We were picked up for not having passports in Iran. We were held with fear, not beatings—just deprivation of reassurance and threat that we were in trouble far greater than we knew. We were afraid. At one point, a group of raucous dark-haired Argentineans was held in the next room and I succinctly said to them, “Tell the embassy: We are American journalists.” I felt quite proud I had mouthed the correct words in my narrow window of communication. It was then a fellow prisoner told me that they, these Argentineans, too, would remain in this jail, and why would I think they could help us? I realized she was right and felt impotent again.
The woman jailer came to us and said we would be moved to a place far worse than this. That if we think we’d had it bad, we had no idea what was coming. She looked like a masculine gym teacher I had as a young teenager—hair in a mat of heavy curls cut close to her head. We would be making crowns of thorns, like Jesus wore, not to wear, but for others. And if we think it would not destroy our hands with each prick and cut, we would soon see what a torture this construction would become, that each thorn would tear at our hands’ meat and slice like razors across our fingers and palms. I become more afraid, but resolve I can do it.
We are sent to a road to wait for a bus to move us, only when two large dirty-white cars arrive, our fellow Iranian tells us these are Special Security vans, meant for our subtle, they-will-look-the-other-way escape across the border. We pile in and drive fast. Only the scenery becomes rocky and forested, and we realize we are still being held, only now in a wilderness in which we would die of thirst and hunger if we could not find our way. Green spreads far and thin but holds chunky gray-white rocks in ragged groupings. The close-cut grass is a yellow-blue coat across the earth that lulls me.
But I would soon lose my socks and shoes and shed my jacket without remembering how. I would chill upward from my toes. I would regret that my camera remains at my apartment with all the photos I have taken on this trip before now.
We come across a huge pool in the woods in which a movie is being filmed. I see John Lithgow and realize he is the person to tell we need help. We wade uncomfortably, watched by the crew, the actors, the grips and lighting guys, through the chlorinated water and I whisper as we pass John, “We are Americans. We are journalists. Tell them.” He seems startled but maybe understands.
I see my black dog drinking heavily from the pool, and fear his poisoning, but know his thirst. I realize then the heaviness our families will feel must be beginning as they finally know we are stuck without charge in Iran, possibly tortured. I worry we have been released too soon, that we will be ridiculed for scaring them, that my detention will not matter enough among the dozens of journalists held for prolonged periods in this country. I realize then that as long as we have made it out, it does not. We go onward, to Iraq.
