Captive in Iran (33 page)

Far below, most of the nation was still asleep—our suffering friends in their crowded Evin cells, our Christian brothers and sisters in their homes, and our many secret supporters throughout the country. Our hope for the future is in the Lord and His mercy for our suffering and persecuted people. This unjust and cruel regime cannot last forever. The day will come when God will cause this country to rise from the ashes and give them “the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Isaiah 61:3). We pray that the Lord will use the two of us as part of His plan to fulfill this dream.

OUR FIRST STOP WAS TURKEY.
We had set our sights on living in the United States, but to get there, we had to apply through the United Nations in Turkey. We lived in Antalya for nearly a year, traveling back and forth to the UN office in Ankara and writing the journals of our imprisonment that are the basis for this book. It was very hard to recall and write down the sad experiences we’d had, but we believed we had an obligation to those left behind to tell our story to the world.

We sat through many sessions of intense questioning, first by Turkish authorities and then by people at the UN. Some of our questioners doubted our story, even though it was all over the Internet. They doubted we were Christians, that we had been arrested, and that the Iranian government had backed down and dismissed the charges against us.

The Turkish police were unexpectedly harsh, though not as difficult as the UN officials who questioned us. Our first UN interviews were with Turkish nationals who worked for the UN, but who, like the police, clearly resented the fact that we had “converted” from Islam. Though they could Google our names and see what we had been through, they said we were making up our story and didn’t have proper documentation. Later, when we interviewed with American UN officials in Istanbul, we continued to have trouble. One interviewer told Marziyeh she couldn’t possibly be a Christian because her baptismal record was from a ministry organization and not from a church.

In God’s timing, our visas were approved and we moved to Atlanta,
where we established a good relationship with World Relief and began our new lives. It was like being on a different planet. We knew very little English, and everything about daily life was strange for us. We started right away trying to find a way to complete this book about what had happened to us. We wanted to tell the world about being captive in Iran ourselves, but even more so, about a whole nation being held captive.

As this book is published, we are each working on a degree at a community college. We look forward to sharing our story and being part of the American Dream!

As we reviewed our notes and gathered more information, we were reminded that every instance of oppression in the world is unique, and no single solution serves for all. We still don’t know all the details about our release. What we do know is that it took a delicate balance between public pressure and private negotiation that only the Lord could have achieved.

If anyone had told us five years ago that by now we would have spent more than nine months in an Iranian prison, been threatened with death, had our story told around the world, written a book (in English, no less), and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, we would have said they were crazy. But we had no idea what the Lord had in mind for us. For all the heartache we have experienced on this journey, we wouldn’t have missed it for anything. It has been our honor to serve Christ in this way, to take up our cross and follow Him faithfully anywhere He leads us. And it has been our honor to share this story with you.

MARZIYEH AMIRIZADEH AND MARYAM ROSTAMPOUR
are two courageous young women. After they were freed from Evin Prison, it would have been both easy and understandable if they had gone to a safe, quiet place to rebuild their lives away from public view. Instead, they began writing their experiences with the hope of sharing them with others.

Leaving their homeland of Iran, they first went to Turkey to apply for residence in the United States. Throughout the long application process, they clung to their dream of coming to America, and their belief that the Lord would use their experience, and their story, for good.

For eight months, they wrote, recalling every friendship, every court appearance, every emotion, every key event of their prison experience. It was very painful to revisit the terrible things that had happened—the shocking injustices, the abuses of the system, the stories of torture and execution of women who had become treasured friends. Sometimes they wrote in tears, barely able to continue, yet they kept going out of a sense of responsibility to the women left behind and with faith that somewhere, somehow, they would share their stories with the world. As difficult as it was to write about what they had seen and experienced, they eventually filled 1,900 handwritten pages with the history of their ministry and their time in Evin Prison.

When I first met Maryam and Marziyeh, I was impressed by their intensity and their sense of calling. They were
compelled
to tell of the Lord’s power in their lives, and of the injustices they had suffered at the hands of the Iranian regime. They were tireless in their quest to make every story accurate, to fill every sentence with meaning and purpose.

The three of us wrestled with the translations, working to articulate thoughts and emotions that would have been challenging enough to express in their native Farsi, yet here we were trying to say them in English, with an entirely different alphabet, different grammatical structure, and countless cultural references. For example, “let’s touch base” makes no sense if you don’t know baseball, and how do you explain that we chop
down
a tree before we chop it
up
? Or that we sit
at
a desk,
in
a chair, and
on
a couch?)

A native English speaker has no idea how treacherous the language can be until he tries to explain why some words are considered off-color while others meaning exactly the same thing are not. Moreover, deeply rooted denominational differences among Christians that are widely understood and respected in America are unknown in Iran; they are strange and bewildering to people who have always been an oppressed minority, and to whom any sort of Christian message or experience is a blessing. On top of everything else, the original translations from Farsi were done in London, requiring various adjustments along the way for American readers, who, for example, think of a “lift” as a ride in someone’s car, rather than the British word for
elevator
.

Moreover, there were thoughts and experiences for which no words in any language could do justice. They were so deep, so visceral, so immediate that they were almost beyond description. Yet that was our job. And over the months we worked together, these two brave young women never wavered at the task, never faltered in their dedication and enthusiasm, never let up in their quest for accuracy, even as they looked up hundreds of words in the English/Farsi dictionary on their iPad, carefully copying the definitions by hand in order to learn them.

From start to finish, the process of writing and editing this book based on Maryam’s and Marziyeh’s journals took almost exactly a year. We spent more time retelling the story than they did living it. For me, every word has been a privilege, every day’s work a joy. Marziyeh and Maryam are gifted writers who have become treasured friends. Their story has transformed my life. If, by God’s grace, we’ve done our work well, it will transform yours too.

John Perry

Nashville

THIS BOOK IS A MIRACLE.
There’s no other way to explain it. Otherwise, how could two Iranian women who are still learning English have written it less than three years after arriving in America?

An opportunity like this could only have come from the Lord. We give thanks to our Savior, Jesus Christ, who carried us safely through all our hardships, brought us to freedom in America, and gave us the chance to share with the world our stories and the stories of other Iranian women.

God has brought many people into our path to make this book possible.

First was Calvin Edwards, who has become our good friend as well as our agent, and who guided us through the many decisions and steps it took to bring this project to life.

We’re also grateful to Jan Long Harris and her wonderful team at Tyndale Momentum: senior acquisitions editor Sarah Atkinson, senior communications manager Sharon Leavitt, and our project editor, Dave Lindstedt.

We owe a special debt of thanks to our collaborator, John Perry, who so patiently worked with us to tell an emotional and complex story so beautifully––in what to us was a foreign language. Praise God for these faithful men and women who have helped us realize the dream of sharing our faith and our journey with you.

MARYAM ROSTAMPOUR AND MARZIYEH AMIRIZADEH
were born into Muslim families in Iran—Maryam in the city of Kermanshah, and Marziyeh in Rafsanjan. They met while studying Christian theology in Turkey in 2005, and realized they had become Christians at about the same time six years earlier. Deciding to join forces, they returned to Iran and began a program of mission outreach. Over the next two years, they handed out twenty thousand New Testaments in Tehran and other cities. They started two house churches in their apartment, one for young people and another for prostitutes. They extended their ministry with mission trips to India, South Korea, and Turkey.

In March 2009, Maryam and Marziyeh were arrested in Tehran for promoting Christianity—a capital crime in Iran—and imprisoned for 259 days in the city’s notorious Evin Prison. The official charges against them were apostasy, anti-government activity, and blasphemy, for which they were subject to execution by hanging. As many around the world prayed for their freedom, international pressure on the Iranian government came from organizations such as Amnesty International, the United Nations, and the Vatican.

Eventually, Maryam and Marziyeh were released from prison and cleared of all charges. They consider it an honor to have experienced a little of Christ’s suffering by being imprisoned in His name. After their release, they immigrated to the United States and now live near Atlanta.

JOHN PERRY
has written or collaborated on more than thirty books, including
Lady of Arlington
, a biography of Mary Custis (Mrs. Robert E. Lee) nominated for the Lincoln Prize, and is coauthor of the
New York Times
bestselling novel
Letters to God
. Among his recent collaborations is
Miracle for Jen
by Linda Barrick, from Tyndale House Publishers. John lives in Nashville.