Captive in Iran (14 page)

“I know you don’t believe it,” Mr. Mosavat went on. “You’ve been so mistreated that you’ve lost confidence in us. But we’ll do everything in our power to set you free as soon as possible.

“During this next week,” he added, “take some time to rethink your position.”

Marziyeh

Our separate interrogations lasted three or four hours. By the time we got back outside and took off our blindfolds, it was dark. We followed a guard across the yard to the women’s prison and Ward 2. He told the guard there that we were to be sent to separate rooms and were not allowed to talk to each other, even during breaks. This was Mr. Mosavat’s way of punishing us for standing our ground during his questioning. One of us had to go to one of the dirty, smoke-filled cells downstairs. We were completely drained from the interrogation, both still suffering from our sicknesses. Each of us wanted to let the other stay upstairs with our friends. In the end, I insisted
the most forcefully and went downstairs to live with the prostitutes. Of course, this was an opportunity to witness to them. Mr. Mosavat’s intended punishment opened the door to bring the gospel of Christ to a whole new audience.

While Maryam was welcomed back to the ward by Silva, Shirin, and other friends, I had to get used to my new surroundings on the first floor. All our shared dishes and snacks were upstairs, so our friend Arezoo brought food, blankets, and a few other things downstairs to me. While she was there, she spoke to the leader of the first floor, Mrs. Niromand.

“Marziyeh is one of our friends upstairs. We will need to come and see her from time to time. She has to stay here for a while, but if anything happens to her, we’ll know you are to blame.” After two years in prison, Arezoo was not shy about speaking up, especially to people in authority who were prisoners themselves.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Mrs. Niromand said. “I’ll take good care of her.”

While I was still getting settled, Mercedeh and Setare came into the room. When they saw me, they screamed with joy and ran to give me a hug. Setare offered me some fruit, partly in thanks for all the little treats I had given her over time.

It was soon clear that the women here treated each other differently than the women upstairs did. Prisoners on the second floor were generally better off financially, but were very selfish with their belongings. Downstairs, most of the inmates were very poor, yet they freely shared what they had. The cells were darker and grimier than upstairs, and the women spoke only in whispers; yet it was a much warmer atmosphere of friendship and trust: no gossip, no betrayal to the authorities, only mutual help and support.

Even so, the harshness of prison life was never far away. During dinner the first night I was there, two prisoners got into a fight. Mercedeh went to intervene, but I pulled her back. Mrs. Niromand rushed in, separated the girls who were fighting, and slapped them both hard. They settled down immediately.

After the meal, several of the women turned their dishes upside down and started banging on them like drums. Other women started to dance; even Mrs. Niromand came and joined the festivities. The sight of these
women dancing and having some fun together was a welcome surprise that lifted my spirits. They found joy in living, even when life seemed so depressing and hopeless.

The next day, I saw Maryam at break time, but we didn’t speak directly because we’d been warned not to. Instead, our friends carried messages back and forth for us. The day after, however, we decided to talk despite the ban. No one tried to stop us. We even ate together, sitting on newspapers outside on the ground. Silva, Shirin, and some other women joined us. After lunch was over, we moved into the corridor and spread our newspapers there. Each day, more women joined us, so that soon there were fifteen or more gathered around us every afternoon, some with food and tea like it was a picnic. We had long, meaningful conversations with them and answered countless questions about our charges and our own personal faith journeys. It became more than a picnic: it developed into a worship experience. That crowded hallway was now our church.

Living downstairs gave me lots of time with Mercedeh, Setare, and Nazanin. I finally convinced Nazanin to talk about her relationship with Mercedeh to Maryam.

MARYAM

A day or two later at break, while Marziyeh talked with Mercedeh, I had an opportunity to talk with Nazanin.

“Why do you seem so possessive of Mercedeh?” I asked.

“I can’t stand to see her talking with anyone but me,” Nazanin said.

“Do you have a homosexual relationship?”

“No. We used to, but Mercedeh doesn’t want to anymore. Not since she was tortured. But I love her so much!”

“Do you think God would approve of two people of the same sex having a romantic relationship?”

“I don’t know. But aren’t you and Marziyeh lovers? Wouldn’t she be jealous if I held your hand?”

“Marziyeh and I share an apartment and love each other very much. But it isn’t romantic love. We feel no sense of possession toward each other.
We’re very different in some ways, and we allow each other to do what we want. We speak to young people like Mercedeh all the time to tell them about Jesus, but not to have a sexual relationship.”

While we spoke, Nazanin watched Mercedeh across the courtyard like a hawk.

“Are you still angry at Mercedeh for talking to Marziyeh?” I asked.

Nazanin lit a cigarette. She started shivering and began to cry. I took her hand.

“God understands your feelings—”

“No He doesn’t!” she shouted. “He doesn’t love me! He has never helped me! I hate men, and all I have left is Mercedeh. If I lose her, I lose the only hope I have left in life.”

“Why do you hate men?”

“I was not always homosexual. I had a boyfriend I loved very much. Then my father raped me. After that, I couldn’t have any relationship with my boyfriend again. I hate myself. I hate my father. I hate everybody but Mercedeh, and I want to save her.”

We stood holding hands for several minutes without speaking, as Nazanin cried and looked over at Mercedeh. My heart was filled with thoughts of my own father, who loved me so much and whom I loved in return. How I wished Nazanin could have known such peace and security in her past. I prayed for her that she would feel a father’s pure love from her heavenly Father and that she would be surrounded by the kindness of Christ. Whether the message penetrated or not, I couldn’t tell.

A girl we hadn’t seen before was assigned to the first floor, and Marziyeh had a chance to meet her the first night she was there. We both saw her the next day at break. She was in her twenties and very thin, a quiet, polite girl who was unusually neat and careful about her dress and manners. She seemed isolated and lonesome. We learned her heartbreaking story from Arezoo.

The girl’s name was Zeynab Nazarzadeh, and she was from a provincial city. She had been in prison for three years on a murder charge. As a
young girl, she had been forced into an arranged marriage with her cousin. From the beginning, he had beaten and humiliated her. No one would help her, and a divorce—difficult to get under the best of circumstances in the provinces—was impossible without her husband’s permission. One day when he attacked her, hitting her and swearing, she threw a mallet for crushing ice, hit him in the head, and killed him. Her aunt filed charges against her, demanding retribution by execution for her son’s death.

In Iran, the law is in the hands of the aggrieved parties. They can choose to press charges, agree to some kind of compensation, or forgive the offender. This means there is no consistency or accountability in the law. The legal system in Iran is based on revenge, not justice. The aunt demanded Zeynab’s life in return for the son’s.

We prayed with all our might that the aunt would change her mind or that someone would come to Zeynab’s defense. She had never seen a lawyer during her three years of imprisonment because she couldn’t afford one. In three years, she had never had a single visitor. That night, we noticed other women paying special attention to her and trying to make her happy.

At ten o’clock the next evening, the loudspeaker called Zeynab’s name and she reported to the office. Her friends were frightened. Once an execution is ordered, the prisoner is taken into solitary confinement for her last night. This is typically the first and only indication that an execution is about to be carried out.

Hours later, we heard that Zeynab’s aunt had accepted her apology and forgiven her. Our celebration of joy lasted late into the night. But it was a false hope. The next morning, we awoke to the sound of
azan
, the call to Islamic morning prayer. That was when we learned that Zeynab had been executed by hanging shortly after midnight; her aunt had claimed the “honor” of pulling the chair out from under her, dropping her to her death. The execution had to be carried out after midnight but before
azan
. The false news that she was alive had been spread because the prison officials feared an uprising once word got out of what had really happened.

Mrs. Niromand said she had told Zeynab before she was hanged that the reason her mother had never come to see her was that she had died of a heart attack on the day Zeynab was jailed. She said that Zeynab welcomed death because it would reunite her with her mother. She had never
complained about anything during her three years in prison and didn’t complain at the last—never begged for her life, never asked for mercy. Mrs. Niromand said that even the prison guards were crying.

It was the first execution of someone we knew. There are no words to describe the pain and sorrow we felt. This was an act of injustice and evil beyond the power of expression. She had been a prisoner for years in a marriage that was a nightmare of abuse, forced to remain there by a law that holds a man’s sexual pleasure above the most basic rights of human decency and dignity for women. This is the law of the land. She killed her husband because he attacked her and she feared for her life. There was no investigation, no attempt to collect the facts, no consideration of the horrific circumstances that caused her to commit a crime accidentally and in self-defense.

Her husband wasn’t murdered; she was.

Two days later, the prisoners held an Islamic memorial service for Zeynab, standing around her empty bed praying, the tears flowing freely. Her friends handed out food to the poorest inmates as an act of charity in her memory. Marziyeh and I were there, along with Silva, and the other ladies thanked us time and again for joining them even though we were Christians. Of course we wanted to be a part of the ceremony. Our hearts were broken for the tragic injustice of Zeynab’s death. This sweet girl’s sad and lonely life should never have ended this way.

Zeynab’s barbaric execution brought the whole horror of the radical Islamic regime into focus for us as never before. Her story, so poignant and sobering, is a symbol of the lives that millions of women experience under the oppressive government in Iran. Anyone who says Islam is a religion of peace and equality should spend a week with the prisoners of Evin. Poor, defenseless Zeynab! Married against her will while scarcely in her teens—in the Islamic tradition. Beaten and abused from the beginning by her husband, who acted with impunity—in the Islamic tradition. Denied any fair chance of escaping her abuse by legal means—in the Islamic tradition. Denied a lawyer, her life dependent on the whim of her husband’s angry relatives, who likely helped arrange the marriage in the first place—in the Islamic tradition.