Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [60]
“What time is it?” I asked, aware only of the throbbing ache in my lower back and the stiffness in my legs.
“If you were supposed to know the time, we would have put a clock in your cell,” said the guard. I recognized the voice: it was Blue-Eyed Seyyed. “Now hurry up!”
I was led blindfolded through the courtyard again, and guessed it to be around four A.M. When Rosewater came into the interrogation room, I could hear him yawning. He once again told me to remove my blindfold and sit facing the wall. He then took a bite of something and chewed loudly.
“Would you care for some of this?” he asked me.
“What is it?”
“A salted cucumber.”
“No, thank you.”
He sounded insulted. “What? Do you think that interrogators don’t wash their hands?”
I accepted the cucumber and took a bite of it. Rosewater placed another sheet of paper in front of me.
“I want you to write down the names of all of your friends and the countries you have been to.”
I took my time listing all the countries I had visited. When I was nine years old, I spent a month touring Europe with Maryam and my mother. Because of the oil boom of the 1970s, Iran’s economy was doing well, and the currency was strong. We visited twelve cities in nine countries. The trip opened my eyes to other cultures and people, and instilled in me a love of travel that persists to this day. As Rosewater hovered around me in the interrogation room, I remembered visiting the Houses of Parliament in London with Maryam and my mother. It was that day when I first learned of a concept called “democracy,” and I fell in love with London because of it. As a child growing up in the shah’s Iran, all I knew about politics in Iran was that the shah—or, as they called him on state television, His Royal Majesty the Shah of the Shahs—had all the power in the country and the people had none.
“So what do they do here?” I asked Maryam. “Why don’t we have a parliament in Iran?” To my surprise, Maryam told me that we did.
“So why don’t we hear about them?” I asked. Maryam and my mother exchanged an exasperated look. They didn’t know how to explain to a child my age that the Iranian parliament in the time of the shah was just a charade, and that no one who was even remotely critical of the shah would ever be allowed to run for office.
“Well, it’s different in Iran,” Maryam said. “The parliament is not that active.”
“Why?”
My mother was growing impatient. “Mazi jaan,” she said, “don’t repeat this to any of your friends or at school. We have a shah in Iran and everyone has to listen to him. Everyone—cabinet ministers, members of parliament, and all other people.”
“And how’s it here?”
“People vote for people they trust, their representatives, and they are the ones who select the prime minister,” my mother said, obviously hoping that I would drop the issue. “In England, the queen has no power; she has to listen to the people. It’s called democracy. In Iran, people have no power; they have to listen to the shah.”
“But why?” I wanted to know, but my mother’s patience had run out.
She smiled at Maryam and me. “Shall we go to Madame Tussauds?”
Now, as I wrote down the names of all the countries I had visited, I smiled at the memory. When I finished, I slowly listed the names of my friends, leaving out the Iranians. I wanted to avoid answering any questions about anybody the Guards might be able to locate and arrest.
“Mr. Bahari,” Rosewater said after I’d handed him the paper. “Why is it that you do not write down the names of your Iranian friends?”
“I don’t have that many Iranian friends, sir,” I answered. “I spend most of my time outside Iran. I only come to Iran to work, and don’t socialize much while I’m here.”
He knew I was lying. I heard him take a piece of paper in his hands, and he began to read off a list of names of my friends, foreign and Iranian. I realized he must have gotten the names from my emails and phone. When I’d first arrived at Evin, the guards had requested that I give them the passwords to my email and Facebook accounts. They had also confiscated my London and Tehran cell phones.