Captive in Iran (27 page)

Marziyeh

Other small acts of defiance sometimes made a difference as well. Reihaneh came from Ward 209 to the public ward and was assigned to our room. We’d heard a lot about her case from radio and television. She was a well-known journalist and blogger who had campaigned for Mr. Karroubi, and also with Mr. Khatami, a former president. Reihaneh was arrested after the elections for supporting them and being a member of the Green Movement. She had been in 209 for about fifty days. While she was there, she went on a hunger strike, refusing to take anything but tea and a few dates every day. She was transferred from 209 because the media were less likely to hear about her strike in the general ward than in the ward for political prisoners. When I first met her, she was pale and weak from physical and psychological torture; her malnutrition made her look even worse. She was nothing like the healthy, robust woman in the news photos.

Soon after Reihaneh arrived, Mrs. Rezaei called her to the office and said that her hunger strike was breaking the law. She must stop it immediately or be severely punished. Reihaneh ignored the threat.

Within a few days, Maryam and I got to know her. “I’ve heard a lot about you two Christians and your resistance,” she said. “Did you know that Christian prisoners are given asylum more easily now since you’ve been arrested and put in prison?”

“How could this be related to us?” Maryam asked.

“Since your arrest, foreign governments are more willing to accept Christians seeking asylum. They now believe that most of the Christians in Iran are under oppression, and that as soon as the Iranian government finds out about them, their lives are in danger.”

We had no idea our situation had made this kind of difference. We thanked God for His mercy and kindness. Reihaneh wanted to write the story of our lives and our Christian experience. Because I still spent most of the day in bed, it wouldn’t raise any suspicions if Reihaneh sat beside me for long periods of time. Thanks to her training as a reporter, she could take my story down in shorthand. The more we talked, the more interested Reihaneh became in Christianity, until finally she put aside her pen and notebook and
wanted to talk about faith. She knew a priest and his family in London who turned out to be an acquaintance of mine. How incredible that she and I would have a Christian friend in common halfway around the world!

“If this preacher is your friend,” I said, “I’m surprised you haven’t wanted to learn about Christ before.”

“I have my own personal beliefs,” Reihaneh answered. “But I’ve never heard anything like your experience with Christ. It’s very interesting to me.”

“I’ve told you so much about myself,” I said. “Now it’s your turn.”

Reihaneh explained that she had studied journalism and media, and had completed a course on human rights in England. She was active in defending human rights, especially rights for women. She wrote articles for reformist newspapers and began to attract a following. She was arrested and accused of taking part in illegal rallies, disturbing the peace, propaganda against the state, and insulting the president. Because she had been a faithful supporter of Mr. Karroubi, the authorities forced her to confess that she was having an affair with him in order to fabricate a corruption case against him and tarnish his reputation.

Reihaneh wanted to write a complete report of the plight of women in prison, an exposé of the abuse, corruption, and evil that made up the fabric of the Iranian prison system. With help from some other prisoners, I listed the names of every inmate, their charges, the year they were arrested, and all the details of their stories. Reihaneh made notes about the terrible medical care, the bad food, and the predatory lesbianism that was so widespread—and that, before the security cameras were in place, had routinely led to the rape and beating of new prisoners. In one especially gruesome case, a young woman had been raped in front of her child.

The first step in Reihaneh’s project was an article she wrote in the form of a letter to her interrogator in Ward 209, which she titled, “Doctor 209.” She read it to Maryam and me. It was a scathing yet hilarious letter condemning him in a sarcastic way and exposing things about him. She planned to get it out to a friend during a contact visit so it could be posted on her website.

Whether that letter made it to the outside world or not, we never knew. A few days later, Maryam and I had a mysterious visitor whose presence began a whole new chapter in our story. Without warning, the pace of our lives suddenly moved much faster, the danger suddenly much closer at hand.

MARYAM

It was visiting day. We weren’t due for our monthly contact visit, so this would be a regular visit sitting across from our sisters, a piece of glass between us, talking with them on the phone as our conversations were recorded by the guards. But this time, Marziyeh had told Elena not to come, because Marziyeh felt too sick to put up with the hours of standing and waiting required for the fifteen-minute visit. My sister and I would visit while Marziyeh stayed on the ward and rested in bed.

The trip to the visitors’ center—the long wait at the women’s prison, the minibus ride, another wait at the visitors’ center, the ride back, and still another wait to be frisked before returning to Ward 2—took even longer this time than usual. Word came around that the electricity in the visitors’ center was off, and we had to wait for it to come back on. After a long delay, the decision was made to let everyone with visitors that day, about thirty women, have a contact visit. This was a wonderful surprise! I walked down the stairs to greet Shirin, and we fell into each other’s arms, thanking God for the unexpected opportunity. We talked nonstop for my allotted fifteen minutes and then said our good-byes.

Back at the women’s prison, in line waiting to be searched, I leaned
against the office wall, exhausted from hours of standing. Suddenly, the door flew open and two men and two female guards walked briskly in. It was very unusual to see men in the women’s prison unannounced. The guards immediately ordered the prisoners to cover their hair completely.

These guys must be from Ward 209
, I thought.

One of the visitors, a middle-aged man with a round face, looked at me. “Are you Miss Rostampour?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Do you have any idea how long we have been waiting for you?” I was too surprised to speak. “You have caused a great deal of trouble for us with these letters of yours. Every day, we have to open and read letters about you and your case.”

“You have to read letters about me?”

“Yes! At least forty or fifty letters a day that have been sent to you from all over the world.”

“If the letters are sent to me, why should you be reading them? Perhaps this is another example of the abuse of human rights in this country—that you open and read other people’s mail.”

“Did you really expect us to give them to you so you could get more encouragement to defy us?”

We don’t need to read the letters to be encouraged by them
, I thought, my heart filled with joy.
The world is watching you. We have a family of faith that loves us and cares for us. We are not alone!

“Besides,” the man added gruffly, “unless the judge in your case permits it, we’re not allowed to give them to you. How long have you been in prison?”

“Seven months.”

“And are you still a Christian?”

“Yes, I am a Christian.”

“What have you decided to do? Are you still insisting on your decision, or have you changed your mind?”

“I’ve already gone through my interrogations and have nothing more to add to what I’ve told you already.”

The round-faced man looked at his companion. “She says she’s already gone through her interrogations.”

“Let’s go,” the other man said. Just like that, the two men left the cellblock.

During the entire exchange, the rest of the prisoners waiting to be searched had been absolutely silent. As soon as the visitors left, they all started talking at once.

“Do you know who those men were?” one of them asked me.

“Not really,” I said. “Who were they?”

“They’re from the security section of the ministry of intelligence.” To the other inmates, it was a case of famous security officials coming to visit a famous prisoner.

“So what? I’m not accountable to them, no matter who they are.” I did my best to sound confident and defiant. Inside, I was afraid of what could happen to me and Marziyeh. We knew all about the security section’s reputation for being particularly ruthless. Had they come to beat us? To torture us at last?

When I got back to the ward, I learned that the men had come there earlier. They had tried to speak with Marziyeh, but she had stayed in bed with her head under the blanket. The men had instructed some other prisoners to get Marziyeh up to talk with them. When one of the women poked her head under the blanket to pass along the directive, it was all she and Marziyeh could do to keep from laughing.

“I can’t come out. I’m not feeling well. I’m trying to sleep,” Marziyeh had said weakly, adding a couple of convincing coughs for good measure.

“You heard her,” the friend told the visitors. “She isn’t feeling well and she can’t talk to you.”

The men had then waited two hours for me to come back from the visitors’ area. No one, not even the inmates who had been at Evin the longest, could remember officials waiting two hours to see anybody. This kind of behavior was absolutely unprecedented.

It looked as if somehow, miraculously, the regime was starting to feel serious heat about keeping us in prison. We weren’t going to change our story. They couldn’t execute us as originally planned because too many eyes around the world were watching them now. Yet if they let us out while we
still proclaimed our Christian faith, they would lose face with the radicals who kept them in power. The tipping point was coming closer.

The next morning, after roll call and breakfast, Mrs. Mujahed, one of the ward monitors, ordered Marziyeh and me to put on our
chador
s and report to Mrs. Rezaei’s office immediately. When Marziyeh took longer to get ready than Mrs. Mujahed wanted, I went ahead by myself to take the pressure off. Three men were waiting for me—the two from the day before and a third man, who was older and had gray hair. At first, I assumed they were there to take me for punishment because of my behavior the day before. When I said hello, they all replied with looks of surprise.

“These gentlemen are from the security section of the prison,” Mrs. Rezaei explained. “They are here to see you.”

The older man with the gray hair asked, “Are you well?”

“Yes, thank you.”

The middle-aged man with the round face said, “She’s the one from yesterday who said she had already had her interrogations.”

“Yes indeed,” added the third visitor, a man in his thirties named Mr. Ramezani. “She’s the woman who mocked us yesterday.”

When Marziyeh came in and stood next to me, the men asked us to sit down.

“You were not feeling well yesterday, were you?” Mr. Ramezani asked Marziyeh.

“No,” Marziyeh said. “I’ve been sick for months.”

Mr. Ramezani turned to Mrs. Rezaei, who was sitting nervously behind her desk. “Doesn’t your health clinic look after these people?”

“Of course they do,” Mrs. Rezaei answered defensively. “I think we’ve sent her to the clinic several times.”

“Then why isn’t she better?”

Marziyeh spoke up. “Because they give all sick prisoners the same medicine, no matter what’s wrong with them, and it has no effect whatsoever. We’re not allowed to bring in our own medications from the outside.”

As Marziyeh and Mr. Ramezani continued to criticize the medical treat
ment, the other authorities left the office. After a momentary silence, Mr. Ramezani began a rambling speech that was rather hard to follow. Clearly, he was distressed and uncomfortable speaking to us, uncertain of what he wanted to say. As he spoke, his face grew pale and he began stuttering, looking at the floor like a nervous boy trying to propose marriage. Somewhere, someone was under pressure about our case, and the government was more desperate than ever to let us go without actually acquitting us.

“Someone had a dream about you,” he began, nodding toward me. “He was in prison in another city at the time, but told me about it. In the dream, Jesus encouraged him to meet you. That’s why I came to see you both yesterday.”

He turned his eyes toward Marziyeh. “Unfortunately, you, Miss Amirizadeh, didn’t want to see me, though I did have a polite encounter with your friend here. I told her that Evin receives dozens of letters for you every day that we have to read. I think you get more mail than the administration office. I’ve heard a lot of news about you now that you’ve become famous.” He paused awkwardly, then continued, “Let me say that I have nothing against your faith. In fact, to some extent I also believe in Christ, and there are a lot of verses in the Koran that confirm the things about Christ that you believe in.” He lowered his voice. “But maybe it’s not right to speak of these things here. And nobody knows what I said about my belief in Christ—what I’m telling you could put me in danger.”

Mr. Ramezani asked us some questions about our beliefs, and we shared a short version of our faith journey with him. “My beliefs are not like other Muslims,” he commented. “I disagree with what they do. If I said a word about it, it would definitely get me into trouble.” He asked us to read Surah 90 from the Koran and tell him what it meant to us the next time we saw him. “I interpret the verse to say that Jesus is a savior,” he said. Marziyeh and I said we would look it up.

“Somebody has asked me to come to see you and find out about your needs,” he stuttered, looking down at the floor again and back up. “I can help you get whatever you want from outside the prison—medicine, vitamins, blankets, clothes—just let me know.”

We told him we’d been trying to get vitamins for months. He handed us a phone number. “Give this number to your relatives,” he said. “They
can call the security office directly and get permission to bring vitamins in.” Marziyeh told him about the terrible food, the poor health of so many inmates—including herself—and the stupid early morning roll call. Though we had quit going outside in the cold ourselves, we still got threats and hassles from the guards, as did everybody else who wouldn’t go.

“Unfortunately,” Mr. Ramezani said, sounding genuinely apologetic, “I can’t do anything about that unless you have a letter from the clinic saying you’re sick. I’ll do my best to have the guards leave you alone, but you really need a letter.”

“But the clinic won’t give us a letter,” Marziyeh explained. “They don’t even examine us. Why would they give us a letter? And the new rule is only making matters worse—the terrible health care combined with the requirement to go outside in the cold every morning is making the sick prisoners sicker, and the ones who aren’t sick yet are going to catch something.”

“I know these problems very well,” Mr. Ramezani admitted. “But unfortunately, at Evin, they have their own special rules. Canceling the morning schedule must come from a higher authority. Until then, I will talk to Mrs. Rezaei about your needs and these conditions, and you try again to get a letter from the clinic.”

I was shocked at this man’s attitude and willingness to help us. Who was he really? And who had sent him? Marziyeh and I thanked him for his visit.

“No, no, I’m obliged to do this,” he insisted. “I’ve been ordered to come and see you. I too believe in Jesus Christ. He was tortured and crucified. The people who imprisoned you say this wasn’t so, but they’re making a huge mistake. Jesus was beaten, tortured, and crucified, and then He rose from the dead.”

Now I was even more shocked! We had been arrested, harassed, humiliated, and in prison for seven months for saying what this high prison official—seemingly feared and obeyed by everyone—was saying right in front of us in the office of the women’s warden. I asked him to tell us more about what he knew of Christ’s resurrection.

“I can’t talk about it in here. It isn’t allowed,” he replied in a halting tone. “We can talk some more about it on the outside. But please don’t mention to anybody that we’ve discussed Jesus like this. It will only make big problems for all of us.” We promised to keep our talk confidential. Then
our incredible conversation ended, and we went back to the ward, where our friends were waiting nervously for us.

In light of the visit we’d had the day before, and now with this high official coming to meet with us, they were worried we were about to be punished. We told them that everything was all right, that the authorities just wanted to know more about the letters we were getting from around the world. We didn’t mention the likelihood of getting vitamin pills, because we thought it might raise questions or cause trouble. Some of the other women were already jealous of the attention we got for being in the news so much. We didn’t want to give them any other excuses to resent us. Marziyeh called her sister, Elena, told her about our meeting, and passed along the phone number from Mr. Ramezani.