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Ebrahim Firouzi tells Article18’s advocacy director, Mansour Borji, about the months he has spent in exile since his release from six years in prison in November. Ebrahim’s two-year term in exile was recently extended by 11 months owing to an unauthorised leave of absence. You can read more about that here.

Can you tell us about where you are, how you are, and a bit about life in exile?

I am now living in the so-called “oil pin” of Iran, in the city of Rask, near Sarbaz, in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan.

About two weeks after leaving prison, I submitted myself here to begin the two-year exile that was issued to me in 2013. First I had to serve a few years in prison – six, seven years – and then it was time to serve this sentence.

Can you explain a little about the conditions in exile and what restrictions you face?

The rules in exile are the same for everyone, unless the judge included an additional limitation in the judgment. Thank God, the judge decided for me only the two-year forced stay here. There was no further limitation. Therefore, like everyone else who is in exile, I have to report to the police station every 24 hours, and declare my presence there. After that I can live the life on offer to me here. I am like other citizens. 

Have you had the opportunity to call or to have visits from friends and family? If they were to travel there, would it be possible for them to see you?

Yes, it’s possible, but one must also take into account the distance, and that my circumstances here are not suitable for receiving guests. 

I live a temporary life here, and definitely there is no opportunity for me to make a welcoming home that would be appropriate for guests. That is the first point. 

The second point is the distance my family are away from me. If they were to travel this distance – for a day or two, or even a week – I would feel bad, especially since I do not have comfortable conditions for guests. 

Since I have experienced prison myself, I can live in all conditions, but it’s different when it comes to family and guests. Since I hadn’t seen my sister for many years, she did come here four or five months ago, to see me for the first time in four years, and in the boot of the car she brought a sleeping bag, food and all other necessities with her. Such are my circumstances.

And I think it takes at least a few hours to get there? The last time you made the journey, how long did it take you to get to Tehran?

If someone wants to go to Tehran by bus, it takes 26 hours.

If someone wants to take the plane, the airport is not close to where I live, like a bus stop. I have to travel 200km from here, but not with just one means of transport – I have to use four different means of transport, and then I reach Chabahar Airport. From there you can take a plane to Tehran, which takes three hours.

Have you been able to get to know some local residents or neighbours? Do you get a sense of how they feel about you being among them?

On my first day, I arrived here as an exile and they didn’t know anything about me and hadn’t had positive experiences with previous exiles. 

Also, I’m single, so it was very difficult to get an apartment. I have to pay for my life’s expenses myself. The police or the judiciary don’t care whether exiles sleep on the street, or wherever. 

So I had a lot of difficulty renting an apartment, but when the locals understood my situation – I explained that it was true that I was an exile but that I was not a criminal – and then their perceptions changed. Because of the kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, the first night, when many exiles sleep on the street, I was accepted and spent the night in the home of one of the residents. 

And this person, the next morning, prepared an apartment for me, within a day, so that I could temporarily live there until, after a while, they provided more suitable accommodation for me to rent, and that’s where I’m living now. 

Regarding the behaviour of the locals – and their feeling about me, or even that I’m a non-Muslim and most of them are Sunnis – one of the interrogators in prison knew about my exile, and he said: “We will not kill you, we will send you into exile where groups of Salafists and fanatics will kill you!” 

Well, my time in prison came to an end and, with those thoughts in mind, after the prison sentence, I was given a two-week leave of absence to visit my family and to take care of official affairs before taking myself into exile here.

Before I was released, I informed the representative of the Ministry of Intelligence in Rajaei Shahr Prison, in writing and verbally, that I would shortly be exiled and that “all of my identity documents, which remained with you for seven years and you did not give them to me, I need them – otherwise, when I go into exile, I will be a person without identity, so how should the police or the judiciary know it is me?” 

But no matter how much I called the Ministry of Intelligence from inside the prison, and then after my imprisonment – my brother called them too – they were not willing to give me my documents. My assumption is that the documents were lost and they didn’t know where they were, in order to return them to me.

But, thank God, I had copies which I had made years earlier and which had also been validated by the court, translated into English, and after a lot of difficulty, trouble and thoughts about where they were and where I had left them, I found them.

So those basically became my identity documents. Wherever I went and was asked for the original copies of my national ID card and birth certificate, I said, “I am an exile, this is my situation and these are copies and court-legalised translations, which have been validated by the judiciary; I can hand these over to you.” 

So, despite the fact that they sent you into exile, they did not provide the minimum of necessities, such as identity cards and accommodation for the first two or three nights until you found a private place to stay?

No, they didn’t. I jokingly responded to a friend who said they would provide me with a home: “My brother, they have sent me into exile to make me suffer; they haven’t sent me on a honeymoon so that they would book me a hotel!” 

And, unfortunately, poverty and restrictions are so high here, there is not even a guest house where I could go. 

But thank God that as soon as it became known that I was only there because of my beliefs, these dear people accepted me as a guest on the first night. And the next day I was provided with another place to stay.

And how do people in the city feel about their home city being used as a place of exile?

Imagine that you are told that your home – we have a term in our dialect, “Olokueh”, meaning “rubbish dump”. Imagine someone saying to me, “Ebrahim, your house is a very dirty, ugly and useless place.” What kind of feeling would that give me if I lived in that place?

These people have exactly that feeling. Basically, those responsible [the government] say openly that this is a place where life will be very difficult. That is why they call it exile. But the people here live with dignity and honour, despite the hardships. And they know it’s difficult, but their dignity is so high that they don’t organise protests like people in other cities.

You were in prison for over six years and now you’re in exile. Can you explain your emotional state now? You must have had many highs and lows these last years? 

Emotionally, you and other Christian friends who will hear this conversation will understand what I mean… The joy and happiness that everyone wants, for me it was sometimes more and sometimes less, just as everyone experiences it in his or her life. But the joy the Bible speaks of – and I encourage those who don’t know to read about it – this joy was always with me and always will be with me. Even now. 

But humanly there were incidents that were painful for me – the death of my mother, the marriage of my only brother.  Definitely, these were incidents that would be sad for everyone, from a human perspective. 

There was one more difficult incident – and I think it was the only night in prison when I cried for hours: a family matter that cannot be told publicly. But the joy of the Lord, and the trust we have in God, helps us to keep going, and it has guided me so that I never felt, in simple terms, that I had reached my limit. 

Basically, I only prayed for my freedom once in all these years, and that was during my first court case, and I was released two days later. 

Since then, I know that many have prayed for my freedom, but personally I have never prayed for my freedom. I have always prayed: “God, your will be done. It was your will that I go to prison, I’m sure of that; so I trust in your plan. Give me the strength to live in the right way until the end.” 

This is always my prayer, and friends who always sent me messages like “We pray for your freedom”, I always thanked them, but I asked them to pray for me only that God’s will be done for me in prison. 

But anyway, being out of prison is just like being in prison, only that the room is bigger.

By Mary Mohammadi

The following is an English translation of an interview conducted by Christian convert Fatemeh (Mary) Mohammadi with Arian Soodmand, youngest daughter of Pastor Hossein Soodmand, who was executed for apostasy in 1990.

When and how did the pressure and security measures against your father begin?

We had a house in Mashhad that had two floors and a basement. My father turned this basement into a church, with the permission of the Islamic Republic. 

This church, called “The Assemblies of God Church of Mashhad”, was founded by my father, entirely legally, and with permission. 

And we put a sign on the house that said, “The Assemblies of God Church of Mashhad”. 

After Ayatollah Khomeini’s death, my father’s permission was withdrawn, the church closed, and the sign removed from the house. Then my father was arrested multiple times. Our phone calls were listened to. When my father was released from prison (on leave of absence), he said to us, “Don’t say anything because they know about our most private conversations, even my very private conversations with my wife. They have hidden listening devices in our house.”

When my father was martyred, without our permission they sold the phone in our home, which was registered in the name of The Assemblies of God Church of Mashhad, and our phone was completely disconnected, and we were not allowed to buy and own a phone. 

Do you remember the dates of your father’s arrests?

I do not remember the date of my father’s first arrest, but I remember that after Mr. Khomeini’s death, my father’s arrests became more serious and the pressure increased. About 40 days after his [Khomeini’s] death, my father kept being arrested and released, and the authorities complained very much that the church had not held a ceremony to mark Mr. Khomeini’s fortieth day of death. Finally, he had to hold a ceremony for it.

My father’s final return to prison, after the end of his leave, was in early or mid-Aban 1369 [late October/early November 1990], from which he never returned.

Since you were only a nine-year-old girl when your father was executed, you and your family were faced with unimaginable difficulties. Tell us a little bit about your memories of the days your father was away in prison, his execution, and the days after.

The hardships for me started when I was seven years old.

My mother was blind, so my father had a lot more responsibility than most other men: he took care of us [children], did the housework and was a companion for my mother. 

My father and his mother helped my mother with the housework and our upbringing, but before my father’s martyrdom, in 67 [1988] when I was seven years old, my mother had an accident. 

In the accident, she suffered a serious head injury and schizophrenia. It is an acute and serious illness that makes a person very isolated. My mother has been at home since then and has been struggling with depression and schizophrenia. 

My mother wasn’t able to do much since the accident and my father and grandmother did all the housework. So my father did all this housework, took care of our schoolwork and was also a pastor and led the church (the church was on the lower floor of our house). 

In 68 [1989], a year after my mother’s illness, my grandmother had an accident and died. My father was left alone and had to do everything by himself. 

The same year Mr. Khomeini died, security pressure on my father increased. My father was in prison from 68 [1989] to 69 [1990]. In general, from 68 [1989] to 69 [1990], we saw very little of him because he was constantly in prison. 

The pressure of life had grown stronger on us since 68 [1989], but my father’s detention from the month of Mehr 69 [September/ October 1990] was much, much more serious. 

Before that, he was in prison for two to three weeks, then he was given a week off and then returned again to prison. 

It was the beginning or middle of the month of Aban [October/ November] when my father went to prison after his leave but never returned. 

When he went to prison, we thought he would be back after at most one to three weeks, as usual. 

But then, when we were in school on the 18th or 19th of Azar 69 [9/10 December 1990], people in civil clothes who introduced themselves as agents of the Ministry of Intelligence came to our house and said, “On 12 Azar [3 December 1990] your father was executed and now we want to show you where your father is buried.” 

At that time, my brother Aria and I, who are twins, were nine years old, and Rashin, my older sister, was 12, and my older brother Ramtin was 15. 

We were in school and my mother and the church members gathered and went to my father’s grave. 

In ruins near the cemetery of Behesht-e Reza [Reza’s Paradise], they showed us a stone with no writing on it and said that our father was buried there. 

At the time, none of my family members believed that my father had been martyred, but since everyone except the family believed it, we unconsciously believed it, but really we were just waiting for his return. 

For years, we were waiting for his return. Every time we heard the bell ring, we thought that today our father must have come, and he was the one who knocked. In truth, 30 years after my father’s martyrdom, we would all believe it if we were ever told, “Your father lives and is in prison.”

For three years after my father’s execution, my mother would take me by the hand and we would go to the Ministry of Intelligence. My mother would say, “Release my husband! If you executed him, show me his body!” 

My mother could not believe that he had been executed, and demanded that he be released. 

They calmly said: “We have already executed him! He was a traitor and we executed him! “They always said that.” 

Often, when I went to the Ministry of Intelligence with my mother, we saw the same person – I don’t know what his position was, but he always sat behind a table – and my mother would ask him, “Why did you execute him?” 

And he replied: “He shouldn’t have wanted to be a Christian. He was a traitor, so we executed him.”

After my father’s martyrdom, Pastor Haik Hovsepian Mehr helped us a lot. He brought a member of The Assemblies of God Church of Mashhad, who was a recently divorced woman, to our home. 

This lady lived with us, and the church gave her an amount as financial support for her expenses – to be in our house, to live with us and to help us with things like cooking, cleaning and other things. 

This went on for about one or two years, during which time she helped us a lot and her presence in our house added colour to our lives. 

Pastor Haik also visited us very much and met many of our material and spiritual needs. But after Pastor Haik’s death, we lost his great care for us and the lady in our house married again and left. 

We became very lonely. The pressures and hardships that had followed after my father’s death began again with the martyrdom of Pastor Haik in 1373 [1994] and the remarriage of this lady. 

It was a very difficult time. After my father was executed and the woman who lived in our house went away, and also the killing of pastors like Haik Hovsepian Mehr, Tateos Michaelian, Ravanbakhsh Yusefi and others, my mother became so lonely and her condition became much worse.

What was written as your father’s cause of death on his death certificate?

Choking by rope.

Some people do not have a good view of the clergy of any religion, for many reasons, and think that they are all one-dimensional people who look down on others and do not do much good. What was your father like?

Not as his daughter, but as a person who lived with my father and saw his way of life, I can say that my father was a true pastor, and I compared him very much with other pastors to see how he lived. 

In my opinion, my father had a very different life than other pastors. He chose a blind person when choosing his life partner. This was a very special decision, which arose from his way of thinking and seeing all people and different social classes as equal, and that for him a person with a disability was no different from anyone else. 

I remember that my father once brought a person who was a hermaphrodite, about 30 years old, to the church, to serve and teach him. He came to our home a lot and began to see my parents as his parents. I remember whenever pastors and other people came from Tehran and saw him in the church, they often said, “Don’t let him come to the church… At least when we come!” It was like it was a totally alien subject to them!

We had a very small room in our house, which we called “the small room”, which was a guest room, and my father gave shelter to many Christians and non-Christians in that room. There was always someone in our house who my father had given refuge to. He also visited and helped many young people, and they regarded my father as their father.

Basically, I want to say that my father saw and helped people who other people didn’t see and paid no attention to, such as disabled people, hermaphrodites, and the homeless. Let me also say that physically and mentally handicapped people came to our home very often. My father gave them a lot of love, and my mother, who taught disabled people, served them.

So my father helped people who were excluded from society and otherwise ignored.

You said your mother taught the disabled. Please can you expand on that a bit?

My mother was a very active person in society and had a bachelor’s degree in French. She was employed by the Ministry of Education and taught as a primary-school teacher for people with disabilities who were blind or in a wheelchair. She also worked in a clinic for the disabled. I have no expertise in this area, but I know that she taught the mentally handicapped the basic lessons of movement and object recognition, the ability to recognise colours, and how to insert objects into other objects, etc.

Did all the persecution, pressure, and security measures against you lead to the government’s desired outcome?

The pressure placed on us and the church had no impact on our faith and that of other church members. Our whole belief remained firm. Maybe fear was instilled, but it was only temporary.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

The final thing I would like to say is that we live in a world in which not only Christians, but also many people with different beliefs and ways of thoughts other than the politics prevailing in their place of residence, are exposed to political and social pressure around the world and from being unjustly condemned in their surroundings. 

But my pain does not come from the rulers, but from people who either share the same creed or mindset, or are sometimes the closest person in your life, who leave you alone under the most difficult conditions that your opponents put you in. I ask all who sing the song of peace not to leave each other alone in difficult situations.

This interview was first published on the Persian-language website peace-mark.org.