****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
"'Roxana,’ Bahman said gravely but quietly, ‘I know what this regime is like. If you fight it, you can’t win. These people are dangerous and have no pity for people like you. If you don’t do what they say, they will keep you in prison for years, and who knows what will happen to you then. If they want, they could hurt or even kill you.’"I remember picking this book off the non-fiction new release shelf of my public library in 2010 and thinking about how brave I was. I’d just started reading non-fiction, and I hadn’t even made it to memoirs. I’d mainly dabbled in true crime narratives, which was as close to keeping with my weekly diet of forensic and coroner programs. Saberi’s beautiful face called to me. I’ve always had an interest in Middle Eastern culture, especially that of Iran and its ancient roots going back to Cyrus. Unfortunately, I didn’t get past page 90 before I had to return the book and later forgot about her–that is until two years ago when I found a copy of her book in new condition. Score! Now I've finally finished it!Saberi, of both Japanese and Iranian heritage, accepts a job as a journalist in Tehran for an American reporting group. Raised in Fargo, North Dakota, Roxana jumps at the opportunity to learn more about her Iranian roots and culture. Knowing minimal Farsi and next to nothing about the culture/regime, she is soon adopted into the city, and falls in love with its people, by extension her people. While there, she decides to write a book about Iran that will give outsiders a true view of life there from various points of view. She interviews hundreds of individuals from all parts of the country, and from all walks of life. After six years and with her book nearly complete, Roxana is set to return home to the United States, work on getting her book published, and decide what direction her life will next take. What she isn’t prepared for is sudden detainment, interrogation, and imprisonment at Evin prison under trumped-up charges of espionage just months before her departure.One of my favorite summer reads last year was Maziar Bahari’s Then They Came for Me, about his imprisonment at Evin prison following his journalistic reporting about the 2009 campaign elections. This one was equally wonderful in that it was told from a female journalist’s perspective. Unlike Bahari, Saberi was not kept in solitary confinement for her whole stay, and as a result, her accounts about the various female cellmates warmed and broke my heart. All of these women were courageous, and I found this book to be uplifting. I experienced similar feelings to Saberi upon her release by proxy, having met each of these women."My tears were of both joy and sorrow: joy at my freedom but sorrow for the prisoners of conscience I was leaving behind, who were being punished simply because of their peaceful pursuit of basic human rights or for their beliefs."
