Camelia (25 page)

I was emboldened and sought to be the first journalist on the scene at major political events. In June 1998 I was watching the news in Sarajevo when suddenly a headline flashed on the screen. Mazar-e Sharif had fallen to the Taliban, and the Iranian embassy had been taken in a surprise attack. The embassy staff and a journalist from an Iranian news agency were being held hostage in an undisclosed location. All it took was a call to Faezeh, and I was en route to Afghanistan.

Two days later I left for Karachi, Pakistan, and from there on to Peshawar. But I still needed a visa. For several days, I found myself at loose ends, sitting on the curb in front of the Taliban consulate in Peshawar. The Taliban were now Iran's premier enemy, and after the seizure of fourteen Iranian citizens, the possibility of a direct attack on Afghanistan by Iran loomed ominously. At Friday prayers in Tehran, there were murmurings about the threat posed by the Taliban, and the military held maneuvers along the border. As I waited, a journalist from a Taliban news agency helped me file my daily reports with
Zan
. Finally, a man emerged from the consulate and said, “Mulawi Ahmad will see you now.” Two Pashtun men with long beards and big black turbans waited inside, the shadows of their eyes to the ground except for once or twice when they gave me a sideways glance.

“You don't have a
mahram
,” they announced. A male relative was required as a chaperone. “It is not possible for you to travel alone in the Islamic country of Afghanistan. Become
mahram
with one of the brothers, and we'll even give you a car and a driver, and you can go all over, wherever you want.” This was their awkward marriage proposal. I smiled at them and said, as I walked out the door, “I
swear by the Qur'an that I'll get over that border. I'm going to Afghanistan.”

 

I was determined to uncover the truth about the seized Iranian journalist and diplomats. Two days later, an Iranian friend in Peshawar found me a pair of reliable Afghans to accompany me over the dirt road into Afghanistan. My escorts were closely connected to the Iranian consul general in Peshawar, and they themselves were going over to collect the latest intelligence for the Iranian embassy. But instead of waiting for them in Peshawar for any news, I decided to go with them to make my reports firsthand. I bought a burqa and cheap used shoes and clothes at the bazaar, and we headed off to Jalalabad. I posed as the wife of one of my traveling companions, and we crossed the border in an elaborately painted Pakistani bus, full of Afghans on their way home. They all had long beards, and some wore large turbans.

We spent half a day in Jalalabad, and in the evening we went directly back to Peshawar. My presence increased the risk for the two Afghans that their mission could be exposed, so we had to return to Pakistan quickly. Agents in Jalalabad had entrusted my guides with video footage of the murder of the hostages in Mazar-e Sharif. In Peshawar I found the first available opportunity to call Faezeh and relay the news.

“Are you sure?” Faezeh asked me. “This is going on the front page!”

I was sure. My report went off like a bomb in the unsettled atmosphere of Iran. A large group of the captives' relatives gathered on the street outside of the newspaper, desperate for more information. That evening the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement denying
Zan
's report, proclaiming that they were in contact with the Taliban and guaranteeing the safety of the captives.

In Peshawar, I arrived safe and sound at my friend's house, covered
in mud and dust and drenched in sweat. The following day I talked to Faezeh.

“Camelia, you're in for it if you screwed up. I'll have your hide. The phones have been swamped all day with calls from the Ministry of Intelligence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They want you to get back here fast.”

“I know what I'm saying. I saw the footage of their bodies.”

In Islamabad, the Iranian undersecretary of foreign affairs, Agha-ye Amini, who had come to Pakistan to try to work things out between Tehran and Islamabad in the face of this crisis, exploded the second he saw me. “You! What made you think you could mess around with our national security? Don't you understand what will happen if you are captured or killed in Afghanistan? People are upset enough at the seizure of the diplomats. The murder of an Iranian girl—for them it would be a declaration of war. I'm really surprised at Khanum Hashemi. Did you want to cause a war?” A Pakistani journalist brought me the same message from the other side, from the conservative side of their government who supported the Taliban: if I wanted to save my skin, I'd better leave Pakistan immediately.

In Tehran, I walked into the newspaper's offices like a hero in a blue burqa. Several weeks after my article was published, the Foreign Ministry officially announced the murders. The people of Iran were better prepared, psychologically and emotionally, to bear the horror of the news because of my reports in
Zan
.

 

The women who worked at
Zan
enjoyed total freedom in choosing what they wore. Faezeh believed the
hejab
was a matter of personal choice. As a member of the Majlis, she spoke out about such issues as women being allowed to ride bicycles in public. I was proud to be working for her, and I'd leave for the office in the morning humming to myself. One after another, new newspapers followed
our lead and added to the ensemble of reformist voices. The tension between the free press and the Ministry of Intelligence grew and grew. I wanted to face the problem head on, to write about the tension that was building instead of keeping quiet about it. I wanted to write about all the pressing issues that had been forbidden to me since my first day as a journalist. And Faezeh never said no.

“Faezeh, you should be president. Twenty million people would vote for you. And I'll run your campaign.”

“You're crazy,” she'd laugh. “I'd better ask Hamid to check your head.” Hamid Lahuti, Faezeh's husband, was a psychiatrist who was as different from his brazen, boisterous wife as night from day. They had two children: Muna, who was the spitting image of her mother, and Hassan, who was the spitting image of his father. Our personal friendship grew closer and deeper. On Fridays, Faezeh and I would go to Karaj or up north with her kids. I'd stay over at their house some nights, and some days Faezeh would stop by our house to eat lunch and chat with my mother. This friendship was kept strictly personal and totally distinct from our professional relationship at
Zan
. When people would ask me about the salacious rumors that dogged Faezeh, I'd simply knit my eyebrows and reply, “I'm not interested in hearing that gossip.” I'd had to answer their stupid questions a million times. “I swear to God. I swear on the Qur'an that Faezeh lives with her husband. Yes, he's the only husband she has, and no, she hasn't been divorced two or three times.” But they would squint at me and say, “OK, you're right to stick up for her. She's your friend, and she takes care of you.” Faezeh and Hamid married when she was eighteen, and she'd never had another husband, but for some reason this particular rumor of divorce was relentless, even passing through the thick walls of Towhid Prison, where it was one of the first things my guards asked me about. Because she was a successful woman and because she was Hashemi Rafsanjani's
daughter, people wanted to trash her. There was a certain man she was close to in our office, and in typical Iranian fashion, the rumors had followed their friendship. She didn't care to defend herself against these accusations. She stood above this kind of talk, and I followed her lead.

When the invitation arrived from the
Boston Globe
for Faezeh to travel to America, she selected me to go in her place. It was the first exchange program for journalists between Iran and America since the Islamic Revolution. Khatami's victory with twenty million votes and the subsequent lessening of the restrictions on freedom of the press had taken the world by surprise. In 1998, journalism in Iran was itself a hot news topic in the global media. Just about every week, the BBC's Persian service or Voice of America or Radio France interviewed me. A German television station filmed a segment on me, and I was interviewed by the Japanese newspaper
Asahi.
“How lucky I am,” I said to my mother. “Today I have everything I've always wanted.”

Five of us were chosen to participate in the American exchange: the editor in chief of
Hamshahri
, Mohammed Atrianfar; the editor in chief of the monthly magazine
Zanan
, Shahla Sherkat; the editor of the foreign edition of
Iran News
, Mojghan Jalali; a member of the editorial board of the newspaper
Salaam
, Karim Arghandeh Pour; and myself. I had worked for Agha-ye Atrianfar at
Hamshahri
and hated him. He had been an oppressive figure, always carrying a
tasbih
in his hand. He'd given me such a hard time that I had resigned from the paper in part just to get away from him. But in America, where I could finally give him a piece of my mind, he said, “Forgive me—those days have passed, and today has come, and you are successful.”

We became friends on the trip, and I began to confide in him. Our program in New York consisted of speaking at Columbia University's School of International Affairs and at the Asia Society. At
Columbia when a few Iranian girls, students at the journalism school, volunteered to give us a tour around the campus, I looked sadly at the buildings and said to Atrianfar, “You know, what I want more than anything is to continue my education here. Do you think that's too much to ask? But with all that's going on in Tehran, how could I leave now?”

We had serious journalistic work to do to reclaim our civil liberties and turn forward the wheels of reform. I couldn't leave Iran just as our freedoms were expanding. But I still dreamed and made hopeful plans, never realizing then that I would become an exile before I could return and become a student.

After we gave our presentation at the Asia Society, our American hosts were showing us around, when one of our escorts, Cynthia Dikstine, excitedly told us that we had been invited to George Soros's house for tea that evening. None of us were overwhelmed with joy. She got impatient and said that he was the most important man in America and had paid for our trip. We still had no idea who he was. I racked my brain and only vaguely recalled an article I had read someplace. As we hailed two taxis to Soros's house on Fifth Avenue, I whispered into Atrianfar's ear, “Now I know who he is! He's Jewish and the wealthiest man in America, and he has an empire in central Asia.” He absently nodded his head, but my wild description didn't seem to impress him.

In Soros's magnificent home, a servant brought us tea in fantastic china teacups. I sat with the other women and looked at Khanum Shahla Sherkat and smiled. Mojghan looked at us, too, and giggled. And then for some reason that to this day is unclear to me, the three of us started laughing in a most ridiculous and idiotic fashion. The whole time we sat in Soros's apartment, we couldn't stop laughing. I went to the washroom and took a deep breath and went back to my seat. It was useless. We were laughing so hard we couldn't even bring the teacups to our lips, and all three of us were pouring tears. Giving
us a disapproving look, Atrianfar asked us in Persian to mind our manners. Even Soros interrupted himself midspeech to say, “The ladies must have spotted something quite interesting . . . It would be nice if you'd let us in on it so that we might benefit from the joke, too.” We were still overcome with laughter, making it impossible for us to answer. As we were saying good-bye and Soros was signing a copy of his book for each of us, we apologized in nervous flurries.

A few days later, Agha-ye Atrianfar had amassed enough information about George Soros to panic. In the distinctive Esfahani accent that he was always trying to conceal, he warned us, “Soros is one of the most prominent Zionists in the world, and there may have been some kind of conspiracy behind this meeting.” He worried that by going to his house without knowing who he was, all of us would be in danger when Tehran got wind of the visit. He implored us to get rid of Soros's book so we wouldn't be caught when our luggage was searched in Mehrabad airport. Mojghan and Shahla Sherkat bit their lips nervously at Atrianfar's predictions, but I only cursed my silliness and stupid laughter, and wondered why I couldn't have shown better character. Who knew that only two years later I would end up as a freelance correspondent for Soros's news Web site, EurasiaNet.

 

Before I flew back to Iran, I stopped over in London. My first piece of unfinished business was to set up an interview with Salman Rushdie. I lay stretched out on my friend Susan's bed in London, wondering how I could possibly track him down. In what I thought was a flash of brilliance, it came to me that I should contact the press office of the Iranian embassy. When I called, they wouldn't give me any information over the phone and told me I needed to come in person, so I tied on a head scarf and calmly went to the embassy. But the official in charge of the cultural center challenged me immediately, wanting to know what business I had with Rushdie.
The foreign ministers of Iran and England had shaken hands at the United Nations and the
fatwa
against him had been lifted, I explained, so it was quite natural that I, as an Iranian journalist, would be interested in interviewing a man who had lived in the shadows for years, fearing for his life. I assured him that Khanum Hashemi had given me permission.

At two in the morning the phone rang, waking me to Faezeh's sharp voice on the other end. “Camelia, whatever steps you've taken to meet with Salman Rushdie up to now, keep them to yourself. As of tomorrow, you will deny them. I just got a call from the highest level of the Ministry of Intelligence about this. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, put a stop to it. Got it?”