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By Root 498 0

that it was Mohammad Atrianfar, the former deputy minister of interior who had praised Khamenei’s greatness in the press conference after the show trial. The fifty-six-year-old Atrianfar had been a revolutionary since his student days in the early 1970s. After the revolution, he became part of the Islamic government’s security and military apparatus. I had interviewed Atrianfar several times and had always enjoyed his stories about traveling to Libya and Syria to buy contraband arms during the Iran-Iraq War, when Iran was embargoed by most of the world. He kissed me on both cheeks. “Welcome, Maziar. Isn’t this great? Coming here has got to be a good omen. I think we’ll be freed soon.” He stroked his thick gray beard. “You have to make sure that you feed the rat,” he told me.

I assumed “feeding the rat” meant something like bribing the guards or being nice to them. “Feed the rat?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said with a big smile. “We have a big rat that comes to the courtyard, and we take turns feeding it.”

I looked around my new environment. The cell was surrounded by high walls and had two large windows and a glass door—all of which were covered by metal grates. It also had its own small courtyard, kitchen, bathroom, and shower—even a television set. This shared cell was definitely an improvement over solitary confinement, but it was also obvious that we’d be more scrutinized here: two security cameras, mounted in the courtyard, pointed at the cell, and I noticed several microphones placed throughout the room as well.

There were five individual beds in the cell, with proper mattresses, clean sheets, and blankets. For the first time in more than three months, I even had a real pillow. The walls were made of three-inch bricks, and the courtyard was covered with polished gray cement. I later learned that the cell was part of the block that belonged to the internal affairs unit of the Revolutionary Guards. It was here that they kept high-ranking commanders who had been arrested on various charges.

Atrianfar told me that he had been moved to the communal cell two days earlier, and in the meantime, he had transformed it into a cozy studio apartment, anticipating the arrival of his new cellmates. He had tea and sweets waiting; he had prepared them himself. We could give the guards a shopping list for fruits and vegetables twice a week, he explained; the money was then deducted from the cash they’d taken away from us on the day of our arrest.

I later learned that since a couple of days before Ramadan, I’d been considered one of twelve VIP prisoners. Not long after I arrived in the new cell, Saeed Shariati, the spokesman for the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the main reformist party, which had supported Mousavi during the presidential election, walked in. I’d met him on several previous occasions, and it was nice to see another friendly face. But after hugging Shariati hello, I noticed how broken and distressed he looked. During his imprisonment, he had apologized publicly to Khamenei and had stated that the reformists had pursued the wrong policies prior to the election. I could see the apologetic, dejected expression in his eyes, and wondered if others detected the same look in my own.

The next prisoner to join us that day was another reformist politician, Feizollah Arabsorkhi, a handsome man with a kind face and big eyes. Arabsorkhi was a leader of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization (MIRO), a semiclandestine reformist party whose heads had been among the founding members of the Revolutionary Guards. As some of the most extremist and radical activists at the beginning of the revolution, the founders of the MIRO were close to Khomeini.

That evening, my cellmates and I sat on the floor of our new home, sharing tea. As we talked, I detected regret in the eyes of both Arabsorkhi and Atrianfar. Both of them were now sorry for the part they’d played in creating a regime that was a far cry from their youthful ideals. They had believed that anyone and anything could be sacrificed on the path to establishing an Islamic