PROPOS

My dearest Fariba, I do not know what you are doing at this moment. Perhaps you are talking to your cell mate Hengameh Shahidi, or maybe you are trying to analyze a book. I don’t know if you are sleeping or two months into your arrest you are still in the middle of different administrative procedures to complete your file!
Anyhow, I am not intending to write to you about our sorrows. I do not want to tell you about the pain of separation or the pain we feel when we see your pale face. I do not want to talk about the pain and agony you have been subjected to during this time; a pain that you always try to hide from us. This time I want to tell you about our Mondays, in other words, I would like to call this letter the Monday Chronicles.
The first month of your detention, during which you were held in solitary confinement with no prison visits, finally came to an end. Since then, every Monday either Amir or I, go the visitation hall of Evin. We bring with us all the ID documents of the family and arrive there between 8.30 and 9 am. After getting a blue card from the soldier who stands at the entrance, we write our names and yours on the card and rush to the small window where we get a number. Often there are a few people ahead of us, which means the families whose loved ones are held in Ward 209 have taken their numbers before us. We start speaking to these newly found and dear friends, with whom we share our pain. We exchange information and news while we wait for the small window to open. It might open at nine or maybe even after 10am. Perhaps the blame is on us for having arrived earlier than necessary. We always do, as we all wait the entire week for those brief minutes when we can see our loved ones.
They take our ID documents and ask us the name of the prisoner we have come to visit, although sometimes they find the name on the blue card. Those moments are always the longest because we don’t know what they will say next. Even if we were allowed to have a visit the previous week, it does not mean that we will get one that day. Finally the waiting ends and we can visit. If there is a sign at the back of the blue card, it means the visit will be through the glass divider; otherwise you are among the luckiest and can have a face to face visit.
For some, like Bahman Ahmadi Amoui , visits are always through the glass divider. But the hardest of all is that every week two or three families are told that there are no visits for their prisoners.
At that moment all the ears and eyes turn toward that little window to see who did not get a visit. Who was the unlucky one this week? Was it Saeed Laylaz, Masoud Bastani, Mohammad Ghouchani, Allahyari, Naimipour or….?
At 1 or 1.30 pm all the families who got a visit that day leave the hall. Their eyes are tired and distressed. There is one question in everyone’s mind: Do they have to come back next Monday or will their Monday Chronicles end?
I have changed my return ticket from Mashad to be back on Sunday morning. I will be there this Monday like all other Mondays. It will be the start of your third month of detention and I am impatiently waiting to see you, my dearest Fariba.
We have put all our hopes in the God almighty.
With all my love and from the Shrine of the 8th Imam, I say Salam to you.