Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [50]
“Do not lock the door!” he yelled.
I opened the door. It was one of the men who had been waiting in the living room. “I have to use the bathroom,” I said.
“I know. But keep it open.”
“Can I close it a little?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling at me. “But don’t try to escape, because then I will have to come and chase you.” The youngest member of the arrest team, he was tall and lanky and had a kind face. I thought of Kafka’s character Josef K., from The Trial, getting arrested by men he thought were pulling a practical joke. I half-expected my interrogators to break down in childlike laughter, and explain the story behind this prank.
When I came out of the bathroom, my mother was speaking to Rosewater in the kitchen. He was sweating very heavily, the shirt under his arms dark with circles of sweat.
My mother had obviously noticed this as well. “Do you want a Kleenex?”
“No, no, no. Thank you very much.”
My mother looked pointedly at his shirt and scoffed, “I think you should take it.”
Rosewater suddenly seemed embarrassed. “Okay, thank you. I will take a Kleenex.” He accepted the tissue from my mother and wiped the sweat from his forehead, but he kept his eyes trained on me. It was the look of a hunter, as if he wanted to kill me with a poison dart.
When they were finished, they told me I was to come with them.
“Where are you taking him?” my mother asked. She tried to hide the concern in her voice, but I heard it all too well.
“Don’t worry,” Rosewater said, smiling at her. “He is going to be our guest.”
I hugged my mother and kissed both of her cheeks. I had no idea what they had in mind for me—they’d refused to tell my mother or me what I was being accused of. It’s fine, I thought. They need to make a big show of this. Intimidate me at my home, take me to their base. Question me for a few hours and let me go later today or, at worst, within a few days. Make an example of me for other reporters and filmmakers. I was quite sure that while many political activists and reformists like Amir had been arrested, no journalists had been detained since the election, and certainly not anyone who worked for the foreign media.
“It’s okay, Moloojoon,” I gently told my mother. “This will be over soon. It’s all a misunderstanding. I will be home soon.”
As the men escorted me toward the door, I hoped I was telling her the truth. As soon as my mother closed the door behind us, they handcuffed me.
Chapter Eight
There were four Peugeots outside the house. Rosewater got into one, where a driver was waiting. I got into another with the man who’d written up the inventory and the young one who’d wanted to prevent my escape from the bathroom. The clean-shaven man got into the driver’s seat. I noticed two women, fully clad in chadors, waiting outside one of the cars. One of them was carrying a machine gun. Because of the Revolutionary Guards’ warning to Ershad a few days before my arrest, I had guessed that my captors were from that organization. When I saw the women, I became almost certain of it, as the Guards employs women to deal with the female family members of the people they come to arrest. My back stuck to the hot vinyl of the seat, and the handcuffs felt tight around my wrists. The man next to me, the young one with the kind face, noticed it and adjusted them. I looked out the window.
“What do you think you are looking at?! Don’t look outside!” Rosewater’s car had pulled up next to us, and he was yelling from the passenger seat, his large, dark face almost purple with anger. I turned my head away, wondering where one is supposed to look while inside a car, if not outside. I kept my eyes trained on my lap.
The car eventually turned north onto the Kurdistan Highway, and that was when I knew: they were taking me to Evin Prison. Sitting at the bottom of the Elburz Mountains, in north Tehran, the prison was built in the late 1960s as a high-security detention center for political prisoners. It gained notoriety