About a year ago, I was itching to go to Iran. I sent out a rousing and somewhat satirical email to friends who might be interested in going, boasting that the “mullahs won’t know what hit them.” To be successful, any such trip would have to be meticulously planned and executed with high caution. But I wanted to whip up support with some cavalier language. I wrote that “ideally, we would be there for the June elections when there is a palpable but distant chance that Ahmedinejad will get upset.” It is a good thing that I wasn't able to get into the country then. Foreign journalists with actual credentials were bullied, harassed, detained, or deported. But any freelancing fool, especially an American, might have it worse.
It does not get worse than Evin Prison, where so many blameless Iranians have wasted away. The dungeon sits right in Tehran, and many accounts of the abuses within have reached Western audiences. The Iranian theocracy takes much the same attitude with Evin as it does with its nuclear bomb-making: “What will you do about it?” We can at least listen to the many tortured voices that ring forth from the prison gates. One such voice is that of Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist who, in her new book, evokes the many layers of sorrow residing in that monstrous jail. By the end of Ms. Saberi’s 100-day captivity, her plight was finally in the international spotlight. But this was not before she languished for weeks without word to the outside world.
Perhaps it was Saberi’s unique ability to report to the West from Iran that so riled her captors. A comely blend of Persian and Japanese parents (she's probably sick of those preoccupied with her good looks), Saberi carries an American passport and a tongue fluid in Farsi. She arrived in Iran in 2002 to research a book she planned to write on Iranian society. While doing so, she was drawn to the people and decided to stay in the country after her press credentials were revoked. In the early pages of the book, one gets the sense that, despite being a foreigner, Saberi felt somewhat at ease in Iran and unencumbered by the authorities. There was the occasional snooping from the intelligence ministry, but nothing that signaled she was in grave danger.
And then something snapped. Her life was blindsided by self-deluding men accusing her of espionage. The game played by these thugs is frighteningly cynical: "We know you are working for the CIA. Admit this and agree to spy for us, and you will be freed. Deny it and you will stay in prison indefinitely." The "evidence" presented against Saberi was laughable. By the end of the psychological warfare waged upon her, Saberi's captors admit to knowing of her innocence all along.
Why carry out this fakery? I think it was simply an exercise in power for the Iranian secret police. They were angered by Saberi's ability to move about the country without a translator doubling as a snoop. And once they had Roxana in their clutches, they got personal. "How long do you want to be in here?" one of the agents asked her in first day of captivity. "In a couple of years, you will lose your looks." They were trying to reduce her to a pretty face, and a fleeting one at that. As the reader finds out, Saberi is no brittle belle. She forces Evin's hand with a hunger strike and instead offers nourishment to her cellmates with her stories from America. After three months of prison, she emerges a haggard reflection of her former self. Yet despite enduring the evil of Evin, and inspiring many along the way, Roxana is dogged by her conscience. What of her acquaintances and contacts whom the secret police may now take a keener interest in because of her? What of the cellmates she was leaving behind to rot while she resumes life in America? Ms. Saberi will be hard-pressed to find an antidote for her anguish, but she deserves one.
International attention was the tipping point in Saberi's case. Despite all of their suffocating methods, the authorities could not keep Saberi completely hidden from the public eye. Once, in transit between courtroom and prison, a young woman caught her eye and smiled subtly while saying, "You must be Roxana. The whole country knows about you. We are praying for you." The support of the Iranian and American people sustained Saberi, and showed that shared compassion can sometimes outmaneuver politics to good effect.
With Iran being the steel trap to Americans that it is now, I am forced to read about the country from the safety of my dust-ridden couch. Most of this reading will be rather depressing tales of persecution and suppressed talent. But I look forward to using this blog to highlight examples of a resilience that will hopefully carry the Iranians through this perilous time. No one knows when it will come to pass.
Roxana Saberi with Mohammad Khatami, Iran's president from 1997 to 2005 and a current member of the opposition movement.
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