Prisoner of Tehran is a memoir written by Marina Nemat on her life in Iran, focusing on the part when she was imprisoned in Evin as a political prisoner during the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Changes were sudden and extreme in Nemat's life, from a teenager with the usual family issues, fell in love with a boy who was later killed in the revolution, found a new love, and then taken by the revolutionaries as a political prisoner. During the time as a prisoner for 2 year, 2 months and 12 days, she was tortured for information, watched her friends being captured, herself sentenced to death but saved by an interrogator at the very last second and received a sentence of life imprisonment, only to be forced into marriage with the interrogator and convert from Christian to Muslim to save her family.
Shortly after, her husband whom she feared and hated from the first time she met him was murdered in front of her, just when she accepted her new family and was beginning to accept her husband as well. Following the son's death, her father-in-law respected his son's wishes and managed to arrange for her release from prison at Evin.
Refusing the government to continue controlling her life, she married her love and escaped to Canada, knowing very well that she may never return to her home country.
After reading this book, Marina Nemat struck me as a brave woman who will act in ways deemed within her rights, such as demanding teachers (who were actually revolutionary guards not qualified to teach) to conduct proper teachings instead of talking politics during the revolution and walked out of the class when they refused, and marrying her lover Andre despite warnings from her family, friends and former captors from Evin.
Years later, she was brave enough to relive her painful past bit by bit and wrote this book, while other former prisoners, including the one mentioned early in the book, refused to talk about it and preferred to keep quiet.
Being familiar only to China's Cultural Revolution, it was interesting to know of another revolution before I was born. Despite being world apart, one could still see the similarities between the two, where the regular people suffered the most and the innocent captured, imprisoned, tortured, humiliated and killed. These were terrible past, but luckily the world was able to move forward for the better.
Lastly, I think Prisoner of Tehran is a good book. Read it!!
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