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| Maziar Bahari's memoir: Then They Came for Me | Maziar Bahari's memoir: Then They Came for Me |
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| "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness," George Orwell's O'Brien, villain of Nineteen Eighty-Four, tells the novel's hero Winston, in a dream. The place turns out to be a brightly lit cell in the Ministry of Love, where O'Brien tortures Winston and reveals – as villains of fiction often do – his methods and motives. This may be an overused expository device, but there is truth in it: no person wields power over another without revealing his nature. | "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness," George Orwell's O'Brien, villain of Nineteen Eighty-Four, tells the novel's hero Winston, in a dream. The place turns out to be a brightly lit cell in the Ministry of Love, where O'Brien tortures Winston and reveals – as villains of fiction often do – his methods and motives. This may be an overused expository device, but there is truth in it: no person wields power over another without revealing his nature. |
| No dream warned Iranian filmmaker and former Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari of his imminent encounter with his own O'Brien in Tehran's Evin prison, but the behaviour of security services following Iran's disputed 2009 election offered glimpses behind the Islamic Republic: he recalls some of them addressing protesters as "motherfuckers", and "sisterfuckers", and jeering and shouting that journalists were spies. | No dream warned Iranian filmmaker and former Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari of his imminent encounter with his own O'Brien in Tehran's Evin prison, but the behaviour of security services following Iran's disputed 2009 election offered glimpses behind the Islamic Republic: he recalls some of them addressing protesters as "motherfuckers", and "sisterfuckers", and jeering and shouting that journalists were spies. |
| After leaving his pregnant fiancée in London to cover the election between state-vetted candidates, Bahari hoped to witness "reconciliation and reform", not revolution. Through his career, he had censored himself so as to maintain access to his country. During a mostly peaceful demonstration against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's dismissal of the opposition as "dust and dirt", he deplored the violence of youths he saw throwing petrol bombs at a Basij paramilitary installation, though he also filmed Basijis shooting dead a protester. | |
| Days later, security officials arrived at his family home. They were led by "Rosewater", an incognito Revolutionary Guardsman who insisted Bahari's Sopranos DVDs were really "pornos", and that the Cambodian visa in his passport was written in Hebrew. They took him to Evin – a highly visible prison at the foot of the Alborz mountains whose reputation for torture dates back to the shah. Bahari's father, a communist, had been tortured there under the old regime, as his sister had under the Khomeini state. Bahari's captors held him for 118 days, releasing him only him under extraordinary international pressure. | Days later, security officials arrived at his family home. They were led by "Rosewater", an incognito Revolutionary Guardsman who insisted Bahari's Sopranos DVDs were really "pornos", and that the Cambodian visa in his passport was written in Hebrew. They took him to Evin – a highly visible prison at the foot of the Alborz mountains whose reputation for torture dates back to the shah. Bahari's father, a communist, had been tortured there under the old regime, as his sister had under the Khomeini state. Bahari's captors held him for 118 days, releasing him only him under extraordinary international pressure. |
| Then They Came for Me is a unique achievement. It is a story not just of political cruelty (a subject Bahari treats movingly), but also about the two poles of Iranian political culture, bent together in upheaval. Evin becomes a place of Orwellian illumination, a stage on which a secular liberal and a pro-government Islamist converse, albeit on unequal terms. It is a drama in which two men speak at cross purposes: one asserts his honest intentions and his need to return to London for the birth of his daughter, while the other insists upon a conspiracy theory, and coerces corroboration. | Then They Came for Me is a unique achievement. It is a story not just of political cruelty (a subject Bahari treats movingly), but also about the two poles of Iranian political culture, bent together in upheaval. Evin becomes a place of Orwellian illumination, a stage on which a secular liberal and a pro-government Islamist converse, albeit on unequal terms. It is a drama in which two men speak at cross purposes: one asserts his honest intentions and his need to return to London for the birth of his daughter, while the other insists upon a conspiracy theory, and coerces corroboration. |
| Rosewater is a villain for our time. He believes torture works, and makes of events at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, both of which he mentions repeatedly, a balm to his conscience. He envies the extrajudicial methods used by Iran's enemies, boasting that Iran can bring its enemies abroad "back in a bag", just as Israel did to Adolf Eichmann. He sees himself engaged in a supernatural struggle on the side of God and Iran's supreme leader against an arcane axis of Zionists, western intelligence agencies, and journalists. | Rosewater is a villain for our time. He believes torture works, and makes of events at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, both of which he mentions repeatedly, a balm to his conscience. He envies the extrajudicial methods used by Iran's enemies, boasting that Iran can bring its enemies abroad "back in a bag", just as Israel did to Adolf Eichmann. He sees himself engaged in a supernatural struggle on the side of God and Iran's supreme leader against an arcane axis of Zionists, western intelligence agencies, and journalists. |
| Like Orwell's O'Brien, he takes an intimate interest in his prisoner, describing himself as Bahari's "specialist" and "owner". He demands Bahari's collusion in alternative history, in the form a televised confession about an international media conspiracy in Iran. But unlike O'Brien, Rosewater lacks confidence, and the old revolutionaries for whom he labours fear the reformists more than the rebels, which suggests totalitarian urges unconsummated. Rosewater is a torturer, but insists he is restrained by "Islamic kindness", and is generous with his tea and biscuits. | Like Orwell's O'Brien, he takes an intimate interest in his prisoner, describing himself as Bahari's "specialist" and "owner". He demands Bahari's collusion in alternative history, in the form a televised confession about an international media conspiracy in Iran. But unlike O'Brien, Rosewater lacks confidence, and the old revolutionaries for whom he labours fear the reformists more than the rebels, which suggests totalitarian urges unconsummated. Rosewater is a torturer, but insists he is restrained by "Islamic kindness", and is generous with his tea and biscuits. |
| He is a man under pressure: Bahari diagnoses him as a psychopathic and manic depressive, but also lets pathos in, calling him: "Just a man with a job." Rosewater's prejudices are not merely his own. His boss insists that "velvet revolutions", whether in Iran or eastern Europe, have always been driven by Americans and "rich Zionists". His colleagues assume all of the world's media are state-controlled. The judge who handles Bahari's case voices the prejudice of one of Iran's two cultures against the other when he "jokes" that he will execute Bahari for having no friends with the peasant name Ghazanfar. | He is a man under pressure: Bahari diagnoses him as a psychopathic and manic depressive, but also lets pathos in, calling him: "Just a man with a job." Rosewater's prejudices are not merely his own. His boss insists that "velvet revolutions", whether in Iran or eastern Europe, have always been driven by Americans and "rich Zionists". His colleagues assume all of the world's media are state-controlled. The judge who handles Bahari's case voices the prejudice of one of Iran's two cultures against the other when he "jokes" that he will execute Bahari for having no friends with the peasant name Ghazanfar. |
| We glimpse Iran's cultural divide from the other side, too, when Bahari's devoted and indefatigable mother, visiting the prison, vents her anger on an eavesdropping guard, who is obviously from a religious family: "Do you have any children? Why not? I thought your mothers forced you to marry early." | We glimpse Iran's cultural divide from the other side, too, when Bahari's devoted and indefatigable mother, visiting the prison, vents her anger on an eavesdropping guard, who is obviously from a religious family: "Do you have any children? Why not? I thought your mothers forced you to marry early." |
| Bahari and Rosewater share a salient detail in their family histories– Rosewater's father was also tortured during the Pahlavi era – but Rosewater takes pains to prevent family feeling becoming a common denominator. He ridicules Bahari's love for his fiancée, and threatens to "put your remains in a bin bag and throw it at your mother". He is eager to believe Bahari's sexual life is impossibly dissolute, insisting that "Europe is a stable full of animals and whores." | Bahari and Rosewater share a salient detail in their family histories– Rosewater's father was also tortured during the Pahlavi era – but Rosewater takes pains to prevent family feeling becoming a common denominator. He ridicules Bahari's love for his fiancée, and threatens to "put your remains in a bin bag and throw it at your mother". He is eager to believe Bahari's sexual life is impossibly dissolute, insisting that "Europe is a stable full of animals and whores." |
| But later on, doubt creeps in. "Is it true that one can go to the Champs-Elysées in Paris, grab a woman's hand, and have sex with her any time he wants?" he inquires, as if hoping to confirm something heard in a sermon or indoctrination session. "Every time I think about life in the west, my whole body trembles," he confesses. "I often wonder how people live without any religious values." | But later on, doubt creeps in. "Is it true that one can go to the Champs-Elysées in Paris, grab a woman's hand, and have sex with her any time he wants?" he inquires, as if hoping to confirm something heard in a sermon or indoctrination session. "Every time I think about life in the west, my whole body trembles," he confesses. "I often wonder how people live without any religious values." |
| He might not tremble so much, if his more secular countrymen did not tremble to answer him. | He might not tremble so much, if his more secular countrymen did not tremble to answer him. |