Stranger to History (25 page)

We were brought into a lobby of sorts, with rooms leading off it, and were seated next to two European men. We waited in silence again. A few minutes later, three plain-clothes men showed up and
salaam
ed everyone before vanishing into different rooms. One of the Europeans was called in. They began to speak and I heard something about a camera. Photography in the wrong places could get you into serious trouble in the Islamic Republic. Then suddenly, I felt my notebook in my pocket and became nervous. If they went through it, they would find all they needed. I whispered to Hosseini that I should do something with it. He nodded his approval. I looked at the door and saw it was not guarded. I took the opportunity and ran out, down five flights of stairs, past the guards at the main office and into the street. Payam and Valaie were waiting for me outside. I indicated that they should come with me into a side-street.

‘What’s going on?’ Payam asked frantically.

‘I don’t know. I have to go back up, but keep this.’ I gave him my notebook and had to fight the temptation to jump into the car and leave.

On my way back up the five flights of stairs, I passed Rashidi. He darted a suspicious look at me. I nodded and continued upstairs. When I came back into the room Hosseini was still sitting where I had left him. He seemed to have digested the sinister colour of the place and looked nervous now. In a few minutes, two men appeared. One was small and dark with lively eyes and a sparse grey beard, the other was fairer, larger, with a broad face and a grim aspect. These were our interrogators. With a wave, they cleared a room of the two
chador
ed women manning a desk, and asked Hosseini to come in. I couldn’t hear what was said, but it was a short conversation, and in a few minutes, Hosseini reappeared. The small, dark man came out after him, flashed me a smile and asked me in.

The large, fair man was the interrogator and he took his position behind a long desk, sprawling comfortably in a chair with wheels. The small, dark man was the translator. The larger man would ask a question in Farsi to his small, mean conduit. While he translated, his beady eyes glued to me, the larger man reclined in his chair, swivelled slightly and watched. The roundabout way in which the questions reached me caused so much discomfort that I was inclined to think the larger man spoke perfect English and only introduced the other as part of a strategy to break me down. They told me to sit on a straight-backed chair placed against a pale, yellow wall.

The questions began immediately without any explanation of why I had been brought there in the first place.

‘Where are your other two companions?’ came the question in Farsi, then the anticipation, and finally the translated echo.

‘One is the son of a family friend,’ I said. ‘The other works in his father’s office.’

‘What are their names?’

‘Payam and Mr Valaie.’

‘Their full names?’

‘Payam Rahimi.’

‘Rah?’

‘Rahimi.’

‘What is their connection to you?’

‘His father is a family friend.’

‘What’s the father’s name?’

‘Muhammad Rahimi.’

‘Rah?’

‘Rahimi, like the son’s name.’

‘Are you staying at a hotel?’

‘No, at a friend’s flat.’

‘Where?’

‘Saman building, off Shiraz Avenue.’

‘What number?’

‘719C.’

‘Whose flat is it?’

‘Bahador,’ I answered, swearing to myself that I would tell the truth, but try to withhold information where possible.

‘Afkhami?’ The larger interrogator snapped, relishing the surprise it created in me.

‘Yes.’

‘Bahador is here?’

‘No. He’s in London.’

‘But you say you’re staying in his flat?’ the little man asked, his eyes widening.

‘Yes, he let me stay there while I’m here.’

‘Are you paying him money?’

‘No. He’s let me use it.’

‘How do you know Mr Bahador?’

‘From London.’

‘Can you describe the exact circumstances of your first meeting?’

‘Yes, we had lunch in London.’

‘Who did you meet him through?’

‘Through a mutual friend.’

‘Can you say where you first heard of Mr Bahador?’ I didn’t know where this was leading, but the questions were coming so quickly I felt I could only rely on telling the truth, even though the truth was turning out to be more complicated than I first imagined.

‘In Indonesia,’ I answered, mystified by the strangeness of the word in this room.

‘Do you know his job in Iran?’

‘No. I don’t think he has one.’ Bahador was not connected to any network, and as I didn’t know much about his work in Iran, I hoped to get away with genuine ignorance.

‘No?’ the little man said, his voice brimming with sarcasm.

‘As far as I know.’

‘You have known him four or five years, Mr Aatish, he’s letting you stay in his flat and you don’t know what he does?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ I mumbled aimlessly. ‘I’m not sure he does anything.’

They looked at each other. The little one’s beady eyes flashed and the big one leant back in his chair with a shrug, as if to say ‘How can we help someone who won’t help himself ?’

‘Then how can he live?’ the little one asked, of his own accord.

‘Perhaps he’s well-off.’

‘What?’

‘Perhaps his family is well-off.’

They both looked away in disgust.

‘You say Mr Bahador is not in the country so how did you get into his flat?’

‘He sent me his keys with his driver to Isfahan.’

‘Who was this driver?’

‘Mr Sadeghi,’ I answered, sad to drag his name into this.

‘What’s his number?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know it by heart. I have it at home.’

‘He’s based in Isfahan?’

‘No, Tehran.’

‘You said he picked you up in Isfahan.’

‘Yes. He came from Tehran to Isfahan in order to pick me up.’

‘Mr Aatish, you have a mobile phone in Iran.’ This was not a question.

‘Yes, I’m borrowing one.’

‘What’s the number?’

‘I can’t be sure, but I think it’s . . .’ As soon as I said it, I knew I’d made a mistake. I had given them a variation of my passport number, which began in a similar way, but I couldn’t bring myself to correct it.

He wrote down the number and examined it closely. ‘Where did you get this phone?’

‘It’s also Bahador’s.’

‘He gave you his phone?’ the little man asked, always with his tone of incredulity.

‘Yes.’

‘How did he give you his phone?’

‘Mr Sadeghi brought it to Isfahan.’

‘Mr Sadeghi had his phone?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is Mr Sadeghi’s phone number?’

‘I told you, I don’t know it by heart. I have it at home.’

‘How much did you pay him?’

‘I don’t know – maybe sixty dollars?’ I had spoken in a tone of exasperation and they eyed me as if to say, ‘Watch it.’

‘Mr Aatish, what is your purpose in Iran?’

‘I’m writing a travel book. I’ve been travelling from Istanbul by land and hope to finish in India.’

‘What is the book about?’

‘It’s a travel book based on my impressions,’ I answered, hoping to find a middle route between Hosseini’s suggestion and my actual purpose. ‘I’m interested in religion and culture.’ Religion had been an innocuous way of approaching more sensitive subjects in other countries and I hoped it would be the same in Iran.

‘Did you have an interpreter in Iran?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ I answered, thinking of all the interpreters I nearly had.

‘You didn’t need an interpreter?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why? Do you speak Farsi?’ The little man’s face gleamed.

‘No, but I’m just travelling through, recording my impressions, talking to people where I can. I haven’t been doing interviews.’

‘Mr Aatish,’ the little man began, with an assertiveness that suggested someone who took pleasure in language and the sound of his own voice, ‘we hear that you have been asking about religion, the changes in religion, and politics somehow.’ I nearly smiled: it was a glorious, subtle formulation, encapsulating perfectly the closeness of religion and politics in Islam and the Islamic Republic, just in case I was confused.

‘I’ve been asking only about religion, not politics,’ I answered, with failing conviction.

‘You were seen attending the Friday sermon given by Mr Rafsanjani.’ This was not true, but it was nearly true. I had asked Payam’s friend to take me to the Friday sermon at Tehran University. If the interrogators knew this, they would have overheard it on the telephone, and if they had been tapping my phone, they knew a great deal more.

At this stage, I made a mental shift from thinking of this as a short interrogation to just the first stage of a much longer detention.

‘No, I did not attend the Friday prayers.’

‘You were seen there.’

‘That’s impossible,’ I said, with as much conviction as I could muster. ‘I wasn’t there.’

‘Have you been visiting any seminaries in cities like Mashhad and Qom?’ Now, a further wave of doubt came over me. Had they spoken to Reza?

‘No.’

‘But wouldn’t you like to?’ the little man asked patronisingly. ‘They’re very interesting for your work.’

‘Yes, I would,’ I answered, seeing no point in lying. ‘I was hoping to go to Mashhad tomorrow night. But I’ve been to other places too.’

‘Where?’

‘I’ve been to Shiraz, Yazd, Isfahan . . .’

‘From Tehran?’

‘No, I flew to Shiraz and worked my way up.’

The big man got up and walked out of the room for a moment. The little interrogator’s tone became suddenly friendly. ‘Which city did you like the most?’

‘Yazd,’ I smiled.

‘Why Yazd?’ he asked, now sly again.

‘I liked the desert nearby, the colour of the buildings, the Friday mosque.’

The other man walked back into the room. He spoke to the little one, who nodded. ‘Mr Aatish, don’t you need someone to arrange your travel for you, buy your tickets?’

Now I was sure they knew something about Reza. ‘No, I do it myself.’

‘All of it?’

‘Yes – why not? For instance, I bought my ticket in Dubai for Shiraz. The hotel in Shiraz organised the car to Yazd.’

‘How much did you pay him?’ he asked, always relying on the relentlessness of his questions to wear down his subject.

‘Oh, I don’t know! Same as the other one – forty or fifty dollars?’

They looked between themselves, mean and dissatisfied.

‘Mr Aatish,’ the little man said, with his special sarcastic voice, making me feel as though I was in a Dickensian orphanage, ‘you do know that you must always tell us the truth?’

‘I am telling the truth,’ I cried.

‘I hope so,’ said the little man, putting down his pen and rifling through some papers. Then, looking up, he added, ‘For your sake.’

I became subdued and a new cycle of questioning began.

‘Mr Aatish, how long have you been travelling for?’

‘Since November, so six, seven months.’

‘How did you have the money to travel?’

‘It was my own money.’

‘Yes, but who gave it you? A newspaper, an organisation or are you also “well-off ”?’

‘Yes, my family gave it to me,’ I lied.

‘Your father?’

‘My mother, actually.’

‘Where are your parents from?’

‘My mother’s Indian and my father’s Pakistani.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a businessman.’

‘What kind of business?’

‘Telecommunications.’

‘And your mother?’

‘She’s a writer.’

‘In India?’

‘Yes.’

A kind of fatigue set in. The interrogators looked thoroughly unhappy.

‘Mr Aatish, why are you doing this trip in Iran?’

‘I’m exploring the lands of my father’s religion,’ I said, surprising myself with how pompous I sounded.

‘You are Muslim?’

‘Yes!’ I answered hopefully.

‘Sunni or Shia?’

‘Sunni,’ I replied, realising too late that this wouldn’t help me in the least.

‘Mr Aatish, you know you have a tourist visa. You’re not meant to be writing a book and asking questions. When you’re a tourist, you just see the sights and then go home. Do you know what you’ve been doing in Iran is illegal?’

‘No, I didn’t. I was just talking to the people I met on the way.’

They looked at me sadly. I had no idea how much more they had up their sleeve. They told me to go out for a while and Hosseini was called back.

Hosseini was in for a few minutes, then came out, shaken. Poor man, I thought, he was too old to go through this. He made out that nothing was wrong. ‘They’re letting me go,’ he said quietly. ‘They want to ask you a few more questions. It’s nothing. Should I wait downstairs?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said, hoping that it really would be ‘nothing’.

They called me back into the room with the frosted-glass windows. Sitting behind the desk, from which the women in black had shuffled off like birds, now nearly two hours ago, they watched me as I sat down on the straight-backed chair against the wall.

‘Mr Aatish,’ the little man sighed, ‘we hope you have thought about your answers and are now willing to tell us the truth. Do you have something new for us?’

‘No,’ I said, with fresh conviction. ‘I’m doing a travel book. I’ve been travelling from Istanbul to India and I spoke to people on the way. That’s all.’

‘Mr Aatish, do you know Ms Violet?’

Of course! That was what this was about. Violet, the agency journalist who had introduced me to Jasib.

‘Yes,’ I said, slightly broken.

‘How do you know her?’

‘She was introduced to me by the Rahimis.’

‘By whom?’

‘My Iranian family friends.’

‘They introduced you to her?’

‘Yes.’

‘What is your relationship with her?’

‘I’ve only met her a few times.’

‘When?’

‘For dinner and for lunch.’

‘When was the last time you saw her?’

‘A few days ago.’

‘When?’

‘Two or three days ago.’

‘What was the exact time?’

‘I’m not sure, about noon.’

‘It was only a few days ago. Try to remember.’

‘Noon on Friday?’