The Foreign Service Journal, March 2015

38 MARCH 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL couple of the leaders of the group came in—they were called in from the outside—and they said the guards were refusing to deal with me anymore because of my attitude, and they took me back down to Komiteh Prison at night in a car, blindfolded, and put me in a cell, just on a concrete floor with nothing else, for about two weeks. I was on bread and water for about two weeks. It was quite interesting. I may have been the first prisoner evicted from Evin because of bad behavior! Then they brought me back later to Evin. Beginning of the End It ended when the United States, I guess, finally got its act together. We had an election in the United States, which allowed the Iranians an out. Do I believe that our release was delayed on purpose, so that the election would take place? Yes, I do. Do I also believe that some Americans conspired in this? Yes, I do. I was removed from Evin, taken to a building that (I found out later) was the former guest house of the prime minister. I was there with Dave Roeder, the Air Force attaché who had been my cellmate off and on. Dave’s a good guy. We started getting vis- its—Algerian diplomats, for example, and others. They weren’t supposed to talk to us very much, other than to inquire about our health. The guards were becoming “friendlier,” as in, “Gee, hasn’t this been swell?” and “You’ll be going home very shortly.” One of the guards even gave me a copy of Time magazine, and that’s when I discovered that Ronald Reagan had been elected president. I immediately assumed it was Soviet disinformation; I did not believe it. And then it was almost over. When we were being put on the bus, I was led back to my seat (blindfolded), and I was trying very hard to be correct because it was an important time. The bus was filling up. Two of the Americans behind me started to whisper to each other. One of them said, “Where do you think they’re taking us? Are we really going?” Something like that. When the other started to reply, one of the guards yelled out, “American, shut up!”Then, in Persian, he made an insulting refer- ence to Americans. So, in Persian, I simply replied in a loud voice, “Shut up your- self, you son of a Persian prostitute!” They pulled me off the bus, and the bus left. They beat me up a little bit, and that was fine, except then they realized that they still had me, and I realized the bus had gone, too. It had been stupid of me. I had just been pushed. I reacted. Eventually they sent me out to the airport in a Mercedes-Benz, which is actually the only way to leave Iran. n