After Tehran (20 page)

In January 1991, two months after our arrival in Budapest, we had noticed that something was wrong with Michael. He was as happy and energetic as ever, but his eyes were swollen every morning when he awoke. I guessed that this was the result of an allergy of some sort and didn’t worry, but I asked Andre’s sister to get us a doctor’s appointment. At the time, Hungarian doctors made house calls, and a young doctor came to our house. Like me, he believed that Michael was suffering from allergies, and he asked me to watch Michael to see if the swelling got worse after he ate certain things. I monitored Michael. No matter what he ate or did, his eyes were swollen every morning. Finally, the doctor sent us to the children’s hospital to have a urine test done. Because Andre was extremely busy at work, his sister accompanied us. At the hospital, the doctor told us that Michael had a high level of protein in his urine.

He had to be admitted.

I was shocked. I had thought they would give us a few pills and send us home, but the doctor said Michael’s condition was serious. I agreed to let Michael stay in the hospital, but then I was told I could not stay with him and could see him only a couple of hours every day at visiting time. My sister-in-law was translating for me, and I asked her to say that this was unacceptable. I understood that hospital rules didn’t allow parents to remain with their young
children, but our case was not ordinary. Michael did not speak Hungarian and couldn’t communicate with the hospital staff. He would be terrified. Not that I spoke much Hungarian, but I was an adult and could somehow manage the situation, even if I had to use sign language. The doctor in charge said, “No,” and I became angry. I was tired of not being understood.

“Why don’t you people speak English or Russian?” I snapped in broken Russian, switching to English when I couldn’t find the words quickly enough. “You’re doctors, for heaven’s sake! You’re educated people! Only Hungarian? This is ridiculous! I come from Iran and I have just a high-school diploma, but I speak four languages—Persian, Russian, English, and Italian. What’s wrong with you? Communism is over! The walls have collapsed! Get out of your shells! It’s cruel not to let a parent stay with a small child! It’s medieval! It’s Communist!”

I was crying.

Andre’s sister tried to calm me. At this point, the doctor and the head nurse were crying, too, but I wasn’t done with them. One of the nurses called Andre, and he came. Finally, they agreed to let me stay with Michael during the day, but I had to go home at night. It was better than nothing.

Michael’s condition was deteriorating rapidly. His whole body had become extremely swollen. A biopsy of his kidneys showed that something was wrong, but the doctors couldn’t pinpoint the cause. All they knew was that he had a form of nephrosis. They speculated that because we had emigrated from the Middle East, his condition stemmed from a viral or bacterial infection they were not familiar with. And because they didn’t know the exact cause, they decided not to put Michael on steroids, the only medication that usually helps the condition.

Michael was very brave. He never complained and remained cheerful. I played with him all day, held him, and read to him.
At night, Andre or I helped him brush his teeth and read him a bedtime story. Then we both kissed him good night, and I told him that I’d be right back first thing in the morning and Andre would come immediately after work. Michael never cried when we left but waved and blew us kisses, but we wept as we went down the stairs. Michael was in a room with a few other children, and his window faced the hospital yard. Andre and I always paused in the yard before we left, looked up at his window, and prayed, wondering if he would be alive the next day.

Since the moment Michael was born, I had protected him. I fully understood that this world was a difficult place, but I had vowed to do everything in my power to make sure he was safe and had a good life. Now, on our way to a better life, an illness was taking him from us. We knew we would fight his illness to the last ounce of our strength, but as I prayed, I was well aware that I was not in control. For reasons I could not understand, God had decided that Michael should fall ill. As every cell of my body screamed with the agony of a mother terrified of losing her child, I realized that I had learned a painful but valuable lesson: I could not keep the people I loved in this world if God decided to take them. I cried and I felt devastated, but in the end, I bowed to God. Michael was His child before he was mine, and if He decided to take him back, I had to trust that He would take good care of him.

Michael fought not only that terrible disease but also the awful infections that plagued him in the hospital. The blood-pressure medication that was prescribed lessened his symptoms, reducing the amount of protein that his kidneys filtered out. His condition stabilized, and at least he didn’t get worse. In time, the doctors let us take him home, but we knew that if something else wasn’t done, his kidneys would fail. It was now even more important for us to get to Canada. We hoped that Canadian doctors would be better than Hungarian ones.

Shortly after our arrival in Toronto we opened the phone book and found a children’s clinic in Richmond Hill. The pediatrician there sent us to the Hospital for Sick Children. Compared with the children’s hospital in Budapest, Sick Kids was heaven. The doctors spoke English, and they patiently listened to us. The hospital was bright and modern and had a cheerful staff. In Hungary, every time lab technicians needed to test Michael’s blood they took vial after vial of blood. The process went on forever and was painful. Michael suffered, and we suffered with him. In Canada, they extracted only a tiny amount of blood each time, in only a few seconds.

At Sick Kids, Michael’s doctor put him on steroids. She was not sure if the medication would work, but nothing else could be done. Michael didn’t need to be admitted, but we had to keep a close eye on him. Steroids cause a great number of side effects, and the road ahead wouldn’t be easy. After starting the medication, Michael threw up for days. Then he became tired and irritable. We had been told that steroids would cause behavioural problems that would go away as soon as he stopped taking the drug.

Michael was on steroids for three years, and his illness gradually disappeared. He had regular checkups at Sick Kids until he turned eighteen. He has never had a relapse.

My Canadian
Passport

A
ndre, Michael, and I took our Canadian citizenship oath and received our citizenship certificates on May 29, 1995. We didn’t have a ceremony with other new Canadians because we had decided we could not wait until July 1—Canada Day. We wanted to vote in the upcoming general election in Ontario in June, so we contacted the authorities and they gave us a private appointment before the public ceremony. For the first time in his life, Michael wore a suit and a tie, and Andre and I dressed in our best outfits. We had passed the citizenship test, which deals with Canadian history and geography. Andre applied for his Canadian passport as soon as we became citizens because he needed to travel for work, but I had no travel plans and didn’t get mine until
Prisoner of Tehran
came out in 2007. After leaving Iran, Andre and I never renewed our Iranian passports.

Once I began to travel abroad, I always looked at the passports of other travellers as I lined up in strange airports to have my passport stamped, trying to discover where the travellers were from. After September 11, 2001, individuals from the Middle East could be harassed at security checks, especially in the United States, but in Canada and Europe as well. I always presented my Canadian passport with pride and a smile. Whenever I went to the United
States, the American customs officer would ask me when I had last been to Iran. I would reply that I hadn’t returned since leaving in 1990. Once Iran is free from dictatorship and tyranny, I will apply for an Iranian passport, but I will never forget that Canada gave us a home when we were in desperate need.

Establishing ourselves in Canada took us years, and only after
Prisoner of Tehran
appeared did I truly feel at home here. Canada has made it possible for me to recover my voice and become an advocate for those who cannot speak out. This does not mean that I believe Canada is perfect; it is not. However, in Canada we have the opportunity to speak and be heard.

When I received an email from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police inviting me to address a seminar on torture in September 2007, I was pleasantly surprised. The email explained that the seminar aimed to inform RCMP members about the illegality and odiousness of torture. It noted that victims were the most important persons in a criminal investigation, but their voices were usually not heard. The RCMP wanted a survivor to talk about her experience to reveal torture’s inhumanity.

That a Canadian institution was inviting me to address such a crucial issue meant a great deal to me. If someone had told me when I was in Evin that I would one day speak at a conference on torture, I would not have believed it. Back then, the world had forgotten about my friends and me. So many years later, the situation in Iran had not improved much, but at last, I had the opportunity to talk to the world about it. I accepted the RCMP invitation. I believe that many organizations like the RCMP that sometimes do wrong are composed of good men and women. I have faith that they can learn from their mistakes and make sure that things change for the better. They were willing to give me a chance to bear witness, so I had to take it. My testimony could potentially help many. Having been a victim of torture has affected
and defined me. Head held high, I have to use all I have learned and try to stop torture in any shape or form.

As a child, I never imagined that I would one day put “victim of torture” on my résumé. I had wanted to become a medical doctor, and I was hard-working enough to do it, but after prison I abhorred the thought of going back to school in the Islamic Republic. I knew authorities would watch my every move and continue their relentless efforts to brainwash me and turn me into an obedient citizen.

RCMP headquarters sat on the outskirts of Ottawa in a large and impressive modern building that belonged to one of the hightech giants of the dot-com bubble. Before the seminar began, I met the other speakers: assistant Crown attorney Don Macdougall; Department of Justice lawyer John McManus; Concordia history professor, author, and director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies Dr. Frank Chalk; and former CIA agent, author, and subject of the movie
Syriana
Robert Baer. They were to speak about state torture and its history; I was the victim who would help the audience understand how it felt to be tortured. I was to put a human face on the faceless victim, who is usually only a number, a vague and insignificant entity.

The seminar took place in a state-of-the art auditorium. Approximately two hundred members of the RCMP attended. Don Macdougall began his talk by explaining what torture is under the law. I had never thought much about how the law describes it—I had always assumed that the nature of torture was obvious. But apparently, the need for a legal description existed. Mr. Macdougall said that torture was pain or suffering inflicted on a person. The pain needs to be severe and there needs to be a purpose for it: to obtain information, a statement, or for any reason based on discrimination.

Severe pain?
Did they have a pain meter? I wondered, a machine that measured suffering? Where was the line between “severe” and
“not severe?” Maybe anything 10 and over was severe and your pain was the result of torture, but at 9.5 your pain wasn’t severe and not the result of torture. Many victims of torture have visible injuries. If people had looked at my feet the first few days after I was lashed, they would have been horrified, but I gradually healed, and before long, no one could see the marks unless he or she knew what to look for. Still, if someone carefully touches the soles of my feet, especially my left foot, even now he or she will feel little bumps of scar tissue. But some methods of torture don’t leave visible scars: sleep deprivation, hot and cold shocks, water boarding, psychological intimidation, rape, long periods of solitary confinement, mock executions, to name a few. What about the victims of those horrible acts?

“Torture always has to have been inflicted by an official or officer,” Mr. Macdougall said. “And an official or officer can be liable for torture as a party even when he or she has not directly taken part in it. According to Canadian law, if an official has a real suspicion that torture is taking place and ignores it, he or she can be as guilty as the perpetrator. Canadian soldiers were accused of torture in Somalia in 1993 and were court-martialled. One of them was charged with murder and three others with torture. According to Canadian law, a Canadian can be charged for torture even if the crime is committed outside Canada.”

My mind drifted back to Evin and my visits to the Hosseinieh, a gym-size room on the prison grounds where hundreds could gather. The guards took us there to listen to propaganda speeches, attend group prayers, and hear the “confessions” of other prisoners. One day, prison authorities recited a list of recent executions. I knew a few of the girls whose names were on the list, but none was a close friend of mine. Prison authorities had never announced names in this manner, and no one knew why they were doing it this time. The names I recognized belonged to prisoners who had cooperated
with authorities and “repented” of their anti-revolutionary actions. Was this the authorities’ way of showing us that even those who had “repented” were not immune from capital punishment? A sense of shock filled the Hosseinieh as the names were read. It was as if no one was breathing. Silence was an ocean that had drowned us all.