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I came to the slow realization that devising the plan had been the easy part. Enduring the pain that went with executing it was not nearly as simple. Rosewater’s moods were becoming more unpredictable, his outbursts more vicious. But he seemed to have realized that beating me was not enough. He had to take his psychological torture to the next level.

One day he asked me, “Don’t you have any friends or relatives?”

“What do you mean?”

“There are campaigns for everyone in this prison—even the most unknown of the prisoners—but nothing for you,” he laughed. “It seems that people have forgotten about you, Maziar.”

A former guerrilla fighter who became an interrogator after the revolution once told me about the effectiveness of white torture. In white torture, the interrogator uses only psychological menace, refraining from physical contact. According to him, Assadollah Lajevardi, the man responsible for managing Evin Prison in the 1980s, realized, after a few years of experimenting with different methods of physical torture, that making threats against a man’s life or against his family was much more effective than pulling out his nails or lashing him. Lajevardi had spent many years in the shah’s jails and knew about the value of solitary confinement; among all the methods of white torture, keeping a prisoner in a cell by himself, without any access to the outside world, was the most effective.

I could testify to the validity of their argument when Rosewater left me in my cell for days at a time. As I sat in my new cell, surrounded by gray-and-white marble walls, with no window to the outside world and nothing to read except for the Koran and a book of prayers, I sometimes felt that I was in a grave. I continued to exercise for many hours each day, but no amount of exertion could help me from feeling abandoned.

I knew Rosewater was lying when he told me that everyone had forgotten about me, but as I stared into the abyss of my small cell I sometimes thought the worst. What if Paola is not campaigning for me? What if Newsweek doesn’t care about me? How about my friends at Channel 4, the BBC, and other media organizations? I thought about my nephew, Khaled, who now lived in Australia, and the list of people I’d given him. Had he contacted all of them? Was he making as much noise as possible to bring attention to my case? If he had, why hadn’t any news of their efforts reached me? I wondered what Paola and Khaled were doing as I did hours of sit-ups and push-ups in my tiny cell.

I couldn’t escape from the loneliness of solitary confinement, not even in sleep. I would dream about sitting in my cell alone for days, forgotten and abandoned. I would cry for help and try to open the door, but no one could hear me. My cries often woke me up, and seeing the locked metal door, I didn’t know if I was awake or still trapped in the dream. This went on for days, and I prayed for Rosewater to call me, even to beat me. At least it was human contact. At least that meant that someone cared where I was.

One morning, I woke up and stared at my eyeglasses, lying beside me on the blanket I used as a pillow. This is not a life, I thought as I rubbed the glass. I’d rather kill myself and disgrace these bastards than waste away alone here, eventually dying in anonymity.

I looked at my glasses for a long time, examining the frame and the lenses. I wondered if I could remove the frame carefully, so as not to shatter the lenses. I could then break one lens and slide the broken glass deeply, but gently, into my wrist. The thought was so vivid that I could clearly see the blood dripping slowly from my body until it covered the green carpet, turning it dark brown.

Then I heard Baba Akbar’s voice in my head. “Don’t be silly,” he said. “You shouldn’t do their jobs for them. If they want to kill you, they can easily do it themselves.”

My father’s authoritative voice snapped me out of my reverie, just as it had when I was in high school and he would catch me daydreaming when I was supposed