A TIME TO BETRAY (13 page)

Finally, he stood and came over to my side of the desk, putting his hand on my shoulder.

“Reza, I just received a phone call from Haj Moradi at Evin Prison.” He cleared his throat yet again. “A few days ago, an order was issued from high authorities and …” He took a deep breath before continuing. “Naser and Soheil were both executed yesterday.”

As much as I’d come to expect him to say this over the past few minutes, the words hit me with unimaginable force. I felt the room start spinning and I had trouble breathing. I turned toward the Imam’s picture angrily and stared at his eyes, silently cursing him. Then, bending forward, I put my head on the desk, crossed my arms around my head, and collapsed into myself. An image flashed in my mind immediately of the last time I saw Naser, at my wedding, when he was caressing Azadeh. He was dancing and laughing like there was no tomorrow.

“Reza, I’m going to marry her. I am in love. Now that makes two of us
. …”

I felt Kazem’s hands on my shoulders, gripping me tightly. “Reza, I am so sorry. I did all I could do, I swear.”

I stood up. I needed to get out of this office. I needed to figure out how I was going to face the future that now lay in front of me. Before I could leave, though, Kazem hugged me and whispered,
“Lanat bar in Munafeghin.”
Damn the Betrayers, the Mujahedin. He wiped a tear and shook his head. I’m sure he thought he was commiserating, but his sympathy felt hollow. Why wasn’t he feeling
this loss the way I was feeling it? Did all those years of soccer, Friday gatherings at my grandparents’ house, and late-night homework help mean nothing? Was our oath of friendship just an empty promise to him?

“I need to go home,” I whispered back, moving quickly toward the door.

I lived in a bubble of confusion for the next few weeks. What was happening to my country? Where was the revolution I—and Naser—had supported? I could not believe that young people like Naser, Soheil, and Parvaneh, the future of our country, were being tortured and executed. How could this possibly lead us to a better Iran? All Naser wanted for his country was to see justice. The revolution inspired him because he saw it as the end of a dictator’s repressive rule. He truly believed that the revolution would bring us freedom. Instead, it snuffed him out.

I, too, had dreamt grandiose dreams about the revolution. I felt that Islam, the religion of honesty and hope, would bring justice and equity to all. But that revolution now had the blood of my best friend on its hands. In the name of God.

The guilt of wearing the uniform of the Revolutionary Guards weighed heavily on me now. I forced myself to go through the motions of working, but I did it bitterly, wondering if I were helping to destroy other futures with every computer I fixed and every Guards member I trained. Kazem kept a little distance because he knew he couldn’t help me grieve. For the first time, I thought about leaving the Guards, but I didn’t know where I would go or what I would do.

Somaya tried to comfort me, but even though her sympathy was genuine and her desire to help me was strong, she couldn’t begin to alleviate my pain. One night, when I was sitting alone at my desk in the den, she came in, held me in her arms, and kissed my forehead.

“Reza, there are other people being arrested for no reason. I know a girl named Roya, who was just released from prison. She won’t talk about what happened to her in there. A close friend of hers told
me that she was not involved in any opposition group, but she was badly tortured anyway, and she is still in a state of shock.”

This caught my attention. I wanted to know more about what was happening in that prison. My heart went to Parvaneh, her last look at me. The shame and defeat in her eyes, the confusion. I needed to talk to Roya. I needed to learn more about what Parvaneh went through, if only to help me understand what my brothers were becoming.

When I asked Somaya to set up a meeting for me, she hesitated at first. I knew my position in the Guards sometimes embarrassed her with her friends. These days, most people looked at a bearded man, especially in uniform, as a threat to their freedom. She tried to allay this by bragging about my knowledge and skill in the technical aspect of my job, but I knew some of her friends questioned how she could be with a man like me. In spite of her reluctance, Somaya agreed to connect me with Roya. This took some time because Roya didn’t want to speak with anyone. In deference to her, I did not wear my uniform when she finally agreed to see me.

Roya kept her head down, her eyes fixed on her fingers, as she guided me inside her house. She was wearing the proper
hejab
but constantly checked her forehead to make sure her hair was not showing while we talked. She would not look at me, keeping her gaze focused on some distant spot on the floor.

“Roya
khanoom,
I know you weren’t sure about meeting with me,” I said delicately. “I completely understand and respect that. Please believe that I would never do anything to bring you more pain or sadness. I just want to know if there is something I can do to help fix the system.”

There was an uncomfortable silence while she pondered my words. Then her head started moving slowly, side to side. Very quietly, she said, “Nobody can help.” She paused and put a hand to her face. “Do you know what they did to Hamid?”

Somaya had already told me about Hamid, Roya’s boyfriend. He was a member of the Mujahedin and the Guards arrested Roya
and him at the same time. They released Roya after holding her for nearly a year, but they tortured and executed Hamid.

“
Na,
Roya
khanoom,
no, I don’t know what happened,” I said in the hopes that she would talk about it.

She said nothing for a minute. And then she spoke very softly. “It is not important. I am sorry I brought it up.”

I needed to do something to reach out to her. “Roya
khanoom,
I am not part of any of this. I recently lost very good friends in that prison and I would like to know more about what is happening in there. What they are doing is inhumane. But I can’t do anything if I don’t know the facts.”

Normally, I would never say anything like this to someone I didn’t know well; it would be too dangerous. But I was trying to reassure her that it was okay to talk to me. I didn’t succeed. She said very little and I left a short while later, feeling terribly empty.

Just before I left, though, I told her about Parvaneh, finishing by saying, “I need to know what happened to her, Roya.”

I had hoped that my visit with Roya would help me get a grasp on the sense of hopelessness and fury I felt. Instead, it only made me feel more confused and impotent. A few days later, though, I received a letter. It came with no sender’s information, and with the word
confidential
written sloppily across it. I rushed to my study and opened it.

Reza Khan,

I know what happened to your friend Parvaneh.

While I was in the prison, I wished many times that I could be free, that I could get out and forget about what happened in there. But now that I am out, I wish I were one of those girls who were lucky enough to go in front of the firing squad. They took everything from me in that prison. I have nothing left.

They killed Hamid. We had plans to get married and to have a family with lots of children. He was a good person, he believed in God and justice. In order to get his body back, they made his
parents pay for the bullets they used to shoot him. He was missing an eye. They did terrible things to him—his arms and legs had broken bones protruding out. Every spot on his body had cigarette burns on it. Hamid’s mother is now in a mental hospital. She lost her mind after seeing his body.

When I was released from prison, I rushed home to see my mother, but she wasn’t there. She had a stroke a few months after I was arrested. I did not know I could cause so much agony and grief. I feel as though I killed her. Every day I blame myself for the pain I brought her. I prayed to God to let me see her one more time when I was in the prison. I asked God to send me home to her and let me put my head on her shoulder and cry, to ask for forgiveness. She was the only one I had. Now there was nobody to tell what happened to me. I had nobody to cry to. My mom was not there to hug me and tell me that it’s okay—it’s not your fault, Roya, it’s not your fault to have a binamoos touch your body, private and sacred, which God forbids a namahram to see. She was not there to tell me—it’s not your fault that they whipped you every day, beat your bare feet with cables. I could not tell her that I bled so hard that I would faint, never knowing what they did to my unconscious body.

When I was in solitary confinement, these filthy, evil men would come to my cell—every time a different rotten, dirty, nasty guard. Not even animals would do what they did to me. I am embarrassed even to say what they did. They raped me, but it was more than rape. They said the most disgusting things to me. When they were through, they kicked me in the back as hard as they could, threw me down next to the toilet, and told me, “You piece of shit, do your namaz now.” Reza Khan, I am a Muslim. I believe in God, and my faith kept me alive in there. I did my namaz every single day, but these shameless people worship Satan, not God.

The day you came to see me, it was impossible to tell you what you wanted to know. But I have since thought about it a lot. I
thought about your friend Parvaneh. I felt you were sincere. I could feel the pain in your voice. Today when I woke up, I knew I was ready to tell you what is going on behind those bars—what happened to a lot of other girls like me and Parvaneh.

Reza Khan, there are thousands of innocent young girls like Parvaneh being held in there. When I was finally released from solitary, they took me to a small cell, a cell designed for just a few, but which held more than thirty women. I had no complaints about being squashed in with these women. Seeing their tormented bodies and minds gave me the strength and the feeling that I was not alone.

Every few days they would call out names over the loudspeaker. We knew what that meant, and we would gather together, hold each other’s hands, and pray that they would not call our names. But always at least one or two from our cell would have to go in front of the firing squad. We could hear the sound of the screams, the pleas for forgiveness, and then the gunshots filling the air.

They would line up the rest of us and make us hold one leg up for a long time. If you got tired, they would lash you on the tired leg and make you stand on it. All of us were crying. Some would faint from the pain and bleeding. Every day we had to undergo interrogation. I never knew what they wanted, nor did I know how to answer their questions. No matter what I said, they would hit me. One day, to answer their questions, I told them that I was not part of any opposition group and that I had no information. I said I didn’t know anybody in the Mujahedin. They got more irritated when they heard the name of the Mujahedin. They cut my arm with a knife and told me that they would cut my throat the next time if I did not confess. The next day they sent me to a small dark room where another guard raped me.

This was the routine.

As disgusted and down as I was, I never lost hope. I thought about Hamid all the time. Every time I was tortured, every time I heard the click of my broken fingers, I thought of Hamid and the
good times we had together and the good times we would have in the future. At night, I thought of my mother and how she would be happy when I came back home—how our life would be the same and how we would put all of this behind us.

One day they released me. Even thinking about it gives me shivers.

Haj Agha Asqar Khoui, a mullah who was in charge of guiding the prisoners to the Islamic path, became fond of me. In the third meeting I had with him, he told me of his interest in me and said that he would arrange my freedom if I agreed to become
sigheh
to him. I don’t think I gave much thought to it. Being free was enough reason for me to make a bad decision. I made that decision not understanding that I had to give myself to another demented person; not understanding that I was committing myself to more torture and mental anguish by accepting the
sigheh
, by being temporarily married to a man who already had a wife or two.

For a few months, there was no physical pain, no beatings, no lashings, and no breaking bones. But I was disgusted with myself, of betraying myself, selling my pride to a mullah in return for my freedom. Was it really freedom? I did not know at the time. I did not know the heavy price I had to pay to get back to my life. The only life I knew.

Nothing is the same; it won’t be the same for anybody that has been in that damned prison.

Today is a different day for me. Last night I had a dream. I saw my mother, Hamid, and my father, who died many years ago. They were all waiting for me behind Evin Prison’s gate on the day I was to be set free. I ran toward the gate as fast as I could to embrace them, to tell them that I was free at last. But before I could get out, the gate closed and I was stuck in that cursed prison.

Reza Khan, I no longer can carry the burden of this guilt. I know what Parvaneh and many other girls and boys inside Evin Prison experienced. No one can help; no one can change our lives.
I wish I had been shot dead in there. I can no longer go to that dirty mullah every week and pretend that being out of that prison is freedom.

I can’t live like this anymore. You are
habs
, a prisoner, forever. This is what’s happening to every prisoner in there. This is what happened to Parvaneh.

Roya

Roya had hanged herself shortly after mailing the letter.

ROYA’S ULTIMATE ACT
left me feeling lost. Her death, the deaths of my friends, and the executions of many more innocent young men and women had left a hole in my heart. I would never forget what happened and I would never forgive those responsible. I remembered the sound of the call for prayer at the prison right after they shot Parvaneh. How could these people stand in front of God and praise him after the unspeakable crimes they’d just committed?