Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [128]
I took my laptop to the living room. As my mother, Mohammad, and Iran told me about the latest family news and political developments, I went through my emails. The Guards had deleted many of my messages. However, I still had hundreds of emails from friends and total strangers who’d written to wish me well, thinking that maybe—miraculously, perhaps—I had access to the Internet in prison. I was moved by the generosity of all those who had cared about me during my time in Evin. Seeing the attention I had received while in prison made me more determined than ever to help the hundreds of prisoners who were not as fortunate as me.
As I went through my emails, my niece told me about the details of Newsweek’s and Paola’s campaign.
On Sunday, June 21, 2009, the day of my arrest, Paola, who was five months pregnant at the time, had been walking in Primrose Hill. It was a hot day, and Paola looked for a place in the shade where she could sit down and relax. Just as she found a bench, her cell phone rang. It was my friend Malu. “Check your email,” she told Paola. “Maziar’s been arrested.”
Paola rushed home and found Khaled’s message waiting in her in-box. Khaled had heard the news of my arrest from my mother, who had called him as soon as I had been led away in handcuffs. From his student apartment in Adelaide, Australia, Khaled had sent a message to everyone on the list I had prepared of friends and colleagues in different media outlets around the world. I had often told Khaled that the Iranian government had never released any prisoner because his family and friends had remained quiet. If you wanted your loved ones freed in Iran, you had to make noise. In his email, Khaled made it clear that I needed as much publicity as possible.
A flurry of emails flew among the people on Khaled’s list—my editors at Newsweek and Channel 4, and my other friends and colleagues. Paola recognized few of these parties. It occurred to her then that she would have to head the campaign for my freedom. There was never any question in her mind that this task would fall to anyone else. But my world was somehow unfamiliar to her. She was a financial lawyer. My world was the world of the media, and Paola didn’t know many of my friends and colleagues. Indeed, in those early days in prison, I’d often wondered whether people were going to be more surprised by my arrest or by the fact that Paola was pregnant. I’d been traveling so much in the months before the election that I had not had the opportunity to tell my close friends in person about the pregnancy. I’d wanted to announce it properly after I came back from Iran. Many of my friends and certainly my colleagues at Newsweek didn’t even know that Paola and I had gotten engaged.
At home, Paola took a deep breath and concentrated on playing catch-up with the emails. Nisid Hajari, who had been my editor at Newsweek since 2006, seemed to have already taken control of the situation. He had decided on a strategy and had drafted a statement to be released to the press that same day. Ironically, Nisid had sent me an email the night before my arrest, asking what my plan was if the government were to start a crackdown on journalists; I’d never gotten the chance to reply.
Don Graham, the CEO of the Washington Post Company, which owned Newsweek at the time, and Jon Meacham, then the magazine’s editor, told Nisid to do whatever he could, regardless of the time it took or the money it cost. When Paola called Nisid later that day, she felt an enormous sense of relief that strong and dependable Nisid was going to coordinate the campaign, to which she would give her heart and soul until I was free. There