Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East Read Online Free PDF Page B

tried, it was almost impossible to hold back.
    I just got a glimpse of it. Iranians deal with Big Brother watching them on a daily basis. I truly sympathized with their situation. I tried to reflect on this as much as possible. In some ways it made things easier for me. As hard as things got, I could always find some kind of comfort in my departure date, the much awaited moment when things would return to normal. Most Iranians don’t have this luxury. Without an escape, they simply find ways to coexist.
    It was my weakest moment. I was alone in one of the most repressive countries in the entire world, and I had just broken down in front of a hostile intelligence agent. There was no sympathy from his end. Up until that point, I had considered myself strong. After all, I had snuck into the Congolese civil war under a pile of bananas, had stood face-to-face with perpetrators of the Rwanda genocide, and had met child soldiers in Africa hopped up on so many drugs that they easily could have viewed their guns as toys, not weapons, and ended my life right then and there. While these experiences were reckless, they did not even compare to the fear and helplessness I felt when I had been stripped of my freedom in Iran. It nearly broke me.
    As if things couldn’t have gotten worse, I realized then that I was out of money. Nobody had told me that I wouldn’t be able to access my bank from Iran; I was told that Iran had ATMs and that even if my debit card didn’t work, I would be able to take withdrawals off of a credit card or have money transferred to an Iranian bank. None of this was possible. Iran did have ATMs, but they only accepted Iranian credit cards (and most of them didn’t even work for that). Because of economic sanctions, no American bank could transfer money into Iran. For the same reason, Iranian banks could also only give cash advances on Iranian credit cards.
    I owed my guides and the appointed intelligence service money. I owed my hotel money. I had entered Iran with a combination of dollars, euros, and British pounds that amounted to no more than seven hundred dollars. Tehran is not a place to be broke and in debt, especially when I had already been threatened several times with imprisonment for nonexistent crimes.
    The unfriendly faces grew less friendly still. My escort and the hotel manager both wanted me to pay them for the privilege of being intimidated and harassed, and I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain.
    I tried calling my family, but my phone would cut out every few minutes or random voices would come onto the phone and make it impossible to speak. My family and I had decided that if I got myself in some trouble and was in physical danger, I would ask her if my sister had heard from one of her ex-boyfriends. This was our code.
    My financial situation did not place me in physical harm and didn’t warrant my drawing on the code, but the situation was nonetheless immediate. I connected with my mother down in Florida, where they were for Hanukkah. It took five days for me to get the money my parents sent. The transfers were complex and involved banks in London and random Iranian businessmen. Later I learned if you go to the central city of Esfahan and purchase a Persian carpet, you can route a credit card transaction through Dubai and get a cash advance off your credit card. For some reason, this transaction can only be made when buying carpets and only when they are purchased in Esfahan.
     
     
     
    O n the third day, Shapour once again greeted me in the lobby of my hotel and informed me that we were taking yet another trip to see Mr. Sorush. Mr. Sorush again threatened me and informed me that he had spoken to the ministry about me. He then advised me to spend the rest of the day at the hotel.
    Would I be returning to the hotel to await arrest? If I were jailed in Iran, I could be held indefinitely, tortured, or worse. But that wasn’t what scared me the most. If I were arrested in Tehran,