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One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran
Ecco
September 2009
On Sale: September 1, 2009
240 pages
ISBN: 0061583278
EAN: 9780061583278
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
At the Ministry of Intelligence in Tehran, a man in a
checkered shirt sits down in an easy chair. He removes
several documents from his pocket and hands one to Haleh
Esfandiari, a sixty-seven-year-old Iranian American
grandmother he has interrogated and detained for what seems
to be an endless number of weeks. “This is your arrest
warrant and we are taking you to Evin Prison," he says. This stunning arrest was the culmination of a chain of
events set into motion in the early-morning hours of
December 31, 2006—a day that began like any other but
presaged the end of Esfandiari's regular visits to her
elderly mother in Iran, and her return to the United States.
That morning, the driver arrived on time. Her mother held
the Quran over her head for blessing and luck. From the car,
Haleh waved good-bye. She checked for her passport and plane
ticket. But as the taxi neared the airport, a sedan forced
them to pull over. Three men, armed with knives, threatened
her and her driver while going through her pockets and
stealing her belongings—including her travel documents. She
was left unharmed but would not fly home to the States that
day. “An ordinary robbery," Esfandiari insisted to friends
and family. She took steps to secure a new passport and book
a new flight. But it would not be until eight months later
that she would leave Iran. Esfandiari became the victim of the far-fetched belief on
the part of Iran's Intelligence Ministry that she, a scholar
with the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington,
D.C., was part of an American conspiracy for “regime change"
in Iran. In haunting prose and vivid detail, Esfandiari
recounts how the Intelligence Ministry subsequently ordered
a search of her mother's apartment; put her through hours,
then weeks, of interrogation; tapped her phone calls,
forcing her to speak in code to her husband and mother; and
finally detained her at the notorious Evin Prison, where she
would spend 105 days in solitary confinement. Through her ordeal, Esfandiari came face-to-face with the
state of affairs between Iran and the United States—and
witnessed firsthand how fear and paranoia could create a
government that would take her captive. Weaving her personal
story of capture and release with her extensive knowledge of
Iran, My Prison, My Home is at once a mesmerizing story of
survival and a clear-eyed portrait of Iran today and how it
came to be.
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