I prayed in Persian in my own words to a person I now knew was actually there and actually listening and he answered not always dramatically but consistently.

I’d pray for guidance in a decision and clarity would come.

I’d pray through anxiety and peace would settle over me that I couldn’t explain medically or psychologically.

I’d pray for Nasserin without her knowing, and I’d see her soften in ways that seem like more than coincidence.

During prayer, I’d sometimes feel physical warmth, a sensation like being held.

I tested this repeatedly.

I wasn’t generating it.

I wasn’t imagining it.

It was given.

But the cost was already appearing.

I was still performing Islam externally.

Maurice still attending mosque with my father.

still fasting during Ramadan, still playing the role in extended family gatherings.

But now I was watching my own hypocrisy.

And I knew I couldn’t sustain it.

I would have to tell Nostrin eventually.

I would have to tell my family.

I would have to either live this publicly or betray the one who had met me in that dream.

And I knew which choice I was going to make.

But I couldn’t do this alone.

Han, the scripture I was reading wasn’t the scripture of isolated individualism.

It spoke of a body, a fellowship, people who needed each other.

I needed to find the others, which in Iran meant entering a world most people don’t even know exists.

Finding other Christians in Thran is not like finding a church in your neighborhood.

There are no signs, no websites, no public gatherings.

There is only trust built slowly through careful relationships.

how through indirect introductions that protect everyone involved.

I spent months searching carefully.

I found coded discussions in online forums using VPN to access them.

A friend mentioned knowing someone who knew someone who might be able to help with certain questions I had.

Each link in the chain protected the previous one.

Weeks passed between initial contact and first meeting.

Security protocols were strict.

changing locations, communication through intermediaries, verification processes.

Finally, in the spring of 2009, I attended my first house church meeting.

It was an evening gathering in a small apartment in the south tan, a workingclass neighborhood with less surveillance than the areas where government officials lived.

Nine people were present when I arrived.

The demographic diversity was stunning.

There was a doctor in his mid-4s, two university students in their early 20s, one male, one female, a government ministry worker in his 50s, either a retired teacher in her 60s, a young married couple in their late 20s, and the host, a woman in her 30s who never mentioned a husband.

She was either widowed or divorced, and I never asked.

All of them were converts from Muslim backgrounds.

Some had been Shia originally, some Sunni, some were recent believers, some had been following Christ for years.

We sang quietly, beautiful Persian worship songs.

We prayed, intimate, honest, personal prayers spoken aloud in a way I’d never experienced in mosque.

The host read from Romans and we discussed it together, each person contributing their understanding.

Then we took communion.

Simple bread and wine, but the weight of it was profound.

This was the body and blood of Jesus.

This was remembering his death and resurrection.

This was participating in something that connected us to believers across 2,000 years and across every nation.

One, and the presence of God was palpable in that room.

This wasn’t emotional manipulation.

This wasn’t crowd psychology.

There were only nine of us, but something was alive in that space.

Something undeniable.

I wept with relief at finding community.

I hadn’t realized how isolated I’d been.

These people understood what it cost to follow Christ in Iran.

They’d made the same choice I was making, and somehow we belong to each other in a way that transcended all the normal social categories that divided Iranians.

I began attending weekly.

The gatherings rotated locations for security.

I developed a disciplehip relationship with the doctor whose name was Kaman.

He became my spiritual father.

He taught me basic theology, church history, how to read scripture carefully.

My understanding grew to match my experience.

By the summer of 2009, several months into community life, I made formal commitment.

In the presence of the other believers, I prayed aloud, declaring faith in Jesus as Lord, Messiah, Son of God.

Then they baptized me in a secret ceremony at a location I still won’t disclose.

I was immersed in water and raised up again, symbolizing death to my old life and resurrection to new life in Christ.

I was no longer just a seeker.

I was a declared follower.

But I still hadn’t told Nostrin.

This was the hardest conversation of my life.

I didn’t have it all at once.

It It was a series of conversations over weeks, gradual revelation, testing responses, gauging safety.

I started with, “I’ve been reading some different things”.

Her response was concern, not theological concern, practical concern.

Reasonable wife worried about her husband’s risk-taking.

Do you know what they do to apostates?

She asked.

Yes, I knew.

What happens to Da and Sharon if you’re arrested?

This was the question that kept me awake at night.

And this was legitimate maternal protection instinct.

This was the hardest part of the cost.

But Nashim began her own investigation.

If her husband was risking everything, she needed to understand why.

She started reading the New Testament herself secretly.

Initially, she was resistant intellectually, culturally, practically resistant.

But she felt the same magnetic pull I’d experienced.

Months passed.

She wrestled.

She prayed prayers like, “If this is real, if you are real, show me”.

And he showed her.

Her encounter was different from mine.

Not a dream, but a waking experience during prayer.

A sense of presence, overwhelming love, conviction settling in her that she couldn’t explain or deny.

This is true.

Nearly a year after my conversion, she made her decision.

From that night, I tell people, we were walking this together.

It changed everything.

We were unified in purpose.

We were sharing the risk.

We were protecting our children together.

If both of us were baptized, both of us were growing.

And by 2010, I was taking on leadership responsibilities.

I had a natural gift for teaching.

A shepherd heart was emerging in me.

I began leading small groups.

By 2011, I was functioning as an informal network pastor, overseeing multiple house churches totaling 60 to 70 people.

There was no formal ordination.

There was no institution to ordain me.

But the community recognized me as pastor by function.

I knew all of them, their names or their families, their circumstances, their spiritual struggles.

I married couples.

I baptized new believers.

I counseledled people through crisis.

I visited during illness.

I prayed during suffering.

That knowledge was one of the greatest privileges of my life.

It also became one of the greatest sorrows because we weren’t naive about the risks.

We knew what happened to believers who were discovered.

We knew about arrests.

We knew about Evan prison.

We knew about sentences that destroyed families.

And we knew about executions.

But we also knew something more important.

We had encountered the living God, and nothing the state threatened us with was sufficient to make us walk away from that.

By 2011, I knew I was being watched.

It wasn’t one obvious thing.

It was an accumulation of small signals that anyone living under surveillance learns to read.

Cars parked too long in certain places, the same faces appearing in different contexts.

I had questions from colleagues that felt like intelligence fishing, technical problems with my phone that suggested it had been compromised.

The question wasn’t if they would come for me.

The question was when.

Thursday night, January 19th, 2012.

I remember it was Thursday because that’s when the Iranian weekend begins.

When families are home and safe and together, we would never have that kind of safety again.

Dinner was finished, the dishes were cleaned.

I I could hear Dar and Sharon playing in their room.

Dar was 8.

Sharon was five.

Nas Shireen was in the kitchen preparing tea.

I was in our small study reviewing engineering plans for work.

This was domestic normaly.

This was peace.

These are the details I remember because they were the last ones.

The knock came, not the doorbell.

A knock.

Loud, flat, authoritative.

The kind of knock that makes your body respond with adrenaline before your mind catches up.

I walked to the door.

Nassin came from the kitchen.

I looked through the peepphole and saw four men in plain clothes, but they were unmistakably intelligence agents.

You develop an eye for this.

I had a moment of decision.

Don’t open.

They’d break it down.

Run.

There was nowhere to go.

My family was in the apartment.

I opened the door.

The lead agent was in his mid-40s.

Calm, professional, not a Hollywood villain.

He showed me a document briefly, a warrant, Farsy text, official seals.

I didn’t have time to read it carefully.

Mr.

Amati, you need to come with us.

It wasn’t phrased as a question.

They entered without waiting for invitation.

All four of them spreading through the apartment methodically, efficiently.

This was routine for them.

Dar and Sharon appeared in their bedroom doorway, eyes wide, frightened.

My instinct was to position myself between them and the agents.

Nazarin came from the kitchen.

She saw what was happening.

The children clung to her.

And in the look between us, everything was said without words.

This is it.

I love you.

Protect the children.

I’ll be okay.

This was a lie, but a necessary one.

An agent said, “Say goodbye quickly”.

Quickly meant 30 seconds.

I embraced Dar and Shar, trying to memorize the feeling, trying to be strong for them.

Dar was starting to cry.

Sharon was silent, too shocked to process what was happening.

Nasarin held herself together with extraordinary discipline.

She didn’t scream.

A She didn’t beg.

She didn’t collapse.

She stood in her own kitchen with a dignity that even now fills me with grief and admiration.

I was permitted to pack a small bag, change of clothes, toiletries.

My hands were shaking while I folded shirts.

Nasin stood in the doorway watching, memorizing me.

Then I walked toward the door.

I looked back once.

Nashin was standing there, backlit by the warm light of our home.

The children were beside her, Dra crying, Sherin silent.

That image burned into my memory.

That was the last sight of my family as a free man.

That image sustained me through the first year.

Outside, an unmarked sedan was waiting.

Neighbors were watching from windows.

They knew what this meant.

We drove through night terron, familiar streets that suddenly felt alien.

North toward the foothills toward Evan prison.

Evan prison does something to time.

In ward 209, the intelligence section, there are no windows where the lights never fully darken.

You lose the ability to know if it’s day or night, what hour it is, how long you’ve been in a room.

This disorientation is deliberate.

It’s the first weapon they use against you.

We entered through a vehicle gate, massive walls, guard towers, walking through corridors that smelled of disinfectant, sweat, and fear.

A smell I will never forget.

The processing room, possessions removed and documented.

Prison clothes issued, rough fabric, ill-fitting, then a blindfold.

Disorientation technique.

I was led through corridors blindfolded, trying to map the space acoustically, counting turns.

They put me in a temporary holding cell, 2 m by 3 m, concrete walls, a single bare bulb that never turned off completely.

This was where I would spend the next several weeks.

Within 48 hours, I’d lost my grip on whether it was day or night.

The lights stayed on but dimmed slightly at irregular intervals.

Meals came at times I couldn’t predict.

I so I couldn’t use them to measure the passing of time.

Guards banged on the door at random intervals, disrupting any attempt at sleep.

The anxiety of existing in timeless space is difficult to describe.

Your body needs rhythm.

It needs day and night.

It needs to know when things will happen.

Strip that away and something fundamental in you starts to unravel.

They left me there for three days.

I think it was 3 days before the first interrogation.

This was deliberate.

Let fear build.

Let exhaustion accumulate.

Let cold seep into bones.

Provide minimal food.

Enough to survive, not enough to maintain strength.

By the time they came for me, I was already destabilized.

I was led blindfolded to the interrogation room.

When they removed the blindfold, I was in a small room with bright lights.

A table between me and two interrogators.

The primary interrogator was in his 40s, educated, measured in tone.

The secondary one was younger, mostly silent, taking notes.

And the primary interrogator didn’t scream.

There was no immediate violence.

His tone was almost sympathetic.

“This is disappointing,” he said.

“A man of your education, your family background”.

Then the questions began.

Names of other believers, locations of house churches, foreign funding sources.

These were imaginary, but they believed in them.

Organizational structure.

Who was leading what?

I refused consistently.

I won’t give you names.

He explained the consequences calmly.

You’re making this harder for yourself.

But the interrogation wasn’t just about extracting information.

It was about dismantling the framework of faith itself.

The questions targeted vulnerable interior places.

Do you really believe God became man, an educated man like you?

Have you considered you’ve been manipulated by foreign interests?

Is your conversion genuine?

Or is this psychological phenomenon?

It a rebellion against your upbringing?

Are you willing to destroy your family for selfdeception?

They were using my own honest doubts against me.

How did they know about doubts I’d had?

Surveillance, psychology.

The most damaging questions weren’t about theology.

They were about family.

Your children are growing up without a father.

Is that faithful or selfish?

Nashin will visit eventually.

She’ll bring the children.

They’ll see you through glass.

What does that do to them?

These were questions designed to produce guilt, doubt, self-rrimation, and they worked.

When I returned to my cell, the days blurred.

The cell was 2×3 m, the constant light, the cold.

I didn’t have adequate clothing, no blanket.

Initially, the food was rice, thin soup, bread, water enough to survive.

The toilet was in the corner with no privacy.

Guards banged on the door at random hours.

I was called for interrogation at times I couldn’t predict.

Sleep was impossible to achieve fully.

I lost weight rapidly, 20 lbs in the first months.

I was chronically cold, shivering constantly, exhausted, but never fully resting.

My skin developed problems from inadequate hygiene facilities.

My hair started falling out from stress and poor nutrition.

I wasn’t beaten.

Not yet.

I could hear other prisoners being beaten through the walls.

They’re screaming.

But for political prisoners, psychological torture was preferred.

It was more effective.

No, it left no marks on the body.

It left something else.

The weeks accumulated.

6 weeks, 8 weeks.

I lost count.

The interrogations continued every few days, sometimes daily.

The pressure increased.

My internal resources were depleting.

My faith was being tested, not dramatically, but erosively, like water wearing down stone.

And then approximately 6 weeks in, I think, I reached a collapse I haven’t fully spoken about before.

I was alone in my cell.

Late at night, I thought, though I couldn’t be certain, and I experienced complete internal darkness, not fear, not exhaustion, the total absence of God.

Every encounter I’d had felt suddenly like selfdeception.

Every moment of his presence felt like psychological projection.

Every prayer felt like speaking to nothing.

I lay on the floor of that cell, cold concrete against my face.

And I prayed the only prayer I had left.

If you are there, I need you to be real right now.

Not later.

Now.

See, because I have nothing left.

What happened next is why I’m still here.

The darkness didn’t lift dramatically.

There was no bright light, no audible voice, no theatrical moment.

But into that cell, into that absolute darkness, came something I can only call a presence.

I was lying on the concrete floor, cold, hard, utterly alone.

I’d prayed a prayer of desperation, not eloquent, barely words.

And I was waiting in silence, expecting nothing.

Then warmth.

Physical warmth.

The cell hadn’t gotten warmer.

I tested this.

Tried to dismiss it.

Couldn’t.

The warmth started in my chest and spread outward.

This wasn’t imagination.

And with the warmth came a quality of not aloneeness.

Someone was there.

Not visible, but unmistakable.

This was external to me.

This wasn’t comfort I generated.

This was given.

Peace settled over me that I hadn’t earned and couldn’t have produced.

Then a verse arrived in my mind.

Isaiah 43.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.

When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

I hadn’t memorized that verse.

I’d read Isaiah in my pre-imprisonment Bible reading, but this wasn’t recollection.

This was communication, a word arriving from outside.

And the clarity was this.

God was not promising escape.

He was promising presence.

I will be with you.

Not I will remove you from this, but I will be with you in this.

The fear didn’t disappear entirely.

The physical conditions didn’t change.

The psychological difficulty didn’t change, but the deepest terror, the terror of abandonment, lost its power.

Something in me was settled that was never fully unsettled again.

The months continued.

Interrogations, pressure, isolation.

But I had a different foundation now.

My faith wasn’t untested.

It was tested and holding.

My prayers weren’t answered by release, but by presence.

After approximately 4 months, they permitted my first family visit.

The visiting room was divided by glass partition.

We spoke through phones.

Nostrin entered and I barely recognized her.

She’d aged.

The stress was visible in her face.

Dar and Sharon were with her.

They were taller, older, different.

We had 20 minutes.

What do you say in 20 minutes through glass?

I focused on them.

How was school?

Are you okay?

Dad loves you.

A dad is proud of you.

Nashin’s eyes communicated what she couldn’t say with the children present.

The church continues underground, growing.

She’s strong, managing.

Don’t recant.

Don’t give names.

We’re okay.

The visits continued every few months.

I watched my children grow through glass.

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