British-Iranian former charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has spoken about the unusual ways she coped with more than five years of imprisonment in Iran, including secretly watching television shows, cooking pizza, exercising and sewing clothes for her daughter and fellow prisoners.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe was detained in Iran in 2016 and held at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison after being accused of spying, a charge she denied. She was eventually released in March 2022 after the UK repaid a longstanding multimillion-pound debt owed to Iran.
Speaking at the Big Brue festival in Somerset, she described how she and other prisoners used small activities to maintain a connection with life outside prison.
Among the items secretly brought into the prison were USB sticks containing episodes of television programmes, including Breaking Bad, Prison Break and Orange Is the New Black. She said watching the programmes gave the women a reminder of the lives they had before imprisonment.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe also recalled dancing with fellow prisoners using secretly obtained Zumba videos and finding ways to cook food inside the prison. She became particularly known among the women for making pizza after arranging for an oven to be sent to the prison.
She also discovered sewing as a way to occupy her time. After receiving permission to use a prison sewing machine, she began making clothes for her young daughter and other prisoners.
The activity eventually developed beyond a way of passing time. Her experience with sewing later contributed to a collaboration with the Imperial War Museum and Liberty’s fabric department, resulting in three designs reflecting her experience of imprisonment.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe also described taking significant risks to obtain small freedoms inside prison. At one point, she secretly brought in a Swiss Army knife, reasoning that she was already serving a lengthy sentence and felt there was little more the authorities could do to her.
Her account also highlighted the psychological strain of prolonged imprisonment. Although she was eventually freed, she said the experience continues to affect her.
Sewing has remained an important source of comfort. She said that during a period of military attacks on Iran, when communications were disrupted and she was unable to establish the whereabouts of her parents, sewing gave her something she could still control.
Her experience has become an example of how prisoners can use creativity, friendship and small acts of normality to cope with extreme circumstances.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s story also draws attention to the wider issue of people detained in Iran in politically sensitive cases and the consequences such imprisonment can have long after release.
More than four years after her release, she continues to use sewing as a form of personal expression while speaking publicly about the experience of being imprisoned and separated from her family.
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