Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [83]
I hope he’s not going to urinate on me, I thought. “Yes, sir,” I said.
“Friend or prisoner?” he repeated.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “Maybe I don’t understand.”
As he placed a blank piece of paper on the chair’s writing arm, he said: “This is friend.” He then moved back and suddenly slapped my right cheek with all his might. It sent a shock down my spine, and I felt dizzy. “And that is prisoner,” he added calmly. “Mr. Maziar, you can choose to rot here by repeating your koseh she’r, your bullshit.” He took a deep breath, as if to calm himself. “Write your answers clearly and honestly. Did my slap hurt you?” he asked gently.
I didn’t reply. I sat in the chair with my legs crossed, trying to think of a way to reason with him, to ask him what had changed. Rosewater kicked my feet. One of my slippers flew across the room. “Never cross your legs in front of me, you little spy.” He then grabbed my hair and forced me out of the chair. “Go pick up your slipper,” he yelled, making me crawl across the floor to retrieve it.
After I took my seat again, he sat in a chair behind me. I could hear him writing something. For several minutes, he sat silently, writing. As much as his beatings and screaming were upsetting, this erratic behavior worried me even more.
I finally heard him pull his chair closer to mine. He then calmly placed a few pieces of paper in front of me. On them, he had written the names of six prominent pro-reform politicians—Mehdi Hashemi, Mohammad Khatami, Mehdi Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, and Grand Ayatollah Youssef Sanei—and the same question next to each of them: Explain the nature of your relationship with this person.
As on the first day of interrogations, I could see that the questions were supposed to place me in a certain scenario. I took the top off the ballpoint pen and had started to write when Rosewater hit me in the neck. “Give me the papers,” he said. “Before you start to write koseh she’r, Maziar, I have to make one thing clear.” He slapped the back of my head. “We know that you’re working for an enemy agency and that your job is to connect various reformist politicians with the Western powers.” He spoke with more confidence than I had heard from him before. “We know that you’ve been working as an agent of a foreign intelligence agency since you arrived in Iran and have had, at least, two missions: to put the reformist elements in Iran in touch with foreign embassies and to incite a velvet revolution in Iran.”
I was dumbfounded. He’d delivered these ideas the same way a narrator might recount the plot of a film or a play. The leaders of the Islamic regime had clearly already written their story about their opponents, and somehow I had been named as a major character.
“We know that you’ve been in touch with each of these elements, and have been a conduit between them and foreigners. If you’re honest with us and tell us the truth, we will let you go tomorrow. I personally guarantee that, Maziar.” He breathed into my ear. “But if you think we’re a bunch of idiots and believe you can fool us, I personally guarantee that I will stand you on a chair, put a noose around your neck, and kick the chair from under your feet. I will make sure that your body rots while it hangs, and I will put your remains in a garbage bag and throw it at your mother.”
I raised my head and looked him in the eye. For the first time since I’d seen him, I didn’t feel anger toward him. Instead, I felt pity. Rosewater was simply a foot soldier for Khamenei, there to help back up his story: that, as