She speaks frequently around the country about her imprisonment and promotes her book, published last year, about her captivity.
Recently, she spoke in Bemidji, Minnesota, to the Library Book Festival there. Saberi described how she spent her first days in solitary confinement in a cell with a cement floor, a thin carpet and no toilet, and a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini on the wall: “Prisons must be colleges for human improvement.”
The Bemidji Pioneer said her audience in the local high school auditorium paid rapt attention to her story. She asked them to close their eyes and imagine how frightened she was at the time by explaining how she was blindfolded and seated at a student desk and listened as four men shouted at her: “You are a spy for America.”
Saberi asked the audience to raise their hands to show how many would give a false confession to gain freedom, how many would not give a false confession, and how many did not know what they would do. The vast majority did not know what they would do, which seemed to bring a smile to Saberi’s face.
In her book, “Between Two Worlds, My Life and Captivity in Iran,” Saberi said she kept thinking about the tuna fish can in the garbage of her apartment that would smell after a while. Who would clean up for her? Would her friend Bahman Qobadi, the filmmaker, let himself in with a key she gave him to see why she was not answering his cell phone calls? Did he think she was away and forgot to let him know? How could she have been so trusting? How could she have been so naive?
Saberi said her sister inmates comforted her during the days after she was released from solitary confinement and allowed to join other women in a crowded cell. She called them the “Angels of Evin.”
Saberi was transferred time and time again and carried with her some gifts she received from released prisoners: an extra blanket, a black-and-white television and some clothing. That little television was the one way Saberi could keep up with what was happening in the outside world.
One night, Saberi and her cellmates listened to a broadcast from the Iranian media that told of her eight-year sentence; she had been convicted the day before of being a spy for the United States. The broadcast also told of protests around the world for her release.
“I thought, ‘I’m not alone anymore,’” Saberi said to the gathering.
An Iranian appeals court overturned her espionage conviction and instead convicted her of possessing a classified document—a document Saberi says was not classified—and gave her a suspended sentence, allowing her to return home after four months in prison.
Saberi spoke of her shame at having given a false confession on the promise of a quick release from prison. She learned through introspection and counsel from her sister prisoners that that no matter how terrible the circumstances, one must stay true to one’s convictions and ultimately the true path will appear.
Saberi, now 34, was named Miss North Dakota in 1997 and finished in the top 10 at the 1998 Miss America competition. She went to Iran in 2003, filled with curiosity about her father’s homeland after listening to his stories about Iran in her childhood. Her father, Reza, immigrated to the United States from Iran while her mother, Akiko, was born in Japan.
