Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [96]
“Is he your interrogator?” the barber asked after Rosewater left the room.
“Yes.”
A look of sympathy passed his face. “Poor you.”
They blindfolded me, led me to a car, and drove me the few minutes from the building where my cell was to the visitors’ hall. Rosewater stayed next to me every step of the way, and used the opportunity to give me further warnings. “Remember your mother’s face, Maziar. This may be the last time you see it. Imagine how she will feel in a few days’ time while you are walking to the noose because you chose not to tell us which foreign agency you’re working for.”
The visitors’ hall was a large space with white walls lit brightly by fluorescent bulbs. There were about twenty white round plastic tables, each with four white plastic chairs around it. The hall was very clean, and it seemed that the judiciary, which runs prisons in Iran, tried to make sure that visiting families were left with a good impression of life inside Evin. A few men in relatively clean blue uniforms were mopping the floor. There were no uniformed guards in the hall, but there were security cameras all around us.
A few prisoners sat at the tables, sharing meals with their families. I didn’t see any familiar faces. I sat down with the guard assigned to monitor our conversation. A chubby middle-aged man with a small mustache, he wore his white shirt with the tails outside his pants. He smiled and offered me a small pack of salted sunflower seeds. As we waited, the man explained that, in the past, the space had been divided into cubicles. “But because of Islamic kindness, the government decided to get rid of the cubicles so the prisoners and their families could enjoy a larger space,” he told me.
There was no trace of irony in his voice. It seemed perfectly fine to him to arrest, jail, and torture innocent people as long as you gave them a haircut, provided a nice place for them to meet their families, and offered them a snack.
I kept my eyes trained on the door, waiting to see my mother’s face. Since I’d said good-bye to Moloojoon on the morning of my arrest, more than a month before, I’d been haunted by the sad look in her eyes. Remembering this now, I felt tears begin to roll down my cheeks. “Mr. Bahari, you’re a grown-up, you shouldn’t cry like this,” the guard said. I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but instead I asked him to take me to the washroom so I could wipe my face. I didn’t want my mother to see me crying. In front of the sink, I tried to remember a funny scene from a movie to help me stop crying. But as I attempted to summon a scene from Wedding Crashers or The 40-Year-Old Virgin, instead I kept thinking of how Rosewater had beaten me for not liking Nescafé.
Since damaging her back carrying a heavy box of Tudeh Party leaflets while she was pregnant with Babak in 1953, my mother has had a difficult time walking up stairs. In order to reach the visitors’ hall, she had to climb a steep flight of stairs, and when Moloojoon finally entered the visitors’ hall, I could see that she was in pain. I felt guiltier than ever for putting her through this experience again—of having to visit someone she loved in prison.
During our telephone conversations, I’d known that my mother was trying hard to appear strong, just as I was—desperate to keep from her the fear and loneliness I felt each night, alone in my cell; the way my thoughts still often wandered to my eyeglasses and the idea of slitting my wrists. But the façades we’d both been working to present crumbled as we hugged each other.
“Mazi jaan, Mazi jaan, cheh ghadr laghar shodi,” she said, immediately noticing how thin I’d gotten. Her eighty-three-year-old body shook with the strength of her sobs.
Mohammad, always the epitome of calmness and strength, stood by my mother’s side. He tried to calm both of us down, and encouraged us to take a seat. We