Then They Came For Me (25 page)

“Do you mean the six people you mentioned are the obstacles between the Islamic system and the people?” I asked, trying to make his point clear.

“
Ahsant
. Bravo! So you are not as stupid as I thought. That is why I said you’re lucky. Our system has chosen to bestow its kindness upon you.”

“The problem, sir, is that I really don’t know any of these men that well, and I haven’t put any of them in touch with anyone.” My voice was faint with the pain of my migraine. I cleared my throat and tried again, hoping to hide from him how much I was suffering. “In fact, I’ve always avoided foreign embassies in order to avoid getting myself into situations such as this. I know the rules, sir, and I’ve always obeyed them—”

Rosewater didn’t let me finish. Instead, he began to slap me once again on my legs. “
Nemidooni? Na?
You don’t know anything? Is that right?” As quickly as he’d started beating my legs, he stopped. “Well, listen,” he said abruptly. “How about I get you some tea and dates so we can have a friendly conversation.”

It was hard to make sense of his actions, but when he left the room, I savored the few minutes I had alone. When he returned, I could smell the fresh tea.

“Mr. Bahari, you’re an intellectual and knowledgeable person, so surely you know who the dirtiest family in this country is, correct?” I knew he meant the family of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose name had become synonymous with financial corruption since the beginning of the revolution. There were rumors that the family had a monopoly on everything from oil tankers to pistachios to shrimp.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ali Khamenei had been friends since 1957, when they were young clerics in Qom. Both
joined Khomeini’s movement in the early 1960s. Rafsanjani was always known as one of the smartest and most diplomatic of Khomeini’s acolytes. When Khomeini died in 1989, Rafsanjani lobbied for Ali Khamenei to become the supreme leader. Rafsanjani became president. With Khamenei’s support, Rafsanjani asked the parliament to dissolve the duties of the prime minister and merge them into those of the president. Rafsanjani wanted to amass enough power to effectively be the leader of the country, and manipulate the supreme leader, but Ali Khamenei outmaneuvered Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani started diplomatic rapprochement and tried to open the Iranian market to the rest of the world. In a country with endemic corruption and cronyism, Rafsanjani’s reforms created a new class of nouveaux riches, while leaving millions of Iranians, including many war veterans, poorer. At the same time, Rafsanjani had little respect for democracy and human rights. Many political activists were imprisoned and tortured during his presidency, and dozens of writers and intellectuals were assassinated by government agents. While Rafsanjani’s economic policies alienated poor and devout Iranians, his cultural policies angered the reformists. This led to the landslide election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami, who promised equality and freedom, in 1997.

Rafsanjani’s mistakes suited Khamenei just fine. Khamenei allied himself with the most ideological members of the Islamic government, including many commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, and tried to marginalize Rafsanjani. While Rafsanjani insisted on the necessity of economic development and political moderation, Khamenei reminded people of the ideological goals of the revolution. The two men’s lifestyles contrasted sharply as well. While Rafsanjani’s daughter became an outspoken member of the parliament and his sons became rich businessmen, Khamenei famously ordered his six children (four sons and two
daughters) not to take part in politics or economic activities in order to avoid any rumors of nepotism or financial corruption. Khamenei’s supporters grew to despise what they perceived as Rafsanjani’s revisionism and decadence, and to revere Khamenei’s simple lifestyle and his ideological zeal.

Yet Rafsanjani remained an influential figure in Iranian politics. By the time of the presidential election in June 2009, many religious figures and politicians who rejected Khamenei’s tyrannical rule had allied themselves with the more moderate Rafsanjani, who was supporting Mousavi. Even many former Guards commanders who found the radicalism of the new generation of the Guards dangerous supported Rafsanjani. Because of Rafsanjani’s prominence, Khamenei and the new generation of the Guards didn’t attack him directly. Instead, after the 2009 election, they tried to incriminate his son, Mehdi Hashemi.

Rosewater answered the question about the dirtiest family himself. “It is, of course, the Hashemi Rafsanjani family,” he said. “Our holy Islamic system wants to give you a chance to reveal what you know of this dirty family, Maziar. We know that you were in contact with Mehdi Hashemi. We know that you were active in his circle. We just want you to give us one example of when and how you put this dirty element in touch with foreign agencies.”

“But, sir—” Rosewater slammed the back of his right hand against my mouth. I tasted blood, and spit it into the empty cup.

“Be quiet and listen,” he said. “Remember: you and I are going to be friends.” He then reminded me of the
Newsweek
interview I had done with Mohammad Khatami, who many saw as the spiritual leader of the green movement, a month before the election. During his tenure as president of the Islamic Republic, from 1997 to 2005, and even after leaving office, Khatami was regarded as the most important reformist figure in
Iran. During his presidency, Khatami spoke to Ali Khamenei on the phone on a daily basis, as the supreme leader criticized almost all of Khatami’s decisions.

In 2009, four years after his term as president came to an end, he was still popular among many young Iranians, and Khamenei rightly thought that if Khatami became president again, he would try to rally the youth against him. According to my friend Amir, Khatami had wanted to run for president again in 2009 but the supreme leader had explicitly warned him against doing so. When Khatami had not paid attention to Khamenei’s warnings, the supreme leader’s office had sent threatening messages to Khatami that if he continued his campaign, he could be assassinated and his advisers could be harmed.

“We would like you to tell us how and why the agency told you to interview Khatami,” Rosewater explained.

I was exasperated. “But which agency, sir?” I asked.

Rosewater slowly approached me. “What’s in this cup?” he asked.

“Blood,” I answered.

“Do you think I cannot make you bleed more?” I didn’t answer. “Answer me. I asked you: DO YOU THINK I CANNOT MAKE YOU BLEED MORE?!” he screamed.

“Yes, sir,” I conceded. “You can.”

“So do what I’m telling you to do.” He tapped gently on my shoulder. “The Koran says: the hypocrites are even worse than the infidels. We have a chief hypocrite in this country, and that is Khatami. You brought up the dirty idea of vote rigging with Khatami one month before the election, Mr. Bahari,” Rosewater said. Khamenei had called the reformists’ claim that the election was fraudulent “a great sin.” I could see that my having reported on the possibility of election fraud infuriated Rosewater. “This is very interesting, since at the time, no one else was talking about the possibility.” This wasn’t true, of course. Since
Ahmadinejad’s first presidential election, in 2005, the idea that he would rig the 2009 vote had been widely discussed. I wanted to remind Rosewater of this, but I remained quiet. “We simply want you to tell us how the agency came up with the rumor of vote rigging, and how you guided Khatami to answer your question about vote rigging,” Rosewater said.

“But Mr. Khatami says in the interview the votes will
not
be rigged,” I pointed out. Khatami had told me it was impossible, given the system of checks and balances in place. I braced myself for another blow to my head, but it didn’t come.

“I know that,” Rosewater replied. “But he let you ask that question and allowed you to publish it. We both know that in a Q&A, the question is often more important than the answer. Now, we’re just getting started. Let’s talk about Mehdi Karroubi.” He let out an exaggerated laugh. “Karroubi is a joke. A moron!”

Look who’s talking
, I thought.

Karroubi was known as the old man of reformism. While Mousavi was regarded as the gentle face of reformism, Karroubi was famous for his bluntness. After Ahmadinejad’s first victory in 2005, in an open letter published in the reformist press, Karroubi accused the supreme leader’s son Mojtaba Khamenei of vote rigging. In the letter, addressed to Ali Khamenei, Karroubi wrote that Khamenei’s son worked with the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards to tamper with the ballot boxes and raise the number of votes for Ahmadinejad. At the time, all my sources in different government ministries told me that Karroubi was right on target, but they also told me that this could not happen again. I did one of the first foreign press interviews with Karroubi in March 2008, for
Newsweek
. During the interview, he openly talked about his plans to topple Ahmadinejad in 2009.

“And you, Maziar, made Karroubi look like an intellectual
by calling him ‘Iran’s organized reformer’!” Rosewater punctuated each word in the phrase I’d used as the title of my interview with a blow to my head. My migraine pain was so intense, I felt nearly ready to vomit. “You then went on to ask him, ‘Don’t you think those who rigged the last vote can do it again?’ ”

He took a deep breath. “
La elaha ella Allah
. There is no God but Allah. The things you’ve written make my blood boil. Why? Why did you want to corrupt our youth by instilling the idea of vote rigging in their heads? Why, Maziar?”

Before I could answer, Rosewater began to rail against certain clerics, those he believed were agents of the West. Chief among them were Grand Ayatollahs Hossein Ali Montazeri and Youssef Sanei, whose names he’d written on the paper. In 1988, after Khomeini ordered the massacre of thousands of members of the MKO and other groups, Ayatollah Montazeri spoke out against the summary trials and executions. Prior to this, Montazeri had been regarded as Khomeini’s successor, but his criticisms of Khomeini cost him that position. In a rare interview I’d done with Montazeri for Channel 4 News, he’d expressed his doubts about the legality and the Islamic pretenses of the Islamic Republic.

Youssef Sanei was regarded as the most media friendly of the grand ayatollahs in Iran. While other grand ayatollahs rarely gave interviews, Sanei was regularly quoted by the foreign media and even had an album in his office where, after interviewing him, journalists wrote down their impressions of the ayatollah’s views. I was given unprecedented access to Sanei when I was allowed to film him in the privacy of his home for my documentary
The Online Ayatollah
.

The films I’d made about Montazeri and Sanei were among the DVDs the arrest team had confiscated from my house. “These films are evidence that you have been in touch with the
spiritual leader of these hypocrites, who pretend to be Muslim clerics but are acting against the supreme leader of the Muslim world,” Rosewater said.

The call to evening prayer sounded outside. Rosewater had to pray. He marked the end of the session with a sharp slap on my neck. I breathed a sigh of relief, anticipating a break from this madness.

Back in my cell, my lunch was waiting for me on the floor, covered with ants. I tried to sleep, but was soon called back to the interrogation room. Rosewater once again made me sit facing the wall, and slowly removed my blindfold.

“Maziar, you may think I’m a violent person, but please understand my position here,” he told me. “We have a divine government in our country. We have a leader whose wish is our desire. If he tells us to die, we die. If he tells us to kill, we kill. And you worked with people who want to annihilate our leader and destroy our holy system of government. How can I forgive you? You know, Maziar,” he continued, “many of my colleagues wouldn’t let you live for a second in this place, but I believe in remorse. I think you can repent, and I saw how you went halfway toward remorse when you confessed in front of the cameras a few days ago. But then you got cold feet and didn’t want to continue. My punches are meant to motivate you to move on the path of the righteous, on the path that our master, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has determined for us.”

Rosewater put a thick green folder on the arm of my chair; it had my name on it. “This is what we have against you, Maziar. We have pictures and evidence of you working with foreign embassies, my friend. My
mohareb
”—anti-Allah—“friend. But I promise, if you collaborate with us and give us information about these men, I will throw away this file and we can forget about everything.” Rosewater put his hands on my shoulders and started to gently massage them.

“We need you to go on television again. We need you to clearly explain how you put anti-revolutionary elements with foreign agents.” Rosewater then handed me his drawing with the two circles. “Friend or prisoner? It’s your choice, Maziar. You can be out of here in a week’s time or you can rot here. Now go back to your cell and think about it.”

The next morning, Brown Sandals came to my cell early, and with my breakfast, he gave me a pen and six pieces of paper with the names of the reformist leaders on them. “These are for
tak nevisi
, writing information about individuals,” the guard said.

“
Tak nevisi
can save you, Mr. Bahari,” Rosewater had told me repeatedly.

I looked at the pen and the papers. I had no inner conflict about what to write. Despite the ache in my body and the bruises that now covered my skin, I was not going to follow Rosewater’s orders and lie about my connection with the reformists, or say that I had put them in touch with foreigners. I threw the papers into a corner and stroked the pen in my hand. It was the first time I’d been alone with a pen in the twenty days I’d been in Evin. What a tremendous gift.

Then I moved to a corner of the cell and pulled back the green carpeting, exposing the gray tile floor underneath.

The living room of my parents’ house was in the shape of a square, which I now drew clumsily. The dining table was at the upper left, with eight chairs around it. The table was wooden and round, the kind you find in elegant Chinese restaurants. A buffet was next to the table, and a large silk carpet was hung on the right side of the buffet. It depicted the eleventh-century Persian
poet Omar Khayyám being handed a glass of wine by a beautiful woman. The silk carpet had a golden frame. Maryam and I had always hated that tacky silk carpet, but my father had loved it. I loved it too right now, and I wrote out the words of one of Khayyám’s poems: