"My Story Is Yours" Mahvash Sabet's heartfelt letter from Tehran's Evin Prison

When the revolution happened, I was 26 years old, a headmaster of a school in the south of Tehran. One day, I received an order; I had been 'disqualified' from working.

Around the same time, I was also 'disqualified' from continuing my studies at the university. My husband would come home once every 15 days. For several years, he had been working in an aluminum container on the outskirts of the Karaj River in Shahriar, through the heat and cold, building a sand and gravel factory. But a week before its launch, they confiscated his factory. He too had been 'disqualified'.

My father, my brother, our relatives and friends, and our co-religionists, all gradually became unemployed and housebound, putting all of our lives in the path of a storm. Hundreds were arrested and imprisoned across the country, and every day we heard news of the execution of acquaintances and friends on the radio. One hundred percent of our community's assets and properties, as well as those of many of our co-religionists, were confiscated. Almost 250 people were executed merely for being Baha'is.

The Baha'i elected institutions responsible for managing our community's internal affairs were also shut down. We were all 'disqualified' together. Suddenly, our ancestral homeland was taken from us, and we became 'the others'. Amidst baseless heavy accusations and breathtaking blows, we were 'disqualified' from enjoying citizenship rights, from having a job, from higher education, from sincere service, from defending our beliefs, which were under constant attack and distortion, and even from normal human relationships with our fellow citizens.

When I was arrested in 2008 and spent two and a half years in tight, dark, high-security prison cells, under pressure and interrogation, and when the seven of us, members of a group known as 'Yaran’ or ‘Friends’ of Iran, were taken to court with a death penalty indictment and even sentenced to 20 years in prison for the voluntary service of managing our community, I kept telling myself that, one day, I would write everything down and expose the baselessness of the espionage accusations. I will tell the people that we have never betrayed our country. We love Iran and wish for it to be dignified and proud. A legal clause eventually reduced our20-year sentences to 10 years and, after that time, all seven of us were released. But even outside prison walls I had been 'disqualified'.

On the day of my release, no one came to greet me. My family was waiting for my release the next day. I wasn't allowed to make phone calls. So, without my family's knowledge, without money, and even without an address for my house, I walked out of Evin Prison. A strange anxiety gripped my heart. Why had the prison done this? They had taken my joy away from me. A kind person offered me his phone to inform my family. But involuntarily, I pulled my hand back. I was scared of mobile phones, which were forbidden in prison. Besides, I didn't even know how to turn one on.

I stood on the stairs for an hour and a half until my husband arrived, and we went home together. It had taken years to change my habits and adapt to the closed, ruthless world of prison under CCTV cameras, and now I had to change my physical and mental habits and psychological adaptations again, which was not easy. Crossing the street filled me with fear and anxiety. I was anxious in large stores. The speed and congestion of the streets gave me headaches and nausea. The rapid changes made me dizzy and weak. Sometimes, I closed my eyes to not see the bustle. I had developed agoraphobia. Everything had changed.

The world I knew, and the image I had carried of life outside prison, for years, was no longer there. The children had grown up and the dust of old age had settled even on the young. Many had left Iran. Sometimes I would ask about someone who had died. Sometimes I would see friends whose names I couldn't remember. And I would often confuse one person for another. Technology was shocking. The first time I stared into my daughter's eyes on a mobile phone screen, as she called from Australia, I was amazed and I cried. Internet taxis, Waze, computers, and the internet amazed me, and my lack of ability in these areas bothered me. I didn't recognize the current currency and I couldn't believe the inflation and price growth. I preferred to stick to minimal and limited purchases –?like in prison. My speed had significantly decreased. I was surprised and tired by crowded gatherings and the nature of conversations. The fever and excitement of freedom and initial visits with friends and family eventually subsided, over the year, and at the insistence of friends and family I went on a few domestic and international trips.

But wherever I was, I was a stranger, half of whom remained in prison alongside my cellmates. The sufferings of the women in the prisons of Mashhad, Gohardasht, Qarchak and Evin, with whom I had lived, never left me.

I had become a split person. Two and a half years of the community's struggle with covid and lockdowns intensified my unwanted isolation. The only thing I could do during these years was write, and prepare a part of my prison poems for publication; much of which I have now probably lost during a raid on my home.

I yearned to see my only grandchild [abroad] and to get a visa. But ‘death’ did not give me time. My ‘death’ was those men, lurking to attack my home again, after two and a half years when I left for a short trip to Ramsar. They attacked my sister's house in Ramsar, where I was staying while recovering from with covid, and they transferred me to Evin Prison’s Ward 209 after charging me. I couldn't guess why I had been arrested until I saw in the arrest warrant at the Ramsar Revolutionary Court: 'Membership in the deviant Baha'i sect'.

For 42 days, in solitary confinement, I underwent the most grueling interrogations, accompanied by violence, insults, threats, and slander. My covid symptoms were severe, and at least three times, I visited the infirmary due to intense coughing, breathing difficulties, and knee pain and swelling. From that same prison ward, I was taken to the prosecutor's office next to Evin to see the new charge of 'running a group under the name of a deviant and misguided sect with the aim of disrupting national security'. I wrote to the Tehran prosecutor that they were fabricating a case against me. I do not accept this charge, and it is impossible that there could even be a document or evidence to prove it. I asked the prosecutor to personally take care of my case. I said the same thing to the prosecutor's representative, whom I met, and he took note. But I was 'disqualified' and received no response. I wrote to the branch investigator that this charge was baseless and lacked any evidence, and if they can introduce even three people in this country who I have managed in any way and for any purpose, to prove the charge, I will accept it. The investigating judge, without even a glance or a word, sent me out of his office.

Until the day of the trial, and still now, I have not been allowed to know the contents of my case. I had no meetings with my lawyer before the trial and did not know if they had read my file or not. But whatever it was, how could a defense take place without meeting or contacting the accused? The judge also 'disqualified' us at the brief court session. After five months, on a cold winter day, wearing the same cotton summer clothes I was wearing at the time of my arrest, I was transferred to the women's ward of Evin Prison. My body was worn out, and my knees were painful and swollen, from being pushed into the wall of the interrogation room.

I returned to the women's ward of Evin, where less than five years ago, after enduring 10 years of imprisonment, I had kissed the ground in front of my cellmates and gone home. My only friend and companion, Fariba Kamalabadi, who had also been disqualified all her life, came to greet me and informed me that we both had been sentenced to another 10 years in prison. And at the same time as receiving this verdict, my husband, after years of struggle and effort, had to hand over the keys to the house that was the fruit of his lifetime of work to the men who had confiscated our home. He left the house he loved and even knew every leaf of its trees forever. I learned that we Baha'is have been 'disqualified,' for 45 years, from having a normal life in our ancestral homeland.

I remember years ago, when I told the interrogator that one day we would leave this prison, he said: 'Yes, but we determine whether it's horizontal or vertical.' Now I no longer see a horizon before me and I have lost hope in the government's justice.

I address myself to the people of Iran. If our government has 'disqualified' us for life, please, don’t you disqualify us. Like other people of this precious land, we have the right to a decent life. To enjoy civil rights. To have a job and businesses suited to our abilities. To go to university. To have respectful mutual relations with our fellow citizens.

Everyone has the right to have their beliefs and live according to them. Everyone has the right to comfort and security and to be safe from harassment or aggression by any person or group, and to spend all their strength and capability on the prosperity of the country, instead of defending themselves.

My story is yours, and our story is one. Please do not 'disqualify' us and hear our stories from our own mouths.

Mahvash Sabet, Evin Prison, November 2023