Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [87]
Youssef Sanei was regarded as the most media friendly of the grand ayatollahs in Iran. While other grand ayatollahs rarely gave interviews, Sanei was regularly quoted by the foreign media and even had an album in his office where, after interviewing him, journalists wrote down their impressions of the ayatollah’s views. I was given unprecedented access to Sanei when I was allowed to film him in the privacy of his home for my documentary The Online Ayatollah.
The films I’d made about Montazeri and Sanei were among the DVDs the arrest team had confiscated from my house. “These films are evidence that you have been in touch with the spiritual leader of these hypocrites, who pretend to be Muslim clerics but are acting against the supreme leader of the Muslim world,” Rosewater said.
The call to evening prayer sounded outside. Rosewater had to pray. He marked the end of the session with a sharp slap on my neck. I breathed a sigh of relief, anticipating a break from this madness.
Back in my cell, my lunch was waiting for me on the floor, covered with ants. I tried to sleep, but was soon called back to the interrogation room. Rosewater once again made me sit facing the wall, and slowly removed my blindfold.
“Maziar, you may think I’m a violent person, but please understand my position here,” he told me. “We have a divine government in our country. We have a leader whose wish is our desire. If he tells us to die, we die. If he tells us to kill, we kill. And you worked with people who want to annihilate our leader and destroy our holy system of government. How can I forgive you? You know, Maziar,” he continued, “many of my colleagues wouldn’t let you live for a second in this place, but I believe in remorse. I think you can repent, and I saw how you went halfway toward remorse when you confessed in front of the cameras a few days ago. But then you got cold feet and didn’t want to continue. My punches are meant to motivate you to move on the path of the righteous, on the path that our master, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has determined for us.”
Rosewater put a thick green folder on the arm of my chair; it had my name on it. “This is what we have against you, Maziar. We have pictures and evidence of you working with foreign embassies, my friend. My mohareb”—anti-Allah—“friend. But I promise, if you collaborate with us and give us information about these men, I will throw away this file and we can forget about everything.” Rosewater put his hands on my shoulders and started to gently massage them.
“We need you to go on television again. We need you to clearly explain how you put anti-revolutionary elements with foreign agents.” Rosewater then handed me his drawing with the two circles. “Friend or prisoner? It’s your choice, Maziar. You can be out of here in a week’s time or you can rot here. Now go back to your cell and think about it.”
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, Brown Sandals came to my cell early, and with my breakfast, he gave me a pen and six pieces of paper with the names of the reformist leaders on them. “These are for tak nevisi, writing information about individuals,” the guard said.
“Tak nevisi can save you, Mr. Bahari,” Rosewater had told me repeatedly.
I looked at the pen and the papers. I had no inner conflict about what to write. Despite the ache in my body and the bruises that now covered my skin, I was not going to follow Rosewater’s orders and lie about my connection with the reformists, or say that I had put them in touch with foreigners. I threw the papers into a corner and stroked the pen in my hand. It was the first time I’d been alone with a pen in the twenty days I’d been in Evin. What a tremendous gift.
Then I moved to a corner of the cell and pulled back the green carpeting,