Jason Rezaian Hopes His Iranian Captors Read <em>Prisoner</em>
In 2014, America was reintroduced to Iran through the eyes of bad boy chef-turned-TV travel host Anthony Bourdain. As his still-nascent CNN docuseries Parts Unknown transported him, and his audience, to Iran, the world traveler was in disbelief.
“I am so confused,” Bourdain remarked as Persian music played in the background. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Of all the places, all the countries, all the years of traveling, it’s here, in Iran, that I’m greeted most warmly by total strangers.”
In that opening line, Bourdain touched on the irony of how Iran and Iranians view the United States: While many of the people share a not-so-secret infatuation with Hollywood, with McDonalds, and with rock and hip hop music, the government still views America as the “Great Satan.”
It’s a jarring discrepancy that brings Bourdain, and his audience, to a bright and hopeful Jason and Yeganeh Rezaian. The two foreign correspondents who appear on his show are wide-eyed—they glow like a young couple in love, who have finally, after many years, created a life for themselves. For the American-born, dual-national Jason, then Tehran bureau chief for The Washington Post, and the native Yeganeh, then a correspondent for the UAE-based The National, this life was characterized, and soon enough dominated, by the friction between their two countries of origin.
“You like it? You happy here?” Bourdain asked them bluntly.
“Look, I’m at a point now after five years where I miss certain things about home,” Jason said, referring to the U.S. “I miss my buddies, I miss burritos, I miss having certain beverages with my buddies and burritos in certain types of establishments,” he joked. Mexican food is impossibly hard to find in Iran, and alcohol is outlawed for all Muslims. “But, I love it. I love it and I hate it. It’s home… It’s become home.”
“Are you optimistic about the future?” Bourdain asked Yeganeh, who goes by Yegi.
“Yeah. Especially if this nuclear deal finally happens,” she said. “Yeah. Very much, actually.” She smiles, nodding her head repeatedly.
The narration that set in next was subtle, but infinitely darker. “Despite the hopeful nature of our conversation, six weeks after the filming of this episode, Jason and Yeganeh were mysteriously arrested and detained by the police,” Bourdain said. “Sadly, in Iran this sort of thing is not an isolated incident.” The Iranians accused him of being a spy at the beginning of tense negotiations with the United States over the country’s nuclear program. He was released a year and a half later once those negotiations had been wrapped up, after a sham trial in which it became clear Iran had no evidence of any kind to back up their charge that he had been involved in espionage. Yegi was imprisoned separately for 10 weeks before she was released.
[Read: Jason Rezaian's Year of Imprisonment in Iran]
In so many ways, Jason Rezaian is a very normal guy. In so many ways, he is like no one I’ve ever met before—except maybe for Yegi. I first met the couple in August 2016, two years after Bourdain’s segment, they were uncompromisingly down-to-earth, humble, and generous: rare qualities for any person, let alone two individuals who had been at the center of a highly-publicized international incident.
