1
THE BLINDFOLD is firmly tied. My consciousness is divided between the darkness that my eyes strive to penetrate and stark terror. When the blindfold is removed, the first thing my vision registers is the face of the man who is to be my interrogator. He is standing, I am sitting, but my gaze instinctively seeks out this man's face. It's not an attractive face. I can see immediately that he knows the impact his appearance will have on a young woman, really a child, snatched from the streets without warning. He knows everything about my terror.
He is tall, fat, and bald, and he stinks. I don't know whether the stink comes from his breath or from his body, but it is foul, like rotting meat. He is perhaps fifty years old, with an untidy beard streaked with gray. He wears a long shirt hanging out over his trousers.
He draws himself up even more fully erect and stares down at me, as if to reinforce the dominance not only of his stature but of the power he has over my life. Some part of my mind, even in the midst of my fear, recognizes that this man is enjoying himself, and that this is only the beginning of his enjoyment. He has already summed me up: pampered middle-class princess from the university, playing at politics in street protests against the regime. I'm a toy to him. Maybe he hates me, too, but more important than his hatred is the enjoyment I will provide. I am guessing at his opinion of me, of course; the only things I can really be sure of are my fear and the aching desire to be safe, to be in the care of someone—my father, my mother—who wishes me exactly the opposite of what this man has in store for me.
I know where I am, or at least I can guess: this is Evin Prison, in northern Tehran, some miles from my home in the inner suburbs. I have heard of this place; everyone I know—all of my friends from the university—has heard of it. We all know it is a place to be avoided, but only in the way that the good people in children's stories know that they must avoid the ogre's castle. It did not truly occur to me that a good person—I!—could be dragged into this bad place. What had I done to deserve this? Voiced a few opinions, handed out petitions, gathered in street protests with my friends. I had never hurt anyone, never fired a gun, never thrown a stone. This is the horrifying contradiction of my situation: I want it to be known that I am someone who loves peace and books and conversations with my friends, but these things are irrelevant to this man who stands before me. If his instructions are to kill me, he will kill me. The world he inhabits is brutal, primitive. There is nothing in him to which I can appeal. Nothing.
The interrogator lets the reality of my situation sink in. He sits at a desk facing me and says nothing for some time. Finally, he looks down at some papers spread on his desk. "Zarah Ghahra-mani, born in 1981, with birth certificate number eight-four-three issued in Tehran, a student doing a translation course, is that right?"
"Yes," I reply softly.
He strikes the desk hard with the flat of his hand, and I almost leap from my chair, such is my shock. My eyes had been slightly averted, half closed, but now they open wide—as wide as they can possibly be.
"When you wanted to change the future of the country at the university, were you speaking so softly?" he shouts.
I don't respond. Just for a split second, I shut my eyes and rapidly pray for God to intervene and make me safe.
The interrogator hits the desk once more, as loudly as the first time. I don't move.
"When I ask you something, answer me, do you understand?"
"Yes," I reply, my voice seeming to come from somewhere far away from where I sit.
The interrogator leans back in his chair and tugs at the strands of his beard.
"What is your name?" he asks, when he is good and ready.
"Zarah Ghahramani," I reply.
"Full details!" he shouts.
I swallow to free my throat from the constriction of fear.
"Zarah Ghahramani," I answer, in a voice neither too soft to antagonize this man nor too loud, for that might make me seem belligerent. I am trying to educate myself in this man's preferences, trying to learn what expression, what tone of voice, what demeanor will placate him just enough to save me from his temper. "Born in Tehran, birth certificate number eight-four-three, student of translation, entrant of year thirteen seventy-nine."
He makes no response at first. His plump hands are toying with a pen on the desk before him. My gaze becomes transfixed by the fidgeting motion of his hands, as if the power he has over me is concentrated in them. I think of what his hands might do to me, not knowing at this moment that those plump hands will become an enduring image in the nightmares that await me, not knowing that everything I fear from those hands will come to pass.
I place my own hands on the desk. I am making a deliberate attempt to regain some control of myself. I am attempting to look like someone who is ready to begin a sensible, logical conversation. Against my better judgment, I am going to treat this dreadful man as if he has some compassion. I am going to speak to him as if he cares about my situation, even though he doesn't. This is whistling in the dark, yes, but I must at least try to relieve my humiliation, if only for a few minutes.
He is observing me thoroughly while hiding his stare. When he sees that I have placed my hands on the desk, he says, "Are you ready, then?"
Instantly my courage falters.
"Ready for what?"
He gives me a menacing look.
"Only I ask questions," he says. "Do you understand?"
"Yes."
All of a sudden and for no reason he bursts into laughter. His laugh reminds me of the shabby old man in an Iranian novel by Sadea Hedayat called The Blind Owl. Hedayat writes that this old man has a laugh "that makes your hair stand on end." If I weren't so scared, I would sneer at my interrogator for having adopted so many of the clichéd mannerisms of bad guys in books and movies.
"Do you know why you are here?" he says.
I don't answer.
"No," he replies, answering his own question, "you don't know, do you? You have to remain here because the country does not need rubbish like you."
I shake my head as a sign of disagreement. I merely wish to say that I am not rubbish, or anything like rubbish. Even more foolishly, I say, "But why?"
He comes abruptly from behind his desk and shoves his face so close to mine that it is almost touching me. "Didn't I tell you, I am the only one who asks questions!"
I have shut my eyes defensively, as if preparing for a blow. I open them again and feel his spit spraying my cheeks. The foul smell of him! I am close to vomiting, and would vomit except that I have not been given anything to eat for days and there is nothing to throw up.
He sits down again and stares across at me with contempt. He waits, letting me dwell in my terror. In God's name, what was I thinking? That this man would talk to me intelligently, reasonably, listen to my side of the story?
He begins to ask me about my family. He speaks in a tone of false intimacy, as if he were an old family friend. How is this person, how is that person? I know perfectly well that he seeks to lull me into believing I am now safe, that he has spent his temper and is now going to be calmer, more sensitive. I am waiting for the blow. I know the blow is coming. This vile man with his techniques of interrogation learned from bad movies is aiming his blow, taking his time. How disgusting that he should name the members of my family with his stinking, unwashed mouth! How repulsive that he should use their names! But that is not the blow.
"Tell me," he says quietly, "how is the old Savaki?"
He means my father.
This is the blow.
2
THE INTERROGATOR, HIMSELF the agent of tyranny, had invoked the name of an older agency of tyranny. SAVAK had been the state security arm of the Pahlavi regime—the regime that ruled my country until two years before my birth in 1981. The shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, had been swept from power by one of the defining events of the twentieth century, the Islamic Revolution of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. SAVAK had been the most detested institution of the shah, a secret police force licensed to torture, murder, and imprison at will. Even by the hideous standards of such institutions through the centuries, SAVAK stood out as especially vile. The agents of SAVAK were known as Savaki, but my father had not been one of them. He had been a high-ranking officer in the shah's army, loyal to Pahlavi, yes, but not a zealot, not a thug, not a killer. The interrogator had wished to shock me by calling my father "the old Savaki"; shock me, sicken me, further reduce my ability to resist his will. He was saying, in effect, "You are the daughter of a devil if I say you are. There is no limit to the means I might employ to harm you. Nobody will sympathize with you."
Although I was born after Khomeini's triumphant return to Iran and grew up under the regime he created, I was raised as if Pahlavi were still in power, or at least as if he might soon return to power. For the first four or five years of my life, I was unaware of any rules and restrictions other than those that originated with my mother and father. I ate everything on my plate because, in other parts of the world, children were starving. I didn't repeat certain words that my older brothers and sisters sometimes used when angry. And so on. But by 1986, when I turned five, it must have become apparent to my father and mother that the zealots who ruled Iran were there for keeps, and so I was required to adopt a second set of rules and restrictions, an outdoor set imposed by the state.
Excerpted from My Life As a Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani.
Copyright © 2008 by Zarah Ghahramani and Robert Hillman.
Published in First edition, 2008 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.
