Freed hostage Rezaian says return not always easy

Freed Iranian hostage Jason Rezaian of The Washington Post, happily reunited with his wife and thankful for their “wonderful reception,” called their 37 months of freedom “a full ride, sometimes rocky.”

“It’s not been easy,” Rezaian said Monday evening at a National Press Club Headliners Book Rap, which was held to note publication of his book, "Prisoner."

He and Club President Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak chatted from chairs on the Club ballroom’s stage. Midway through their conversation, Kodjak invited Rezaian’s wife Yeggi, who was born and raised in Iran, to join them. Holding hands occasionally, the couple recalled they had met in Iran and were married only 15 months before they were arrested there for being spies.

Soon after the arrests, the couple was separated with Rezaian being sent to the notorious Evin Prison. Yeggi, when released 72 days later, was unable to have a cell phone or communicate about the media and was followed everywhere.

Rezaian himself was born in Marin County, Calif., son of an Iranian father and an American mother. He acknowledged “my career was really taking off” as he rose from stringer to correspondent to Tehran bureau chief for the Post. Then came the arrests and "544 Days in an Iranian Prison,” the subtitle of his memoir.

Since being freed, Rezaian said they have found themselves buried in the mundane. He said he had to negotiate with the Internal Revenue Service to avoid a penalty for taxes unpaid during his captivity. Furthermore, his Iranian wife's immigration status is “up in the air,” so he faced a lot of paperwork the first six months, he said.

Perhaps worse, in what was referred to as “subtle harassment,” Rezaian said "there were things said and done that surfaced on the social media that only my captors would have known. We’re still watched.”

In answer to a question, Rezaian said the U.S. government has not shown consistency in dealing with hostage situations. As for his own case, Rezaian said he knew that “I’m not going to get out until the President of the United States decides that I have to get out. I believe that to my very core.”

Yeggi Rezaian said that a change or administration creates a problem when new staff do not know the details of hostage situations.

One day, a Kurdish cell mate told Rezaian that President Obama had mentioned him in a speech and said in coded language, “That means you'll be going home,” Rezaian recalled. Boxing great Mohammad Ali was an American who spoke out, unusual because in Iran he was considered a great Moslem hero.

Yeggi Rzaian said her husband told her during a visit, “I don’t want the media to write about my case (as much as) I want my high school friend, my teachers to write about me. Just normal, humanizing stories. The more they write about me as a normal human being.” She added: “Those were very, very effective.”

“If we had kept quiet, I’d probably still be setting in the same cell,” Rezaian said. “There are so many cases we don’t hear about.” "

Rezaian demurred when asked about contacts with the 52 hostages who were taken in 1979 and held for the duration of the Carter administration. But he said said 44 of them had accepted his rug merchant father's offer of $1,000 worth of rugs.