rosewater was strong.

Rosewater sat me down and pushed my head close to a table. “Keep your head like this,” he said.

A few moments later, the room erupted in a cacophony of greetings.

“Salaam, Haj Agha!”

“Hello, Haj Agha!”

Typically
Haj Agha
is a term of respect used for someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but among Iranian officials, it signifies seniority. Haj Agha took my hand.

“Salaam, Mr. Bahari. Do you know why you are here?” He sounded like a high-ranking Iranian official.

“No, sir,” I answered. “I’m still not even sure why I was arrested in the first place.”

“Well, we know exactly why you’re here,” Haj Agha said.

“But, sir—,” I said, raising my head to speak. Rosewater’s beefy hand forced it back toward the table.

“I told you to keep your head down!”

“Whatever you do, keep your blindfold on, Mr. Bahari,” Haj Agha said. “Do not even open your eyes.” He was giving me this warning, I thought, because he did not want to be recognized. Maybe I was correct, and he was a regime official.

“Is the car here yet?” Haj Agha asked someone in the room. Then he addressed me again. “Mr. Bahari, you’re suspected of espionage. You have been in contact with a number of known spies.” He named a few of my friends, mostly Iranian artists and intellectuals in exile. “A car is coming to take you to the counterespionage unit. There, you will be interrogated more … shall we say, aggressively? Sometimes up to fifteen hours a day. We are done playing games with you. It is time for you to talk.” I could sense him moving closer to me. “Our agents there are prepared to subject you to every tactic necessary. The investigation can take
between four and six years.” He paused. “If you are found innocent, you will, of course, be freed and we will offer you our apologies. But if you are found guilty, you could be sentenced to death.”

My heart sank with every word. This was the end of my magical thinking.

This prison, these people, these questions—this would be my life for the foreseeable future. I tried to quiet my mind, but I felt as if the earth had opened and I was being swallowed by it, powerless against everything. The black velvet blindfold became damp, and I didn’t know if it was with my sweat or my tears.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Haj Agha asked.

A cup of tea? “Yes, please. Thank you.” I could barely get out the words. I was lost in thoughts about my mother, about Paola, about our unborn child. How could I have put them in this situation? I felt the beginnings of a migraine creeping slowly up the back of my neck.

“Unless …,” said Haj Agha.

“Unless what?”

“Unless you would be interested in a deal, Mr. Bahari.”

“A deal?” I felt the blood move through my body again. Of course. I knew exactly what kind of a deal he wanted to make. I thought of all my friends who had been forced to confess on television. They were all freed eventually, and the dream of being with my family again was my only consolation as I remembered their tired and broken faces as they’d read their scripted confessions.