Then They Came For Me (29 page)

“Why me?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” Rosewater’s expressions reminded me of an interview I had seen with a South African torturer after the fall of the apartheid regime. Faced with questions about his crimes, the man had no answer, except to blame it on others and say how sorry he was.

“Why did you beat me? Why did you slap, kick, and punch me?”

Rosewater’s head was still down. “I don’t think you’re a spy,” he said. “But they told me they needed a spy. It was my job to force you to become one, even if it was through lies.” Each word caused Rosewater more regret. I was not sure if he was acting or if he really felt guilty. He seemed to be struggling with an invisible force that was pushing him off his chair. I wanted to punch him the same way he had beaten me, and to stomp all over his body, but at the same time, the thought horrified me.

“Stop interrogating him,” my father’s voice said to me. “He’s making you into a monster.”

Suddenly, Rosewater was far away from me, on the other side of the room. I tried to get close to him, but he was already on the floor and someone or something was killing him. He was dying fast. By the time I reached him, he was already dead. His body was rotting. Maggots were crawling all over him. I heard loud laughter in the darkening room.

I woke up feeling nauseous. I threw up in the plastic bag in
which my breakfast had been delivered that morning. I sat in the corner of my cell, sweating and shivering.

·   ·   ·

A week later, I was walking as fast as I could with my blindfold on during my
hava khori
. My body was still hurting from Rosewater’s beatings and many nights of fitful sleep, and the fact that I hadn’t seen him in several days made me anxious about what they might have in store for me.

“You exercise too much,” Blue-Eyed Seyyed said, leading me back to my cell afterward. But this time, he didn’t shut and lock the door behind me as he usually did. Instead, he looked around my small cell. “We think you need a smaller place. Pack your stuff. You have to change cells.”

My “stuff” included two blankets, a bottle of water, the Koran, and a book of prayers. I was desperate for anything to read, but both books were written in Arabic, which I didn’t know. I gathered them and followed him up a flight of stairs. Despite what Blue-Eyed Seyyed had said, the new cell was much bigger and, most importantly, had a window. Left alone there, I could hear two other prisoners speaking to the guard. I immediately recognized their voices: former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi was in the cell next to mine, and former deputy speaker of parliament Behzad Nabavi was in the cell across the hall.

They were both among the most outspoken and influential figures in the reformist movement. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a rotund man in his early fifties with a permanent smile, was an open-minded cleric. Abtahi had been reformist Mohammad Khatami’s vice president for eight years. He was also the first prominent Iranian politician to start his own blog, in which he criticized the conservatives who ran the courts and the army.

Behzad Nabavi had spent many years in prison before the revolution and had held a number of high-ranking positions in
the early years of the Islamic regime. Prior to the election,
Newsweek
had asked me to compile a list of the most influential Iranians. According to a pro-Ahmadinejad conservative pundit I interviewed, Nabavi was “the most devious element in Iranian politics.

“I’m sure he’s behind all the conspiracies against the supreme leader,” the pundit said. Khamenei must have thought the same thing. Nabavi had been among the first group of people arrested after the election, on Khamenei’s specific orders. Nabavi later claimed that his arrest warrant had been issued weeks before the election, and that the Guards had only been waiting for an opportunity to jail him.

I didn’t know why they had put me on the same level with such influential figures. I sat on the floor, gazed out the window, and searched for the strength to look on the bright side. After all, my cell was larger and cleaner, and I could see the sunlight again. I carefully rolled the blankets into a wide pillow, like the ones that covered our big bed in London. Placing the pillow on the floor, I leaned back into it, closed my eyes, and focused on the sun.

·   ·   ·

A few days later, on the morning of August 1, 2009—forty-two days into my stay at Evin—I was dreaming the most beautiful dream. I was in Croatia, making love with Paola. We had just finished one of my favorite dishes in the world: Croatian grilled calamari, accompanied by a cold glass of white wine. We were lying on a sandy beach and her soft skin was slowly growing dark with the sun. I rubbed the beads of sweat that covered the small of her back.

The top slot of my door opened. “
Shazdeh, pasho
. Get up, my prince.” It was Brown Sandals. “Put these on.” A new prison uniform and my blindfold landed on the floor of my cell. Brown Sandals waited outside while I changed. I wasn’t sure
what was going on, and my thoughts remained with Paola in Croatia.

“I feel privileged to be in the company of Mr. Abtahi and Mr. Nabavi,” I said as I dressed, hoping to get any information about why I had been moved. I was shocked when Brown Sandals answered me.

“I heard you’re going to be tried with them,” he said. “And they said that you need to get a haircut.”

Outside the bathroom, a few other prisoners were waiting for a haircut. When it was my turn, a prison guard sat me down, kept my blindfold on, and, in a matter of seconds, trimmed my hair and beard.

“Do you use gel?” he asked.

This is amazing
, I thought.
They deny you your basic rights and then, when they want to put you on trial, they offer you hair gel
.

“Sure, I’ll have some,” I said.

After my haircut, I was taken outside. I could hear dozens of other men being moved around as well. There was a cacophony of guards shouting orders, wardens looking for keys, and people asking where they should stand or sit down.

I was eventually separated from the group and taken to a dark room; there I was asked to remove my blindfold. Before me was a breakfast of flat bread and cheese, and a small cup of tea. I was starving, but I could barely chew the food. Was it true that I was going to be tried today? Was I about to be killed? I felt the bread lodge in my dry throat.

Suddenly, Rosewater was behind me, his hand on my shoulder. “You thought I was joking about your trial?”

I couldn’t answer him.

“You’ll have a trial today and then an interview,” Rosewater said. “Then I’ll suggest a sentence to your judge, based wholly on your performance. We need names today, Maziar. We need a lot of names.”

I was left alone in the dark room for hours after that. I heard the call for morning prayers, but no one came to take me to the bathroom. I’d had two cups of tea and really needed to use the toilet, but I’d been told to sit in my chair and not move.

After what felt like an eternity, a guard finally came for me. He put handcuffs on me and sat me in the back of a car, blindfolded. I was allowed to remove the blindfold only when we reached Chamran Expressway, about a mile south of Evin. There were three armed guards wearing civilian clothes in the car.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Sshhh,” one guard said. “You’ll find out soon.”

It was the first time I had been out of Evin since my arrest six weeks earlier. I tried to absorb every scene and face I was seeing. I knew that I’d be back in my cell soon enough, and I was desperate to keep as many fresh images of the outside world as possible in the depository of my memory. Everything looked so bright: the colors were more vivid than I’d remembered, and I felt that even the wind was a colorful shade of blue. One of the guards’ cell phones rang.

“No. Tajbakhsh is not with us,” the guard said. “We have Bahari.”

Hearing the name Tajbakhsh felt like one of Rosewater’s slaps on the back of my head.
What the hell?!
I thought.
Is Tajbakhsh still in Iran?

Between 2003 and 2007, the Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh had worked for the Open Society Institute (OSI), an organization run by the billionaire George Soros that promotes democratic values in former communist countries and many other nations. Tajbakhsh had held this position with the official permission of Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs until, in 2007, he was arrested by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and held for four months in Evin. His arrest and that of two other scholars
were part of the first wave of incarcerations of those accused of fomenting a velvet revolution in Iran.

The OSI’s role in the soft revolutions in Georgia, in 2003, and Ukraine, in 2004, was not a secret. The organization had offices in both countries, and in both had openly endorsed a move to a more democratic state. But OSI had never received official permission to open offices in Iran, and Tajbakhsh worked only within the framework set for him by the Iranian government. Nonetheless, at the time, Tajbakhsh was forced to make a television appearance in which he admitted to being guilty of working with Soros to undermine the regime. The other two scholars left Iran immediately after their release, but Tajbakhsh stayed in Iran. He loved his country and wanted to raise a family there, and he believed the assurances of the Ministry of Intelligence that if he didn’t get involved in politics, they would allow him to continue his job as an urban planner. I thought Tajbakhsh would have left the country immediately when he noticed that the situation was becoming more repressive. I later learned that after the election in June, the Revolutionary Guards had arrested Tajbakhsh in his house, in front of his wife and their two-year-old daughter.

The Guards had chosen three people to connect the reformists with foreign governments. I was supposed to be the media connection, Tajbakhsh was the connection to foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and Hossein Rassam, a political adviser to the British embassy, was the connection to foreign embassies in Tehran.

Part of Rassam’s job as political adviser was to meet different political figures in the country and write papers for the British embassy staff based on those conversations and his own analyses. Rassam had held that position for years with no interference, until two weeks after the election, when he was arrested and charged with espionage. By arresting the three of us
and parading us in front of television cameras, the Guards hoped to convince Iranians that the postelection unrest had been provoked by foreigners.

Rassam was going to be tried on a later day, but Tajbakhsh and I were among the first to be put on trial. I was taken to the Imam Khomeini Judicial Complex, in central Tehran, and led to a small office in the back of the building. As I followed the guard, I caught a glimpse of Tajbakhsh in a smaller room across the hall. He was sitting at a small table with Rosewater, going through a series of notes. I was surprised to see Rosewater there, and his presence confirmed one of my fears: that he was a high-ranking member of the Revolutionary Guards, responsible for high-level prisoners. I wished for the chance to speak to Tajbakhsh, but knew it would not come. He was being guarded by several men.

One of the guards in the room where I was taken had been part of the team who had raided my house and arrested me. He’d been in charge of keeping an inventory of my confiscated DVDs and equipment.

“How are you, Mr. Bahari?” he asked with a smile. “How is your mother? Have you seen her since that day?” I thanked him and said that she’d visited me a few days ago.

“Mr. Bahari’s mother is a very strong woman,” the guard told another man. The mention of Moloojoon’s name made me really proud. There was a newspaper lying on the table, and I managed to read one headline before the guard grabbed it: something about the dangers of swine flu for pilgrims in Mecca.

“I guess the swine flu is a real problem,” I said to the guard, hoping to distract him so I could focus on watching Rosewater and Tajbakhsh in the other room. From what I could hear, Rosewater was telling Tajbakhsh what to say.

Rosewater glanced up and caught my eye. “Don’t look!” he yelled as he jumped up and ran at me. I lowered my head, preparing
for his punch. Instead, he leaned over me and moved his jacket so I could see his gun in its holster.

“Do you know him?” Rosewater asked, referring to Tajbakhsh.

“Not personally,” I said. “Is it Kian Tajbakhsh?”

“No, it’s my aunt!” he answered.

Rosewater told the other guards in the room to leave. “Listen, Maziar,” he said. “There are dozens of former ministers and members of parliament in the courtroom right now. They’re all admitting to their crimes and dishing the dirt about each other. Why do you think you’re so different from them?” He ran his fingers through my gelled hair. “Nice haircut,” he said. “It will be such a pity if the last time your mother sees her beautiful son is on television.” Then he slapped me hard on the head.

“Listen, you
bacheh khoshgel
”—you pretty boy—“you either name everyone on the list I gave you and apologize to the supreme leader for breaking his heart, or you’re going to be sentenced today and executed a few days from now.” He slapped me on the head again and opened the door. “It’s your choice to live and see your mother, or die for Mousavi and Rafsanjani.” He shut the door behind him.

I was eager to know what was happening inside the courtroom. I would later learn that the reality was far more absurd than anything I could have imagined. The “trial” was the first in a series of show trials that the Islamic government would stage after the election. A number of sources told me that the trials were produced on Khamenei’s direct orders, meant to show the strength of the regime and disgrace the reformist leaders who were paraded in front of the press in their prison uniforms.

The scene was something out of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Stalin himself had staged similar show trials, in which a couple dozen high-ranking former Communist Party officials
were put on trial for treason and allegedly planning to assassinate Comrade Stalin. The difference was that the culprits in Stalin’s courts had clear, albeit fabricated, charges against them; the incrimination procedure was thorough. In Khamenei’s version, the charges could be anything from possession of a satellite television, to throwing stones at the Revolutionary Guards, to being in contact with the CIA. The Guards had collected more than a hundred prisoners of different backgrounds and political affiliations under the same roof. There were former ministers and parliamentarians, as well as a number of young kids who had done nothing more than attend a demonstration. It seemed as if everyone had been arrested for the same reason: to show the widespread nature of the
fetneh
—the sedition, as Khamenei called the postelection demonstrations. But there was not enough time to try each prisoner, leaving the prosecutor to read a long statement that sounded like the same propaganda and nonsense the Iranian people had heard too many times before.