Then They Came for Me_ A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival - Maziar Bahari [98]
In order to protect my face I raised my hands, but he shoved them away with such force that I fell from the chair. I was on the floor, but that didn’t stop him from striking my head with the rolled-up papers. I looked at his face, red with anger as he bent over to hit me in the head. “Negah nakon! Don’t look at me!” he ordered, continuing to punch me. “Bad bakht khodam mikoshamet. I will kill you myself, you miserable man.” He then kicked me a few times in the back. I lay on the floor, breathing heavily. His cell phone was ringing, but he didn’t answer.
A migraine crept over my head as Rosewater’s spit began to dry on my face. I felt sullied and violated but also encouraged: I hadn’t signed the false confession. In that moment, I was proud of myself. When I returned to my cell afterward and lay on the green carpet, I felt my father’s presence beside me. I knew that he was proud of me, too.
· · ·
I once filmed a man hanging from a noose. He was Saeed Hanaei, a religious serial killer who had murdered sixteen prostitutes in the city of Mashhad, in northeastern Iran. I had interviewed him inside the Mashhad prison a few months before his death, and knew that he had no remorse about strangling those women to death. Hanaei told me that he wanted to rid the earth of corrupt elements; he knew that his killings had paved his path to paradise.
When I woke up a few hours later that night, feeling the familiar ache in my back and legs from sleeping on the floor, I couldn’t get the image of Hanaei’s death out of my mind. As I tried to fall back asleep, I worried that my nightmares would be riddled with images of a dead man hanging from the noose. But I didn’t dream of Hanaei. I dreamt of Rosewater. We were alone in a prison sometime in the future, and this time, I was interviewing him. Unlike the serial killer, Rosewater regretted his past deeds and was uncomfortable talking about them. In my dream, I could see Rosewater’s face. His big head was covered with drops of sweat, his stubble was longer, and his thick glasses were foggy with steam. The school chair in which he sat was too small for him, and he kept fidgeting in his seat.
It was my turn to ask questions. I stood in front of him and stared him in the eye. It was surprising, what I found there: not the gaze of a monster but signs of humanity. “Do you really believe that I am a spy?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer and looked down, trying to avoid my stare. “I have to make a living,” he said quietly. “I don’t make any decisions.”
“Why are you accusing me of espionage?”
“I’m sorry about that,” Rosewater said.
“Why me?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” Rosewater’s expressions reminded me of an interview I had seen with a South African torturer after the fall of the apartheid regime. Faced with questions about his crimes, the man had no answer, except to blame it on others and say how sorry he was.
“Why did you beat me? Why did you slap, kick, and punch me?”
Rosewater’s head was still down. “I don’t think you’re a spy,” he said. “But they told me they needed a spy. It was my job to force you to become one, even if it was through lies.” Each word caused Rosewater more regret. I was not sure if he was acting or if he really felt guilty. He seemed to be struggling with an invisible force that was pushing him off his chair. I wanted to punch him the same way he had beaten me, and to stomp all over his body, but at the same time, the thought horrified me.
“Stop interrogating him,” my father’s voice said to me. “He’s making you into a monster.”
Suddenly, Rosewater was far away from me, on the other side of the room. I tried to get close to him, but he was already on the floor and someone or something was killing him. He was dying fast. By the time I reached him, he