Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [74]
“How many months?” he asked.
“Five months.”
He went on, speaking about the benevolence of the Islamic system and how the supreme leader regarded all of us, even the mischievous ones, as his children. But I was not listening. I was thinking about Paola, and about my father. I could hear Paola’s words: Come home, Mazi. We need you. That was where I wanted to be. I wanted to spend my life with Paola and our baby, away from these hypocritical bastards and their “Islamic kindness.”
I had tried to be a balanced reporter. I was in favor of democracy and human rights, but I had always tried to present the point of view of the Iranian government in my work, to the point that I’d even been accused of being an agent of the government. All I was asking was to be left alone, to do my work in peace. But instead the Revolutionary Guards had jailed me and were tormenting me. To my horror, I was disillusioned with my country. We deserve this, I thought. This regime, this close-mindedness. Everything that is wrong with this country, this nation has brought on itself.
In that moment of despair, I wished that these bastards had been hanged by their turbans, that the people had the guts to take arms against these monsters. I wanted to leave Iran and never look back. I felt betrayed by my own country, by my own people. I just wanted to be back with Paola.
My violent thoughts horrified me. I hated myself for feeling this way about Iran. I shut my eyes as tightly as I could. I could see my father sitting at the head of the table shaking his head, chastising me. “Please, Baba Akbar,” I implored him in my thoughts. “Please let me be with my family.” I looked my father straight in the eye and said to him, in my head, “I’m not going to name names. I will harm no one.”
Then I took control of myself and addressed Haj Agha. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t like to talk about my family. I would like to know what kind of a deal you have in mind.”
“I can understand your emotions, Mr. Bahari,” Haj Agha said in the most melodramatic tone imaginable. “We do not want to harm you. We do not want your wife to raise the child alone. I do not want your child to grow up an orphan. Is it a boy or a girl?”
I forced myself to answer his questions as diplomatically as I could, trying to keep from him what we both knew was true: my family was my main vulnerability. “We don’t know the sex yet. In fact, we were planning to find out together this week, but instead I have the privilege of being in your presence.”
“And you have a mother who has lost two children and her husband in the past four years,” he went on. Each time he mentioned Paola, my mother, my sister, or my brother, I felt as though a knife were twisting in my body.
“The deal you mentioned, sir? Could you explain, please?”
“Mr. Bahari, you’re a well-known filmmaker and journalist. In fact, I saw you last month on television talking about the art of documentary filmmaking.” He was referring to an interview I did with Iranian state television in May 2009. “Young people are tired of old faces. They need to hear from people like you.” He paused. “Don’t you agree?”
“You are very kind, sir,” I said. “What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing special. We just want you to speak about your experience of working with the Western media and its role in the velvet revolution,” he said. The term “velvet revolution” originated as a way to describe the peaceful revolutions that had brought down socialist dictatorships in Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and Georgia from 1989 to the early 2000s. Khamenei had accused Iranian reformists of being “velvet revolutionaries,” which, according to him, meant being a stooge of the West.
“But, sir, I don’t know anything about it.” I was desperate to make a different deal. The thought of condemning my work and my colleagues on television repulsed me.
“That is fine, Mr. Bahari,” Haj Agha said benevolently. “We will work on it together.” He explained to me, in careful detail, the role the West had played in creating and encouraging the demonstrations after the elections. The media, he