Marina, aged 41 when this book was published, spent 2 years
and 2 months in Evin Prison in Tehran, a place notorious for the torture and
incarceration of those considered to be enemies of the state of Iran. When she was 16 years old, Marina came under
suspicion for leaving a calculus class in protest, after the Revolutionary Guard
person teaching the class refused to teach calculus and instead recited a
litany of great deeds done by Ayatollah Khomeini, the religious leader. Although Marina had not expected such an
outcome, almost the entire class followed her out, starting a school-wide
strike against the Guard, who were in charge of the school after the Iranian
Revolution. After two days of students at the school
refusing to attend class, they were forced to end their strike under pain of
being turned over to the Guards, known for their harsh tactics. Marina found it hard to grasp that she was
really in danger when a teacher and family friend told Marina later that she
was now targeted and should flee Iran with her family. She knew her family had no money for such a
trip, and she felt like she had to take her chances.
As her friends start disappearing, however, the whole
narrative becomes more and more ominous.
There is a street protest against the government, and armed Guards shoot
the protesters from rooftops. In the
face of this threat, few citizens are outspoken, and Marina’s mother warns her
to just lay low and stop putting herself in harm’s way. You can see the culture shutting down bit by
bit under the regime, with people trying to live their normal lives while
changing their practices to avoid recrimination and punishment.
After Marina is arrested she is sentenced to be executed but
is saved at the last moment by a prison interrogator who is impressed by her
testimony and eventually falls in love with her. He forces her to convert to Islam, as she is
Catholic, and compels her to marry him by threatening harm to her family and
former boyfriend. The complexities of
her status and her life through this ordeal are dizzying. She spends some nights with her husband in a
special room, when he is free, and even stays with him outside the prison,
although she is still a prisoner. Her
husband becomes at odds with those running the prison who are practicing
violence, and he asks Marina to help some other female prisoners before they
are tortured to death.
What you see in this book are the shades of terror and of
anguish which are engendered by brutality.
Marina has a new life in Canada now with a new husband and family. However, when the Iranian-born Canadian
journalist Zahra Kazemi was tortured and killed in Evin in 2003, Marina realized
that it was time to tell her story.
I found her story difficult and yet her writing opens up her
heart, in terms of what and who she loved, and what this experience did to
her. Ironically, in an interview she had
with National Public Radio, the questioner suggests that she must have had
“Stockholm syndrome” – where a victim feels solidarity with their
persecutor. Although she agrees, she
calls that syndrome, in the end, just a label.
And that is true. Just as all
these testimonies can be reduced to statistics, to events, to a story happening
far away – what counts is whether we see it through her eyes, and hear it with
the beating of her heart.
Click here for the catalog listing.
No comments:
Post a Comment