Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran Read Free Page B

ordered to arrest you. Your wife is already under arrest.” They showed me a piece of paper with my wife’s name, Nooshabeh Amiri, on it.
    I was already dressed and ready. A pair of brown velvet trousers and a light brown jumper, a birthday present from my wife. I have kept that jumper ever since. It’s too tight for me now and isunfashionable, but it’s always hanging among my shirts in the wardrobe. And boots. So I was left with nothing else to do. The last thing I did, which I later realized was a mistake, was to take my wallet out of my trouser pocket and place it on the table. That money would have been very useful where I was going. They threw a quick glance around the room and together we proceeded to the little library that my wife and I were using as our office. The room’s window opened on to a building where Shirin Ebadi 10 and her mother lived. Shirin’s mother was close friends with my mother-in-law and they used to talk to each other through the window. Next door to their building was some open ground where a wild fig tree had sprouted and subsequently grown to full size. The tree was leafless at that time of year, and I could see the Hillman car that had been parked nearby and several men walking around. They were the officials who had surrounded the building and blocked all the escape routes. One of the men in our flat, who must have been the leader of the arrest team, asked: “Where are the weapons?” I laughed.
    “Are you making fun of us?” he asked.
    “No. The weapons are there,” I replied, and pointed to the penholder on the desk.
    He said: “We’ll find the weapons. If you want to collect some stuff, do it now so we can leave.”
    I picked up my wife’s pills, as I knew she couldn’t sleep without them. My mother-in-law was standing by the door. She blocked their way and asked: “Where are you taking my child?”
    The man who had spoken before said: “We’re going to ask him one or two questions. He’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
    I said: “Mother, dear, if they turn out to be the boys from the Revolutionary Guards, then I’ll return. If they are
putchists
, then I won’t be coming back. Tell my wife that I’ll die shouting ‘Death to America!’ ”
    My mother-in-law burst into tears. I kissed her wet eyes and threw one last glance around my home. We walked down the stairsand left the building. On the street, a couple of Hillmans had been parked in front of the carpark. One of them was full. The men from the second car had got out and were walking about. They put me in the middle of the back seat with someone sitting on either side of me. Apart from the people from the Hillmans the street was deserted. When the car started moving, I saw another Hillman setting off from the bottom of the street and when we reached the end of the street, the fourth Hillman, which had been stationed in a guarding position, also started to move. When we made a turn into the side street, I saw my younger brother drive into our street.
    I watched the crowds of people who were getting on with their lives on that wintry morning, looking at the passengers of this Hillman with their tired eyes. This wasn’t the first time I had been arrested, but somehow the experience was completely different. We were defenders of the revolution. This arrest must either be at the orders of the clerics in charge, and hence would be over in one or two days because, according to the Party’s analysis, the clerics were our allies in the struggle against imperialism. Or the Americans had masterminded a coup, which would mean that I’d be saying “Death to America!” while facing a firing squad alongside all the other staunch supporters of the revolution. These thoughts were going round and round in my head while I was looking at the walls, on which were written the fashionable slogans of the time. The last slogan I saw before we turned into a main street said: “Death to the Dashnaks, the agents of ...”
    The