Tan pantyhose were selling for 1,000 tomans, assorted head-scarves for 2,000.
âRed with white flowers, black with turquoise stripes!â a plump woman hawker cried out as she pushed her way through the packed train car.
Like my fellow female passengers on Tehranâs metro, I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of these $1 to $2 items, but all I could see from where I stood jammed in the corner were the backs of heads covered in mandatory hejab.
The metro screeched to a halt. Some women got off; others snatched up the vacated seats in our subway car, one of two set aside for female passengers who chose to sit separately from the men. I remained where I was, tired but content that with my trip to the holy city of Qom behind me, I had come one step closer to finishing the interviews for the book I was writing.
I hadnât intended to write a book when I moved from America to Iran nearly six years earlier, in February 2003. Instead, I wanted to get to know my fatherâs native land and its rich culture and history, learn the Farsi language, and realize my dream of becoming a foreign correspondent. Everything was going more or less according to plan when, in 2006, the Iranian authorities unexpectedly revoked my official press credentials.
I could have left Iran then, but I chose to stay. The loss of my press pass, I realized, might actually be an opportunity. I had gained more time to explore Iran, a country that remained exciting and mysterious to me and a place many outsiders seemed to misunderstand. And so I had decided to work on a book about life in Iran as seen through the eyes of a wide range of Iranians.
I believed if I didnât do this before leaving Iran, I would be too caught up in the next stages of my life to have another chance. Besides, I wasnât in a big hurry to go. I had fallen in love with Iran, had made many good friends, and for now, would have rather been here than anywhere else.
Several taxis crawled by when I got off the metro at a bustling central Tehran square. They were all full. Since fuel rationing had begun in 2007 in this oil-rich, gas-guzzling nation, cabs seemed to have become harder to find on the streets.
My boyfriend, Bahman, had urged me to always use a taxi agency instead of privately owned taxis and shared cabs, in which total strangers often sat next to one another. I usually heeded his advice, but this evening, I just wanted to go home, take off my hejab, and unwind.
âDarbast!â (literally, âexclusiveâ) I shouted at an approaching four-door Peykan, Iranâs most popular car before it was discontinued a few years earlier because it was a heavy polluter.
âGet in,â said the driver, a young man with gelled hair and a tight T-shirt.
As we entered the highway, he cranked up the Iranian rap music on his stereo and began to hum along. It was one of those songs available only on the black market but largely tolerated by the authorities if played in private. I turned to look out my window. A gray cloud of smog hung in the air, obscuring the Alborz Mountains to the north of Tehran. If I hadnât known they were there, I would have thought they didnât exist.
âSo where are you from?â the driver yelled over the music.
âIran!â I yelled back. Although I had been an American citizen since birth, I was in Iran on my Iranian passport.
He turned down his music and glanced back at me. âYou look Japanese,â he remarked.
âYeah,â I said. âMy mother is Japanese.â
âReally? The Japanese are very hard workers.â
My cell phone rang, saving me from going into any more detail about myself. Bahman was on the line. Even though he was visiting his sister in Los Angeles, he still called regularly to check on me. I gave him a rundown of my previous twenty-four hours, then we hung up the way we always did, with the words Dust-et dâram, a term of affection meaning âI like youâ or âI love you.â
Gradually, the car wove its way north up Sadr Highway, which Iranâs authorities had named, like many streets and freeways, after a âmartyr,â this one, a grand ayatollah who had been executed by former Iraqi President Saddam Husseinâs regime. Since Iranâs 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic had tried to equate the idea of martyrdom, a concept highly revered in Shiite Islam, with self-sacrifice for the state. Many Iranians were lured to the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s with the promise that if they died, they would become martyrs and go to heaven.
I got out at my neighborhood grocery store, where I picked up the ingredients for my dinnerâsome eggs, fresh bread, and a bag of imitation nacho Doritos. The grocer smiled warmly at me as he handed me my goods.
My apartment complex sat at the end of an alley a block away, past a pastry shop, three fast-food restaurants, and several high-rises. When I walked through the front door, I found the elevator broken as it often was. On my hike up five flights of stairs, I bumped into the building caretaker, Gholam.
âMiss Saberi,â he said, âis your heater working well? The weatherâs going to get colder soon.â
My heater had been pumping out more cold air than warm, I informed him. He told me he would call the handyman.
As I unlocked my door and entered my apartment, giggling children burst out of one neighborâs unit and chased each other down the stairs, while Voice of America Persian boomed from another neighborâs illegal satellite TV.
I took off my long, black chador, which I had worn on my trip to Qom to blend in with the conservatively dressed local women, but instead of hanging the cloth on a hook as was customary, I returned it to its role of keeping the dust off my piano.
I began to whistle âSilent Nightâ as I prepared my dinner. My home was my refuge. I felt a sense of calm here, even though I suspected that my life within these walls wasnât completely private. As an Iranian-American journalist, I knew that my telephone and e-mail might be at least occasionally monitoredâa fact of life for many journalists, foreigners, and certain others in the Islamic Republic.
It was Christmas, which few people celebrated in this largely Muslim nation. Other than e-mailing holiday greetings to some friends abroad, I would spend my evening like most other nights: logging interviews, doing research for my book, and typing on my laptop. For a break, I might play the piano, call a friend, or visit my elderly widowed neighbor, who always welcomed me with gossip and honey-filled pastries. Then I would e-mail or video Skype my parents in North Dakota to tell them all was well, scrub the pollution from my clogged pores, and go to sleep, usually long after midnight.
I expected to more or less repeat this routine for the next three months, until late March. By then, my book would be finished, and perhaps with Bahman, I would leave the country to move on to the next chapter of my life.
I sank my head into my flannel-covered pillow and pulled my down comforter over my cold ears. It was the last day of January, and more than five weeks had passed since Gholam had promised to send the handyman, but still my heater was broken.
Most mornings, I was awakened by the sounds of hammering, drilling, and sawing, as construction workers erected one new apartment complex after another in my upper-middle-class neighborhood. But on this Saturday, the first day of the Iranian workweek, the only sound that reached my ears was the ticking of my clock.
My eyes turned toward it: 9:00.
Ding-dong.
I flinched. So it was the doorbell that had woken me up. I rolled over and closed my heavy eyelids. I wasnât expecting any visitors. Someone was probably mistaking my doorbell for a neighborâs on the console downstairs as usual.
Ding-dong.
If I got up to answer it, I wouldnât be able to fall back asleep. Brain wonât function if donât get eight hours of sleep.
Ding-dong.
Whoever it was obviously wasnât giving up.
I stumbled out of bed and across my living room. The monitor on my video door phone was lit up, displaying a black-and-white image of an unfamiliar middle-aged man.
âYes?â I asked in Farsi.
âMiss Saberi?â the man inquired with a friendly smile.
âYou are?â
âYou have a letter.â
It was a mailman, I realized.
âCould you bring it up, please?â I was too groggy to go downstairs. âIâm on the fifth floor.â
âCertainly.â
I buzzed open the door to the building, then dragged myself back to my bedroom, put on a white headscarf, and slipped a knee-length black roopoosh over my pajamas.
A light rap sounded at the door. I opened it just a few inches. The mailman was standing there with an indecipherable smile on his face and a piece of white paper in his fist. Saying nothing, he handed the paper to me through the crack.
My eyes scanned the page, skipping over most of the words, trying to figure out what this was all about. My modest Farsi-reading skills, combined with a growing sense of unease, were hindering my comprehension of what appeared to me as:
Evin Prison?
I ran my eyes over the last line again.
âEvin Prison.â
My heart began to pound. This Tehran jail was notorious for having held Iranâs most famous political prisoners, including students, academics, and activists. Torture was common, and hangings and a mass execution had taken place there. In 2003, Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was detained in Evin and shortly afterward, died suspiciously. No one had ever been held accountable for her death.
âExcuse me,â I said to the man at my door, attempting to conceal my mounting fear. âI donât read Farsi very well. Could you give me a moment to look at this more carefully?â
I tried to shut the door but couldnât. He had propped it open with his right foot and was now sneering at me.
âNo,â he grunted, forcing the door open just as three other men filed out of the elevator behind him.
I shuffled a few steps back in horror as they pushed their way into my apartment and quietly shut the door.
Two of them had the same look as the âMailmanâ: middle-aged, with scruffy beards and untucked shirts hanging over dark trousers. The third was well groomed and younger, perhaps in his early thirties.
No doubt about itâthese were Iranian intelligence agents.
What could they possibly want from me?
âDid you just wake up?â one of them asked in Farsi, as he glanced at my pajama pants sticking out of my roopoosh.
Before I could answer, another remarked, âYes, she goes to sleep late and gets up late.â
I turned to look at the agent who had just spoken, shaken that he knew my sleeping patterns. He was the youngest member of the group, a clean-shaven man who didnât fit the typical intelligence-agent profile. Wearing blue jeans, a black leather jacket, and hard-soled shoes that clicked as he strolled across my tiled living room floor, he could have fit right in with the youthâor javânâof northern Tehran who often had a Westernized look. âJavanâ (who as an agent would never disclose his real name) surveyed my living room with indifference, except for a faint look of disgust when he spotted my chador draped over the piano.
âDo you know why weâre here?â the tallest man said, fiddling with a set of tasbih, or prayer beads, in his right hand.
I opened my mouth to respond to âTasbihi,â but no words came out.
âWe have the right to interrogate you,â he said evenly, without waiting for a response. âAnd if we are not satisfied, we can take you to Evin Prison tonight.â
This had to be a very, very bad dream, worse than any nightmare I could remember.
âDonât worry,â Tasbihi continued, flashing an unsettling grin. âIf you cooperate, youâll be back home this evening. Just do as we say, and donât leave our sight.â
I wanted to make a dash for either my phone or the door, but all I could do was nod. I recalled what I had heard about Zahra Kazemi. As the sto...
