Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges
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Speaker 1: is recorded on. Hello Omeya Friedman and the team at
Speaker 1: Mamma Mea are bringing you over one hundred hours of
Speaker 1: the best of the best from across our award winning
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Speaker 1: Here at No Filter, we have selected the very best
Speaker 1: stories of human resilience, of escaping from colts and tsunamis,
Speaker 1: of surviving in prison, surviving a landslide, surviving a broken heart,
Speaker 1: and so much more. Today, I'm bringing you the story
Speaker 1: of Kylie Moore Gilbert, the Australian academic who spent eight
Speaker 1: hundred and four days in an Iranian prison. But that,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, was just the beginning of her story.
Speaker 1: In the time since we recorded this conversation, Kylie has
Speaker 1: remarried a guy called Sami Shah. He's a comedian, and
Speaker 1: she's given birth to a little girl called Leah. But
Speaker 1: the road to get to this point in her life,
Speaker 1: this happy point, has been really long and incredibly rocky.
Speaker 1: You won't believe this story that she's about to tell you.
Speaker 1: It was the twelfth of September twenty eighteen. An Australian
Speaker 1: academic Kylie more Gilbert, was making her way through Tehran's
Speaker 1: International Airport in Iran. She'd been in Iran for three
Speaker 1: weeks for a work trip. She was a lecturer at
Speaker 1: Melbourne University specializing in Islamic studies, and Kylie had been
Speaker 1: invited to the country by another university. All in all,
Speaker 1: she'd had a really great time there. But now she
Speaker 1: was on her way home, and if she was being honest,
Speaker 1: she was slightly relieved because for the past twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: Kylie couldn't help but feel like she was being watched,
Speaker 1: and she couldn't wait to get home to her husband
Speaker 1: and her parents and shake this feeling. She reached into
Speaker 1: a bag, pulled her passport out, and she was getting
Speaker 1: ready to check in at the airport after texting her
Speaker 1: parents to say I'll behind soon, when she felt a
Speaker 1: tap on the shoulder. What happened next, Well, that's for
Speaker 1: Kylie to tell you, but it would be eight one
Speaker 1: hundred and four days until she'd ever see her passport again.
Speaker 1: From Mom and Me, you're listening to No Filter, a
Speaker 1: podcast where people like Kylie tell their stories very candidly
Speaker 1: and aren't afraid to be vulnerable. My name is Miya Friedman.
Speaker 1: After being detained and then arrested at the airport, Kylie
Speaker 1: Moore Gilbert spent eight hundred and four days incarcerated in
Speaker 1: Tehran's Evin and Quai Chak prisons for espionage, a crime
Speaker 1: she never committed. During those two and a half years
Speaker 1: that she spent in prison, most of it in solitary
Speaker 1: confinement from the ages of thirty one to almost thirty four,
Speaker 1: Kylie had no bed, no mattress, no pillow, no tampons,
Speaker 1: and for some of it no lights and no windows
Speaker 1: and no toilets. Kylie was completely cut off from the
Speaker 1: outside world. She was an innocent Australian stuck in a
Speaker 1: harsh foreign prison with no way of getting home. And
Speaker 1: she joins me now for a very special episode of
Speaker 1: No Filter. Kylie, tell me a little bit about what
Speaker 1: your life was like before September twenty eighteen when you
Speaker 1: went to Iran.
Speaker 2: I think I was living a pretty regular life really.
Speaker 2: I am originally from New South Wales. I'd spent several
Speaker 2: years living overseas, mainly in the UK, but I'd moved
Speaker 2: back to Australia and moved to Melbourne. I did my
Speaker 2: PhD at Melbourne UNI, and I was at that time
Speaker 2: working then as a lecture at Melbourne UNI, lecturing in
Speaker 2: Middle East history and politics. I had recently bought a
Speaker 2: house in the far flng Dandenong Rangers, quite a commute
Speaker 2: from Melbourne, but you know, as a young person trying
Speaker 2: to get my foot on the housing ladder, that was
Speaker 2: the best I could do. I'd recently got married, so
Speaker 2: I was in my early thirties, and I guess living
Speaker 2: a pretty regular life, you know, starting off my career,
Speaker 2: starting you know, a relationship, buying a house. So I
Speaker 2: was in that kind of that place, and I thought
Speaker 2: I was going to Iran for three weeks and that
Speaker 2: my life would continue in that vein afterwards.
Speaker 1: Iran's not somewhere that most people would visit, certainly not
Speaker 1: for a holiday. But you were going for work. What
Speaker 1: were you doing there?
Speaker 2: So I'd been invited to go to Iran actually by
Speaker 2: an Iranian university and they were running a program for
Speaker 2: scholars in my field to learn more about Shia Islam
Speaker 2: in Iran, and it's the majority religion of Iran. But
Speaker 2: it's actually a minority sect within Islam more.
Speaker 3: Broadly, so I guess.
Speaker 2: It was a soft cultural outreach program being run by
Speaker 2: an Iranian university to try to link themselves more strongly
Speaker 2: to foreign universities and build research contacts, that kind of thing,
Speaker 2: And I just thought it would be really interesting. I'd
Speaker 2: always wanted to visit Iran, and my research wasn't on
Speaker 2: Iran at all. It wasn't on Shia Islam at all,
Speaker 2: but I had touched on Shia Islam in other research
Speaker 2: projects i'd done, so it was sort of relevant to me.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I just thought, why not, Like if someone
Speaker 2: invites you to go to an interesting and exotic foreign
Speaker 2: location for work, and the university approved my trip and
Speaker 2: paid for the flights and everything, so why not, Like
Speaker 2: I thought it would be a good professional opportunity.
Speaker 1: The day you would do to flay home, you're arrested
Speaker 1: at the airport. What are your memories of that day?
Speaker 2: I remember the arrest itself quite well, although the day
Speaker 2: in the lead up to the arrest, I was quite anxious,
Speaker 2: and I think I was I cottoned on. As you
Speaker 2: know from the book, I knew that something was wrong
Speaker 2: before I was arrested. I just never in a million
Speaker 2: years thought that i'd be on a flight list, banned
Speaker 2: from living the country. And I, you know, some men
Speaker 2: had come to my hotel the day before and asked
Speaker 2: about me, asked what my room number was, this kind
Speaker 2: of thing to the receptionist, and he actually told me
Speaker 2: he gave me heads up about it. So I was
Speaker 2: already nervous from that, and I thought, Okay, it's good
Speaker 2: I'm leaving the country. I don't know who these men
Speaker 2: are or what they want, but I'm flying out anyway,
Speaker 2: so as long as I avoid them until then, it'll
Speaker 2: be okay. So I was a little bit highly strung.
Speaker 2: I didn't really sleep very much that night the night
Speaker 2: before my flight, and you know, nobody came up to
Speaker 2: me during the day or anything. The men didn't come
Speaker 2: back to the hotel while I was there. And I
Speaker 2: went to the airport with all my stuff, checked my
Speaker 2: baggage in and I was walking to immigration with my
Speaker 2: passport ready to be stamped, when people who I later
Speaker 2: learned were the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps i LGC approached
Speaker 2: me and touched me on the shoulder and took me
Speaker 2: away to an interrogation room inside the air and told
Speaker 2: me I wouldn't be making my flight. So my memory
Speaker 2: in the lead up was just sort of one of
Speaker 2: anxiety and being ready to leave the country, saying okay, something,
Speaker 2: he is not right. It's good that I'm living today.
Speaker 2: But the actual moment of the arrest itself is quite
Speaker 2: sharp in my memory. And you know, I was interrogated
Speaker 2: for several hours in that airport room before being moved elsewhere,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I remember it quite vividly.
Speaker 1: Where were you taken from the airport?
Speaker 2: I was first taken to a kind of a safe house,
Speaker 2: an apartment clearly controlled or owned by the IRGC in
Speaker 2: northern Tehran. It was clearly used for filming purposes.
Speaker 3: The living room of the apartment was.
Speaker 2: Set up like a film studio, and I wasn't filmed there,
Speaker 2: so I'm not sure why. But actually I was allowed
Speaker 2: to take a nap for an hour amidst all the
Speaker 2: film paraphernalia.
Speaker 3: So I got to see it up close.
Speaker 2: So they were clearly using it, I guess, to film
Speaker 2: prisoners or false confessions or something like that. It was
Speaker 2: clearly used for interrogations in other security related purposes, and
Speaker 2: I was interrogated there overnight without you know, with one
Speaker 2: hour's sleep at dawn, and after that interrogation, I was
Speaker 2: you know, almost passed up from fatigue by that point,
Speaker 2: and I was taken to a hotel also under their
Speaker 2: control in Tehran, and I was there for one week,
Speaker 2: interrogated on a daily basis by the same group of people.
Speaker 1: What were they asking you, Kylie, Like, what was their accusation?
Speaker 2: I think they weren't clear at that point what they
Speaker 2: were wanting to accuse me of. They were interested in
Speaker 2: recruiting me as some sort of informa or spire to
Speaker 2: work for them, because they asked me about it within
Speaker 2: the first twenty four hours. They kind of informally sounded
Speaker 2: me out, which was bizarre to me because I had
Speaker 2: no idea who they were or what was going on,
Speaker 2: so I kind of didn't take it seriously. At that point,
Speaker 2: they had decided I was suspicious and they were just
Speaker 2: digging to try to figure out why and what they
Speaker 2: could get on me, so they asked me about absolutely everything. Really,
Speaker 2: it was when they got into all of my email accounts,
Speaker 2: and I initially had given them fake passwords or hadn't
Speaker 2: told them about my primary email address. But in the
Speaker 2: end they got all of it out, and I gave
Speaker 2: them the passwords because I didn't really have a.
Speaker 3: Choice at that point.
Speaker 2: And when they went through my emails, they found messages
Speaker 2: from people, They found topics or subjects or information that
Speaker 2: then they were able to expand upon in the interrogation,
Speaker 2: and it kind of snowballed from there. But you know,
Speaker 2: they initially wanted to know about my research, what I
Speaker 2: was doing in Iran, the research trip I'd taken to
Speaker 2: Bahrain from my PhD a few years earlier, visits to
Speaker 2: Israel that i'd made, my ex husband and his links
Speaker 2: to Israel, even everything even including my family history and
Speaker 2: what my great grandparents were doing and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: which I didn't know very much about at all. They
Speaker 2: were really digging around everywhere they could at that point.
Speaker 1: When you were in the hotel and previously in the
Speaker 1: safe house, and even when you were being interrogated at
Speaker 1: the airport, what did you think was going to happen?
Speaker 2: I had no conception whatsoever that I would be spect
Speaker 2: to prison. I just like I would not have believed
Speaker 2: it if had they told me, because I'd done nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: I thought, Okay, this is a misunderstanding. I will explain
Speaker 2: to them that I've done nothing wrong. I'll show them
Speaker 2: that I'm innocent. They'll interrogate me and then they'll let
Speaker 2: me go in and get back on the plane and
Speaker 2: fly back to Australia. So I cooperated them at the beginning.
Speaker 2: I tried to answer their questions because I thought, well,
Speaker 2: I've got nothing to hide, I haven't done anything. So
Speaker 2: you know that when they're finished with me, when they've
Speaker 2: asked me all the questions they have to ask, they're
Speaker 2: just going to let me go home. And they were
Speaker 2: lying to me and telling me that as well, so,
Speaker 2: especially in the hotel, led me to believe that once
Speaker 2: I'd cooperated and done everything they needed me to do,
Speaker 2: then they would actually themselves buy me a ticket and
Speaker 2: put me on a plane. So I was naive, and
Speaker 2: at the beginning that's what I thought would happen.
Speaker 1: It was just you alone in a room with up
Speaker 1: to a dozen men. Were you worried feel safety? Did
Speaker 1: they hurt you? Were you worried that you would be
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted?
Speaker 2: Yes? I was.
Speaker 3: This was one of my first fears.
Speaker 2: One of the first times that I felt physically unsafe
Speaker 2: was when there was a large scrum of men around
Speaker 2: me and I because I didn't know who they were,
Speaker 2: they wouldn't tell me who they were. They weren't wearing uniforms,
Speaker 2: they were.
Speaker 3: All playing clothes. I didn't speak fasty.
Speaker 2: They were all quite aggressive and hostile in the way
Speaker 2: they were speaking with one another. And there was somebody
Speaker 2: who was an appointed translator, but A didn't speak fluent English,
Speaker 2: but B didn't translate anything other than a direct request
Speaker 2: of me into English. So I was just bewildered by
Speaker 2: what was going on. And there were so many men,
Speaker 2: and they were quite hostile and aggressive, and I was actually,
Speaker 2: you know, when they put me in the hotel, I
Speaker 2: didn't really sleep the first night because I was afraid
Speaker 2: that one of them would come in and do something
Speaker 2: to me, or they would come back in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night, or I later learned actually they were
Speaker 2: cameras everywhere in that hotel. In my bedroom, they were
Speaker 2: hidden cameras, so they would have been watching me get undressed,
Speaker 2: this kind of thing. I hope there weren't cameras in
Speaker 2: the showers, but I wouldn't know, so, you know, I
Speaker 2: definitely had that fear.
Speaker 3: You know, these are highly highly.
Speaker 2: Religious men that see Western women uncovered. I mean I
Speaker 2: was wearing a hdehob, but not at all of the
Speaker 2: level of hitjob that they would advocate. They you know,
Speaker 2: they would have seen me as fair game maybe, and
Speaker 2: I was being in the middle, you know, being a
Speaker 2: scholar of the Middle East. I have encountered these kinds
Speaker 2: of people before, and I know that often they are
Speaker 2: quite they can be.
Speaker 3: They see Western women as objects.
Speaker 2: Of harassment sometimes, and I did feel quite afraid that
Speaker 2: they would assault me.
Speaker 1: You were taken to Evan prison and put into solitary confinement.
Speaker 1: What was it like physically when you were taken there?
Speaker 1: And did you know that's where you were going?
Speaker 2: No, I had no idea a that I was going
Speaker 2: to prison and be that happy to put in solitary
Speaker 2: I actually when they put me in the solitary cell,
Speaker 2: they'd given me the prison uniform to change into, and
Speaker 2: I just thought this was like a change room for
Speaker 2: the uniform. It was so small, like couldn't it didn't
Speaker 2: even cross my mind I would have to sleep in there.
Speaker 3: I literally thought, she's put me.
Speaker 2: In the room, close the door, I'm going to get changed,
Speaker 2: and then she's going to take me to the real cell.
Speaker 2: It was tiny, It had no window, no natural light.
Speaker 2: There was just a light on twenty four hours a
Speaker 2: day in the ceiling, a very bright led sort of thing.
Speaker 2: No furniture, no stimulation whatsoever, designed to torment you, designed
Speaker 2: to break you for the interrogation, so complete sort of
Speaker 2: sensory deprivation you could there was nothing to do whatsoever.
Speaker 2: The only object in the room was a telephone for
Speaker 2: calling the guards. But because I couldn't speak Fasting and
Speaker 2: they couldn't speak English.
Speaker 3: If I called them.
Speaker 2: Nothing would happen because I'm saying I need to go
Speaker 2: to the toilet, and they didn't understand what that meant
Speaker 2: did so they would just hang up on me.
Speaker 3: And so I was just in this horrible box.
Speaker 2: Unable to communicate with anyone and not really understanding what
Speaker 2: was going on.
Speaker 1: How did you go to the toilet?
Speaker 2: Initially I would bang on the door and they didn't
Speaker 2: like that. They didn't like any making of noise. So
Speaker 2: they would come and open the door and I would
Speaker 2: be sort of toilet toilet and they understood that, and
Speaker 2: they would take me to the bathroom only when they
Speaker 2: had time or when they felt like it. So I
Speaker 2: would be blindfolded as well when I was taken to
Speaker 2: the bathroom, so that I wouldn't see the hallways or
Speaker 2: the other rooms.
Speaker 3: In the facility.
Speaker 2: But that did you know, after a while I had
Speaker 2: seen everything. But for that first month, I was very
Speaker 2: heavily blindfolded and escorted by the arm to the toilet
Speaker 2: and given one square of toilet paper. And if I
Speaker 2: spent more than sort of thirty seconds in there, they'd
Speaker 2: bang on the door and yell at me. And you know,
Speaker 2: going to the toilet was a fraud experience in and
Speaker 2: of itself.
Speaker 1: What about getting a period?
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Miah, this was a nightmare, Kylie.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I know, these are such like basic questions,
Speaker 1: but of course that's it's like your basic dignity was
Speaker 1: taken away. How did you cope with these very basic
Speaker 1: needs that you would have had.
Speaker 2: Honestly, every female prisoner in there, you can have an
Speaker 2: hour's long discussion about these things with them. I've heard
Speaker 2: countless horror stories, like principally, Iran doesn't believe in tampons.
Speaker 2: It's very difficult to get tampons in Iran because they
Speaker 2: believe that it takes a woman's virginity. There's all these
Speaker 2: superstitions about tampons. So the prison guards basically banned tampons
Speaker 2: because they said only an immoral woman would.
Speaker 3: Use such a thing.
Speaker 2: And it's actually a very pervasive idea even, you know,
Speaker 2: with other prisoners I discussed and many of them, especially
Speaker 2: older ones or ones who hadn't traveled abroad, believed that,
Speaker 2: you know, no man would want to marry you if
Speaker 2: you were a single woman, if you'd used tampons for
Speaker 2: your period.
Speaker 3: So they used these terrible, huge.
Speaker 2: Fat nappy pads that looked like they belonged like in
Speaker 2: continents pads for elderly people. This was all we were
Speaker 2: given for our periods, and actually I had many fights
Speaker 2: over it because they would give me one at a time.
Speaker 3: You know, they wouldn't give me a packet.
Speaker 2: They'd come and doll out one every time I and
Speaker 2: even communicating that that's what I needed when I didn't
Speaker 2: speak for you know, it was very difficult, it was,
Speaker 2: and it was a very unhygienic place. The toilets were
Speaker 2: very very dirty. There was no toilet paper to clean yourself.
Speaker 2: I wasn't allowed to shower at the beginning except once
Speaker 2: every three days, So cleaning yourself it was Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a nightmare. I mean, I'm not going to go
Speaker 2: into the gritty details, but it just these feminine hygiene.
Speaker 3: Issues were huge until.
Speaker 2: It got marginally better when I was allowed to make
Speaker 2: certain grocery purchases once a month on a shopping list.
Speaker 2: Maybe after six months or so or seven months of
Speaker 2: my incarceration, the embassy dropped some cash off at the
Speaker 2: prison and I was able to make a shopping list
Speaker 2: that someone would go and purchase and deliver to the prison,
Speaker 2: one of the IGC guys, not the embassy, And I
Speaker 2: put on pads, like a Western brand of pads, and
Speaker 2: a few times that got delivered to me, and that
Speaker 2: that was much better. But yeah, we were banned from
Speaker 2: any cleaning products. So even with that money, we weren't
Speaker 2: able to buy bleach or bathroom spray or disinfectant because
Speaker 2: they said, oh, if you'd buy that, you'll drink it
Speaker 2: and kill yourself and so. And I used to fight
Speaker 2: them and say, well, you come and put it in there,
Speaker 2: you sprayed around in them, take it away and I
Speaker 2: won't touch it.
Speaker 3: But just spray it so I can clean the toilet
Speaker 3: or whatever. But you know, they refused, So this was
Speaker 3: really difficult.
Speaker 2: It was dealing with the sanitary situation, especially, Yeah, when
Speaker 2: you had your.
Speaker 1: Period, when you were in solitary confinement and there were
Speaker 1: just four walls, what did you literally do every day?
Speaker 3: So a lot of the.
Speaker 2: Days I was taken to interrogation and I actually wanted
Speaker 2: to go because even though that was obviously very unpleasant
Speaker 2: and a very hostile atmosphere normally, and I felt constantly
Speaker 2: under siege and under attack there in that interrogation room,
Speaker 2: it was still better than being left alone inside my
Speaker 2: own head for hours and hours in that room, in
Speaker 2: that solid confinement cell. And toward the end of my interrogations,
Speaker 2: they came less and less frequently, and every weekend there'd
Speaker 2: be two or three days where I would be just
Speaker 2: on my own and you wouldn't know when they're coming,
Speaker 2: so you'd be anticipating that the interrogators might come for
Speaker 2: you every day, and some days they did, some days
Speaker 2: they didn't.
Speaker 3: So when I was left on.
Speaker 2: My own for those days on end where I didn't
Speaker 2: go anywhere, it was basically like psychological torture, you know,
Speaker 2: I was The first week was the worst until I
Speaker 2: developed psychological coping mechanisms.
Speaker 3: But I was bouncing off the walls.
Speaker 2: My brain was thinking at a million miles an hour
Speaker 2: over all sorts of subjects. Rapped by guilt, rapped by regret.
Speaker 2: I should have done this differently, I should have done
Speaker 2: that differently. Fear about the future, anxiety, worry, it was
Speaker 2: all rolling through my brain at an intense speed. And
Speaker 2: you know, I would try and play games with myself.
Speaker 2: I would try and memorize or recite things that I
Speaker 2: thought I could memorize, try to remember the lyrics of songs,
Speaker 2: try to remember my times tables. But you know, it
Speaker 2: was really really hard, and a lot of my memories
Speaker 2: sort of blanked out for like some of that period,
Speaker 2: I think from the trauma of all because being left
Speaker 2: alone inside your own head with zero stimulation whatsoever and.
Speaker 3: No natural light, no control.
Speaker 2: I didn't even have control over my own toothbrush. I
Speaker 2: didn't even have control over whether I could take a
Speaker 2: shower or go to the toilet. I had control over
Speaker 2: nothing whatsoever. It's designed to break you, and it really
Speaker 2: is very effective. It really really does make you suffer
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 1: You mentioned psychological coping mechanisms that you developed.
Speaker 2: What were they somehow my brain managed to slow itself down,
Speaker 2: not for the first couple of weeks, but over time, slowly.
Speaker 2: After about the two week mark, I kind of started
Speaker 2: to inhabit this like send you asleep semi awake state,
Speaker 2: not really meditation. But it wasn't a deliberate thing I
Speaker 2: was trying to do, Like I'm very bad at meditation,
Speaker 2: but a few times I tried to meditate, and you know,
Speaker 2: I just couldn't turn off my brain.
Speaker 3: But after about.
Speaker 2: Two weeks, I would lie down on the floor because
Speaker 2: there were no beds or mattresses, with that kind of
Speaker 2: an itchy blanket over my head to block out the light.
Speaker 3: And I wasn't tired enough to sleep, but I would just.
Speaker 2: Close my eyes and my memories would become very vivid,
Speaker 2: and especially my long term memories, so my short term
Speaker 2: memory completely gone. All prisoners say this that solitary confinement
Speaker 2: kind of after a while induces a sort of amnesia
Speaker 2: or Alzheimer's in your short term memory. You know, if
Speaker 2: you had to asked me, what's what's on my Spotify
Speaker 2: play list, I wouldn't have been able to tell you,
Speaker 2: you know, or what movies did I see before I
Speaker 2: went to Iran. But I could suddenly like draw on
Speaker 2: these ultra vivid memories of my childhood, of events that
Speaker 2: I'd long forgotten or what I'd forgotten in my brain,
Speaker 2: and then kind of relive them and go through them
Speaker 2: and inhabit that strange space of kind of half a sleep,
Speaker 2: half away, half in my memories, trying to forget the present,
Speaker 2: forget the future, and just sort of live in the past.
Speaker 3: And I don't really know.
Speaker 2: What that's called, or whether that's a thing or it
Speaker 2: just happened to me, But that's kind of how I,
Speaker 2: in a way coped. I just slowed my brain down
Speaker 2: and lived in the past.
Speaker 1: There were almost two parallel tracks. You were living your
Speaker 1: hell in an Ieranian jail, and your family, your husband,
Speaker 1: your parents were like what did they think were going on?
Speaker 1: What were they doing?
Speaker 3: At the beginning, they had very little information.
Speaker 2: The government didn't really tell them much. I don't think
Speaker 2: the government really knew what was going on either. I
Speaker 2: was able to contact them on a kind of an
Speaker 2: ad hoc basis via WhatsApp from the interrogations, so you know,
Speaker 2: when I got arrested the first time at the airport
Speaker 2: that night, they let me text my family on WhatsApp
Speaker 2: and say, you know, they made me write some silly
Speaker 2: excuse like I've decided to extend my trip in Irun
Speaker 2: to do more research or something, when I'd already told
Speaker 2: them I checked in for my flight and I was
Speaker 2: at the airport, so there's no way they would have
Speaker 2: believed that. But I guess to show them that I'm
Speaker 2: okay and I'm alive and some horrible accident hasn't happened.
Speaker 2: So periodically they were allowing me to, I guess, show
Speaker 2: proof of life or message my parents or whatever and
Speaker 2: tell them that I'm still around. I wasn't allowed to
Speaker 2: say I was in prison, but I'm sure they would
Speaker 2: have worked that out at some point, and I imagine
Speaker 2: the government would have worked it out too, and perhaps
Speaker 2: have had have told them. I'm not sure, but everybody
Speaker 2: knew very little. I was allowed to say very little,
Speaker 2: and my contact with them was just haphazard and to
Speaker 2: the whims of the interrogators.
Speaker 1: Essentially, you were held at Evan in the notorious to
Speaker 1: A unit for twenty three months, almost two years. How
Speaker 1: did your mental state change over that time.
Speaker 3: I feel like.
Speaker 2: I actually became stronger as time went on. I think
Speaker 2: you have to first perceive the permates of your surroundings.
Speaker 3: Where you are, why you're there.
Speaker 2: Who's captured you, what's going on, what possibly would happen
Speaker 2: to you, for example, going to court and getting sentenced
Speaker 2: to prison, something like that, Whether there could be a
Speaker 2: diplomatic deal on the offering this kind of thing. Once
Speaker 2: I perceived the boundaries of what's possible and what's not possible,
Speaker 2: where I am and y and who captured me, I
Speaker 2: think I started to understand the rules of the game
Speaker 2: a little bit better, and I drew strength from that.
Speaker 2: I also educated myself through making contact with other prisoners.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about how you made
Speaker 1: contact with other prisoners.
Speaker 3: So they reached out to me. They heard I was there,
Speaker 3: I heard my.
Speaker 2: Voice speaking English to the guards, and the guards not
Speaker 2: understanding me and speaking back in Persian. I'd scratched some
Speaker 2: stuff in English on the wall of the outdoor exercise area,
Speaker 2: and they occasionally scratched a response a word or two
Speaker 2: back to me. And then I received in the ut
Speaker 2: exercise area some a small bag of food of nuts
Speaker 2: and fruits and a small letter written on some toilet
Speaker 2: paper with a piece of chocolate that they'd scratched onto
Speaker 2: the toilet paper. And these were two girls in a
Speaker 2: cell just opposite mine, actually, but there were two in
Speaker 2: a cell, not one like me. And then I made
Speaker 2: contact with their friends in a different cell down the hall.
Speaker 2: There were three of them at the time, and they
Speaker 2: all spoke English, and because I didn't speak fastly, they
Speaker 2: were able to tell me in English who these people were,
Speaker 2: what the rules were, what they could do to me,
Speaker 2: and what they wouldn't do to me. That I should
Speaker 2: have a hope that my government will get me out,
Speaker 2: because often the Uranians take people hostage to make deals
Speaker 2: and to get something in exchange. That I shouldn't make
Speaker 2: a false confession. That I should stay true and just
Speaker 2: tell the truth, and you know, not trust them because
Speaker 2: they weren't trustworthy. They would play me in the end
Speaker 2: if I trusted them. So I got to understand a
Speaker 2: lot from these friends, and they really risked themselves to
Speaker 2: reach out to me. It was really dangerous for them.
Speaker 2: They didn't have to do that. They were really good
Speaker 2: people that wanted to help me. They could hear that
Speaker 2: I was in distress, they could hear I didn't understand
Speaker 2: the language. And some of them really became my friends
Speaker 2: and my sisters.
Speaker 1: You went to incredible lengths to communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: Can you describe some of the ways that you would
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 2: We had an air conditioning vent for a period of
Speaker 2: several months that through this convoluted system of events that
Speaker 2: we figured out one of the events we had maybe
Speaker 2: four vents in each cell, won in the toilet or
Speaker 2: three maybe, and we figured out one of our events
Speaker 2: connected to one of their events. So and I had
Speaker 2: to sort of climb the toilet cistern in order to
Speaker 2: get my head up there and talk through the vent.
Speaker 2: But at certain times, on certain guard shifts, we figured
Speaker 2: out we could communicate through the events without it being discovered.
Speaker 3: So every three.
Speaker 2: Nights, on certain guard shifts, we would talk for maybe
Speaker 2: ten minutes, myself and my friend Nilu Faire and Horda
Speaker 2: who were in a cell next to mine. And this
Speaker 2: is when you know, we exchanged notes too, but this
Speaker 2: was where we could, you know, exchange the most information.
Speaker 2: We were moved cells many times and that vent situation
Speaker 2: didn't last, but we desired We devised several different ways
Speaker 2: of passing notes, and the most successful way, which I
Speaker 2: actually came up with was we got a pair of pants,
Speaker 2: prison uniform pants that were spare, you know, because prisoners
Speaker 2: would come in and then go out, and you wash
Speaker 2: your clothes and you put them on a rack in
Speaker 2: the communal laundry. So when we discovered there was a
Speaker 2: spare pair of pants on the rack, I stole them,
Speaker 2: pretending they were mine, and managed to open the seam
Speaker 2: of the bottom of the trouser maybe one or half
Speaker 2: a centimeter and roll up a very small note in
Speaker 2: a long tube and insert it into that scene. And
Speaker 2: then we've marked the pants with a small asterisk actually
Speaker 2: on the waistband to know that these were the note pants,
Speaker 2: and I would wash them alongside my own uniform, trying
Speaker 2: to keep the note as dry as possible, and hang
Speaker 2: them up on the rack in a certain part of
Speaker 2: the rack is an indication that those pants were a
Speaker 2: delivery of a note. And then the other cell would
Speaker 2: take them, pretending that's their washing that they're taking from
Speaker 2: the rack, and remove it back to their cell and
Speaker 2: take the note out and read it. And it was
Speaker 2: a very complex operation to write the notes in secret
Speaker 2: away from the camera as well and get them into
Speaker 2: the pants. But it was actually never discovered, unlike several
Speaker 2: other methods we had, we were never caught with that one,
Speaker 2: and we kept it up for months and months.
Speaker 1: Some of the things that were considered contraband were pen
Speaker 1: and paper. I mean that was considered an absolute luxury.
Speaker 1: But occasionally you got hold of some, didn't you, Like,
Speaker 1: what did you write these notes with?
Speaker 2: So we all had secret pens for a time. One
Speaker 2: of my friends, Elena, was a master at stealing pains,
Speaker 2: and she even stole a pen from the judge and
Speaker 2: it had his name on the side, and it became
Speaker 2: like a trophy for us, like, how on earth when
Speaker 2: you recort you go, you put on trial, You've managed
Speaker 2: to steal a pen from the judge. And so you know,
Speaker 2: she would nick them from from various judiciary meetings, from
Speaker 2: the interrogation one time, even find them from the If
Speaker 2: the guards had ever left a pen lying around in
Speaker 2: their area, she would always cause a distraction and managed
Speaker 2: to steal it. So often the pens would be discovered
Speaker 2: and confiscated from us. But there was sort of a
Speaker 2: network of secret pens going around. I tricked the guards
Speaker 2: just by lock into a pen I had been given
Speaker 2: to answer some interrogation questions with I managed to fool
Speaker 2: the guards into thinking I'd given back when I hadn't.
Speaker 2: So I would keep that pen in a number of locations,
Speaker 2: initially in my underwear and then inside a pipe that
Speaker 2: was linked to the toilet plumbing in my cell and
Speaker 2: would write the notes to my friends on the toilet,
Speaker 2: squatting down where it was a black spot from the camera,
Speaker 2: and we would write on scraps of packaging, scraps of cardboard,
Speaker 2: you know, the cardboard of a toilet paper roll, or
Speaker 2: even toilet paper itself if we didn't have anything else.
Speaker 2: So we became quite good at stealing and hiding pens.
Speaker 3: And even if.
Speaker 2: You took the actual thin vessel of the ink out
Speaker 2: of the plastic pen itself, then it became really really
Speaker 2: small and thin, and that could be inserted into the
Speaker 2: hem of a piece of clothing article of clothing and
Speaker 2: not be discovered as well. So it was harder to
Speaker 2: write with because it was bendy, but you could do that.
Speaker 2: I did that a few times to avoid detection.
Speaker 1: I Mayor Friedman and you're listening to No Filter with
Speaker 1: Kylie Moore Gilbert. You mentioned that you were moved from
Speaker 1: cell to cell quite a lot, so after that initial
Speaker 1: period of more than a month in that tiny two
Speaker 1: by two windowless cell. But it was interesting to read
Speaker 1: that every time you were moved. For someone who's not
Speaker 1: experienced it, I would have thought, oh, you would have
Speaker 1: been excited for a change of scene, but you always
Speaker 1: felt very, very anxious when you were moved. Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think because psychologically you become dependent on that
Speaker 2: space very quickly. It becomes a comfort. Almost The routine
Speaker 2: of prison is comforting to you. Anything outside of the
Speaker 2: routine is scary.
Speaker 3: You get into that psychological.
Speaker 2: Space where by the end of my four weeks in
Speaker 2: that extreme solitary confinement box, I had figured out how
Speaker 2: to manage my brain, and anything outside the routine just terrified.
Speaker 2: So when I was removed from that cell and brought
Speaker 2: into a slightly larger one with a TV TV locked
Speaker 2: on one channel at one high volume, and couldn't turn
Speaker 2: it off and didn't understand the language, so it actually
Speaker 2: was worse to have that TV than without. But I
Speaker 2: guess it was a step up, you know, it was
Speaker 2: some sort of reward in a way. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I just freaked out. I didn't want to go there.
Speaker 2: I actually got myself transferred back to my old solitary
Speaker 2: self for one night before agreeing to move. And it
Speaker 2: was the suddenness and the unexpectedness of it too. They
Speaker 2: just rocked up one day and said pack your stuff
Speaker 2: or pack up, pack up. Your blankets were moving in there,
Speaker 2: and I just yeah, I couldn't deal with it psychologically
Speaker 2: because you've become really dependent on that space and on routine.
Speaker 1: You just slept on the floor, like was it just
Speaker 1: a hard floor with a scratchy blanket? Like no pillow,
Speaker 1: no mattress.
Speaker 3: Yep, there was.
Speaker 2: I didn't sleep on a mattress for the entire two
Speaker 2: years and three months in Iran. I didn't have a pillow.
Speaker 1: What are they dirty? Your back kylie? Like are you
Speaker 1: in agony?
Speaker 2: My back was okay, but my neck because of the
Speaker 2: lack of a pillow, I'd put like I folded up
Speaker 2: a blanket and.
Speaker 3: Put it under my head, but it was itchy, bulky, hard.
Speaker 2: It felt like I had a brick under my head,
Speaker 2: you know it really mind, I had a lot of
Speaker 2: neck pain and neck problems. Other prisoners, though I saw
Speaker 2: plenty of older women in their sixties, for example, who
Speaker 2: already had bad backs before they came in, or who
Speaker 2: were overweight or had various health problems, and just sleeping
Speaker 2: on the floor like that was agony for them, and
Speaker 2: they really couldn't do it. They were constantly whimpering and
Speaker 2: in pain and suffering from it. And it's part of
Speaker 2: the suffering.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: They treat you like an animal, and it's deliberate. They
Speaker 2: dehumanize you, and not giving you a proper bed or
Speaker 2: a pillow or a sheet or a mattress is part
Speaker 2: of that. Having everything be dirty and unclean is part
Speaker 2: of that, you know. I was constantly one of my
Speaker 2: pastimes was to pick other people's hairs out of my blankets.
Speaker 2: And I would spend hours meticulously going over every inch
Speaker 2: of my three blankets and pulling black curly hairs and
Speaker 2: people's head hair and everything out and creating a big.
Speaker 3: Ball of them on the floor, you know. And so
Speaker 3: I think it was deliberate.
Speaker 2: They didn't give us clean blankets, They didn't give us
Speaker 2: betty because they wanted us to suffer. And all of
Speaker 2: these small humiliations, all of them work together to break up.
Speaker 2: Same with not being able to shower. There was no
Speaker 2: logical reason why at the beginning I could only shower
Speaker 2: every three days very quickly, because I just couldn't deal
Speaker 2: with it and was having meltdowns over it. In the end,
Speaker 2: they let me shower every day, but there was no
Speaker 2: logical reason for it. It was just to make yourseffer,
Speaker 2: to humanize you were.
Speaker 1: Their little things that you did that were like privately
Speaker 1: defiant to sort of maintain your dignity.
Speaker 2: The first real active defiance I undertook was a hunger strike. Well,
Speaker 2: I guess you could say it was contacting my friends
Speaker 2: and other cells and still a pen and hiding it
Speaker 2: and everything that was obviously defiant too. But I took
Speaker 2: the step of going on hunger strike after about four
Speaker 2: months of my incarceration, and actually it worked and I
Speaker 2: had my demands fulfilled, and I underwent maybe seven hunger
Speaker 2: strikes I think, over the time of my incarceration, and
Speaker 2: that actually felt good because you felt like you were
Speaker 2: actually doing something. It was one of the only things
Speaker 2: you could control was whether you ate or not. They
Speaker 2: couldn't really force you to eat unless they took you
Speaker 2: to hospital and force fed you. But they never did
Speaker 2: that to me, so I felt some measure of control,
Speaker 2: that I was clawing back some control, and I could
Speaker 2: make demands and I had some agency and power in
Speaker 2: doing that. So I think that was really the first
Speaker 2: proper step of outward, obvious, overt defiance that I took.
Speaker 2: But I, you know, I'd resisted a lot. I after
Speaker 2: I knew that I was going to court and they
Speaker 2: would convict me and give me a prison sentence, because
Speaker 2: it was obvious it was just a kangaroocord. It was
Speaker 2: totally corrupt and a total sham, and that was clear
Speaker 2: to me from the beginning, and I'd.
Speaker 3: Heard stories of others as well.
Speaker 2: By that point, I just realized, well, cooperating with them
Speaker 2: hasn't served me well at all, and I haven't gained
Speaker 2: anything by being nice and quiet and placating them, So
Speaker 2: I may as well at least claw back some of
Speaker 2: my dignity and resist. And I did, and sometimes I
Speaker 2: shot myself in the foot, and other times I did
Speaker 2: win concessions for myself, but it gave me a feeling
Speaker 2: like I was doing something. At least, I wasn't just
Speaker 2: this passive person sitting back and waiting for others to
Speaker 2: rescue me. So it did actually play a big role
Speaker 2: in my ability to survive Psychologically, I think the idea
Speaker 2: that I was resisting and I was showing defiance, and
Speaker 2: I was actually trying to influence my own fate.
Speaker 1: What does a hunger strike feel like?
Speaker 3: The beginning is the hardest.
Speaker 2: That might be a little bit counterintuitive, but I found
Speaker 2: the first two days the hardest. You do have really
Speaker 2: strong pangs of hunger. If I was doing it with
Speaker 2: other prisoners in my cell who weren't striking and were eating,
Speaker 2: especially the hot food, you know, it was disgusting, but
Speaker 2: they'd deliver like a stew or something with rice for lunch,
Speaker 2: for example, and if the prisoners you know, opened that
Speaker 2: or the smell would waft throughout the room, and you know,
Speaker 2: I would often be lying prostrate because I didn't have
Speaker 2: much energy, and you'd lose blood pressure very quickly, and
Speaker 2: I'd be very light headed. But I'd just smell it,
Speaker 2: and it was almost like the smell was more intense
Speaker 2: because I was deprived of food myself, and it was
Speaker 2: quite torturous for me to smell that, you know, that
Speaker 2: disgusting stew that the other prisoners were getting. But then
Speaker 2: after a few days, you kind of get used to
Speaker 2: not eating. If you keep hydrating, you're generally okay for four, five,
Speaker 2: six days, okay by you. I always had low blood
Speaker 2: pressure even before I went to Iran, so my blood
Speaker 2: pressure would just plummet and I couldn't move.
Speaker 3: Even sitting up.
Speaker 2: I would just see stars and my head would swim
Speaker 2: and I would It would take me a really long
Speaker 2: time to walk to the toilet. For example, I'd walk
Speaker 2: like an elderly person, hand on the wall to stop
Speaker 2: myself falling. Everything's very bright, seeing stars. It would be
Speaker 2: a real mission to get out of bed and move anywhere.
Speaker 2: After a few days, and I did a dryer strike
Speaker 2: once where I didn't I refused water as well, and
Speaker 2: that was the toughest because after I think I lasted
Speaker 2: two days after even one day of not drinking or eating.
Speaker 3: The headaches that you got.
Speaker 2: From dehydration and everything was really painful. Everything was on fire.
Speaker 2: Your body just was crying out for water. In particular,
Speaker 2: I lasted forty eight hours without water, and then I
Speaker 2: was hospitalized and put on a drip, so they put
Speaker 2: the intravenous put you know, water backing hydrated me. So
Speaker 2: that was the hard by far, The longest I'd lasted
Speaker 2: on a wet hunger strike was about eight or nine days,
Speaker 2: I think, But by then, I mean I was always hospitalized,
Speaker 2: and then they're just drip feed vitamins and things into
Speaker 2: me and I would perk up again. But you know,
Speaker 2: it is really tough. But the first few days of
Speaker 2: the hardest for sure, when your body still I guess
Speaker 2: has some food in its digestive tract, so it's still
Speaker 2: digesting and working and doing something, so it's calling out
Speaker 2: for war, and you have those real pangs of hunger.
Speaker 2: Then when everything empties out and you're just drinking water,
Speaker 2: I think it's sort of the pangs and that the
Speaker 2: pains lessen in a way and you get used to.
Speaker 3: It in a way.
Speaker 1: All through this time, from the minute that you were
Speaker 1: detained at the airport, you were being interrogated, and the
Speaker 1: lead interrogator was an Iranian revolutionary guard called Kazi. Your
Speaker 1: relationship with him or his relationship with you was so
Speaker 1: twisted and brutal and intense and complicated. Can you explain
Speaker 1: how it was and how it developed over those years
Speaker 1: that you were held.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is really hard for me to sort of
Speaker 2: articulate because I don't properly even understand it myself. He
Speaker 2: was sort of more senior than the interrogators in a way.
Speaker 2: He was the head or responsible for judicial affairs or
Speaker 2: legal affairs within the Revolutionary Guards intelligence wing intelligence organization,
Speaker 2: and he was actually one of the main interlocutors of
Speaker 2: the Australian government in negotiating my release. So he was
Speaker 2: quite senior, and I think was linked through family ties
Speaker 2: to the head of the iogc's intelligence unit, which gave
Speaker 2: him because it's all very incestuous and mafia like in
Speaker 2: a way, it's all one big family, and it gave
Speaker 2: him the ability to act outside.
Speaker 3: The rules of his own organization.
Speaker 1: In a way.
Speaker 2: He broke the rules many times. He kind of did
Speaker 2: what he wanted and acted with impunity. So even you know,
Speaker 2: from the first few nights in the hotel, he was
Speaker 2: telling me things and doing things which.
Speaker 3: Were outside of the rules. And he was there on
Speaker 3: the night of my arrest.
Speaker 2: He initially played the good cop role in the hotel,
Speaker 2: for example, and sort of I think wanted to recruit me.
Speaker 2: He was trying to recruit me for most of the
Speaker 2: time I was there, using either.
Speaker 1: Carrots or to be a spy for Iran. Yes, even
Speaker 1: though they were accusing you of being a spy and
Speaker 1: they convicted you of being a spy for Israel.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I mean I think he and they knew
Speaker 2: I wasn't a spy, but once their organization decided that
Speaker 2: would be the line they were running and that's what
Speaker 2: they were going to convict me of, they all just
Speaker 2: sort of parroted the propaganda from then on. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so it sort of we had a very like conflict relationship.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of animosity between us. He had a
Speaker 2: sort of a classic male ego. He wanted to call
Speaker 2: the shots, be in charge, and wanted everybody. I think
Speaker 2: he was used to getting his way with everything, including
Speaker 2: among his colleagues. Maybe something about my defiance attracted him
Speaker 2: in a way I don't know. I would often make
Speaker 2: jokes and mock him, laugh at him, and I think
Speaker 2: in a way he liked that because nobody else really
Speaker 2: had the balls to do it to him, and I
Speaker 2: didn't really understand who he was or how important he was,
Speaker 2: and I didn't really care at that point either, so.
Speaker 3: That's probably why I was doing it.
Speaker 2: So he went through phases of being really, really horrible
Speaker 2: using sticks instead of carrots, and you know, banning me.
Speaker 2: I was banned from family calls, embassy, consular visits, everything,
Speaker 2: banned from everything as a result of one of my
Speaker 2: acts of defiance. And that was him that instigated that.
Speaker 2: Band He went to the judge and got me banned
Speaker 2: from you know, contacting my family for nine months and
Speaker 2: banning me from embassy visits is against international law, but
Speaker 2: they still managed to do that, so, you know, he
Speaker 2: was responsible for a lot of my suffering, you know,
Speaker 2: into a But then toward the beginning of twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: when the situation changed with the negotiations with the Australian
Speaker 2: government and they gave up on trying to recruit me,
Speaker 2: he kind of changed his behavior toward me and started
Speaker 2: actually flirting with me, courting me, breaking the rules in
Speaker 2: order to give me favor, to show off, to give
Speaker 2: me benefits and presence. Immediately organized a birthday party for me.
Speaker 2: He bought me clothes, he brought me cake, he bought
Speaker 2: me pizza, you know, developed feelings for.
Speaker 3: Me essentially, and I.
Speaker 2: I guess, I don't know if I had a choice,
Speaker 2: but I entered into this dangerous, risky sort of game
Speaker 2: of trying to toy with his affections and use his
Speaker 2: in a way weakness for me to my benefit, but
Speaker 2: without properly understanding the rules of the game and the parameters,
Speaker 2: and therefore shooting myself in the foot of hell all
Speaker 2: the time because I just couldn't.
Speaker 3: I couldn't play the.
Speaker 2: Game where when I didn't have any cards in my
Speaker 2: hand and I didn't know the rules of the game.
Speaker 2: So it was a really ye and he there was
Speaker 2: a lot of emotional abuse I was. I was entirely
Speaker 2: under his power. I was in solitary confinement under his control,
Speaker 2: and it was Yeah, it was a really, really difficult situation.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get out of that I was trying to
Speaker 2: influence to my benefit.
Speaker 1: The word I kept coming back to as I read
Speaker 1: your account was feisty, and I kept saying while I
Speaker 1: was reading Kylie, stoppish, stop stop it, stop it. I
Speaker 1: was so worried for you, And I was just like,
Speaker 1: don't say that, don't do that, don't mock him, just
Speaker 1: be a good girl, which I thought was interesting, Like
Speaker 1: I was like, just play the game to get out
Speaker 1: of there, but of course what would I know. But
Speaker 1: also I realized that you never gave up like you
Speaker 1: never were. I mean, there were times when you had
Speaker 1: complete despair, but it didn't last long. And I was
Speaker 1: wondering if that sense of pushing back and being feisty
Speaker 1: that was part of how you survived. Was it a
Speaker 1: choice it was.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good way of looking at it, actually,
Speaker 2: because I don't know if I'm a feisty person in
Speaker 2: real life, but I'm actually I am stubborn, and.
Speaker 3: I do have a kind of a sense of justice.
Speaker 2: I guess, or injustice or you know.
Speaker 3: I don't like when.
Speaker 2: I'm not somebody who it's easy to bully. So for me,
Speaker 2: I had had an I was completely fed up with
Speaker 2: towding the line and doing what they wanted when they
Speaker 2: constantly broke their promises, shifted the goldposts and essentially fucked
Speaker 2: me over like they were bullies and I was weak
Speaker 2: and they were getting what they wanted from my weakness.
Speaker 2: I had to stand up to them and show them
Speaker 2: that I was stronger than they thought in order to
Speaker 2: I guess, establish a red line and not let them
Speaker 2: do whatever they wanted to me. So I saw it
Speaker 2: as it was a survival mechanism in a way. For me.
Speaker 2: I didn't know how long I would be there for.
Speaker 2: I wanted to come out with my dignity and tact
Speaker 2: as well, and it was important to me to stand
Speaker 2: up to them. And yes, you know, I did have
Speaker 2: a big mouth at times, and you know, would mock
Speaker 2: and belittle certain members of them that I knew I
Speaker 2: would get away with, or joke around with clazizade or whatever.
Speaker 2: But that was because I understood I'd probably would get
Speaker 2: away with it, you know, Like I spoken off fastly
Speaker 2: by that point. I understood the dynamic between them all
Speaker 2: by that point, and I.
Speaker 3: Just didn't care, Like you just reach a.
Speaker 2: Point where you stopped caring. Yeah, I got nothing to lose,
Speaker 2: you know, And befriending some of them actually was beneficial
Speaker 2: because I got information out of them. So I probably
Speaker 2: wasn't very smart. I probably should have just kept my
Speaker 2: head down, stay quiet, and not got to know any
Speaker 2: of them and just waited for the government to get
Speaker 2: me out. But I wasn't seeing any movement on that front,
Speaker 2: and because it wasn't in the media for so long,
Speaker 2: I just I didn't trust that I would be prioritized
Speaker 2: that anybody really knew what was going on, and so
Speaker 2: I just thought that was really the only avenue I
Speaker 2: had left to me.
Speaker 1: Because he was so instrumental in the negotiations with the
Speaker 1: Australian government about your release. Did it occur to you
Speaker 1: that maybe he was going to stall them so that
Speaker 1: he could keep you there because he'd become so obsessed
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it occurred to me too late, you know, once
Speaker 2: I was already too deep in it to get out,
Speaker 2: and I actually just didn't think that this person is
Speaker 2: powerful enough to do that, to get in the way
Speaker 2: of a diplomatic negotiation. I'm pretty sure that's what happened,
Speaker 2: but I don't know one hundred percent. But they would
Speaker 2: have got me out in the end. But I do
Speaker 2: believe that I spent a significant period extra in prison
Speaker 2: because of his infatuation with him and the fact that
Speaker 2: he didn't really want to make a deal to let
Speaker 2: me go and so kept putting roadblocks in the way.
Speaker 2: For the hell of it.
Speaker 1: Has he tried to contact you since he got out.
Speaker 2: He hasn't contacted me directly. No, I mean that would
Speaker 2: be he was I believe removed from my case because
Speaker 2: of this relationship with me. For one of a better
Speaker 2: words about a couple of months before my release. He
Speaker 2: was still influencing things, though from behind the scenes, I believe,
Speaker 2: up until five weeks or four weeks before my release,
Speaker 2: when he did manage to send me a few messages
Speaker 2: via other people when I was moved back to Tuay
Speaker 2: in October or September twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, they feel were never required. It
Speaker 1: was not. It was very much a one way abusive relationship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, but I certainly gave him to believe that
Speaker 2: there was hope, you know, because I was trying to
Speaker 2: leverage him for my freedom but also for better conditions
Speaker 2: in prison, you know, I was. It was for me
Speaker 2: a matter of survival. I wanted him on side. I
Speaker 2: wanted him to be my friend because he was so
Speaker 2: powerful in there that he could do things like bring
Speaker 2: me a three tiered chocolate cake with my name iced
Speaker 2: on it for my birthday, or you know, authorize me
Speaker 2: to be able to wear my own clothes and not
Speaker 2: the prison uniform, authorized me to have extra shopping lists,
Speaker 2: authorized me to go outside the prison for medical treatment
Speaker 2: to you know, he allowed me to go to an
Speaker 2: optometrist in Tehran and choose a pair of glasses because
Speaker 2: my eyesight was ruined by years of staring at a
Speaker 2: wall a couple of meters in front of me, so
Speaker 2: I needed reading glasses and he authorized that, you know,
Speaker 2: medical treatment, all sorts of things. It was beneficial to
Speaker 2: me to sort of develop a friendly relationship with him
Speaker 2: in order to leverage that. So, whilst it wasn't reciprocated,
Speaker 2: I did, you know, encourage it to a certain extent
Speaker 2: at certain times because I could see the benefit sometimes.
Speaker 1: Another thing that he had control over was when you
Speaker 1: were occasionally given your phone during interrogations and allowed to
Speaker 1: either WhatsApp or call your family. And in that early
Speaker 1: stage your husband Ruslan, when did the phone calls with
Speaker 1: your now ex husband start to become a little odd
Speaker 1: and start to give you, you know, cause for confusion.
Speaker 3: After the second call I had to him. Ever, actually.
Speaker 2: The first call was just out of the blue. He
Speaker 2: wasn't expecting it, He didn't know where I was. He
Speaker 2: was very worried about me, and he was himself just
Speaker 2: a just worried husband wanting information about his wife. But
Speaker 2: the second time I called, he was distant, he was cold.
Speaker 2: I had a feeling he wasn't the only person in
Speaker 2: the room, and he had developed a kind of a
Speaker 2: security mindset, and I mean as you would. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, he knew that some nefarious group in Iran
Speaker 2: had arrested me or taken me hostage or something, so
Speaker 2: of course he would be mindful of security. But I
Speaker 2: just felt like it wasn't the person I knew that
Speaker 2: I was talking to. It was someone else, and it
Speaker 2: was cold and unfeeling, and I just it upset me.
Speaker 1: Did you eventually sort of stop speaking and stop contacting
Speaker 1: each other?
Speaker 2: Well, we couldn't, you know, especially because of his links
Speaker 2: to Israel. Once the first phase was out of the
Speaker 2: way and they'd got what they wanted or tried out
Speaker 2: of him. I was not allowed to call him, really
Speaker 2: because his Ida occasionally would give me a favor and
Speaker 2: allow me to call him, but I was mainly calling
Speaker 2: my parents and my sister Belinda on the rare occasion
Speaker 2: that I was permitted phone calls.
Speaker 1: You had a lot of time to think. Did you
Speaker 1: tell yourself a story about what might have happened?
Speaker 2: I certainly theorized a lot about how I came to
Speaker 2: have been arrested in the first place. I just because
Speaker 2: I didn't understand all the dynamics, and I still don't
Speaker 2: completely you know, from getting to know some of the IGC,
Speaker 2: including Couzizade and others, I was able to piece a
Speaker 2: few things together about over time, over a number of years,
Speaker 2: about how I came to have been flagged on their
Speaker 2: radar at all. And a guy that I had interviewed
Speaker 2: prior to my arrest in Iran who wasn't an Iranian,
Speaker 2: he was a Bahraini for my research, had some sort
Speaker 2: of involvement with the Revolutionary Guards and had potentially betrayed me,
Speaker 2: dabbed me in for whatever reason as someone suspicious to them,
Speaker 2: which what led to them taking an interest in me
Speaker 2: whilst I was still in Iran for my academic three
Speaker 2: week trip and led to my so this person but
Speaker 2: essentially is responsible for my rest.
Speaker 1: At one stage, Kuzie said to you, your husband's having
Speaker 1: an affair, your marriage is over. Did you just think
Speaker 1: that was just another thing that he was saying to
Speaker 1: you to try and break you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't really give it much credence at the
Speaker 2: time because, yeah, as you said, like they would say
Speaker 2: things to me like that all the time, Like nobody
Speaker 2: in Australia cares about you. The embassy hasn't even reached
Speaker 2: out once.
Speaker 3: To ask where you are.
Speaker 2: They know you're guilty, therefore they're not bothering about bringing
Speaker 2: you home.
Speaker 3: You know, you're a traded to Australia.
Speaker 2: Too as well as you know, you know, like the
Speaker 2: Australians know you work for Israel like and you're an
Speaker 2: Australian citizens, so they wouldn't care about you.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: They would say all sorts of bullshit to me.
Speaker 2: So when they said that about my husband, I'm just like, yeah, whatever,
Speaker 2: Like I didn't didn't believe it, and I actually laughed
Speaker 2: at them. I think when they said it, I don't
Speaker 2: know whether they knew that or not. They could have
Speaker 2: just been saying that to upset me, and actually it
Speaker 2: was true, but they didn't know, you know, so either
Speaker 2: they knew something or they didn't, I'm not sure. But
Speaker 2: at the time I didn't really believe them.
Speaker 1: Had you kind of made peace with yourself in your
Speaker 1: mind that whatever the reason, your marriage was over while
Speaker 1: you were still in prison, I.
Speaker 2: Wasn't thinking about it a lot, to be honest. The
Speaker 2: outside world felt so far away. I was really My
Speaker 2: coping mechanism was to just focus on the here and now,
Speaker 2: live in the moment and forget the future to get them, like,
Speaker 2: you know, just not think about my old life, thinking
Speaker 2: about my family, my job, everything, my relationship.
Speaker 3: It upset me a lot.
Speaker 2: So I would just sort of numb myself and just
Speaker 2: live in the here and now and try and focus
Speaker 2: on various you know, goings on within the two A unit,
Speaker 2: what my friends were up to, you know, concerning myself with.
Speaker 3: The day to day routine.
Speaker 2: So, whilst I didn't think about it, I was pretty
Speaker 2: sure our marriage was over, just because I didn't feel
Speaker 2: that I was getting the support that I would have
Speaker 2: wanted from a partner in such a situation that I
Speaker 2: thought I would have given had it been reversed. So
Speaker 2: I felt like, well, when I do come home, whenever
Speaker 2: that may be, I don't think we can come back
Speaker 2: from this.
Speaker 1: After eight hundred and four days, on November the twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, you were released. Could you believe it? No?
Speaker 2: I also had such a mistrust that it was real
Speaker 2: that even when it was happening, I had part of
Speaker 2: my brain was going, don't celebrate yet something could still
Speaker 2: happen to eff it up, you know, Like you've got
Speaker 2: out of prison, but you're still in Iranian territory. They
Speaker 2: can come and pick you up at any moment. They
Speaker 2: can turn the plane around in the sky as long
Speaker 2: as you're still an Iranian airspace and take you straight back. So,
Speaker 2: you know, the diplomatic deal had fallen through a few times,
Speaker 2: and I just I didn't want to give myself false hope.
Speaker 2: So even when the ambassador came two days earlier and
Speaker 2: told me two days before my release and said we're
Speaker 2: going to release you in forty eight hours, Nick Warner,
Speaker 2: the envoy, who's fantastic, he did so much to help,
Speaker 2: and the Ambassador Lindall too, you know, he's on his
Speaker 2: ways in the air, I just didn't believe it, and
Speaker 2: I thought, okay, this is another time it's going to
Speaker 2: fall through. So only at the only when we passed
Speaker 2: out of her any airspace and landed in Qatar, in Doha,
Speaker 2: which was our first stop on the way back to Australia,
Speaker 2: did I actually kind of start to breathe and try
Speaker 2: to grapple with the fact that I wasn't in a
Speaker 2: run anymore, that couldn't get me anymore.
Speaker 1: That is not the end of my conversation with Kylie.
Speaker 1: If you are a Muma Mea subscriber, you can hear
Speaker 1: what happened to Kylie after she got out, and in
Speaker 1: this subscriber episode, she talks about how her life changed forever,
Speaker 1: what it was like trying to acclimatize, and what happened
Speaker 1: when she got back to her house and her marriage,
Speaker 1: and that part is just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Them together in the street and publish them and that
Speaker 2: was quite upsetting for me to see, but it is
Speaker 2: what it is, and you know, I wish them all
Speaker 2: the best.
Speaker 1: Follow the link in the show notes to hear that episode.
Speaker 1: You can find Kylie's book, The Uncaged Sky. It's brilliant
Speaker 1: Vira link in our show notes. Our producer is GM moylan,
Speaker 1: the executive producer is Eliza Ratliffe, and I'm Nea Friedman.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for something else to listen to, like
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