Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir (No Series) (23 page)

She was surprised and asked me what Hail Mary was, and I told her.

“You really believe that Mary was the Mother of God?” she asked after hearing the prayer.

I explained that Christians believed that God had willed his son, Jesus, to become flesh inside Mary’s womb and that Mary was not an ordinary woman; she had been born for this.

“We believe that Mary was a great woman but not the mother of God!” said Akram.

“I’m not asking you to believe in anything. You asked me about my dream, and I told you,” I snapped.

She looked down, trying to make up her mind. “I’ll do it. I’ll say this prayer. There’s nothing to lose, is there?”

A couple of days later, early in the afternoon, Ali came into my cell. This was unusual; he always came in the evening. I was taking a nap and woke up startled. He sat next to me, leaned against the wall, and closed his eyes.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine.”

He put his arms around me.

“What’s wrong?”

“The guards brought in a girl a couple of nights ago. She’s seventeen or so. She was caught writing
DEATH TO KHOMEINI
and
KHOMEINI IS A MURDERER
and other things like that with spray paint on a wall on Enghelab Avenue. When they arrested her, she said she hated the imam because he had killed her little sister. She’s been saying the same things here. I think she’s lost it. Hamehd beat her pretty bad, but she’s still saying the same things. She’ll be executed soon if she doesn’t behave herself and cooperate. Will you talk to her? What she needs is a psychologist or something, but that’s not going to happen.” He sighed. “Don’t say it. I know this isn’t fair. And I know there’s a good chance you won’t be able to talk sense into her. I hate doing this to you. But I can’t think of anything else.”

“I’ll talk to her. Where is she?”

“Interrogation building. I’ll go get her.”

About half an hour later, Ali pushed a wheelchair into my cell. The girl sitting in it was covered with a dark blue chador and was leaning to one side, her head resting against her shoulder.

“Mina, you can take off your blindfold now,” said Ali, but she didn’t move. Ali pulled off her blindfold, and she opened her eyes a little. Her right cheek was blue and swollen. I knew she couldn’t see, hear, or understand much. Everything would seem like a senseless nightmare to her.

“My name is Marina,” I said, kneeling in front of her. “I’m a prisoner. You’re in a cell. I’ll help you off the chair. Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”

I pulled her up, and she fell into my arms. I helped her sit on the floor. Ali took the wheelchair and stepped out of the cell.

“Layla is dead,” Mina whispered.

“What?”

“Layla is dead.”

“Who’s Layla?”

“Layla is dead.”

While spreading a blanket on the floor so she could lie down, I saw her feet and gasped. They were even more swollen than mine had been.

“I’m going to take your slippers off. I’ll do it very gently.”

The skin on her feet felt and looked like an overblown balloon, but the slippers came off easily.

I poured some water into a plastic cup and put it to her dry, chapped lips. She took a few sips.

“Have more.”

She shook her head, and I helped her lie down and took off her chador and scarf. She was shivering, so I spread a couple of blankets over her, and she soon fell asleep. I sat next to her. She was tall and thin. Her curly brown hair was dirty and stuck together from constantly being under a scarf since her arrest. I thought about her swollen feet, and my own feet began to throb. The pain I remembered from my first days in Evin was more than a memory. It lived inside me.

About four hours later, Mina began to moan. I grabbed a cup of water and helped her sit up.

“Listen to me. I know how you feel. I know everything hurts, but I also know it will get better if you drink this. Don’t give up.”

She had a few sips, and her eyes focused on me.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m a prisoner. My name is Marina.”

“I thought I was dead and you were an angel or something.”

I laughed. “I promise you I’m not an angel—and you’re very much alive. I have some bread and dates. You need to eat. Your body needs strength to recover.”

She ate a few dates and a little bit of bread. There was a knock on the door of the cell as soon as she lay down again.

“Marina, put on your chador and step out,” Ali’s voice said from behind the door. He took me to another cell. We had some bread and cheese he had brought with him. He didn’t ask me about Mina.

“Don’t you want to know if I’ve talked to Mina?” I asked him.

“Frankly, I don’t want to know anything right now. I need to switch off my brain. I just want to go to sleep.”

When I returned to my cell at about four in the morning, Mina was still asleep. She woke when the sun came up.

“Who’s Layla?” I asked her.

She wanted to know how I knew about Layla. I told her what she had said when she had come in.

“Layla is my sister.”

“How did she die?”

“A protest rally. She was shot.”

She said that a friend of Layla’s, named Darya, had been attacked by the Hezbollah one day because her hair had been showing from underneath her scarf. Mina’s mother had been on her way to the store and had witnessed the beating. Then the Hezbollah men had thrown Darya into a car and had driven away. Darya’s parents had looked for her everywhere, every hospital and every Islamic committee, but she had disappeared. A couple of months after this, Layla heard of a protest rally and decided she had to go. She encouraged Mina to go with her. Mina tried to talk her out of it, but Layla said she would go whether Mina went with her or not. She asked Mina what if what had happened to Darya had happened to her. Mina finally gave in and decided to go with her. Layla made Mina promise not to tell their parents about the rally.

“So we went together,” said Mina. “There were so many people. The revolutionary guards attacked and opened fire. Everyone began to run. I grabbed Layla’s hand and tried to get us to safety, but she fell. I turned around, and she was dead.”

I told Mina about the protest rally at Ferdosi Square, about the young man who was shot, and about my decision to commit suicide when I got home after the rally. And I told her that instead of taking my mother’s sleeping pills, I decided to do something about what I had witnessed; I had decided to do the right thing.

“What did you do?” Mina asked.

“I wrote about the rally on a bristol board and put it on a wall in my school. Then, I started a school newspaper.” “I went out really late two or three nights a week and wrote about what had happened to Layla with spray paint on walls. I also wrote slogans against Khomeini and the government. They are all murderers.”

“Mina, I came very close to execution. They will execute you if you keep saying things against Khomeini and the government. I’ve lost friends and I know how you feel. But your death won’t solve anything.”

“So, you cooperated and lived,” she narrowed her eyes.

“It wasn’t exactly like that. They threatened to hurt my family and loved ones. I could never put them in danger.”

“I see. But my family is destroyed anyway. My father has diabetes and heart problems and has been in the hospital for a while. My mother hasn’t talked to anyone since Layla’s death. Lately, we’ve been staying at my grandma’s house, and my grandma has looked after my mother. The guards can threaten me as much as they want. It can’t get much worse. And some of it is my fault. I should have stopped Layla from going to that rally. Then she would have been fine. All of us would have been fine.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“It’s my fault.”

“Would Layla want you to be executed?”

“She would want me to do the right thing.”

“Is committing suicide the right thing?”

“I’m not committing suicide!”

“If you argue with guards and interrogators, they’ll kill you. So, don’t argue. A little bit of cooperation can save your life.”

“I will not cooperate with the people who killed my sister.”

“They’ll kill you, too. And what will that accomplish?”

“I cannot live with a guilty conscience.”

“Don’t throw your life away.”

“You can’t change my mind. Do you really think this life is worth living?”

“You never know what tomorrow might bring, what will happen in two, five, or ten months. You should give yourself a chance. God has given you life; live it.”

“I don’t believe in God. Even if there’s a God, He’s cruel.”

“Well, I believe in God and I don’t think He’s cruel;
we
are sometimes cruel. Whether you existed or not, Layla would have lived and died the way she did. But God gave you the gift of being her sister, of knowing and loving her, of the good memories you shared. And now, you can remember her. You can live and do good things in her memory.”

“I don’t believe in God.” She looked away from me.

Mina slept the rest of the day. I could understand her bitterness. Her anger had turned into hatred, consuming her. My faith in God had given me hope. It had helped me believe in goodness despite all the evil that surrounded me.

In the evening, Ali came to the door of the cell and called my name. Mina didn’t move or open her eyes. Again, Ali took me to another cell. I tried to talk to him about Mina, but he didn’t want to talk.

It was before the morning
namaz
and still dark when he returned me to my cell. After the door closed behind me, it became pitch-black. I couldn’t see a thing. I sat on the floor right away so I wouldn’t step on Mina. There wasn’t a sound. I crawled ahead, feeling my way with my hands. Mina wasn’t there.

“Mina?” I called.

The lights came on as the sound of the
moazzen
filled the air: “
Allaho akbar
…”

“Mina!”

“Allaho akbar…”

Mina was gone.
Ali was with me in the other cell all night. Dear God. Hamehd has taken her, and Ali doesn’t know.
I tried to think. Maybe she was still alive. What could I do? I was sure Ali was on his way to the interrogation building. I could knock on the door of my cell and ask a guard to get him for me. On the other hand, this would only keep Ali away from the interrogation building. I had to wait.

I marched up and down my cell; it took only five or six steps to walk its length, and its width wasn’t much more than three steps. Images from the night I had been taken for execution flashed in my head. I had witnessed the last moments of the lives of two young men and two young women. I didn’t even know their names. Had their families been told that their loved ones had been executed? Where were they buried? The same thing could happen to Mina. I knocked on the door of my cell with my fists as hard as I could.

“Something wrong?” asked a man’s voice.

“Can you please find Brother Ali and tell him I need to talk to him right away?”

He agreed.

I paced some more, my heart pounding. I didn’t have a watch and couldn’t tell how long I had waited. The
moazzen
had not announced the midday
namaz,
so it wasn’t noon yet. I became dizzy and wobbled from side to side, hitting the walls. There had to be something more I could do. I began asking all the saints I knew for help.
Saint Paul, help Mina. Saint Mark, help Mina. Saint Matthew, help Mina. Saint Luke, help Mina. Saint Bernadette, help Mina. Saint Joan of Arc, help Mina.
When I couldn’t remember any more saints, I knocked on the door again.

“I told him,” said the same voice.

“What did he say?”

“He said he’d come as soon as possible.”

I sat in a corner and sobbed.

“Allaho akbar…”
the
moazzen
announced the time for the midday prayer.
“Allaho akbar…”

The door of my cell opened. Ali came in and closed the door behind him. He stood there, staring at me for a few seconds.

“I was too late,” he finally said. “She died last night during interrogation.”

“How?”

“Hamehd said she was talking back, he slapped her, and she fell and hit her head somewhere.”

“My God! Do you believe him?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

I wanted to cry, and I couldn’t. I wanted to scream, and I couldn’t. I wanted to stop terrible things from happening, and I couldn’t.

Ali sat next to me.

“I tried,” he said.

“Not hard enough,” I cried.

He left.

Ali didn’t come to see me for five or six days after this, and I spent most of my time sleeping, overwhelmed by Mina’s death. Finally one morning, he brought a young woman named Bahar, who was holding a baby in her arms, to my cell. He still didn’t say a word, but our eyes met, and I had a feeling that he wanted to talk to me, but he left right away.