14 March 2023 , 19:52
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On Thursday this week, Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe and her husband Richard will try to find a peaceful moment to grab a coffee together.
A pretty regular outing for a married couple perhaps, except this marriage has been anything but regular.
This Thursday marks a year to the day since Nazanin was finally freed following six years of detainment in Iran. A year since she was allowed to step onto a plane to fly home to London to be reunited with Richard and their young daughter, Gabriella.
“I’m sure she will want to mark it, even if it’s to go out and have a coffee, to celebrate it in a quiet, together again kind of a way,” says Richard.
He speaks carefully because 44-year-old Nazanin’s return is bittersweet – she is now separated from family in Iran, and the anguish and anger of her imprisonment and their separation does not simply slip away.
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But, 12 months ago, her first night back home in the UK together as a family was pure joy.
Nazanin is reunited with her husband and daughter Gabriella (Free Nazanin campaign/AFP via Ge)
The family outside 10 Downing Street (AFP via Getty Images)“I remember not being able to sleep at all and just staring at her while she was sleeping,” Richard, 47, recalls.
Nazanin was arrested at Tehran airport in March 2016 on false charges of plotting against the government.
She and her then 22-month-old daughter were returning home from a holiday visiting family.
Outrage at her incarceration, beginning with nine months of solitary confinement, was widespread, and her emotional return last March was euphoric following accountant Richard’s relentless campaigning, including two hunger strikes.
But this week, ahead of a Channel 4 documentary charting his fight, Nazanin has admitted returning to a normal life is still a work in progress, and although she feels safe and loved, she does not yet feel free.
A portrait of Nazanin that formed part of campaign for her release (Getty Images)“You can be free living in a free world, but not be free in your mind,” she said. “I still have nightmares of being told I’m going to be released but not being released, I live in a separate, parallel world of Evin prison on a daily basis.”
Returning to their North London flat with Gabriella, now eight, was just the start of rebuilding their lives, as Nazanin also processed anger.
“We had to learn to be a couple again and probably still are. A couple, and a family,” Richard explains.
“The past six years, I learnt to survive by being universally stubborn.
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“Learning give and take again is harder. We both ended up getting a bit battle-hardened. We have good days and bad days.”
I ask if they have found the old Richard and Nazanin? The smiling couple in the carefree photos with baby Gabriella.
Nazanin gets emotional as she is reunited with Gabriella (Channel 4)“I don’t think we are there yet and I expect we are not going to reclaim where we were before, we are going to build something new,” he answers.
He is cautious. “It’s baby steps on lots of levels, and most days they’re forwards, but not all of them.”
But are they happy? “It depends which day if I’m honest. We have come out the tunnel and we are blinking a bit in the sunlight.”
Filming for the documentary initially began in 2017 to highlight Britain’s £400million arms deal debt with Iran, unpaid since the 1970s, which Nazanin was told was behind her arrest.
She was first sentenced to five years, and after that received a further one-year sentence.
The debt was finally paid “in parallel” with Nazanin’s return, alongside another British-Iranian prisoner, Anoosheh Ashoori.
But over the years documentary director Darius Bazargan also captured intimate footage of their lives, most movingly of Richard and Gabriella’s video call conversations with Nazanin.
Nazanin and Richard have worked hard to get their marriage back on track (CHANNEL 4)A year from the end of her initial sentence, Nazanin was released on parole to her parents’ home with a leg tag, which enabled them to at least see each other on Facetime.
Gabriella, who had been living with her grandparents since Nazanin’s arrest, had returned home to her dad when she was five.
We see Nazanin’s tiny face on Richard’s phone asking to see Gabriella’s new dress; being told she has read her first book; watching as Gabriella bakes cookies.
Her sadness is achingly clear.
We also see she and Richard repeating their love for each other on Facetime.
“That need to affirm I’m still here and I still love you, it’s the most important thing you can say to each other,” he explains.
The film also captures Gabriella’s suspicion and weariness. When Richard tells her Mummy is coming home, she asks if it’s a trick.
She is, of course, delighted to have Nazanin here, brushing her hair after bathtime, cooking Iranian food. She is currently making secret plans for Mother’s Day.
“For Gabriella it was going to school with her mum, Mummy being visible and doing the things mums do,” says Richard.
“But if Mummy has been busy and she hasn’t really seen her, she has a strong instinct for where there is a risk of abandonment.”
Nazanin at the time of her arrest in IranIt is being able to care for Gabriella together which has brought some of the most joyful moments.
“The first parents’ evening where we could just go in the class together, I think we all cried,” says Richard.
But any joy is mixed for Nazanin, while friends she was imprisoned with remain incarcerated, and Iran’s regime becomes increasingly oppressive.
The death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, last September after she protested against enforced wearing of the hijab, the mass imprisonment of protesters since, the recent reports of the poisoning of schoolgirls, has all been triggering.
Those still detained include dual national Morad Tahbaz, who was almost released with Nazanin, and her friend from prison, Niloufar Bayani, two of a group of conservationists jailed on spying charges.
Nazanin said: “It’s very hard to experience and witness what is happening in Iran and then be like a normal person at home...”
She added: “I don’t know how to plan things, I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow… All I know is for my friends in prison, I will do all I can.
“Some of these women, the world does not know their name. I will make sure their story is told and their voice is heard.”
Richard agrees it is not yet time to plan.
“You need a couple of years of coming to, and then we have a second chance of life. What do we want to do with it?” he muses.
“It’s probably a little bit early to decide what we make of that chance.”
* Nazanin, directed by Darius Bazargan, is on Channel 4 at 9pm tomorrow.