This March Nazanin was released from Evin to her parents temporarily, with a 300m range ankle tag.  

Initially, she was required to check in weekly for return, or a ‘clemency’ decision, which never came. The days became 9 months of lockdown. No one (even the Embassy) dared visit.

Lately the temperature raised. A new court case was opened, then adjourned, with the threat of more years. There has been a new crackdown of arrests and executions. We wait for normal life.

Throughout it, Nazanin has been cooking, a legacy of prison.

In Evin, food is about mental health as much as physical. Sometimes moreso. Most arrive from solitary with their appetite withdrawn. When Nazanin first came out, all she ate was cheese puffs. It took her time to trust and share.  

Her isolation was broken down through food. Sometimes so much depends upon a warm meal table, or two cups of tea.

In the public ward, they took cooking seriously. It revived an appetite for life. For a world of bare cupboards, the women spent considerable efforts planning meals, with elaborate schemes, even battles for certain ingredients or fresh fruit or vegetables brought by the prison shop.

Mealtimes helped absorb uncertainty. Their routines broke up the day, with projects that filled time and feelings. Busy fingers quietened busy minds. Ordinary life goes on in extreme circumstances, precisely because normality is needed.

Food also helped hold onto the world outside. Last year Nazanin was sent coffee by a politician who visited our #hungry4justice tent. The women shared it in treasured sips in the yard, remembering other coffees in the sun, savouring stories from faraway lives. It helped remind them: they are in prison, not of the prison.

They nourish this sense through cooking. The women continually invite each other to mark the occasions passing outside, like the Bahai bicentennial or the Islamic Eid. Celebrations always centred on a long meal table, with lunch and laughter spread.

Food had other ways of reaching across walls.

In solitary, the only thing Nazanin’s family could bring to visits was fruit. Her father brought baskets, as a memento of care. In the public ward, families subsidise prison rations. For a commission, prisoners can order many extra things. It helps cover the cost of their own imprisonment.

On visiting days, the women prisoners made edible treats for their families. Hospitality is always a marker of home. For Nazanin, making breads and biscuits for her little girl allowed her to be briefly mum again. Gabriella would sit on Nazanin’s lap, resting her head on Nazanin’s chest as she ate.

For absent children prisoners would bake birthday cakes and celebrate vicariously, especially when no phonecall was allowed. Other prisoners send food home to absent relatives, even overseas.

Following release, many prisoners still pay for meals in Evin for special occasions. This Eid the prisoners sent cakes for the children in the nextdoor ward. Nazanin cooked sholeh zard for the families of her cellmates – to travel when she could not.  

Yet food is also a kind of safety.

When Nazanin was first taken, for months Gabriella would not eat outside her grandmother’s presence. For months, she wouldn’t eat at nursery or in a restaurant, sensing the tensions of a family watched. Our first agency is the refusal to eat.

On prison visits she wouldn’t eat often what Nazanin made. I’ll have mine later, mummy. As she grew, she realised how sad it made mummy, but frequently the expectation was much, she’d announce she didn’t like what mummy had cooked, tears rolling down her cheeks.

In London Gabriella still likes safe foods: plain pasta, fruit, butter and bread. Life already has enough seasoning. Settling into school was marked by eating more school dinner. Then lockdown a summer of stand offs, and her wanting to sit on my lap and be fed, clarifying it did not mean she was a baby.  

Food marks control also in Evin. The new warden’s first act was to cut rations. Nazanin never ate prison bread because of the bromides added to suppress prisoner appetites. Safe bread is why the families bought a ward oven.

And there is the shadow of the hunger strike, the only way to claim control in injustice. Though trauma plays deep tricks on appetites. Self-control often overlaps with self-blame as the sadness settles in.

And eating has its anxieties. Often women prisoners reproach themselves for filling out during days of lethargy. Released female prisoners confront criticisms – if prison’s so bad, look how fat they’ve become.

Each year we have hung from Nazanin’s One Day Tree our hopes for a different becoming.

This year Nazanin has been collecting recipes with her cellmates to make a ‘Tastes of Freedom’ cookery book – what they cooked in Evin to keep hope and home alive. Gabriella has made some biscuits with the help of the daughter of Anoosheh another British hostage in Iran.

This festive period we are looking for your #tastesoffreedom, what you eat to remind yourself you once lived in normal times. Please post below:

·       Your favourite meal and why

·       Your comfort food during hope-starved times

·       What you cook to cheer your family up, or the meals you remember your parents (or grandparents) making

·       What food still reminds you of home

We will hang them from Nazanin’s One Day Tree in West Hampstead with ribbons (and tinsel) this weekend.

For those online, we hope you might cook one recipe between 20-22 December (Yalda in Iran, the turn of winter), and post perhaps with a picture and explanation and #tastesoffreedom.

We aim to include a collage in our Evin cookery collection.

To a better tasting 2021…