Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [116]
“Hi, Mazi, hi, hi,” Paola said when she picked up, as if wondering what her first words should be. Despite my best intentions, the moment I heard her voice, I could no longer control myself, and tears rolled down my cheeks. Rosewater hit me on the back of my head. “Mard baash!” he said. “Be a man!” He then pressed his head against mine to eavesdrop on what Paola was saying, even though we were speaking English and he couldn’t understand us. I wanted to beat his big head to a pulp with the receiver, but I didn’t dare move even the slightest bit, fearing that he would stop my conversation. I had so much to say to Paola, only I couldn’t find the words. “I love you,” I uttered between bursts of tears.
Paola was calm and strong. “The whole world is thinking about you, Mazi,” she said. “Everybody cares about you.” Her words were as reassuring and calming as my mother’s. It was almost as if she, too, had experienced decades of arrests and imprisonments in her own family. “We will get you out of prison, Mazi,” she told me.
“Tell her about Berlusconi and not giving interviews,” Rosewater said, shoving a note into my hand and pushing my blindfold up so I could read it.
Again Paola knew exactly how to avoid answering my question about her letter to Berlusconi. “Let me think, let me think,” she said innocently. “I don’t think I’ve written any letter to him. I’m fine. I’ve been to the doctor a few times and everything’s fine. I swim and walk every day.”
When Maryam died, Paola and I had agreed to name the baby Marianna Maryam if it was a girl, to reflect Paola’s Italian ancestry and my sister’s name, but we hadn’t decided on a boy’s name. Since the Leonard Cohen dream, I had decided that I wanted to call the baby Leo if it was a boy.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked Paola.
“I haven’t found out yet. You’ll be home soon.” She paused, and I thought I detected tears in her voice. “I’m waiting for us to find out together.”
“But I have to know, darling,” I told Paola. “I had a dream and want to call the baby Leo if it’s a boy.”
Rosewater was getting impatient. “Have you told her that you’ve made mistakes?” he wrote on another slip of paper.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Mazi,” Paola reassured me. “I know that the call is monitored, but no one thinks you’ve done anything wrong and everybody’s supporting you. Everybody!”
Hearing this news, I felt the weight lift from my chest, and for the first time in weeks, I could breathe normally again. A prisoner’s worst nightmare is thinking that he’s been forgotten, and Paola’s words reassured me that this idea—which had plagued me for weeks—was false.
“Please find out if it’s a boy or a girl,” I said to Paola as Rosewater reached toward the phone to end the call.
I tried to say “I love you” one more time, but the line had already gone dead.
“I love you!” he mocked as he handed me back to the prison guards.
But his words didn’t touch me the way they had over the last several weeks. That night, as I rolled one blanket into a pillow and lay down in the darkness and silence, I envisioned the day when I would finally get to see Paola again. I had so often entertained this thought while alone in my cell, or during interrogations, but doing so had always been painful. The experience had been very much like the weeks and months after Maryam died, when I would fall asleep praying for it all to be different—for the chance just to see her again.
But that night, as I pictured holding Paola’s hand, and kissing her pregnant belly, the thoughts felt different: they no longer felt like a hopeless fantasy.
“I’ll get home to you,” I whispered into the darkness. “I will.” I wrapped the second blanket tightly around my body, and for the first time in weeks, I slept through the night.
· · ·
Ramadan ended on September 19, and the weather in Tehran turned cooler. Rosewater no longer had to fast, and he wasn’t suffering from the sweltering summer heat. He