Status Updates From My Prison, My Home: One Wom...

As we moved toward the exit, I saw a group of incoming prisoners: they stood blindfolded and facing the wall, anxious and disoriented—grown men and women reduced, like children, to helplessness.

I felt the country I had cherished all my life was no longer mine. I had loved Iran with a passion. I loved its brilliant blue sky and its brown earth. I loved the desert and the sea [...] The great ruins at Persepolis had made me proud; the poverty in Zahedan had made me weep. The beauty of Isfahan's mosques took my breath away. Yet these horrible people had made me feel alien in my own homeland.

I felt the country I had cherished all my life was no longer mine. I had loved Iran with a passion. I loved its brilliant blue sky and its brown earth. I loved the desert and the sea […] The great ruins at Persepolis had made me proud; the poverty in Zahedan had made me weep. The beauty of Isfahan's mosques took my breath away. Yet these horrible people had made me feel alien in my own homeland.

I walked to the corner of the street and took a cab to the home of my friend Shideh. We went for a walk in the large garden of her apartment complex. Shideh had made a nazr-a vow Iranians make to themselves to engage in a charitable or religious act if their prayer is answered. Shideh had vowed to give money to a charity when I was reunited with my family. Several friends had made a similar nazr.

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