After Tehran (27 page)

ON THE PLANE
on my way to the conference in Milan, I thought of the Angel of Death. I had dreamed of him at the age of seven after
Bahboo’s
death. In my dream, he was a handsome young man with curly black hair; he was wearing a white robe, and he told me that he was my guardian angel. When I asked him why he didn’t have shoes on, he said that there was no need for shoes where he came from. He held me in his arms and made me feel loved and secure. Ever since, whenever the world became too much to bear, I thought of him. As I lost loved ones, I felt comforted to know that he waited for them in the next world.

Milan was unseasonably cold, even colder than Amsterdam, with the temperature hovering around 0°C. Early in the morning of my second day at the conference, when I looked out the window of my
room, it was snowing—a relatively rare sight in Milan. The snow was accumulating, and the flakes were the largest I had ever seen. In keeping with my morning ritual, I took a shower, got dressed, and went outside for a little walk. I didn’t want my hair to get wet and frizzy, so I opened my umbrella. The wind wasn’t too strong at that point, and I enjoyed the fresh, crisp air. I stood by a large fountain with little angels in the middle of it. Dressed in snow, they appeared even more heavenly. The wind grew stronger, so I turned back to go for breakfast, but a strong gust suddenly blew my umbrella inside out and tore it out of my hand. Years earlier, something similar had happened to me in Iran. Now it was as if a hand grabbed me and pulled me back in time. Tears fell down my face and burned my frozen skin. I couldn’t move.

I was at a memorial service for Arash, the boy I had first met at the Caspian Sea. I didn’t know how passionately he believed in the need to fight the shah’s regime. In September 1978, only a few months before the success of the revolution, he was killed at a street demonstration. His family didn’t know where his body was. He was eighteen when we met, and had finished his first year of studying medicine at the University of Tehran. We spent a lot of time together that summer, and he was the one who first told me about the Islamic Revolution in progress in the country. I had never heard the name Ayatollah Khomeini before Arash mentioned it to me. I was only thirteen and interested in books and music, not in the news. Even though a five-year age difference stood between us, we became close friends quickly and our friendship turned into love. Arash told me that the shah was a dictator and imprisoned those who opposed him. He said that the people of Iran were revolting against the shah because they wanted democracy. I didn’t know what to make of it. From my perspective, we had good lives and didn’t need a revolution. Arash disagreed with me, telling me I was too young and naïve.

In December 1979, Arash’s parents finally gave up their search to find his place of burial and had a memorial stone made for him. Friends and relatives accompanied them to his aunt’s cottage by the Caspian Sea, a place he loved dearly. There, on a miserable, freezing, rainy day in January 1980, we held a memorial service for him. My face was numb from the cold. My eyes moved from face to face, from one black outfit to the next, from the grey landscape to the grey sky, longing for hope. The rain suddenly changed to snow. I had never seen it snow at the Caspian. As Arash’s brother, Aram, put a bouquet of red roses next to the memorial stone, a strong gust of wind turned my umbrella inside out and blew it out of my hand, away into the trees.

Arash’s mother began to scream. Her cries seemed to rip open her chest, exposing her pain and her helplessness. Everyone was sobbing.

After the service we returned to Tehran, and the first thing I did was find a cardboard box that I hoped was large enough to hold my memories of Arash. I had to cure myself of the agonizing pain I felt, and it seemed that the only way was to forget. Walking from room to room, dragging the cardboard box behind me, I gathered souvenirs, clothes, music tapes, books—anything that even slightly reminded me of Arash. When the box was full, I closed it, taped it securely, and kept it in our basement for a while. In March 1980, during the Iranian New Year holidays, I took the box to our cottage with me. There was a special place on the property where, as
Bahboo
had taught me, I said the Our Father every morning. From a distance it resembled a big moss-covered rock, but as you approached you could see that it was made of many small stones. It stood about four feet high and six feet wide, and a thick, rusty metal bar reached out of one of its corners. It belonged to ancient times when the sea covered most of the land. Once useful as a place where fishermen tied their boats, it looked strange and out
of place when I discovered it in a forgotten corner of the property. I loved to stand on it, open my arms to the gentle breeze, close my eyes, and imagine the sea surrounding me, its glassy surface transforming the sunlight into a golden liquid that glided toward the shore. I had come to call this strange monument the Prayer Rock. I found a shovel, dug a large hole in the sandy earth, and buried the box next to the rock.

After Arash’s death, I became close friends with his brother, Aram, until he left Iran shortly before my incarceration in Evin. I lost touch with him and didn’t hear from him until April 2000, when I received a phone call.

The winter of 2000 had felt longer than any other I had spent in Canada. It had seemed as though spring would never come, that it had frozen to death somewhere deep in the ground, buried inside an eternal shroud of glittering ice. On April 22, 2000, my thirty-fifth birthday, I checked my flower beds. The deep-green leaves of my tulips had broken the surface of the soil, but the landscape was still grey. The wind whipped against me. It started to rain, and although I hated being cold and wet, I stayed outside, breathing in the scent of the waking earth. A group of returning Canada geese filled the sky with their joyous, urgent cries; their graceful, dark wings arched, stretched, rose, and descended, bearing them back home.

I went inside the house. I had taken the day off work because of my birthday, but the kitchen floor was a mess and the bedrooms were upside down. I decided to have a cup of tea before attending to housework. As soon as I sat down, the phone rang.

I picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Marina?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“It’s me … Aram.”

“Aram?” Speaking his name sounded unreal, like hearing a vague and scattered echo.

“Arash’s brother.”

“My God. Where … where are you?”

“New York.”

“You live there?”

“No. I’m here for work. I live in Australia.”

“How did you find me?”

“Long story … It took a long time.”

“Yeah. About … nineteen years.”

I told him that I had married Andre in 1985, and we had two sons. Aram said he was divorced and had one son. His parents had both died a few years back, within a year of each other. He asked me about my parents, and I told him that my mother had died a few weeks earlier, but my father was well.

“Sorry to hear about your mother,” he said. “You know, she wrote to me and told me you had been arrested …”

“I was in Evin for two years.”

“I lost touch with your parents in early 1984. My letters began coming back.”

“My parents moved.”

“It took me years to find out you had been released and left Iran.”

“We came to Canada in 1991.”

“Marina, I was so angry at you. Didn’t I tell you to be careful?”

After nineteen years, had he called me to say “I told you so”?

He said he could come to Toronto to see me. My heart sank. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see him. Actually, I realized I didn’t. That part of my life was over and I didn’t want to step into it again.

“Aram … let’s not go back …”

Silence.

“Aram?”

“I understand.”

“Stay in touch.”

“I will.”

I hung up and stared out the window. A black squirrel was sitting on the fence, staring back at me. I sat down. A part of me was telling me to call him back, to say that I had been wrong in not wanting to see him, but I knew what that would mean. For sixteen years, I had avoided the past at all costs. The bubble I carried on my shoulders, the one that held the memories of my life in Iran, had been secure for years, but now cracks were forming on its surface.

Aram called me again about three months later, and after that, we emailed each other every so often. When I decided to publish
Prisoner of Tehran
, I asked for his permission to write about his brother and about him. He gave it but requested that I protect his identity. He still had friends and family in Iran and travelled there about once every two years. I had to be discreet enough that Iranian authorities wouldn’t easily recognize him from my book and cause him trouble.

After
Prisoner of Tehran
appeared in print, I considered visiting Aram. Before my arrest, I had
really
liked him. We were simply compatible. Except, I had been his brother’s girlfriend. After Arash’s death, we couldn’t be more than friends. Then I fell in love with Andre in 1981, shortly before Aram left Iran.

We have a word in Persian that does not have an exact translation in English. It is
mehr
, which could be translated as “love.” But in Persian, the word for love is
eshgh
. However,
eshgh
is the dramatic, hormonal kind of love, when
mehr
is even-handed, strong, and gentle. It implies friendship and trust. During all the years we had lived together, my
eshgh
for Andre had evolved into
mehr
. Seeing Aram could put what Andre and I had in jeopardy.

In so many ways, Andre and I could not be more different. I love literature, and he reads books only about his work. I love movies, and he watches only the news, sports, or the weather channel. I love to dance, but he has never danced in his life. I love to travel, and he always wants to stay home. I am easygoing and believe in not sweating the small things, but he is a perfectionist and expects everything—for example, even making the bed—to be done flawlessly. He has been loyal to me, and I have been faithful to him. We became one in front of God. When I considered seeing Aram, Andre and I had been married for twenty-two years. We were—still are—committed to each other. I knew I had to protect our marriage. I had to take care of Andre the way he had taken care of me. Till death do us part. This is the reason I decided not to see Aram, even after I faced my past.

AT THE END
of that snowy day in Milan before I fell asleep at night, my last thoughts were of Arash and Aram. I had emailed Aram before going to bed to tell him about my umbrella and how that small incident had drawn me back in time. The next day, I found an email from him in my inbox:

You won’t believe this, but I dreamed of Arash last night before reading your email. The two of us were standing on the beach by the Caspian, watching you swim in the distance. Arash was holding an umbrella. It was a beautiful day, so I asked him why. He said it was yours, and that he had promised to keep it for you
.

A Dream Catcher

W
hen I was a child, I sometimes saw angels, monks, or ghosts as I lay in my bed at night. As I grew older, the line that separated dreams from reality became more and more clear, but there were still instances when I found myself in a world I can only describe as in-between sleep and consciousness. A friend of mine who has had quite a few traumatic experiences told me that his nightmares sometimes make him get out of bed in the middle of the night and try to defend himself and the people he loves. Unlike him, though, when nightmare and reality become one, I never react. My nightmares pull me into the dark ocean of silence and paralyze me.

Occasionally, I have recurring nightmares. In one of them, I am on a relaxing holiday or a day trip with friends or family. We are strolling along, laughing, and having a great time. I’m wearing a bright, floral summer dress. Suddenly, a hand grabs me and drags me into a semi-dark room. There I find myself tied up to a bed. I struggle to scream, but I have been gagged. A man is always in the room, but I can never clearly see his face. I wake up in a cold sweat.

When my two boys were very young, I bought them each a dream catcher and hung it in their bedrooms. I explained how the dream catcher, which is a willow hoop with a woven web
in the middle and is decorated with personal and sacred items such as feathers and beads, would catch their nightmares so that they would have only sweet dreams. Dream catchers originated with the Ojibwa nation, but during the sixties and seventies, Native Americans of a few different nations adopted them. Some consider the dream catcher a symbol of unity among those nations.

WHEN
, in the fall of 2008, I was in the city of Cosenza, Italy, to receive the Grinzane Prize for
Prisoner of Tehran
, I met a woman named Giuliana Sgrena. She was one of the judges for the prize and sat next to me during a dinner party. I felt at a total loss because I didn’t know anything about her, but she had read my book and, as a result, knew me very well. She was about an inch shorter than I was, probably in her late fifties, and weighed no more than ninety-five pounds. Her shoulder-length blond hair was carelessly combed, and she wore no makeup. Her eyes were a colour I didn’t have a name for—a shade between amber and grey. She appeared tired. Very tired.