First of all, please allow me to express my gratitude to all of you for giving me your precious time. I know you're all busy.
I am here to speak about my experience as a political prisoner in Iran.
I grew up in Iran. I am a Christian. I was born to a Christian family, and when I was born, Iran was not an Islamic republic. It was during the time of the Shah in 1965. My father was a ballroom dancing instructor and my mother a hairdresser. I grew up among the sounds of the cha cha and the tango, and women with puffy hair. We had a cottage by the Caspian Sea, and I was just your average teenager. Back then, Iran was governed by secular laws. I wanted to become a medical doctor.
Then the revolution happened and Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. I became a very unlikely activist, which I say because I'm not political. My family is not political. There had never been any political people in my family.
I was only a teenager back then, but I had grown up in bikinis on the beach and a miniskirt. I had grown up having fallen in love with Donny Osmond because his show was my favourite.
When the revolution happened, all of the above became illegal. My father who had brought modern dance to Iran had to shut down his dance studio, because dancing had been declared evil and illegal. I took ballet lessons and they were shut down. Wearing the hijab became mandatory.
What about our liberties, our personal liberties? The revolution promised us freedom, democracy, and political liberties, but it did not deliver. We lost even our personal liberties, and this upset us. As a girl who had grown up in a miniskirt and could no longer wear it—and the uglier you looked, the happier the government was—I protested. We were on the streets of Tehran, not because we were political, but simply because we wanted to have fun. Every single protest rally was attacked by the revolutionary guard.
The wave of mass arrests of young people in Iran began in the spring of 1981. My first friend who was arrested was named Shahnush Behzadi. She was 15 years old. She was afraid of spiders. We had been classmates since the third grade. I was a trouble maker. I was a loud mouth. I was always protesting in school. But she was one of the quiet ones and she was the first one to disappear. Every day you would go to school and there would be an empty desk. There would be somebody missing, and we would look at each other and ask, “How bad can it get? I mean, they are arresting 15-and-16-year-olds. How bad can it get?”
There aren't many stupid questions in this world but this one is really stupid: “How bad can it get?” Well it got really bad.
They came for me on January 15, 1982. It was about 9 or 10 o'clock at night. I was at home. I was about to take a shower. I had just turned on the water. I was waiting for it to heat up. The door bell rang. My mother called my name. I opened the bathroom door and there were two really big guns pointed in my face. People have asked me if I was scared. No I was not. This is not because I'm brave; I'm not brave at all, but I entered a state of shock. A state of shock is like body armour but it doesn't protect you against bullets; it protects you against emotion. I lost the ability to feel. I'm afraid that once you enter a state of shock, it's very difficult to get out.
The guards put me in a car and drove me north to Evin prison, which is still 100% operational. It's still working 35 years later. They blindfolded me upon arrival; that's what they do to prisoners. It's an intimidation technique. They walked me along hallway after hallway after hallway. Eventually they told me to sit down. I sat down. Eventually—I don't how many hours later; I cannot tell you how long I was sitting there—somebody called my name. They took me into a room. I still couldn't see anything. I was still blindfolded.
A man asked me if I had attended protest rallies against the government. I said yes. It was common knowledge. I didn't wear a ski mask on the streets of Tehran. Of course I attended protest rallies. My principal knew. I was 16 years old. My teachers knew. My friends knew. Of course I attended protest rallies.
Then he asked me, “Have you written articles against the government?” I said, “Yes, I have written articles against the government in my school newspaper.” Then he asked about the whereabouts of a girl who was a friend of a friend of mine. I had met this young woman once but I had no idea where she was. If I had known, I would have told then. I was not a member of any organization. I had not been trained on how to behave under interrogation. If I had known, I would have told them. I just didn't want to be there.
They didn't like what I said. They took me to another room and they took off my blindfold. I was in a small room with two men, Ali and Hamed. They handcuffed me. When they handcuffed me, they laughed because—it was funny—my hands would have slid out of the cuffs. I was 90 pounds back then. So they put both of my wrists into one cuff, and as it clicked my right wrist cracked. The torture had not even begun.
They tied me to a bare wooden bed. I was lying down on my stomach. They took off my socks and my shoes. I had Puma running shoes and I had paid a fortune for them. It's funny because I was 16 and I was thinking about my shoes. They took off my socks and my shoes and they lashed the soles of my feet with a length of cable. When I say cable, I mean cable. I don't mean wire. It's about an inch thick. It is heavy rubber. It's heavy stuff; and they lashed the soles of my feet.
This is the most common method of torture in the Middle East. Why? It's because our nerve ends are in our feet. With every strike, your nervous system explodes and is magically put back together; and you're wide awake for the next. I started saying a Hail Mary. I forgot the words to it. I started to count. I got to six. I forgot what was after six. If the devil had appeared and offered, “If you sell your soul I will take you back home to your mother,” I would have sold my soul with whipped cream and a cherry on top. I would have done anything, anything I mean it, to get out of that room. I wasn't proud of it but it is the absolute truth.
They gave me documents to sign. I signed everything. I didn't read what they said. If they had asked me to confess I was Jesus Christ, I would have confessed I was Jesus Christ.
To make a long story short, I was given the death sentence. Back then and still today, it's very easy to get a death sentence in Evin. My sentence was reduced to life in prison and I was sent to the cell block with hundreds, maybe thousands of other girls.
Six months after my arrest I was called for interrogation. My interrogator Ali was there. He closed the door behind us. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “You had the death sentence. I reduced it to life in prison. You're going to be here forever and nobody cares.” Well, I knew that much. Then he said, “You are going to become my wife, or I will arrest your parents and your boyfriend.” I knew he was not kidding.
I was forced to marry my interrogator. I was 17 years old. This didn't mean that I was released. They moved me to solitary confinement in the 209 section of Evin prison. I was raped over and over again in the name of marriage and it was absolutely legal. There was nothing I could do about it.
This is my story in a nutshell. My friend Shahnush whom I mentioned earlier was executed in October 1981. We don't even know where she is buried. She was executed before I was even arrested. I have her photo on my desktop, and every once in while when I get discouraged by what's going on in the world—it's quite easy to do. I guess you would agree with me—I just click on her photo and I bring it up, because she remained 15 and I'm now 50 years old. I'm now more than old enough to be her mother. This is not fair.
In Evin prison, I became a witness, no more, no less. As I said, many of the girls are buried in mass graves, and in Iran there are no memorial walls to remember the names of the dead. One day there will be. But until then, it is my duty and the duty of all who survive to carry not only the names but also the stories.
Thank you so much for your time.