During the course,she lived for 12 months in Israel,where she met Hodorov. He accompanied her when she returned to Australia in 2014 to do her PhD at Melbourne University. (Kylie Baxter was her PhD supervisor.) Moore-Gilbert converted to Judaism and married Hodorov in 2017,less than a year before
her trip to Iran. When she was arrested,her phone and computer were confiscated,but during the week of interrogation in the hotel she furtively borrowed a laptop and fired off some emails. “I love you very much. I love you ridiculously!” she wrote to her husband,adding,“Please don’t worry,
I have my wits about me and I am strong.” She also wrote to her mother,Jenny,saying she hoped to be home in a few days,but if not,and Jenny hadn’t heard from her,to please call the embassy.
Her grandmother,Marjorie Cameron,who lives in a retirement village at Laurieton,on the NSW Mid North Coast,vividly remembers getting the news that she was being held in Iran. “Jenny came up to see me and she told me,” says Cameron,now 97. “And look,I was absolutely shocked. I couldn’t believe that could happen.” Like other family members,she was sworn to silence. “Jenny said,‘The government doesn’t want us to let anybody know that Kylie has been detained in prison,because if it gets into the press,it might interfere with the negotiations.’ ” Cameron,a devout Anglican,asked if she could at least confide in her minister. “I just had to have somebody to talk to,” she tells me,“and I needed somebody else to pray for Kylie.”
In the beginning,Moore-Gilbert’s despair and confusion were compounded by her inability to understand the orders her jailers barked at her. She had studied two Middle Eastern languages,Arabic and Hebrew,but not the Iranian language,Farsi. “Not knowing what they were saying to me,not being able to communicate,that was just horrible,” she says. Nevertheless,she resisted making any serious attempt to learn. “I didn’t want to study Farsi because that would mean acknowledging to myself that I would be there for a long time.” When after six months she finally bit the bullet,and Ian Biggs brought her an English-Farsi dictionary and grammar book,“it became a reason to get up in the morning. It gave me a goal,and something to do.”
The battle to hold on to a sense of purpose was ongoing,because everything about life in the political prisoners’ section of Evin was designed to crush the inmates’ spirits. Whenever Moore-Gilbert stepped out of her cell,she had to put on a blindfold. For a trip to the clinic inside the prison grounds,she would be handcuffed. She wasn’t permitted to wear a bra under her prison uniform of a pink knee-length coat and baggy pink pants. “It was a deliberate strategy of humiliation,” she says. “Dehumanisation,also.”
Whenever Moore-Gilbert stepped out of her cell,she had to put on a blindfold. For a trip to the clinic inside the prison grounds,she would be handcuffed.
Each prisoner was assigned a number. To Moore-Gilbert’s chagrin,guards often addressed her as 97029 rather than use her name. “I’d always say,‘I’m a human being! I’m not a number.’ ” As proof of her existence,she sometimes sang at the top of her voice,belting out the collected works of Destiny’s Child,say,or the entire Amy Winehouse albumBack to Black. Inevitably,the wretchedness of her situation gradually wore her down. She didn’t attempt suicide,as was later reported,but she certainly thought about it. “My understanding of myself as a unique human being with a personality and a character,with likes and dislikes,with talents,with a moral compass,with dreams and ambitions,slowly diminished,” she writes in her book. “I was losing myself. I was becoming 97029.”
The food was barely edible and the squalor deeply disheartening. Moore-Gilbert tells me she never got over her horror at the “filthy,disgusting,squat toilet that hadn’t been cleaned for god knows how many months,if ever. They said,‘We can’t give you cleaning chemicals because you’ll drink them and kill yourself.’ I said,‘You clean it then.’ My first hunger strike,that was one of my demands:‘I want someone to pour bleach into the toilet.’ ”
She went on seven hunger strikes in all. The first 48 hours were usually the hardest,she says. After that,the stomach cramps subsided and her blood pressure fell to the point where she passed the time dozing. She realised she was risking permanent damage to her health,but starving herself was quite an effective way of getting the prison bosses’ attention. Also,the strikes gave her a feeling of empowerment,as if she had some measure of control over her fate. Deep down,she knew that this was an illusion. In truth,her fate was in the hands of the man she knew as Qazi Zadeh. “He had complete and utter power over me.”
Ibrahim Qazi Zadeh – which she’s sure wasn’t his real name – was an enigmatic figure. Though he was wholly in charge of Moore-Gilbert’s case,she never completely understood his larger role in the regime. He was head of legal affairs in the IRGC’s intelligence branch,as far as she knew,but seemed to have his finger in many pies. Moore-Gilbert describes him as tall,broad-shouldered and completely bald,with striking blue-green eyes. He had a deep,melodic voice,and unlike most Revolutionary Guards,wore good suits.
The other thing about Qazi Zadeh? “He was a psychopath. A 100 per cent,genuine,bona fide psychopath. Extremely intelligent. Always operating on multiple levels,playing multiple games,manipulating everybody,including his own colleagues.”
He would taunt Moore-Gilbert,telling her,for instance,that Australian embassy staff knew she was guilty,or assuring her that she would be buried in Iran. At other times he would play good cop,claiming he was on her side and that he would organise her release if only she agreed to switch allegiances and spy for the Islamic Republic. “It was this weird relationship,” says Moore-Gilbert,who came to realise that he had a crush on her. More than that,actually. “He was in love with me. It was clear to everyone,not just me.”
The knowledge was useful to her:“I was always trying to leverage that weakness in him – his partiality for me – to benefit myself.” But her response wasn’t entirely cold-blooded. She admits she felt a real connection with him.
On his frequent visits to the prison,“We had a lot of intellectual conversations,and flirty banter was going on as well,” she says. “It was probably Stockholm syndrome.” Loneliness no doubt came into it,too. “I was in solitary. I had nobody else to talk to.”
Qazi Zadeh was appalled by Moore-Gilbert’s behaviour during the meeting with Biggs. In Iran,women aren’t supposed to shake hands with men to whom they’re not related,much less seize them around the legs. Neither are they supposed to hurl sweary abuse at Revolutionary Guards. As retribution,he cut her off from the outside world,stopping consular visits and prohibiting phone calls. Books that Biggs had delivered were withheld from her. The crackdown was a strategic error,in Moore-Gilbert’s view. Rather than have a chastening effect,it made her more defiant. “I wasn’t afraid of them any more,” she says. “They couldn’t take anything away from me:I’d already been banned from everything. I had nothing to lose.”
A couple of months later,during an exercise period in a prison courtyard,she scaled a two-metre-high corrugated-iron fence and climbed onto the roof of the interrogation building. It was exhilarating to feel the breeze in her hair and the sun on her face. She took in the panoramic view of the sprawling city.
“Salaam,Tehraaaaan!” she shouted jubilantly. When guards appeared,she said she would jump off the roof unless access to her books,consular visits and phone calls was restored. She also demanded that she have her day in court. The verdict was a foregone conclusion – she knew she would be found guilty – but she wanted to get the trial behind her.
Abolqasem Salavati,who presided over Moore-Gilbert’s case,is known in Iran as “the hanging judge”. (Dissident journalist Ruhollah Zam,convicted of “spreading corruption on earth” andexecuted in December 2020,was among those he’s sent to the gallows.) Though Moore-Gilbert expected no mercy from Salavati,she was knocked for six when in August 2019 he sentenced her to 10 years’ jail,the maximum term possible,for “cooperation in espionage for the tyrannical Zionist regime”. In the custom of the Islamic Revolutionary Court,she was handed a piece of paper and invited to write a response. “I am still free,” she wrote,“because freedom is an attitude,freedom is a state of mind.”
By this time,Moore-Gilbert had acquired two cell-mates – Niloufar Bayani and Sepideh Kashani who,with six other members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation,had been arrested on espionage charges while filming and researching endangered animals. Moore-Gilbert had grown close to the pair and knew they would support her when she returned from court after the sentencing. What she didn’t predict was that the cell would erupt in a strange kind of celebration. “We were dancing and singing and crying,just an explosion of emotion,” she says. The three women laughed until tears rolled down their cheeks,overwhelmed by the sheer absurdity of their shared plight. “Freedom is an attitude,freedom is a state of mind!” Bayani whooped. “Isn’t that the slogan of one of those luxury watch brands?” (Moore-Gilbert has dedicated her book to Bayani and Kashani,who are still in prison.)
The longer she was in Iran,the less Moore-Gilbert allowed herself to pine for home. “I told myself,‘This is your new life,’ ” she says. “I taught myself not to think about Australia and not to think about my life before I came to Iran,including not thinking about my family,not thinking about my job,just trying to focus on the here and now.” In a way,the ban on phone calls had been a blessing. Her irregular,rushed conversations with her parents always left her distressed,she says,“because they drew me back to my old life. I preferred to keep the wall up and pretend none of it existed.”
As the first anniversary of her arrest approached,Moore-Gilbert’s family was still being told not to talk about it. Marjorie Cameron struggled under the strain:“Going about the day as if everything was okay – it was really hard.”
When people asked after her granddaughter,she kept her answers vague. “I’d say,‘I haven’t heard from her for a while’ or something like that.” Moore-Gilbert tells me her sister took calls from some of her friends,baffled that she no longer responded to their messages and emails. “Belinda would say something really ambiguous,like,‘She’s going through a really hard time at the moment and can’t be in contact,but she’s still your friend.’ ”
“I understand how quiet diplomacy is supposed to work. But the fact was,it had not produced results. Was Kylie home? Was she being treated well? The answer to both questions was no.”
Word had spread quite fast in academic circles,says Australian National University lecturer Jessie Moritz. “But as soon as you found out,you were told to be quiet.” Moritz,based at ANU’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies,initially accepted the need for discretion,given that delicate diplomatic manoeuvring was said to be going on behind the scenes. But as time went by,she and others started wondering whether it mightn’t be better for Moore-Gilbert’s predicament to be publicised. “I understand how quiet diplomacy is supposed to work,” she says. “But the fact was,it had not produced results. Was Kylie home? Was she being treated well? The answer to both questions was no.”
Moore-Gilbert herself was increasingly frustrated by the secrecy surrounding the case. What her colleagues didn’t know was that she had started urging her parents to go to the media within a couple of months of her arrest. Marjorie Cameron understands why they were reluctant to take that step:“It was all so foreign to them. They had no idea. They could only be guided by what the government said was the best way to do it.”
The story of Moore-Gilbert’s incarceration finally broke in September 2019,a year after she’d been arrested. That December,the US-based Centre forHuman Rights in Iran published letters she’d managed to have smuggled out of Evin,in which she said her physical and mental health were deteriorating. She said,too,that she felt abandoned and forgotten. In a letter addressed toPrime Minister Scott Morrison,she wrote:“Please,I beg you to do whatever it takes to get me out.”
Individuals sprang into action. In Wales,a man called Phil started achange.org petition calling for Moore-Gilbert’s release,and more than 250,000 people signed it. A“Free Kylie” website and Facebook group popped up. As the pandemic took off in early 2020,Victorian film and television special effects supervisor John Sanderson found himself part of an online coalition intent on helping Moore-Gilbert in any way it could. Says Sanderson:“We were total strangers to each other,stuck in different countries and time zones in a locked-down world,with nothing but an encrypted group chat and a common objective.”
Lobbying parliamentarians was one method of putting pressure on the Australian government to bring Moore-Gilbert home. Keeping her name in the news was another. When her supporters learnt she had been transferred in mid-2020 toQarchak women’s penitentiary,a grim establishment in the desert east of Tehran,and was running in a tiny prison yard to keep up her morale,they organised a #WeRunWithKylie event to mark the second anniversary of her arrest.
“We had people running in Canada and Qatar and South Africa – just all over the place,” says Sanderson. On her 800th day in prison,the campaigners attached bamboo sticks to 800 blue cardboard butterflies and planted them in the lawn of St Paul’s Cathedral,in the Melbourne CBD. “It was such a huge number of sticks,” says Sanderson,who had bought tomato stakes at Bunnings and cut them into the right sized pieces. “I thought,‘My goodness,each one of these is a day in somebody’s life that they can never get back.’ ”
Three days later, Moore-Gilbert was abruptly removed from her cell and driven to the Revolutionary Guards’ grandiose Tehran headquarters. “She walked into the room understandably looking a little dazed,” remembers Nick Warner,then director-general of Australia’s peak intelligence agency,the Office of National Intelligence. Since soon after Moore-Gilbert’s arrest,Warner had led a team trying to stitch together a deal that would secure her release. A former Australian ambassador to Iran,he still had high-level contacts there. This was the first time he had met Moore-Gilbert. “I gave her a long hug,” he tells me,“and whispered in her ear,‘I’m taking you home.’ ”
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After one more night in prison,she was free. Her first stop was the residence of the current Australian ambassador,Lyndall Sachs,where she had a slap-up lunch and her first glass of wine since 2018. Offered coffee,she threw back two cups in quick succession. “She was bubbly,happy,chatty and focused,” Warner recalls. Says Moore-Gilbert:“I was probably tipsy,and high on caffeine.”
At the beginning of that week,an Airbus A319 chartered by the Australian government had flown from Canberra to Tehran,then on to Qatar,where it parked for a day. The next stop was Bangkok,where it picked up three Iranian prisoners – men who had been convicted of the attempted 2012 bombing of Israeli diplomats in Thailand. The Airbus returned them to Tehran. A few hours later,Moore-Gilbert boarded the plane with Warner for the trip home to Australia. She tells me that,even after take-off,she half-expected to be snatched back by the Revolutionary Guards. “Qazi Zadeh had actually said,‘If you’re on a plane,I can make a call and re-route that plane,force it to land.’ Until we left Iranian airspace,I had that nagging fear at the back of my mind.”
Iran has a history of “hostage diplomacy” – arbitrarily arresting foreign citizens on trumped-up charges and exacting a high price for their release. Moore-Gilbert’s freedom had been granted as part of a prisoner swap:she was exchanged for the three convicted terrorists. The Australian government stands by its handling of the case. Moore-Gilbert’s release was achieved through “careful and considered diplomatic engagement”,says a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In the government’s opinion,“a public media campaign would not have offered the best chance of a positive outcome”.
Moore-Gilbert disagrees. Though she can’t say definitively that public campaigning helped get her out of jail,she strongly suspects it gave new urgency to the negotiations,which she gets the impression had been moving at a glacial pace. She has no doubt the campaigning was responsible for an improvement in the way she was treated in prison. “There was a direct benefit to me of having a spotlight on my conditions,” she says. “I saw that the Revolutionary Guards were responsive to public pressure,even though they claimed they weren’t.”
To Hadi Ghaemi,executive director of the Centre for Human Rights in Iran,there seems no advantage to a hush-hush approach to hostage negotiations. “I have never seen it work,” he says. Ghaemi knows that,for Moore-Gilbert,the story is not over. “We are seeing a lot of innocent lives ruined through these imprisonments. The healing process is very challenging.”
The house in the Dandenong Ranges is Moore-Gilbert’s haven. She tells me as we drink tea and nibble Persian Love Cake that she worried,while in Iran,about whether her mortgage payments were being made. “Everyone kept saying,‘You’re in prison! Who cares about finances?’ But this was a life I had been building for myself. I saved for a decade to buy this house. I had a scholarship for my PhD but I worked two or three jobs sometimes,to pay for my living expenses during my studies,so I could save all my scholarship for a house deposit.” She runs daily in the surrounding forest,breathing the clean air and savouring the sensation of being embraced by nature.
Nick Warner is hugely impressed by Moore-Gilbert. “An amazing person,” he says. “So strong. So smart. How do you teach yourself Farsi in solitary confinement?” She tells me that another of her mental exercises was committing to memory the events of each day from the time of her arrest. She would pace up and down in her cell for hours,going over and over the details of incidents and conversations. “Memorisation was an intellectual challenge and a way of keeping my brain occupied,” she says. On the plane home,she started jotting it all down. This was the raw material forThe Uncaged Sky.
Writing the book has forced her to re-examine some painful experiences,but the process has had a cathartic side. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened to me,” she says. “Sometimes even dreaming about it. Now I would like to put it to one side and move on.” Moore-Gilbert has no bitterness towards Iran. “It’s a beautiful country,” she says. And ordinary Iranians are wonderful people – “so hospitable and friendly and warm”. Her interest in the Middle East is undiminished. “If anything,I’m more interested in the Middle East.”
Imprisonment has made her reassess her priorities,though,and she has quit her job at the University of Melbourne. “I’m cynical about academia. I love teaching,and I love research. But teaching isn’t valued,and nobody really cares about research. It’s all about chasing the grants,the money. Higher education is just in a terrible state.”
She says in her book that Iran profoundly changed her:“Some of these changes have been positive. I am more confident and assertive,and I am more of a risk-taker. I back myself. But prison has also made me a lot more guarded and emotionally cautious. I am slow to trust,and slow to let people in.” Not that she has turned her back on romance. “I’m dating someone and I’m happy in that new relationship,” she tells me.
Her friends insist she is still the Kylie they have always known. “She’s probably sick of us saying,‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ Because she actually is doing really well,” says Jessie Moritz. Long-time friend Hannah Kunert is slightly more cautious:“If anyone can get over something like this,she’s the one. But I think it will take time.” Moore-Gilbert hasn’t decided what she will do with the rest of her life. “I’m not particularly worried,” she says. “I feel like I’ll just go with the flow and I’ll find something.” Before I leave,she packs the rest of the cake into a plastic container. She insists I take it home with me.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert will feature on60 Minutes on Sunday,March 27. She will speak at theWheeler Centre,Melbourne on March 29 and at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on May 21.
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