Camelia Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  chapter one - When the Shah Left, We Stayed

  JANUARY 16, 1979

  FEBRUARY 1979

  MARCH 21, 1979

  FALL 1979

  1980

  chapter two - My Commander

  NOVEMBER 1999

  chapter three - Snapshots of the War

  SEPTEMBER 1980

  1981

  JANUARY 1985

  SPRING 1999

  chapter four - Cool Summers of the Peach

  FALL 1999

  chapter five - Madame Camelia

  1982-1986

  chapter six - The Basement of Towhid Prison

  SUMMER 1999

  FALL 1997

  chapter seven - Tulips Sprouted from the Blood of the Young

  THE LATE 1980S

  FALL 1987

  WINTER 1989

  SPRING 1989

  chapter eight - I Will Plant My Hands in the Garden

  JULY 1999

  chapter nine - Daisies in Autumn

  1990

  AUTUMN 1991

  SPRING 1992

  chapter ten - A Clever Bird Caught in a Snare

  FALL 1999

  chapter eleven - Zan

  SUMMER 1998

  FALL 1998

  FEBRUARY 1999

  JULY 1999

  MARCH 1999

  APRIL 1999

  SPRING-SUMMER 1999

  JULY 1999

  chapter twelve - Save Yourself by Telling the Truth

  OCTOBER 1999

  NOVEMBER 1999

  DECEMBER 1999

  JANUARY 2000

  APRIL 2000

  MAY 2000

  epilogue

  Glossary

  Copyright Page

  “In this psychologically complex and morally controversial autobiography, Camelia takes the reader on a surreal tour of post-revolutionary Iran, where under harsh medieval laws (much harsher for women) the ‘children of the revolution’ become anti-revolutionary, deceit and trickery become the rule of the game, and the demoralized youth do almost anything for a breath of fresh air—for freedom.”

  —Farnoosh Moshiri, author of Against Gravity

  “Entekhabifard has written an affecting, emotionally rich memoir that is a must-read for anyone concerned with the current Iranian predicament, women’s rights, or the plight of journalists in authoritarian states.”

  —Afshin Molavi, author of The Soul of Iran: A Nation’s Journey to Freedom

  “As important as its summary of the facts is Entekhabifard’s rendering of the horror of life forcibly stripped of all personality in graceful and precise prose.”

  —Bust Magazine

  “Books like this one remind us that literature remains one of our most potent—and poignant—means of expression and creating empathy through shared experience.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, Top Picks for Reading Groups

  “Iranian journalist Entekhabifard’s enlightening memoir traces her childhood in Tehran . . . [She] brings unique courage and insight to her practice of journalism, for which she and her family have paid a dear price.”

  —Booklist

  “Camelia’s courage is a symbol of humanity’s hope under the worst kind of oppression. A heart-stopping story that you will not be able to put down . . . this book will take your breath away.”

  —Ahmed Rashid, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia

  To the memory of my father. To my brave and unique mother. To all those who have stayed in Iran.

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  Because this memoir is not a scholarly work, a distinction has not been made in the transliteration of the long a/alif and the short a/fatha sounds, with the exception of the word “Salaam.” In constructions involving the Arabic definite article al-, the l has been assimilated to sun letters to reflect common pronunciation. Exceptions to the rule have been made for names of well-known individuals, which are spelled as they commonly appear in print media.

  chapter one

  When the Shah Left, We Stayed

  JANUARY 16, 1979

  My mother sat dressed in black on the purple sofa in our salon, tears streaming down her face. Every so often, I’d peek out at her from my bedroom. Her ears were stuffed firmly with cotton, and at her side sat Mino Khanum, our close friend and neighbor whose hair was always dyed burgundy. She was also visibly upset.

  My mother had covered her body in black to mourn my grandfather. I knew this because, two months before, we had all gone to Behesht-e Zahra, the largest cemetery in Tehran, and my parents had told my cousin Elham; my sister, Katayun; and me to wait in the car. I understood my grandfather had died. But of my mother’s sobbing, I understood nothing.

  The transistor radio sat playing at my mother’s side, and from time to time she would take the cotton out of her ears to hear the voice of the radio announcer better. She wanted to hear the news, but at the same time, she lacked the strength to keep listening. With each news flash, her heavy sobbing intensified, and she jammed the cotton even harder back into her ears. It was Tuesday morning, and it was my birthday. At the age of six, nothing was more important to me than celebrating my birthday. I knew a party was out of the question; we were in mourning. But my mother had promised we would go downtown to pick out my present. The radio announcer started yelling at the top of his voice, “The Shah is gone! The Shah is gone!” Both my mother and Mino Khanum fainted.

  It had gotten dark, and with me clinging to my mother’s black overcoat, we headed south on the downward incline of Khiaban-e Vali-ye Ahd. My mother was impatient, and she had been crying so much that her eyes and nose were red. I had not let her forget about buying that present. It was out of sheer helplessness that she had taken my hand in hers and set off for Mufid’s, a store that was piled to the ceiling with Barbie dolls and colorful toys. Agha-ye Mufid, the owner, was always waiting for my sister, Kati, and me.

  Our street, Kucheh-ye Omid, was enveloped in silence and total darkness. The avenue was quiet, too, but only a few streets before the main thoroughfare we were suddenly engulfed in a flood of cars with their horns blaring and headlights flashing. The street was filled with the sound of their joy, and my mother cursed them under her breath. Overwhelmed and bewildered, I clung even more tightly to her. She turned to me and said, “I told you it would be better not to go out tonight . . .” Her voice was lost in the din of car horns and people shouting. Everyone was congratulating one another and handing out sweets. They also congratulated us, but my mother kept her head down as we barreled straight ahead. After months of fighting between forces loyal to the Shah and the revolutionary masses, the Shah and his queen had left Iran for Cairo, and the people were pouring out onto the streets to celebrate.

  In the midst of that frightful traffic and noise, a hand holding a giant stuffed cloth dog emerged from the window of a Peykan and danced, wiggling at us and no one and everyone at once. “The Shah is gone! The Shah is gone!” The man who danced the toy in front of us had whiskers down to his waist. His voice warbled, “Tuleh sag-e Alashi, Bakhtiar-ra ja gozashti!” (You little Alashi dog, you left Bakhtiar behind!) He called the dog Alashi because the Shah’s father, Reza Shah, was from the village of Alash in the north of Iran, and by Bakhtiar he meant the prime minister, Doctor Shahpur Bakhtiar. Bakhtiar was negotiating with various revolutionary groups, attempting to keep the country under control in the Shah’s absence. He had even proposed going to Paris to negotiate with Ayatollah Khomeini. But when the people cried, “Tuleh sag-e Alashi, Bakhtiar-ra ja gozashti!” they also meant that they had driven the Shah out of their house—which is to say Iran—like an unclean dog.
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br />   At home in our house, we had neither listened to the personal communiqués from Ayatollah Khomeini who was arriving from Paris, nor did we join the throngs of revolutionaries burning tires in the streets. When revolutionaries tossed their manifestos into our courtyard at night, my father would throw them back out onto the street. We didn’t want to know where they planned to gather, and we weren’t interested in the mullahs or that surly old man with the crooked black eyebrows either. We liked to think that we could sit still and ignore all the commotion, and that if we did, the crisis would subside and the country would return to its regular old self.

  When we had been in England for the summer holidays, my mother had gotten upset when she read the words “Death to the Shah” written in Persian on the wall in the London metro. In Hyde Park we’d seen young Iranian students standing on chairs, shouting slogans against the Shah amid a gathering crowd. On more than one occasion my mother yelled back at them, as she held Kati and me at her sides. “Come down from there you ungrateful brats! That poor Shah gave you money so you could go to school and now all that money has made you into wolves, and you stand up there howling away!” In London my mother hadn’t been afraid to tell them she was a supporter of the Shah. She was proud of the Shah’s pledge to safeguard the freedom and progress of the women of Iran, and of all the opportunities he had opened up for them. But today, in the middle of Khiaban-e Kennedy, besieged by the Shah’s opponents, my mother just clamped her lips together in anger.

  We finally reached the toy store, and it was closed. Every shop was closed. Afraid of looting, the shopkeepers had pulled down the shuttered gates at noon that day and hurried home. When I saw that the sign proclaiming “Mufid” in neon was turned off, tears started running down my cheeks. It was of no importance to me that the Shah had gone or that someone else would come to take his place or that the days ahead were bound to be completely unpredictable. I just wanted my present. My mother promised, “Tomorrow . . . tomorrow. . . .”

  Weeks before, a crowd of yelling students had flooded into the courtyard of my school, Ghafari, their faces almost laughably angry. Before the main entrance, a pretty young official with black hair stood guard. Her face was smothered in makeup, and she was wearing a button-down shirt and pants, a rifle slung across her back. I was in kindergarten, and my sister, Katayun, who was in third grade, marched around the courtyard with a group mimicking the older students. I tried to join in as best I could with this game, but an invisible hand—belonging to my sister—immediately took hold of me. She led me out of the ruckus to the wall at the edge of the courtyard. She was watching to make sure that I didn’t get crushed. I kept trying, and the last time my sister drew me to the side, she put a cluster of pea pods in my hand and said, “Don’t move. Stay here in this spot. Eat your peas until Maman comes to get us.”

  I couldn’t play the older children’s game, but Kati sure was having fun. Every time the angry students rotated past the front of the main building, the older boys would lift chairs dragged from the classrooms above their heads and brandish them at the principal’s office, chanting, “Baroye hefz-e shishe, Madresseh bayad ta’til sh-e” (For the sake of the windowpanes, the school must be closed). In the midst of all the protesters my sister waved at me and twirled her body in delight.

  The principal of our school was a serious, fashionably dressed woman with long hair wrapped around her head like a hat and fancy necklaces draped around her neck. That day, she and the other teachers stayed timidly inside, glancing anxiously down at the revolt. Even Vice Principal Habashi’s wooden meter stick, which she used to punish unruly boys at the front of the classroom every morning, was incapable of inspiring fear. The windows of the building shattered one by one, and there was nothing for the school authorities to do but close the schools and join the strike. That winter day was our last day of school in 1979.

  The Shah’s administration was faced with a mounting threat as the strikes swept across the country. Banks closed, the Abadan oil refinery went on strike, the electrical plants went on strike, and from time to time our homes were plunged into darkness. The government declared martial law and a nine o’clock curfew. But in the nighttime stillness people went up onto their roofs to cry out, “Allahu Akbar.” Within minutes the few voices scattered here and there would grow to a chorus of hundreds.

  Most days, we stayed home and watched TV and listened to the radio while my mother went back and forth to Mino Khanum’s house to exchange the latest news. Mino Khanum’s husband would go out to the demonstrations to gather firsthand information. But my father had warned us not to leave the house even to play because civilians were often randomly killed, caught in the cross fire of armed confrontations. We heard that police had opened fire at a large demonstration at Meidan Zhale, killing hundreds. Every morning we saw new slogans on the walls of our street, hastily scrawled in bright colors. “Hail Khomeini! They have struck down the martyrs. Death to the traitor Shah!” At first Kati and I would clean as much as we could reach off our walls, but eventually we had to content ourselves with making sure to remove the most dangerous of the slogans: “SAVAKi.”

  It was rumored that my father was an employee of the Shah’s secret intelligence service. In those days, you’d hear terrifying stories about the crimes of the SAVAK and how they killed and tortured those opposed to the Shah’s regime. We were not revolutionaries, and we did not participate in the demonstrations. And my father’s cousins, tall men with shiny navy blue uniforms and dazzling shoulder decorations, would be seen going to and from our house. This was enough evidence to label us monarchists, SAVAKi, and taghuti. A few months earlier, in November, when the people first started taking to the streets, the Shah had appeared on television saying that he had gotten the message. To a certain extent, censorship of the press had been lifted, and in a show of combating corruption, he’d arrested and imprisoned about a 120 leading state officials, among them the head of the SAVAK, General Ne’matollah Nasiri, and Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hovida. But the people responded to these token gestures by repeating Khomeini’s words: “The Shah must go.” The people saw the SAVAKis as bloodthirsty traitors who deserved to be put to death.

  But who could say this about my father? How could our neighbors hate us so much? During our summer holiday in England, we had spent a few weeks in the coastal city of Brighton with the Vaqadi family from next door. They drove a green Zhian and spoke Persian with a Kermanshahi accent. Kati and I used to go roller-skating with their young sons, Nima and Mani. But now they had joined the Islamic Revolution and were spending their days at the local mosque. Agha-ye Vaqadi was a poet with fine features, a bald head, and thick glasses—and of course a tudeh-i, a communist, as my mother would say. The tudeh-i were very active in the first months of the revolution, before Ayatollah Khomeini outlawed their activities, arrested their leaders, and executed large numbers of their members.

  Nima and Mani had little glasses just like their father’s and had become stars at their mosque. Mosques all over the country had become centers of resistance, the place to design placards and print propaganda, to plan demonstrations and disseminate Khomeini’s communiqués. Passing by our house, Nima and Mani would stick their heads into our courtyard and cry out, “Mardum chara neshastid? Nakone ke Shah parest id!” (People, why do you just sit there? God forbid you’re supporters of the Shah!) My mother would put on a scowl and shout back, “Dirt on the head of you tudeh-i! You’ve gobbled up all the country’s money and gone mad! It would be nice if your father could come up with some better poetry!” My mother knew that just like the students in London, Agha-ye Vaqadi had studied abroad with the support of the Shah.

  The worse things grew around the country, the bolder Nima and Mani got. They had made a banner almost ten feet long with a picture of Khomeini on it to carry at demonstrations. At night they would hang it on the terrace of their house in full view of our courtyard. In retaliation, my mother would fasten pictures of the Shah and his queen, Farah, to helium balloons to show o
ff our loyalty. My sister and I would stand out on the terrace, each with a balloon in hand, making faces at one another. Before my father came home and caught the two of us with those balloons, we’d let them go. I really thought that they’d float all the way up to the moon to convey our greetings to the Shah and the Queen.

  My mother was madly in love with the Shah, and she was just as crazy about Reza, his oldest son. She carried around in her purse a picture that she had ripped out of a children’s magazine of Reza sitting on a playing field in a soccer uniform. When the Queen gave birth to Reza, my mother, who was eight at the time, asked my grandmother if she could go to the hospital with a bouquet of flowers to congratulate Farah in person. She left the flowers with the guards at the door, singing the lullaby she had learned in school: “I’m a beautiful virgin, my name is Farah Diba, the third wife of the Shah . . . I will bear a crown prince, and I am going to call him Reza . . . La, la, la, my dear Reza, la, la, la, my dear Reza.” I don’t know whether this little bouquet ever got to the Queen, but for my mother the important thing was that Reza had come into the world and the royal line would survive.

  My mother was one of many women of her generation who had been able to escape the traditional constraints of her birthplace thanks to the Shah’s support for women’s rights. She was independent and was, I believe, one of the first women in Jamaran who refused to wear the veil. My grandfather had died in an avalanche, and my grandmother—whom I called Mader-jan—was a widow. She was peaceful and kind, and she afforded her daughter every kind of freedom. But the other women in her family beat my mother severely in the streets, hoping to persuade her to put on the veil. She withstood all that pressure and attained a certain distinction for never wearing the hejab. New doors opened before her. She met my father at the progressive social club Kakh-e Javanan, and they grew to be friends before they married in 1969. This was in contrast to the customs of the day, where suitors would normally just show up, and families would be obliged to submit their daughters for marriage.