Then They Came For Me (28 page)

Rosewater gently patted me on my back. “What are you humming, Maziar?” he asked with a laugh. “Go back to your cell, and think about what we just discussed.”

It sometimes surprised me that in my imaginary conversations, my mother’s voice didn’t come to me as often as my father’s and Maryam’s. But I knew that I didn’t need to hear her voice to be inspired by her strength. Just as she had shielded me from many dangerous things throughout my life, Moloojoon now shielded me from Rosewater’s torture. I could stand his verbal and physical abuse because I knew Moloojoon protected me.

As I looked forward to my mother’s visit, I remembered the way she had supported me during my difficult high school years. I’d never been interested in my studies. My mother was often called to my school after I was caught skipping class to go to the national library to read old newspapers or, during class, when I was caught reading novels or books about politics or cinema instead of listening to my teachers. Whereas other parents might have been infuriated by such rebellious behavior, my mother, who had been a primary school teacher for twenty-seven years, until she retired in 1973, always defended me. “You just don’t understand the youth,” my mother would say to the principal. “You don’t know about their ideas, their needs, and what a difficult time they have in this society. So you just kick them out of your institutions and think your problems are solved.”

The incompetent school administrators never knew how to rationally answer my mother. But in their minds, the fact that I had such a strong mother was just one more reason to expel me and not have to deal with me for another year.

·   ·   ·

In the days before the visit of my mother and Mohammad, I was allowed to call home twice, for a few minutes each time. Rosewater wanted to know which of my friends were in touch with my family. Each time I called, Rosewater would put his head against mine and say, “Ask who’s been calling your family.”

Rosewater didn’t know that my mother was too smart for this. “No one,” she would answer. “No one is calling us except for Paola and your nephew.”

I couldn’t even imagine what my mother was going through. But her trembling voice calmed me down. I remembered the times when Maryam used to call us from prison in Ahvaz—how Moloojoon would cry immediately before and after talking to Maryam, always in her room, so she wouldn’t upset anyone
else. But when she talked to Maryam she would muster every ounce of courage and strength she could for the duration of the call. Afterward, I often thought that my mother’s soothing words and her compassionate, strong tone helped Maryam endure prison.

On the morning of the visit, I was given a haircut and allowed to shave. As the barber cut my hair, Rosewater stood behind me and gave me instructions on what I should and should not say during the meeting. I could not ask my mother anything about the lawyer she had mentioned or my case. “Nothing about your friends outside of Iran and nothing about political events in the country,” Rosewater said. Our conversation had to be limited to family matters and my mother’s and Mohammad’s health. Someone was going to be assigned to sit at the table with us, to monitor our discussion. “A word out of normal family greetings and conversation and I will stop the meeting,” Rosewater said. “Do you understand?” he yelled before slapping me on the back of my head.

“Is he your interrogator?” the barber asked after Rosewater left the room.

“Yes.”

A look of sympathy passed his face. “Poor you.”

They blindfolded me, led me to a car, and drove me the few minutes from the building where my cell was to the visitors’ hall. Rosewater stayed next to me every step of the way, and used the opportunity to give me further warnings. “Remember your mother’s face, Maziar. This may be the last time you see it. Imagine how she will feel in a few days’ time while you are walking to the noose because you chose not to tell us which foreign agency you’re working for.”

The visitors’ hall was a large space with white walls lit brightly by fluorescent bulbs. There were about twenty white round plastic tables, each with four white plastic chairs around it. The hall was very clean, and it seemed that the judiciary,
which runs prisons in Iran, tried to make sure that visiting families were left with a good impression of life inside Evin. A few men in relatively clean blue uniforms were mopping the floor. There were no uniformed guards in the hall, but there were security cameras all around us.

A few prisoners sat at the tables, sharing meals with their families. I didn’t see any familiar faces. I sat down with the guard assigned to monitor our conversation. A chubby middle-aged man with a small mustache, he wore his white shirt with the tails outside his pants. He smiled and offered me a small pack of salted sunflower seeds. As we waited, the man explained that, in the past, the space had been divided into cubicles. “But because of Islamic kindness, the government decided to get rid of the cubicles so the prisoners and their families could enjoy a larger space,” he told me.

There was no trace of irony in his voice. It seemed perfectly fine to him to arrest, jail, and torture innocent people as long as you gave them a haircut, provided a nice place for them to meet their families, and offered them a snack.

I kept my eyes trained on the door, waiting to see my mother’s face. Since I’d said good-bye to Moloojoon on the morning of my arrest, more than a month before, I’d been haunted by the sad look in her eyes. Remembering this now, I felt tears begin to roll down my cheeks. “Mr. Bahari, you’re a grown-up, you shouldn’t cry like this,” the guard said. I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but instead I asked him to take me to the washroom so I could wipe my face. I didn’t want my mother to see me crying. In front of the sink, I tried to remember a funny scene from a movie to help me stop crying. But as I attempted to summon a scene from
Wedding Crashers
or
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
, instead I kept thinking of how Rosewater had beaten me for not liking Nescafé.

Since damaging her back carrying a heavy box of Tudeh Party leaflets while she was pregnant with Babak in 1953, my
mother has had a difficult time walking up stairs. In order to reach the visitors’ hall, she had to climb a steep flight of stairs, and when Moloojoon finally entered the visitors’ hall, I could see that she was in pain. I felt guiltier than ever for putting her through this experience again—of having to visit someone she loved in prison.

During our telephone conversations, I’d known that my mother was trying hard to appear strong, just as I was—desperate to keep from her the fear and loneliness I felt each night, alone in my cell; the way my thoughts still often wandered to my eyeglasses and the idea of slitting my wrists. But the façades we’d both been working to present crumbled as we hugged each other.

“Mazi jaan, Mazi jaan, cheh ghadr laghar shodi,”
she said, immediately noticing how thin I’d gotten. Her eighty-three-year-old body shook with the strength of her sobs.

Mohammad, always the epitome of calmness and strength, stood by my mother’s side. He tried to calm both of us down, and encouraged us to take a seat. We did as we were told, but we couldn’t stop crying. At first, my mother didn’t notice the prison guard sitting at our table. When she finally saw the man, she gave him a uniquely insulting look.

“Who is this?” she asked me loudly so the man could hear her. Then she turned to him, asking, “Do you have any children?” The man, clearly surprised by my mother’s uninhibited disgust, said he was not married.

“Why not? I thought your mothers forced you to marry early,” she said, referring to the religious families of many government supporters. I tried to change the subject.

“How are you, Moloojoon? How are you feeling?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” she answered dismissively before turning once again to the guard. She clearly wanted to shame him for his career choice. “Why is it you don’t have a family of your own?”

“Don’t worry about this gentleman’s family,” I said. “I’m
sure he has good reasons for not getting married. Have you been in touch with Paola?”

“Yes, she’s called me a few times.” Paola doesn’t speak Persian, so she had asked my half-Iranian friend Lizzy to translate her calls.
“Paola, mahshareh,”
my mother said, calling Paola “amazing.” I understood immediately what this meant: Paola was campaigning for me and staying strong. Years of visiting political prisoners had taught my mother how to communicate her ideas in one or two words. It was all I wanted to hear, and my mother knew that.

Because we couldn’t speak about anything related to my case or the lawyer my mother had hired, we spent the fifteen minutes of our visit talking about different relatives and distant cousins. I actually began to feel sorry for the prison guard, so every now and then I explained whom we were talking about. At times, to our surprise, he would offer a comment about our family affairs.

“Are you still in solitary confinement?”

“Please, talk only of family subjects,” the guard said.

“Of course,” my mother answered. “But you keep on interrupting us.” I gave the guard a “she’s out of control” smile and tried to change the subject, asking Mohammad about the swine flu epidemic that had started a few months before my arrest. My mother interjected before Mohammad could respond.

“The real swine flu is this government that has plagued the country for the past thirty years,” she said.

“Moloojoon!” I tried to look upset, but inside I was proud of her. The guard was dumbfounded by her audacity. He sat quietly during the rest of the conversation. When we said good-bye, my mother hugged me and whispered into my ear, “Don’t worry about anything. Paola is doing all she can to get you out.” Mohammad didn’t have any special message for me. Looking at his calm and peaceful face, I was confident that all that could be done for me outside of the prison was being done.

I was hoping to return to my cell, where I could cherish the memory of my mother’s voice and face, but instead I was taken directly to an interrogation room, where Rosewater was waiting for me. He pulled a chair up next to me and whispered, “I feel sorry for you, Mazi.” It was the first time that he’d called me Mazi, and I figured he’d eavesdropped on our conversation and heard my mother address me that way. When my friends and family call me Mazi, the nickname is familiar and affectionate. When Rosewater said it, it sounded obscene. “You are the most miserable of creatures, Mazi. You’re rotting in this prison for people who are laughing at you. Haven’t you come to your senses after seeing your mother’s sad face? Don’t you want to cooperate?”

After everything that had happened that day and the last few days, I felt on the verge of a mental and physical collapse. I knew that I was never going to cooperate with Rosewater, but the pressure was becoming unbearable. I lowered my head and whispered my own mantra: “Moloojoon, Maryam
joon
, Paola, Moloojoon, Maryam
joon
, Paola.” Saying these names gave me strength.

“What are you whispering?” Rosewater said, pulling my hair. I didn’t pay attention to him and kept on repeating the names of my loved ones. “What are you whispering, I asked,” he demanded, hitting me on the back of my head. I continued, ignoring him. Rosewater rolled up the papers on which I was supposed to write my confessions about the reformist leaders and hit me on the head with them. “
Bad bakht
, you miserable man, you’re gonna die here, you
bad bakht
,” he repeated as he swatted at my head and face.

In order to protect my face I raised my hands, but he shoved them away with such force that I fell from the chair. I was on the floor, but that didn’t stop him from striking my head with the rolled-up papers. I looked at his face, red with anger as he bent over to hit me in the head. “
Negah nakon!
Don’t look at
me!” he ordered, continuing to punch me. “
Bad bakht khodam mikoshamet
. I will kill you myself, you miserable man.” He then kicked me a few times in the back. I lay on the floor, breathing heavily. His cell phone was ringing, but he didn’t answer.

A migraine crept over my head as Rosewater’s spit began to dry on my face. I felt sullied and violated but also encouraged: I hadn’t signed the false confession. In that moment, I was proud of myself. When I returned to my cell afterward and lay on the green carpet, I felt my father’s presence beside me. I knew that he was proud of me, too.

·   ·   ·

I once filmed a man hanging from a noose. He was Saeed Hanaei, a religious serial killer who had murdered sixteen prostitutes in the city of Mashhad, in northeastern Iran. I had interviewed him inside the Mashhad prison a few months before his death, and knew that he had no remorse about strangling those women to death. Hanaei told me that he wanted to rid the earth of corrupt elements; he knew that his killings had paved his path to paradise.

When I woke up a few hours later that night, feeling the familiar ache in my back and legs from sleeping on the floor, I couldn’t get the image of Hanaei’s death out of my mind. As I tried to fall back asleep, I worried that my nightmares would be riddled with images of a dead man hanging from the noose. But I didn’t dream of Hanaei. I dreamt of Rosewater. We were alone in a prison sometime in the future, and this time, I was interviewing him. Unlike the serial killer, Rosewater regretted his past deeds and was uncomfortable talking about them. In my dream, I could see Rosewater’s face. His big head was covered with drops of sweat, his stubble was longer, and his thick glasses were foggy with steam. The school chair in which he sat was too small for him, and he kept fidgeting in his seat.

It was my turn to ask questions. I stood in front of him and
stared him in the eye. It was surprising, what I found there: not the gaze of a monster but signs of humanity. “Do you really believe that I am a spy?” I asked him.

He didn’t answer and looked down, trying to avoid my stare. “I have to make a living,” he said quietly. “I don’t make any decisions.”

“Why are you accusing
me
of espionage?”

“I’m sorry about that,” Rosewater said.