E-mail a friendMarina Nemat
airdate May 18, 2007
Marina Nemat was a good student from a Christian family in Iran and accustomed to speaking her mind. The Iranian Revolution turned her world upside down. She was arrested at age 16, jailed for more than two years in a political prison in Tehran, tortured and almost executed. After gaining her freedom, Nemat immigrated to Canada, where she attended and is now an ambassador for the University of Toronto. She was awarded the first annual Human Dignity Prize and tells her story in the acclaimed memoir, Prisoner of Tehran.
Being jailed and tortured in Tehran (1:32).
Marina Nemat
Tavis: Marina Nemat grew up in Tehran and was arrested at the age of sixteen for questioning the teaching of government propaganda. While incarcerated, she was tortured, sentenced to death and forced in a marriage with a prison guard. Following her release from prison, she escaped Iran and immigrated to Canada. Details of this harrowing ordeal are told in the new book, "Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir," Marina, nice to have you on the program.
Marina Nemat: Thank you so much for having me.
Tavis: I was trying to figure out where I wanted to start our conversation. There's so much in this text, in this memoir. I think I want to start by asking how you navigate living in a Muslim country when you are a devout Christian because so much of the book has to do with how you navigate that particular journey. Talk to me about that.
Nemat: That's right. Well, you know, it wasn't too bad. As long as you kept your mouth shut and you concentrated on your own business and as long as you didn't try to convert anybody into Christianity, it was okay. You could go to church, but you had to abide by the rules.
Just because of the fact that you were a Christian, it didn't mean that you did not have to wear the hejab. You had to wear the hejab and you had to behave yourself in the Islamic manner. You know, as long as you didn't try to convert anybody, they wouldn't bother you.
Tavis: Okay. So tell me the story, then, of how you end up getting in trouble in class because you have a problem with a particular teacher who has strayed away from teaching the subject matter and starts preaching Islamic fundamentalism.
Nemat: That's right. You know, during the time of the Shah when I was a kid, I went to a wonderful girl's high school and we had wonderful teachers and I had hopes of becoming a medical doctor. Going to school was the most important part of my life.
Then after the revolution - I was thirteen when the revolution happened - they replaced our wonderful teachers with seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year old female revolutionary guards. These girls spent all of the class time spreading government propaganda and non-Koranic studies, so it was awful.
Imagine being thirteen and fourteen years old and having to sit through that six, seven, eight hours a day, so it was boring. So I raised my hand one day during calculus and I said to the teacher, "Can you please teach us some calculus?" She looked at me and she said, "Well, if you don't like what I teach, leave."
You know, everybody was staring at me. I really felt like my reputation was on the line here. So I collected my books and I walked out. When I reached the hallway, I realized that most of my classmates had followed me out. So this was the beginning of a school-wide strike.
Tavis: The school-wide strike begins, but you eventually and, I suspect, unbeknownst to you, metaphorically and quite frankly almost literally, walked out of that classroom and into a prison.
Nemat: That's right. Well, the principal was also a revolutionary guard at the time and she had compiled this list with names of kids from my school. These are fifteen and sixteen year olds we are talking about who, in her opinion, were anti-revolutionaries for their activities, mostly things they had said and done in school. She sent this list to the Courts of Islamic Justice and then gradually beginning in the spring of 1981, we started getting arrested.
A good friend of mine was the first one to be arrested from my class. We had been friends since elementary school and she wouldn't hurt a fly. I don't even know why she was arrested because I had spoken out a lot more than she had. But yet she was the first one to go. Who knows why? Three months later, we heard that she had been executed.
Tavis: So fast forward then - again, so much of this book we can't get to in one conversation - but fast forward to your being arrested and being imprisoned. How did that occur?
Nemat: Well, it was January 15, 1982. It was winter, it was cold outside and I was just going to go take a bath before I went to bed. The sound of the doorbell just echoed in the house. Nobody rang our doorbell at that time, so I knew immediately that they had come for me. At the time, people told me, "Why don't you go? Why don't you hide somewhere?" There was nowhere to hide. If they came to your house to arrest you and you weren't home, they would take your mom or your dad or whoever was there.
Tavis: And you're sixteen at this point?
Nemat: I was sixteen at this point. So my mom called my name and, by the tone of her voice, I could tell that something was definitely wrong. So I opened the bathroom door and, in the hallway, there were two guards with their guns pointed at me and they said I had to go with them. My mom was crying and my dad was crying because when they said they were taking me to Evin, everybody knew that Evin is a horrific place. If you end up there, there's a good chance you're not going to come out alive.
Tavis: There are two things that strike me as you tell the story now about Evin. Let me come back to that. First of all, you remember that date of January 15, 1982. It's obviously etched in your memory and in your heart. What struck me when you said that is that January 15 happens to be Dr. King's birthday.
Nemat: Really?
Tavis: That's a personal thing for me.
Nemat: I know, I know, but there are these odd things that happen with dates and you think, "Oh, my gosh, that is so interesting."
Tavis: So on the date that the Peacemaker is born, you end up being arrested at the age of sixteen in Iran. That's the first thing that struck me when you said January 15. The second thing, though, to your point about Evin, this prison, there was just a story in "The New York Times" just a few days ago about this prison. It is still regarded inside of Iran as like the worst place in Iran to go. You're talking about 1982. Here we are in 2007 and this prison is still like the place that nobody wants to go.
Nemat: No, not at all because, once you step in there, you are going to be tortured and you know it.
Tavis: And so you stepped in and you, in fact, were tortured. Tell me about your time with regard to the maltreatment you received. Tell me about that.
Nemat: Well, they blindfolded everybody. As soon as you arrived at the gates, they blindfolded you. They took me to a hallway and they made me sit down there. There were so many people there. I could see from below my blindfold. Some of these people were injured. They were in pain, they were moaning, they were hurt. I could hear interrogations going on in the rooms. So they took me for interrogation and they wanted the whereabouts of a girl. I had no idea where she was. She was a friend of a friend of mine.
So they wanted this information out of me that I didn't have and they said it's pretty simple. I said, "I don't know. I really swear to God I don't know." They didn't believe me. They took me to this room and they tied me to a bare wooden bed by my wrists and my ankles. Then they started lashing the soles of my feet.
Now I can try to tell you what that feels like. I have tried in the book, but it's impossible. How do you explain pain to somebody who has never experienced pain? This is the kind of pain that is just unbelievable. It entirely destroys you. If I knew where this girl was, I would have told. So that was when I found out that I was no hero. If I knew, I would have told.
Tavis: So you readily admit that, had you known, you would have given up the information?
Nemat: Absolutely, of course. I would have done anything. I would have sold my soul to save myself. It was horrific. Don't forget, I was sixteen years old. I didn't have the experience to back me up into a situation like this.
Tavis: On that point right quick, tell me, given that you are an adult now, when you look back on that period and you readily admit that you would have given up that information to save yourself, how does that make you feel about yourself?
Nemat: You know, the person I was back then and the person I am today are two different people. Now I have so much experience. My two years in prison has made me who I am today. When I stepped into that prison, the person I am today didn't exist. You know, if they put me in prison now today, I pray to God and I hope that I would react differently, that I will have more tolerance toward pain.
Tavis: If this isn't interesting enough already, it really gets fascinating. I'm skipping over a lot of stuff in the interest of time here. The story really gets fascinating when you are at the point where you are about to be executed. That's how bad your imprisonment gets. You get to the point where you are now about to be executed.
You are lined up with a number of people who are about to be executed at gunpoint and, at the moment that you are about to be murdered, a car comes out of nowhere, someone grabs you, throws you in the car and you are saved from execution. You are rescued in that moment by whom?
Nemat: By one of my guards. His name was Ali and he had been rather nice to me compared to everybody else during the interrogation. I was thinking that he was just playing "good cop," that this was just a game they were playing. But he was good to me.
He even brought in the doctor after I was tortured and he gave me some painkillers that I could sleep a little bit afterwards. He took me away and he took me to a cell. As he drove away, I heard guns fire. At the time, I told myself, "You know what? There's no way they were going to really kill us. It was just a mock execution."
You know, this was how I just explained it to myself because, if I didn't, I couldn't have lived with myself anymore. You know, I saw those peoples' faces and then later when I figured that, you know, they were probably actually really executed, I was wondering about what was their names? You know, how were their families? Do they know what had happened to their children? It's a very difficult thing to live with.
Ali took me away. He took me to a cell and I had no idea why I had survived. My thought was that what is he going to do to me? Am I going to be tortured again? So I was really, really terrified. In a way, I would have rather died with those people. I really didn't want to live. You don't want to live in a place like Evin. You don't.
Tavis: So the tradeoff for Ali rescuing you is that you have to end up marrying Ali?
Nemat: That's right.
Tavis: And converting to Islam to save your life?
Nemat: Yes. He didn't tell me immediately. He just disappeared for about four months and then, when he came back, he called me to the interrogation building and he told me that he had been gone to the war because Iran was in war with Iraq at the time and then he had to return. He told me he had saved my life. I was a prisoner. I had no rights whatsoever, and I had to marry him or he would arrest my parents.
Tavis: I've just a couple minutes here to go. You end up - again, fast-forwarding past so much of what is a harrowing tale here. Not a tale, but a true story. Actually, some time passes and Ali, who rescues you, ends up himself being executed?
Nemat: Assassinated on the street. He is shot and killed on the streets.
Tavis: Right. Later on, his family who you have become close to -
Nemat: - yes, because they were good, normal people, to my surprise.
Tavis: They help you finally escape?
Nemat: That's right.
Tavis: You run to Toronto eventually and now you are married in Toronto with two kids.
Nemat: Yes, that's right. That's right.
Tavis: I was going to ask what you make of the fact that you are alive every day when you wake up? I didn't know how to phrase it, but -
Nemat: - yes, I know what you're saying. You know, for so many years, I pretended the past never happened. I just ignored it. You know, I thought this would go away. But then one day I woke up and then I couldn't sleep anymore. Nightmares, they plagued me, and I just had to do something. I just couldn't have survived for nothing, for just being a housewife, you know, in the suburbs of Toronto.
So I thought, you know, I have to make sense of this, of my survival. I lived for a good reason when so many other people didn't. By writing this book, this is my way of paying back because it is the story of political prisoners of Iran, you know, told from my perspective, of course. I'm not a representative in any way. I'm just one of them. But this is a story that has never been told. Thousands of innocent people were killed in those prisons and nobody knows.
Tavis: It is one person's story, but it is a harrowing story. The name of the book is "Prisoner of Tehran," It is a memoir by Marina Nemat. We have just literally scratched the surface of what I'm sure you'll find an interesting and fascinating read. Marina, nice to have you on the program. When I say that I'm glad you're here, in more ways than one, I'm glad that you are here.
Nemat: Thank you so much for having me.
Tavis: It's my pleasure.
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