Book description
Robbed in Iran and imprisoned for over 100 days for suspected
espionage, this is the true story of one woman's shocking ordeal in the
country she called home.
The morning of 30 December 2006 began routinely for Haleh Esfandiari.
The Iranian-American academic was due to return home to the United
States after visiting her ailing mother in Tehran. She got into a taxi
to the airport, and was driven by the driver who she always used when in
Iran. Fifteen minutes later, Haleh was robbed at knife point by three
men, who threatened to kill her. Her baggage, two passports and
identification cards were all stolen.
Without her documentation, Haleh was unable to leave Iran. What
appeared to be an ordinary theft was almost certainly a stage-managed
robbery by agents of Iran's Intelligence Ministry, conducted to keep
Haleh in the country. This was the beginning of her eight-month Iranian
saga - starting with endless hours of interrogation, intimidation and
threat, and ending with her release from prison after over 100 days in
solitary confinement.
Revealing, gripping and, at times, alarming, Haleh Esfandiari's ordeal
acts as a microcosm of Iran's difficulties in dealing with the outside
world and the modernity that the country only half-embraces. 'Haleh
Esfandiari's personal narrative begins with a horrific event, one that
transformed her beloved country of birth into a prison, but it is also
an account of that country's rich and complex history and culture,
revealing not just the repressive and inflexible nature of the Islamic
regime, but its failure to subdue the Iranian people's spirit of
resistance, or their belief in their democratic aspirations.' AZAR NAFISI
'From the threads of history and personal experience, Haleh Esfandiari
has woven a masterful memoir…an intimate tale of bravery in the face of
ignorance set against the larger tragedy of U. S.-Iran relations.
Esfandiari's story - timely, suspenseful and artfully told - will
fascinate experts and general readers alike.' MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
'I have long admired and respected Haleh Esfandiari, but never so much
as after reading her memoir. The story of Iran's complex relationship
with the United States mirrors the extraordinary and compelling events
of her own life. She has beautifully interwoven autobiography and
history in a testament to her fortitude and spirit.' LEE HAMILTON,
President, Woodrow Wilson Center
'History is full of unlikely heroes and heroines: ordinary people who
show phenomenal courage when their lives take unexpected turns. Haleh
Esfandiari is one of them. An Iranian-American scholar whose love for
both her native and adopted countries led to her arrest and
incarceration in Tehran's dreaded Evin prison, Haleh writes movingly of
her ordeal with a lack of bitterness that is astonishing. Caught, as she
notes, in the crossfire of a decades-long undeclared war between
Washington and Tehran, she faces her accusers with dignity and emerges
as an even more eloquent advocate for mutual understanding.' BARBARA
SLAVIN Haleh Esfandiari is an Iranian-American academic and Director
of the Middle East Programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars in Washington. Iranian politics and democratic developments
in the Middle East are amongst her areas of expertise and she frequently
lectures on these topics.
