In Iran it has all gone quiet – there have been a number of religious feast days. The authorities have said nothing more to the family since their visit. They have never said anything to me anyway. It is Nazanin’s father who has to deal most with this silence, who the family turn to for an answer. He was the one who went to the airport repeatedly in the early days without response. He had to find people with connections, and amongst the minefields of opportunists for a fee - find some they could trust. He was the one at the end of the telephone when the Revolutionary Guard finally called, handling their instructions, and bringing our family through that 1,000km trip. And he is the one to keep spirits up that it will all be ok. My father-in-law is a kind, open-hearted man, someone the wider family turn to in a family dispute. Nazanin is very proud of him. He was the one who welcomed me into their family when I first came to ask for Nazanin’s hand. He stressed the universals – the importance of doing what you can for your family, that differences in culture and in religion do not deeply matter. There is one God, he said. One God, one wife. Am I clear? One wife. Our relationship now is in a very different place. It currently relies on an almost blind trust of each other learning to do the best for Nazanin in different contexts, without a common language. His role is talking to the Iranian authorities. In this conversation, much remains in the silences. His attempts to deliver letters requesting clarifications to eminent officials and clerics have not been simple. Often they have not received them in the first instance – we know about the case, and we’ll get back to you. Just before I went public, his planned meeting with the Office of the Supreme Leader was cancelled. He has never complained. In this silence there is a lot of waiting. In Iran there is a tradition of claiming your rights largely through enduring, going every day to the government office or prison and waiting silently – whether for one’s right to a family visit, for one’s confiscated papers to be returned (or at least be told where to wait), for the discretionary telephone call, or charges, or discretionary release on a religious feast day. Our waiting could be worse. I was in Brussels last week with the son of Kamal Foroughi, whose father was not charged for a year after arrest, not told of those charges for a year after that. The Revolutionary Guard does not justify its actions in part because it can’t. It is a strange fantasy where a mother and baby on a family visit are a security threat. Half an hour’s questioning would have revealed that Nazanin does not work on Iran and was not planning to. Her and Gabriella’s treatment cannot be justified under Iranian, international or even Islamic law. End of, as my niece would say. But in part, the silence is the point. It is what keeps the Revolutionary Guard’s grip on the rest of Iranian society and government. The one rule Nazanin must keep above all others is not to talk about her case, even the prison manager is not told. It is part of why she was kept in solitary, long after they were actually asking her anything. This silence gives the Revolutionary Guard inflated sense of power, and mystery that there is some deep magic her interrogators are dealing with. It feeds rumours that there must be something. Keeping the enquiries secret also mask from view the misunderstandings of a provincial office, enjoying its 15 minutes on a national case, insulated from acknowledging mistakes. Keeping your family safe means many things in these circumstances. Most of all it means ensuring things get no worse, that no one else in the family is arrested as further punishment. Nazanin’s father has responsibility for that part of the family whose story does not end with a plane ride to London, but will continue their lives in Iran. So it also means those lives continuing, keeping up spirits in the face of this silence. It means taking his family to the park when down, buying his granddaughter strawberries (her current favourite), and tending to his own aged father-in-law when needed. It means keeping hold of the little things that make up the big ones, cherishing those parts of life that are still not broken, and keeping them whole for when a new day comes. Amongst my fears and outrage, that is a response to the silence I have to thank him for reminding me.