UK – Financial Times, December 07, 2024
Zaghari-Ratcliffe on her liberation from Iran Held in the country for six years, the former prisoner shares her insights into how repressive states work — and finding escape
Like most people, I have always associated freedom with political or civil rights. It used to be an abstract concept to me. But that changed entirely when my rights were suddenly taken away.
In March 2016, my daughter and I took a two-week trip to Iran to be with my family for the Persian New Year. On the way back to London, I was abducted at the airport, taken to an unknown location, interrogated for months, accused of plotting to overthrow the Islamic Republic’s government and sentenced to five years in prison.
I spent the best part of the first year of my incarceration in solitary confinement. So unexpected was my arrest that I had no time to process it. I was terrified and confused. Everything had vanished: my motherhood; my home; my entire world. All of them were suddenly unavailable to me.
I was a stranger in the world they had thrown me into — the isolation, the discipline, the punishment, the uniforms and starvation. All of it filled me with fear, doubt, loneliness, anger and hate.
Sometimes the best way to appreciate something fully is to be made to live without it. I was lonely, and unfree. So my mind started redefining those concepts. In order to set myself free from the boundaries imposed on me by the prison walls, I had to create a parallel world of my own. Liberation came only when I realised no one could take that away from me: my mind, my ability to dream and let go of the darkness happening around me.
Freedom is not an island; it is in connections and conversations, in everyday human things
All that we create and conceive outside can be replicated inside. There were many nights in prison when I dreamt of entering a supermarket, passing through the fruit and vegetables section, getting in the lift and going to the fourth floor towards the home and clothes section. Yet every single time, I lost my way, couldn’t find the exit and got stuck there. In the dream, I was surprised that I could walk freely into a place outside prison, but then my subconscious would remind me that I was not free.
For the first nine months of my imprisonment, I was kept in complete isolation. I had minimum contact with people, and virtually no access to anything, including pens, papers and books. The only books I was allowed were a Holy Book, and one heavily damaged prayer book. I soon realised that other prisoners, depending on their circumstances, charges and the length of their stay in isolation, were allowed to have books and writing materials. But I seemed to be an exception. After a couple of months of battle and many complaints, my family were finally allowed to bring me books.
These books were both in English and Farsi. I read them over and over. They pulled me into a different world, allowing me to forget where I was. The moments I looked forward to most in isolation were when, after long hours of interrogation, they sent me back to my cell. It was then that I could drown my fears and sorrows in the stories of others.
