Prisoner of a symbol

All Tehranis know the location of Evin prison in the north of the city, and they know its hideous reputation. They avoid looking at the place or thinking about who might be inside, perhaps muttering “There but for the grace of God ...” as they pass by. For those in the Iranian diaspora, however, Evin symbolizes everything they detest about the regime they fled in the years following the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and they think of the prison all the time.

About seven years ago, I came to know Evin as much more than a symbol. I was a language sophomore at Tehran University, and like thousands of other students, I considered it my duty to take part in peaceful protests mocking the humorless ruling regime. I never imagined that the henchmen of state security would take any interest in me, and when I was snatched from the street by a pair of rather listless, seemingly uninterested policemen on my way home from classes one afternoon, my immediate reaction was one of indignation.

The policemen spoke ill-educated Farsi and had no right, I thought, to question their social betters. My snobbish disdain lasted about five minutes once I was handed over to the interrogators of Evin. I was confined in a tiny concrete cell with no windows or furnishings. I slept on a blanket on the floor. A strip light on the ceiling bathed the cell constantly in intense white light that made me crave darkness. Whenever I was taken from my cell for interrogation, I was blindfolded. I saw no other prisoners. Over the course of a month, I was lashed, battered, threatened with execution and instructed to confess to espionage, subversion and treachery.

Eventually, I was willing to put my name to any document placed before me, hoping to be spared further pain. This was a vain hope. I was finally released not because of my “confession” but because of the frantic efforts of friends on the outside, who paid money at the right time to the right people.

As an Iranian who survived detention in Evin, then fled my homeland to write of my ordeal, it is usually assumed that I, like most Iranian exiles, think of Evin constantly, both as a symbol and as the site of my worst nightmares. But in fact, I don’t think of Evin often, which is awkward when Iranian exiles (complete strangers) approach me with assumptions that I cannot accommodate.

I was no firebrand when I protested against the regime in 2000, and what I endured in Evin has left me reluctant, from the comfort and security of my current home, to urge Iranians to run into the streets and shake their fists at their rulers. What are my moral credentials for encouraging young women to risk their liberty and their lives? I got out while I could.

Another source of discomfort for me in raising my voice too shrilly in condemnation of the Iranian regime concerns my love of my homeland. Whatever my disdain for the absurd dogmatists within the Iranian ruling elite, it is exceeded by my contempt for the caricature of Iran dispensed in the United States.

Iran is by far the most sophisticated state in the Middle East, with a history and culture that makes me flush with pride whenever I contemplate them. I am not talking only of the pre-Islamic era. Muslim Iran has created monuments of extraordinary splendor at Isfahan, at Mashad, at Yazd -- monuments that preserve the beauty of Islamic spirituality.

Are Americans never to be made aware of what those monuments suggest about the more persistent character of Islam in Iran? Are they never to think of Iranians as capable of shaping a more variegated destiny for themselves over time? Will they remain ignorant of the way that Iranians have succeeded in creating a nation-within-a-nation where the lies, distortions, spin and stupidity of the regime have no hold? Will first one, then another generation of Americans be forced, through lack of contradiction, to think of Iran as a hellhole in the desert populated almost entirely by rabid Arab (Arab!) terrorists?

I fear that some Iranians of the diaspora, particularly those in the U.S., are prepared to let this absurd fantasy hold sway. The fantasy was fashioned in part by the Bush administration (with invaluable help from the Iranian regime itself, admittedly), and it is in the interest of the less scrupulous diaspora organizations to pander to the Bush version and to embellish it.

In the years since my experience in Evin, I have become more aware of the breadth of human suffering, so when I think of Evin now, I think also of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and of the thousands of other prisons in a hundred countries where professional tormentors add to the sum of human misery. If I am again to raise my voice in the streets, I will not be singling out any one group of self-serving dogmatists. My message will be: A plague on all your prisons.