Moore-Gilbert was accused of being a Zionist spy, ostensibly due to her husband’s Russian-Jewish heritage and her own travels to Israel. Soon, she found herself in a two-square-metre cell in Evin, Iran’s most notorious political prison. Her panic was overwhelming, giving way, over weeks, to a numbing of her faculties. ‘The terror of being left alone … was greater even than my early fears of physical or sexual assault,’ she wrote. Hauntingly, she tracked time through the morning cries of parrots roosting nearby. When escorted to a small open-air balcony for hava khori (yard time: literally ‘eating air’), she gazed upwards. ‘The sky above our heads was uncaged and unlike us, free.’

In The Uncaged Sky, what ensues is an astonishing account of Moore-Gilbert’s 804 days in prison, first at Evin, then at the remote desert prison of Qarchak. In exquisite detail, she reports the psychological torture and unexpected reprieves of prison life: disgusting toilets and planted informants one day, a lenient warden the next. Along the way, complex relationships develop, not least with her case manager. This man, bizarrely, seems to harbour romantic notions for her, in a kind of reverse-Stockholm Syndrome. It’s a toxic dynamic where she is both rewarded and punished (think chocolate cake/interrogation). At her trial in June 2019, she was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to ten years in prison. She suspects that the Sepâh accepted her innocence but went on detaining her for ransom. As an inmate explains, ‘It’s not about determining whether you’re innocent or guilty, it’s about determining your price.’

In the face of this trauma, Moore-Gilbert’s resilience is jaw-dropping. In her finest moments, she plays jailyard soccer, pens secret letters, learns Farsi, celebrates Ramadan, and retains her sense of humour (‘Nice legs!’ she yells, clinging to an ambassador’s calves).  Despair and exhaustion shadow these high points, as does a gnawing alienation from her husband. Exasperated, she stages hunger strikes, and begins to defy and humiliate her captors. At times she wonders if these protests are counterproductive (as a family member of former political prisoners, I nodded at these concerns). ‘These men have egos – enormous, fragile ones,’ a friend warns her. Crucially, she is supported by other women through an ingenious system of hidden notes and solidarity.

In both Evin and Qarchak, Moore-Gilbert’s manoeuvring, whether tactical or mundane, is critical to her sense of control. One is reminded of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), an account of surviving Auschwitz.  Like Frankl, Moore-Gilbert seeks hope through small actions and personal encounters.  ‘What saved me was the sense that I was an active participant in my fate and destiny,’ she has since stated. To the judge who issued her sentence, she wrote, ‘I am still free, because freedom is an attitude, freedom is a state of mind.’

After protracted negotiations between Canberra and Tehran, Moore-Gilbert was released on 25 November 2020. Ironically, her emancipation began in confinement, this time in hotel quarantine. There, she received a final blow, confirmation of her marriage’s dissolution. In public appearances since, she appears relaxed, psychologically intact, and frank about her well-being. ‘I feel a bit detached from it,’ she has professed, ‘like it happened to someone else.’

Beyond its testimonial value, The Uncaged Sky illuminates broader issues. Moore-Gilbert was released as part of a prisoner exchange, where three Iranians charged with a bomb plot were freed in Thailand. This raises uncomfortable questions about Australia’s participation in, and hence enablement of, hostage-trading practices. (Moore-Gilbert has called for international frameworks to disincentivise these extortions.) Attention is also drawn to the treatment of imprisoned women in Iran. As reported by Amnesty International, and by some Iranian officials themselves, the sexual harassment and rape of prisoners by their interrogators have been alleged, and may be under-reported. This is an international human rights issue of ongoing concern. Western states, meanwhile, are not exonerated. Among developed nations, Australia retains perhaps the cruellest carceral system for refugees. As such, Moore-Gilbert’s work may invite comparisons with Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains (2018). Both memoirs bear witness to the arbitrary detention of civilians, for the political gain of a regime.

As a work of prison literature, The Uncaged Sky is an utterly engrossing book.  The repetitiveness of some sections may leave readers feeling exhausted; the effect may be intended to delay the author’s relentless ordeal. Here, the narrative could have benefited from providing summaries or synthesis; Moore-Gilbert’s analyses of hostage negotiations or Iranian politics, for example, are welcome and astute.  Authorial integrity is evident in her balanced, three-dimensional portrayals of her captors. ‘I saw the full spectrum of the human character among their ranks,’ she writes. In doing so, she resists the temptation to demonise all Iranians, instead finding that human decency, depravity, and ambivalence are universal and coexistent. In the prisoners who protect her,
or the guards who turn a blind eye, and indeed through her own machinations, we observe people caught in an oppressive system who seek out agency and self-expression – freedoms of a sort.