Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [90]
Two days after I had moved to the new cell, I was doing my bicycle moves when the guard finally opened a slot in my cell door and said that my specialist wanted to see me.
Rosewater sat me in the chair. He left my blindfold on.
“What do you think this country is, you little spy? A stable full of animals and whores, like Europe? We have a master in this country. Do you think of anything except yourself and your carnal desires, you little man?” He began to kick my feet. “You know what you are, Maziar? You are a mohareb,” he said, “you are at war with Allah. And you know what the sentence for a mohareb is, Maziar, don’t you?” I did know. It was death by execution. I said nothing. “I’m sure you know that, you little spy.”
He then grabbed my hair and pulled me from the chair, and out of the interrogation room. “I can’t look at your face anymore,” he sneered. He led me to the courtyard that separated the interrogation rooms from the cells. “Face the wall! Think about those six godless anti-revolutionary elements when you’re back in your cell,” he said. “Don’t let yourself rot here while they’re having fun outside, Maziar. They don’t care about a worthless spy like you. You shouldn’t care about them, either.”
For the next week I was beaten by Rosewater on a daily basis, and despite his endless questions about my relationships with the six reformist politicians, I never answered them again. As I sat silently in the chair day after day, I wondered if he honestly believed the words he was saying or was simply acting on orders to break me through torture and threat of execution. Because he was always careful to avoid injuring my face, I also guessed that they planned to parade me on television and force me to repeat my statements about the Western media’s animosity toward the Islamic Republic.
After a while, his behavior became more erratic. In the beginning, other interrogators had periodically joined Rosewater in the room, but since the day he had started to beat me, he was always alone. He had to play the bad cop and the good cop at the same time. After hours of kicking, slapping, and punching me, he would bring me fresh apricots and tea and sit beside me, asking about my family and my personal life.
“You know, Maziar, I like you,” he’d say. “I think you’re a good person but you were tricked by the agency to act against our holy system of the Islamic Republic.”
“But which agency, sir?”
“Don’t worry about these things right now. We’re having a friendly conversation. You know better than me which agency you’re working for, so don’t make me use my hands again.”
“But, sir, please show any evidence you may have and I can prove that it’s a misunderstanding.”
“Maziar, please, relax. Stop worrying. Have an apricot. Tell me about your life. How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
I was aware that he already knew the answers to these questions, and it pained me more than his punches to have to speak to him about the people I loved. On his lips, the mention of their names was even more obscene than his physical torture. Rosewater sighed melodramatically. “So sad, Maziar. I really don’t want you to join your father and your siblings in the hereafter. Think about how much your mother needs you. Who is going to take care of your mother if you rot in prison or, God forbid, get executed?”
I did everything I could to keep Rosewater from seeing how effective this psychological manipulation was. During our conversations, I would sit calmly and say as little as possible. This just enraged him further, and he’d respond with some of his hardest punches. Most of the time, I was able to keep it together. But sometimes, in the coldness of that interrogation room, under the darkness of the blindfold, all of the emotions I had been holding back in the five