Roozbeh Mirebrahimi

Abbas Amirentezam, Memories, Experiences Roozbeh Mirebrahimi

It all started from a report, the result of which was my acquaintance and friendship with Abbas Amirentezam. On the morning of February 4, 1979, Amirentezam received an order from Mehdi Bazargan, the head of Iran's Interim Government which had been set up after the 1979 revolution. He was instructed to go to the Office of the Prime Minister (which was still occupied by the last Prime Minister of the previous regime) and prepare it for the new Prime Minister, who had been appointed by the leader of the revolution. After successfully delivering this mission, Prime Minister Bazargan offered him a new role, as Deputy Prime Minister. In addition, during the first meeting after the new cabinet was formed, Amirentezam was appointed speaker for the interim government. The year I met him, he was the longest-held political prisoner of the Islamic Republic of Iran. .... At the time, I was the political desk editor for Etemaad, a major daily newspaper close to the country's reform movement, where I published a report about Amirentezam's book. I was immediately deluged with phone calls. It seemed to me that Iranian society was thirsty for the same thing that had been unknown to me. One of the people who contacted me was Ms. Elahe Mizani, Amirentezam's wife. Until that time I had had no information about his situation, and I imagined, based on old information, that he was in prison serving his life sentence. After that phone call, I realized that Abbas Amirentezam had left prison for medical treatment.... Once a week, we met at 10 in the morning at his place. When I exited the elevator on the fifth floor and rang his bell, he would come to greet me with an open, smiling face. We talked in his living room, which had a window that looked out on the heights of northern Tehran. During winter, the warmth inside and the cold outside caused the window to frost. I called it "The Frosted Window." Whenever I stared at that window, I imagined the man who was sitting in front of me.... The first part of this book is based on our electronic letter exchange, which occurred after my first book about him was published in Persian in 2008 in Paris. This is a kind of continuation of the conversation we had in Iran, covering the same topics, and I have also tried to address some of critiques that was raised after the first book. The second part of this book is a new edition of the conversation I first published in 2008. I have arranged it in the order of our meetings and have attempted to follow the topics covered in chronological order.