DAVID BIANCULLI, host:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli of tvworthwatching.com, sitting in for Terry Gross.
Our guest Maziar Bahari has just written an account of his 118 days in captivity at the hands of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. It's called, "Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival."
Bahari was arrested in 2009 while covering the protests in Tehran, which followed the disputed presidential election. He was sent to Evin Prison, notorious for its torture of political prisoners.
His interrogator, a member of the Revolutionary Guard, accused him of many things, some of them pretty ludicrous. For instance, the interrogator used a TV interview Bahari did with a correspondent for Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" as an example of Bahari's association with a spy. He was released after four months in captivity because of international pressure. Nine days later, his wife gave birth to their only child.
Bahari grew up in Tehran and moved to Canada in 1988 to study film. A decade later, he returned to Iran where he made documentaries and covered that country for Newsweek. He now lives in London. This month will mark the second anniversary of the start of protests in Iran as well as two years since Maziar Bahari was arrested.
Terry Gross spoke to him last June, as the first anniversary of those events was approaching, and asked him how he was feeling.
Mr. MAZIAR BAHARI (Author, "Then They Came for Me"): I - yeah, I mean, I, inevitably, have to think about the anniversary of my arrest in Iran as well, because, as much as I was proud to be Iranian on the 15th of June, 2009, I got worried about the future of the country on the 19th of June, 2009, when the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who people thought he was a pragmatic leader who was thinking about his own survival, would accept the voice of the people who came to the streets and wanted a recount of the votes.
And - but Khamenei did not do that. Khamenei told the people to go back home or they have to pay the price of the violence and the consequences of their action. And on the 19th of June, when Khamenei delivered that ceremony and the Friday prayers, Iran entered the new phase. And we can talk about Islamic Republic of Iran as an Islamic government, as a theocracy. We have to talk about it as a quasi-military dictatorship.
TERRY GROSS, host:
While you were in prison, your interrogator told you that they could find you anywhere. He said, we can put people in a bag no matter where in the world they are. No one can escape from us. And his last words to you just before you were released were: remember the bag.
Mr. BAHARI: Yes. Yeah.
GROSS: So does that haunt you, moments like this when you're speaking about the Iranian government and the opposition movement and speaking about your imprisonment?
Mr. BAHARI: Well, only in the moments like this when the interviewer reminds me of that, it haunts me. But I try not to think about it on a day-to-day basis. And I try not to let them win and take over my life even though I'm living thousands of miles away from Iran.
That is the strategy of the Iranian government. The Iranian government wants to tell its citizens that we are in control of every aspect of your life no matter where you are. And also, it's part of the bullying characteristic of the Islamic government. And it's not only the Iranian people that the Islamic government bullies. It bullies the international community as well through programs such as the nuclear program.
But to me, personally, not talking about my experience, allowing them to haunt me on a day-to-day basis, it would mean a defeat for me, a personal defeat. And I cannot allow them to defeat me.
GROSS: In March of 2010, which was months after you were released - you were released in October 2009. So in March you were sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison plus 74 lashes.
Mr. BAHARI: Yes.
GROSS: What was the point of sentencing you after you were already released?
Mr. BAHARI: They released me on bail. Before I was released, they asked me to sign a paper saying that when I leave Iran, I'm going to cooperate with the government and I'm going to spy for the government. And the first thing I did when I arrived in London was to send them an email, through the email address they provided for me, that I have never spied for anyone, and I'm not going to start spying for you. And that really bothered them.
And then - not immediately, but within a month after my release, I started talking about my experience and the torture, psychological and physical torture I had been through. And also, I started a campaign with the help of Committee to Protect Journalists and many other international organizations in support of other journalists who are imprisoned in Iran, because, as you know, more than 100 journalists have been detained since the election, re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2009, and many hundreds are in exile.
So I started a campaign in support of those journalists, and they did not like that at all. So they kept on threatening me through my family members, and sometimes they even called me in London, and I just had it. I think in March, I just made those threats public, and I told all the different networks that the Iranian government is threatening me. And it was - there was an international condemnation of those threats, and within a few days, they passed this sentence.
The sentence was supposed to scare me because the Iranian government was planning to start this international court for Iranians in the diaspora. And also, the sentence was supposed to scare many other journalists and filmmakers who were working in Iran that if you do something on the anniversary of the election, this kind of sentence can happen to you.
GROSS: Is your mother still in Iran? And do you worry about her, if she is?
Mr. BAHARI: My mother is still in Iran, and my extended family is in Iran as well. I worry about them on a day-to-day basis. But traditionally, the Iranian government has never touched the families and relatives of the people they regard as the opposition - with a few exceptions, of course.
But the Iranian government is not known for its predictability, so I wonder when and if they are going to bother my family. But again, that's part of their control mechanism that they want to threaten you through threatening your family and - or make you feel always fearful of what they're going to do to your family.
So, again, I don't want them to control me through my family. And I don't think that my family will be very happy with me if I stop talking about the atrocities that the Iranian government is committing now.
GROSS: We were talking about how you were sentenced in March even though you were released months before that, in October of 2009. And you were sentenced for some of the things during that sentencing in March in which you were accused of other things when you were arrested, and some of them are kind of predictable, you know, like being a spy and inciting riots and things like that. Some of the charges were kind of bizarre, like, one of them was for a photo that was on your Facebook page? Would you describe that too?
Mr. BAHARI: Yeah, it was not even my photo. It was a photo that was tagged on my page. And most people who know Facebook, they know that you have no control over what people tag on your wall. And it was a photo of Ahmadinejad kissing a boy, and it was a photo that I think it was taken two or three years before that.
And one day, my interrogator said that, who put this photo on your Facebook? And I said, I don't know. And he said, how come you don't know? I mean, this is your Facebook page, so you must know. I mean, I have to say that they were beating me while they were asking those questions. So I was getting beaten, and I was being asked these idiotic questions. And I said, sir, it doesn't have to do anything with me. It's like if someone throws something into your house, are you responsible for that? You know, it's exactly the same thing.
But the man didn't know anything about Facebook. So there was no way I could explain to him. And then he said that, through this photo you are saying that Mr. Ahmadinejad is a homosexual, so you're insulting him. And as a result I received a six-month sentence. And I mean, I'm laughing now in the comfort of a London studio...
GROSS: That's because I'm not beating you. I mean, really.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BAHARI: Exactly, yeah. And - but many of my colleagues are suffering because of this stupid, idiotic thinking of the Iranian government and their captors. And that is the tragedy of Iran, that a country with many educated people, many intelligent people, is almost hijacked by a group of thugs who are running the country right now.
GROSS: You were also charged with being in contact with the Jews and Israelis. Is it illegal to be in contact with Jews?
Mr. BAHARI: Well, you know, that Jewish episode of my imprisonment, it was just so bizarre. I'm a member of two fan books in - on Facebook, and one of them is Anton Chekhov. The other one is Pauly Shore. But I'm not going to talk about that one. One of them is Anton Chekhov.
And one day my interrogator asked me, who is Anton Chekhov? I said, well, he is a Russian playwright from the late 19th century, early 20th century. What does he write about? I said, you know, about existential subjects, about people's day-to-day problems. It's a very - he's a very good writer, a beautiful - and he said, was he a Jew? I said, well, I'm not sure whether Chekhov was a Jew or not, but, you know, there were many Jewish intellectuals at that time. Maybe he was. Maybe he was not. I'm not really sure whether Chekhov was. And he said, no, no, no. I'm sure that Chekhov was a Zionist. We have to investigate. So, you know, they went and investigate Anton Chekhov during my interrogation. And, you know, they were accusing me of supporting the Zionists because I was a member of an Anton Chekhov fan club on Facebook.
And then, when they found out that I had made a film about the Jewish Holocaust, and I may be the only Iranian filmmaker or Muslim filmmaker who's ever made a film about the Holocaust, they thought that, you know, that's it, that they have found a Zionist spy. And, you know, I received a lot of beatings and torture because of that.
But it was not part of my sentence. You know, most of the things that they accused me of, it was not brought up in my sentence because they were all false. There is no talk of espionage in my sentence, for example, because they didn't have any proof, because I was not a spy. And, you know, so they had to resort to this really idiotic evidence that they thought they had.
BIANCULLI: Maziar Bahari, speaking to Terry Gross one year ago.
(Soundbite of music)
BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's June 2010 interview with Newsweek correspondent, Maziar Bahari. She spoke to him one year after he was imprisoned in Iran for 118 days, accused of being a spy.
He's written a book about his ordeal, which will be published next week. It's called "Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival."
GROSS: You were also accused when you were in prison of improper sexual conduct. And it sounds like your interrogator, after accusing you of improper sexual conduct, enjoyed nothing better than trying to get you to talk about sex.
Mr. BAHARI: Yeah. You know, my interrogator - you know, after a few days I realized that, you know, my interrogator was a human being. He was not a very good human being. He was not the human being that I would be friends with. But he was a human being. And that man, he spends most of his time in a dark room, in a small room, beating people, insulting people and interrogating people.
And sometimes, he would receive calls from his wife, and he was just tired. He was very gentle and very nice on the phone with his wife. But the wife was apparently - was evidently always complaining about him not coming home. And he was always making different excuses that, OK, I have to finish this guy, and then I promise I'll come home, and we can (unintelligible)...
GROSS: That's so bizarre, and I'm trying - wait, wait. Hang on. I'm trying to think of what that's like. He's beating you, then he's talking to his wife and having, you know, a husband-wife kind of conversation. He's saying I can't make it home because I have to finish beating this guy, and this guy is you.
Mr. BAHARI: You know, he was a master of a schizophrenic personality. You know, his body was doing something and his voice was totally doing something else. For example, one day he was squeezing my ear in his hand, and he was punching me in the head, and then at the same time he had the phone in his hand, and you know, and he was talking lovingly to his wife. He was really gentle and very nice to his wife, and you know, while beating me.
And I think the fact that he could not be with his wife and the fact that he was in that really claustrophobic atmosphere that made sex into such an important subject for him. And he was going through all my email contacts, all my Facebook friends, all my - even mobile cell phone contacts, and he was asking about each individual, if I had sex with them or not.
For example, he was asking me about Shirin Ebadi, you know, the Nobel Peace laureate, the human rights lawyer. And he said, did you have sex with Shirin Ebadi? I said no, I did not have sex with Shirin Ebadi. She's, like, she's 70 years old. And - but he said, you have three phone numbers for her. I said, yes, I have three numbers. I have 10 numbers for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Like, what does that prove?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BAHARI: And then, you know, of course he would not like me to talk back and the beating would continue. So, yeah, I mean, I can easily say that I was maybe beaten up and tortured for about one month just because of his sexual accusations.
GROSS: Do you think that that kind of sexual obsession and beating of you is an example of what happens when a culture is so sexually repressed?
Mr. BAHARI: It is. And, you know, it is about ignorance, and it's about suppression, and it's about being isolated from the rest of the world and the rest of the people as well.
You know, to him, I was eating the forbidden fruit on the Earth. I was supposed to - I was - like him, I was supposed to wait until my death, go to paradise, and then I could have sex with as many women and men as I wanted. I could drink wine or whatever. And he thought that, you know, people should not exercise that on the Earth. Otherwise they were infidels. So he hated me because I, you know, I was eating the forbidden fruit on the Earth, and he was also jealous at the same time.
And, you know, because people in Iran, they have satellite dishes, and even in the most religious traditional families, they watch satellite television that's beamed from the United States mainly. They have some ideas about the West. And he had this fascination with the state of New Jersey. So to him, New Jersey was that paradise. I'm not sure why he had that fascination with New Jersey. Maybe he was a big fan of "Jersey Shore" or something. I never found out, really. But he was...
GROSS: Well, explain how he used that in his questions to you.
Mr. BAHARI: Well, you know, in the beginning, he told me that you wanted to create a New Jersey Islam in Iran. And I was wondering, what is New Jersey Islam? He said, you wanted to create a New Jersey Islam in Iran, an Islam with Michael Jackson music and people having sex with each other. I was like, oh my God. That would be a really weird place to have sex(ph).
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BAHARI: But then, after a while, after the beatings and after all the torture finished, and he wanted to release me - because 20 days before my release, he started being nice to me. And because of the international pressure, they wanted to release me but they wanted to have certain conditions before my release.
And during the last 20 days, we would just talk about different things, and I could see that he had that fascination with New Jersey. And he would ask me, so what are the main cities in New Jersey? And what about health care in New Jersey? Are there any Jews? And...
GROSS: So odd. Are there any Jews in New Jersey?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BAHARI: Yeah. He asked me once, are there any Jews in New Jersey? When I said that, yes, there are many Jews in New Jersey...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BAHARI: ...he was surprised because he thought that such a nice place, there shouldn't be any Jews in such a nice place. But, yeah, but that was the -I mean, it was just a bizarre - it was really a comedy of horrors. And I can laugh about it again now in London, after - a month after my release. But during that time, in a small dark room with a big man beating you up and kicking you and insulting you, it was not very funny.
GROSS: No.
Mr. BAHARI: And it's not funny even now because these are the people who are running the country. I mean, don't think that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is much different from my interrogator. In fact, my interrogator was sometimes very critical of Ahmadinejad and his radical policies. And he would say, why did Ahmadinejad say this? Why did Ahmadinejad say this? So, in a sense, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is even more ignorant than my interrogator, and that is really scary because Iran is a very powerful country. Iran is on the brink of, I think, a nuclear weapon. And being run by these people, it makes it very dangerous.
BIANCULLI: Maziar Bahari speaking to Terry Gross last June. We'll have more of their conversation in the second half of the show. I'm David Bean Cooley. And this is FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli sitting in for Terry Gross.
We're listening to an interview Terry conducted one year ago with journalist and documentary filmmaker Maziar Bahari, who was arrested Iran after covering the 2009 protests against that country's disputed presidential election.
Bahari was accused of being a spy and was imprisoned and interrogated for 118 days before being released. His memoir is an account of his ordeal, the history of modern Iran and the story of his own family. It's called "Then They Came for Me." Bahari now lives in London with his wife and daughter.
GROSS: You've described your imprisonment, in a way, as a comedy of horrors because the questions you were asked, the things you were charged with were so absurd. But your torturer had no sense of humor at all. I mean, not anyways applied to anything in your life in what he was accusing you of. And his knowledge of America, his knowledge of Facebook, his knowledge of everything he was accusing you of was so - well, nonexistent, really.
Mr. BAHARI: Limited. Yeah.
GROSS: Yeah. So just to kind of prove that, part of the evidence that was used against you was your interview with Jason Jones, a correspondent for "The Daily Show," who happened to be in Iran just a few days before the election and a few days before all of the protests. And he was there to do these kind of funny reports about, you know, how he's going to show what villains the Iranians are and how all Iranians hate Americans. And, of course, every Iranian he spoke to was talking about no, no, no. We really like America. No, no. We don't hate America.
And then he interviewed a few experts, you know, about Iranian-American relations, and you were one of those experts. So I want to play the interview he did with you, and then we'll talk about how your interrogator used this interview when you were in prison.
Mr. BAHARI: Sure.
GROSS: And I should mention, Jason Jones - actually, you describe how Jason Jones was dressed for this report.
Mr. BAHARI: Jason was dressed in a Palestinian kafia scarf and had sunglasses. He basically looked like a bad spy in a B movie. And he pretended to be a redneck American who didn't know anything about Iran and anything about the Middle East or Islam, and had all these stereotypes. And I was supposed to give him answers that, you know, that was so different from his prejudgments.
GROSS: OK. So here, you're both at a coffee shop. And when this starts, Jason Jones is at a table looking for you and waiting for you.
(Soundbite of TV show, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart")
Mr. JASON JONES (Actor): We headed to a coffee shop off Azadi Square for a clandestine meeting with Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari. I was told he'd go by the code name Pistachio and I would recognize him by - oh, I didn't see you there.
I asked him the question on every Westerner's mind: Why was his country so terrifying?
Mr. BAHARI: In one word: misunderstanding. The truths are(ph) is they don't understand each other. They don't know the values of the other side. They don't know how to talk to the other side. And actually, I've written about that for Newsweek magazine several times.
Mr. JONES: I didn't understand a word of that. Mahmoud, can you translate this for me please?
MAHMOUD (Translator): Yes. He's saying that he's written about this problem that you have in Newsweek magazine, and you can read about it.
Mr. JONES: OK. What did he say?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BAHARI: He said that I said I've written about it for Newsweek magazine several times.
Mr. JONES: I'm going to need someone who speaks English.
The one thing I could understand was that this entire country is evil.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BAHARI: The first thing to know about Iran is that it's not evil. Iranians and Americans, they have much more in common than they have different.
Mr. JONES: But what do I have in common with you?
Mr. BAHARI: Who is number enemy of the United States?
Mr. JONES: Al-Qaida.
Mr. BAHARI: Al-Qaida is also the number one enemy of Iran. According to al-Qaida members, any Shia, any Iranian, has to be killed. And if you kill an Iranian, you will go to heaven and you will have 72 virgins.
Mr. JONES: Enough of his Western-educated, Newsweek doublespeak.
(Soundbite of laughter)
GROSS: OK, that was Jason Jones from "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" one year ago interviewing my guest, Maziar Bahari. And not long after that interview, Maziar Bahari was arrested in Iran for 118 days. He spent 118 days in Evin Prison.
And how was this video, this "Daily Show" video used against you by your interrogator when you were in prison?
Mr. BAHARI: On the first day when they arrested me, they told me that they knew I was working for four different intelligence agencies: the CIA, Israeli Mossad, MI6 and Newsweek magazine. But my guess at this point is that, in the absence of any evidence to prove that I was a spy, they were just desperate. They wanted to find some sort of evidence that proved I was a spy. And I'm sure that someone in the U.S. or someone in Iran who filmed "The Daily Show" - that sketch with Jason Jones and me - and sent it to them and said that this is this guy who says that Iran and America, they have a lot in common. And he's talking to a spy.
So I think they just put all this different circumstantial evidence together and they said, well, if Jason Jones looks like a spy, if this guy gives different names to people, then he must be a spy. And, you know, it just it was so emblematic of this paranoid thinking that they had and, you know, that it didn't even allow them to listen to the laugh track on "The Daily Show."
GROSS: Now, your father spent four years in prison under the shah.
Mr. BAHARI: Yeah.
GROSS: And you wrote that your father never asked for mercy. And he wondered what he - you wondered what he'd think of you signing a confession, as fake as that confession was, as limited as that confession was.
Mr. BAHARI: Yeah.
GROSS: Can you talk about that a little bit?
Mr. BAHARI: Well, my father was a member of the Communist Party of Iran, and he was a political activist. And he had a political ideal and he was also tortured in the 50s after the CIA-backed coup in 1953. And he - according to him and his friends - never revealed the identity of his comrades.
And my situation was totally different because I never liked politics. I never wanted to be part of a political group. I'm a cynic. I don't believe in anything. And for me, it was just bizarre that even though I had tried all my life not to be in prison, not to confront the authorities about anything, they still could not tolerate someone who was as mild and peaceful as I was.
And it just - it was mind-boggling. And, of course, I was thinking about my father and my father's ideals, which I did not believe in. But I - when I confronted the - my torturer, I could not not think that my father was tortured by the same kind of person - working for another regime, of course, but the same kind of ignorant person.
GROSS: So when did you decide that, OK, I'm going to give a confession, a limited confession? How long did you hold out, and when did you decide that it would be better for you to give some kind of confession?
Mr. BAHARI: After they accused me of espionage, they said that one night they took me to a room and they told me that we're going to charge you with espionage. And unlike any other judicial process, in espionage cases, you have to prove you're innocent. Otherwise, you're guilty.
And the guy - who was different from my interrogator. He was my interrogator's boss, I think. He said that the investigation may take six or seven years, and at the end of six or seven years, we may find that you are not a spy. And we'll say that we are sorry, and we'll just let you go. Or if we find that you're a spy, we're going to execute you. So I had a very limited choice. I had to do a confession, or I had to be charged with espionage.
GROSS: So, at that point, you figured, do the confession.
Mr. BAHARI: Yes.
GROSS: But did the confession get you out of prison, or was it the international pressure that got you out of prison?
Mr. BAHARI: No, no. It was the international pressure, definitely. I think my colleagues in Newsweek, in Washington Post Company, in Channel 4 News in the UK, and especially my wife Paola, they campaigned for me tirelessly. And it was just amazing. When I came out, I realized what an amazing job they had done, and I never can thank them enough. But it was the international pressure and it was the comments made by different officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and many other officials around the world who talked about my case in private, sometimes, to the Iranian officials.
So it was an amazing job that my friends and colleagues in Newsweek and other places did for me, and that led to my release. And that's why I think that I have to do the same thing for hundreds of people who do not have the same opportunity as I had while I was in prison. I have to be their voice, and I have to talk on their behalf.
GROSS: Your wife gave birth to, I think, your first child...
Mr. BAHARI: Yes.
GROSS: ...nine days after you got out of prison.
Mr. BAHARI: Yeah.
GROSS: That must've been just such an amazing experience for you.
Mr. BAHARI: Oh, it was. You know, I - while I was in prison, I was always thinking that the day that my daughter was going to be born, it could be the best day of my life or it could be the worst day of my life if I'm not going to be with Paola in London. And fortunately, it was the best day of my life, because I was with Paola. But it was - I mean, Paola had to suffer through a lot because of what the Iranian government did to me.
GROSS: It appears that as long as this regime is in power, you cannot go back to Iran. It sounds pretty certain like you'd be arrested the moment you set foot there. How - what does it mean to you to know that for an indefinite amount of time - maybe never - will you be able to go back?
Mr. BAHARI: I mean, it makes me really sad. And it makes me really sad for my daughter because I really wanted my daughter to be able to go to Iran to visit her family in Iran. Paola's never been to Iran, either but it's not possible. And - but it's something that I have to deal with.
I always tell people it's like being in an accident and some drunk driver has made me handicapped. And I have to live with my handicap. So, you know, not being able to go back to Iran is like that for me. It's a big damage to my life, but I have to live with it because if I go back to Iran, I will be imprisoned, and who knows what's going to happen to me.
BIANCULLI: Maziar Bahari speaking to Terry gross one year ago.
More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(Soundbite of music)
BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's June 2010 interview with Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari. She spoke to him one year after he was imprisoned in Iran for 118 days, accused of being a spy. He's written a book about his ordeal which will be published next week. It's called "Then They Came For Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival.
GROSS: Right before you were arrested, you wrote your editors in America at Newsweek: This is the beginning of the end of the Islam Republic as we know it. I don't know how long it's going to take for the Islamic regime to fall. Khamenei has learned many lessons from the Shah's downfall, and is not making the same mistakes.
So, at that time, you were very optimistic about the opposition movement. How do you feel now about that statement that you think it's the end of the Islamic Republic as we know it?
Mr. BAHARI: I still feel the same. I think that the Islamic Republic government started to dig its own grave on the 19th of June last year when Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, put a distance between himself and the people of Iran.
But I just have to make it clear that I do not think that people of Iran want to have a revolution. People want to have a reform. There are two movements in Iran right now. One is for dictatorship and one is for democracy.
Many Iranians and the increasing number of Iranians are becoming more individualistic. They are thinking about individual freedoms. They are thinking about their rights as citizens of Iran. They do not want to be part of this Ummah, which is a Islamic state. They do not want to be subject of an Islamic ruler.
And on the other side you have people who are followers of Khamenei. Some of them honestly follow Khamenei and they think that Khamenei is the God's, Allah's representative on Earth and his words are Allah's words. So there's this two main trends going on in Iran and I'm very hopeful about the future of Iran because I see that as more and more Iranians are becoming educated, as more and more Iranians are getting in touch with the rest of the world, communicate with the rest of the world, they believe in their individual freedoms and they believe in the fact that no government can represent Allah on the Earth.
And this struggle may continue for decades. I mean, just think about the Soviet Union. When Stalin died in 1953, it took 36 years for the Berlin Wall to collapse. The government may be in power for a few years or a few decades but a few years or a few decades compared to 2,500 years of Iranian history and even more is nothing.
GROSS: I'd like to end our interview with a song by Leonard Cohen, because that seems to be a theme that ran through your imprisonment. There were three songs that you've mentioned that went through your mind while you were in prison: "So Long, Marianne," "The Partisan" and "Sisters of Mercy." And I guess I'm wondering if he knows the...
Mr. BAHARI: Power.
GROSS: ...part that his music played while you were in prison?
Mr. BAHARI: I don't know. I haven't been in touch with him.
GROSS: OK.
Mr. BAHARI: But Leonard Cohen basically provided the soundtrack to my imprisonment. And...
GROSS: In your mind, right? This is just all in your mind.
Mr. BAHARI: In my mind. Of course, all in my mind. They - no, they didn't allow me to have an iPod in prison. And it was just amazing to me that this very cynical Jewish Canadian singer-songwriter can help me in the naval of this dictatorship in a prison in Iran. That was really liberating, you know, because that was a secret between me and Leonard Cohen, that my interrogator and my prison guards they did not know anything about. So that was my little secret and that really helped me to endure the pains in prison.
GROSS: Do you want to choose the song?
Mr. BAHARI: "Sisters of Mercy." Yeah, "Sisters of Mercy" was the main song that reoccurred in my dreams and I hummed it all the time. Yeah, that was the main song. And it's such a beautiful song as well.
GROSS: Well, Maziar Bahari, I thank you very much for talking with us. And I'm glad you're continuing to work on behalf of journalists who are still in prison in Iran. And I'm very glad that you are not one of those journalists who is in prison. So...
Mr. BAHARI: Thank you. Thanks very much.
BIANCULLI: Maziar Bahari speaking to Terry gross last June. His book, "Then They Came For Me," comes out next week published by Random House.
We checked back with Maziar Bahari this week to get an update. He wrote us quote, "My mother and other members of my family are fine. She is still in Iran. Iran is her country, her home and she doesn't want to live anywhere else. The specter of violence in Iran really scares me," he continues. "The regime is brutalizing people in hope of making people more violent. Violence is the only language the government in Iran understands and they're very good at it. What really frightens them is logical and peaceful opposition. So I'm in the process of making a film about the history of nonviolent movements around the world. We start with Gandhi, then show Mandela, the peaceful toppling of Milosevic in Yugoslavia, Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt and then ask the question: How can others learned lessons from these movements?" Unquote.
Maziar Bahari lives in London with his wife and daughter. Here is Leonard Cohen.
(Soundbite of song, "Sisters of Mercy")
Mr. LEONARD COHEN (Musician): (Singing) Oh, the Sisters of Mercy, they are not departed or gone. They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on. And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song. Oh, I hope you run into them, you who've been traveling so long.
Yes, you, who must leave everything that you cannot control; It begins with your family but soon it comes 'round to your soul. Well, I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned. When you're feeling not holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.
BIANCULLI: Coming, David Edelstein reviews the new Mike Mills film "Beginners."
This is FRESH AIR.
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