Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir by Marina Nemat

When I was a teenager, reading The Diary of Anne Frank and Exodus made me realize how blessed I was to be born in this country. I got the same feeling after reading Prisoner of Tehran and I think any teenager who read this would feel the same way. When you are sixteen years old, you are trying to break away from parents, traditions and rules to become your own person. In the United States, teens are free to speak their minds and write what they feeling. While I realize that schools can censor what the kids write, those kids aren't then placed on an arrest-to-be-tortured list.

Yet this is what happened to young Marina. When she was born, the shah was still in power and while there were abuses by the government there was also a lot more freedom and independence for women. Under the Ayatollah Kohmeini, all of that changed. Marina and several of her high school friends were arrested for "striking" against the school and for writing a protest newspaper. The strike involved a protest against teachers who chose to lecture on fundamentalist religion rather than on the topics they were supposed to teach (like calculus).

Marina was tortured in an attempt to force her to reveal the names of more friends involved in the protest. She suffered a great deal before being placed in a cell with some of her friends. Some survived; some did not. The ultimate horror--in my opinion anyway--was when Marina's interrogator fell in love with her. I recommend the book to anyone. Read it to find out what happens to Marina.