“All right then. This is the last time,” the interrogatorsays as he stands right behind me. Facingthe wall, he asks me to remove the blindfold without looking back or to the sides. “Last chanceto write whatever you think you might’ve forgot. I’ll give you enough time to go over anythingyou want to add. Start with the personal questionnaire and finish up with your relationship withthe anti-revolutionaries. Anything you might even think is trite or not worth mentioning.”He offers me a chair with an attached desk and hands me a stack of white paper, pencils,and two blue Bics. This is the time they become saints. They offer you

everything

you need: anextra eraser, another pencil sharpener, differentpens in case one runs out of ink. Their techniqueswitches 180 degrees. “Ah, your pencil got too dull? Here, take a few more.” They even offer you water, which you have to sip and give the cup back to the Hand behind you. It is only atthese times that your eyes are open, but you’re not allowedto turn around to peek. You never seea glimpse of the interrogators or anyone, or the place they take you. The only time the blindfoldwas ever removed from my eyes was the first day that they took me to the

Hakem-e Shara’

,accompanied by two armed

pasdars

. The interrogators must have had a solid training and beenchosen with extra care, because they all sound almost alike, talk alike, and act alike, so thedetainees won’t be able to distinguish between them. They have you sit in the triangle corner of the room and you can never ever look back or drop something. The bright light overhead is blinding. It’s the writing time. The spit-out-whatever-you-know time. Andif you don’t know,they make you know.I stare for the hundredth time at the questions and the blank papers. I sharpen the pencil afew times, put it down, take a black Bicinstead, then a blue one, but I can’t write down the liesthey want me to write. I read the first question: Place of birth?In the past few days, my mindseems to drift all over. There’s so much time in solitary that I don’t know what to do with it. So,I summon my inner self to float in an unknown horizon and dream in a different dimension. A

rainbow butterfly breaks out of its fragile cocoon and flies and flies. I dream of a place wherethere’s no lashing, prison, footfalls, darkness, silence, torture and executions. Where there is skyand sky and sky. Think. Think. Think. In my cell, my chest to the cold floor, I lay down for hours, trying to find an answer to the questions ringing in my ear. How did it all start? Why am Ihere? Why is it that thousands of us are jailed, executed, falling down to the ground like autumnleaves. The lives of the young people of this country have become cheaper than dirt these days. Iglance at the question: Place of birth?The blue Bic is frozenbetween my fingers. The invisible words chain and join lines: Iwas born in a garden…

Through the narrow doorway of the house barges in a lady. She shouts at my Bibi. I think she is that Fruit-lady coming back with her basket of peaches, apples, and pears inexchange for the golden-green and ruby-color grapes, which droop under the canopy of grapevines over the vegetable garden. On the path to the garden, she reaches out her hand, picks some black grapes from beneath the arbor, crunches a few, spits them out under the treesand says, “They’re too sour.”The Fruit-lady doesn’t look like the others who bring things to the house, calling out when they come. Not like the toothless salt-man who comes on his donkey, shouting in the alleys for dried bread in exchange for salt and onions. He never enters the house, but prays that Bibimay drink the eternity-water in heaven whenever she offers him an ice-cold drink of lemonade. And when he picks the grapes from the creeping branches over the doorway, he says, “Bah, bah!They taste like honey.” Even the ice-man who brings clumps of ice on Saturday afternoons, and the shopkeeper’sboy, who brings yogurt and butter and collects the empty tin bins, prays for Bibi and likes the grapes.

Nor does the Fruit-lady look like the scarf-headed women who tie their babies on their hunched backs and sell syrup, honey, and dates. They, too, pray that Bibi may be a pilgrim tothe House of God.This one Fruit-lady wears white shiny shoes and a knee-length, pleated, puppy-flowers skirt with a long sleeve matchingtop. A wide pearly belt hugs her waist, which is as thin as my storybook. Her belly isn’t like Bibi’s belly, rising like bread dough under her cotton dress.The Fruit-lady doesn’t even look like any of the neighbor women with their long,uncombed hair. Her brown short hair is curled uparound her neck. When she looks at me, she fingers strands of hair and pulls them back behind her ear. Bibi calls her Golrokh, Flower-face. AndI find myself wondering how someone as angryas the Fruit-lady could have such a pretty name. Butwhen I stare at her, her large eyes look likethe eyes of the deer standing next to the man with a ring of light around his head in the painting in the prayer-room. And when she blinks, her long, black lashes move like the lashes of my porcelain doll, except that her eyes aren’t blue, but a glowing honey brown.The Fruit-lady doesn’t laugh or smile. I think she doesn’t like my garden of tomatoes,eggplants, and cucumbers either. Suddenly she walks toward me. She lifts up my hands, yelling at Bibi for letting me dig in the dirt and play with vegetables. She says I look like a village-girl and wants Bibi to rub more Vaseline on my hands. She wants to know why my cheeks aren’t pink and pinches them withher long fingers. “There,” she says, “they’ll be pink now.” When she sees me staring at her, she almost hugs me but gives me a quick kiss on the forehead instead. I become so hot, I know my cheeks are pink.She turns and yells at Bibi again. Bibi cries and tells her if she’s worried about myclothes and my hands, she should take me with her. I clutch my bunny to my chest. I can’t understand why Bibi wants to give me away to the fruit-lady, even though she smells like Cameo