Homa Hoodfar merely wanted to escape Montreal’s cold weather and visit friends and family. Instead, the 65-year-old Concordia university professor found herself in a three-month nightmare, held in Iran’s infamous Evin prison, not sure when, or if, she would ever get out.

“It was tough last year, being in Montreal with so much snow and alone, remembering (her recently deceased spouse,” she said.

Upon arriving in Iran, Hoodfar said she never would have thought she was under suspicion. She spent her time in the country meeting with people associated with her field of study, feminism.

 “They tried to tell me, we’ve been watching you for the past so many months. I know they probably do have files on people who do social sciences because to them, social sciences are a criminal activity.”

Her arrest came as a shock.

“I was packing. At 4 o’clock, I opened the door and here they were. One woman and five or six men who came in and started searching my apartment. They handed me a letter that said I had to go to court for charges that were specified in the file, but at that time there was no file.”

Over the next three days, Hoodfar would meet with interrogators who asked questions about her background in research.

Her books were seized and her computer files searched. Still, she did not panic, knowing this is not an uncommon experience for academics in Iran. Hoodfar said it was her work studying feminist issues in foreign countries that aroused the suspicion of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

“I knew I had done nothing wrong,” she said.  “Initially, I thought they were trying to understand what I was doing. This went on after I went to court and they released me on bail, the interrogation continued.”

While out on bail, she was still unable to leave the country. She soon realized her situation was part of a larger political game.

“I knew the (Iranian) conservatives had lost very badly in the election,” she said. “Rather than accepting they had lost the popular support, they were trying to blame that on foreign intervention and I just happened to be there.”

While her family pushed for her to go public with her ordeal, she resisted, thinking it would only further draw the ire of the government’s unelected religious authority.

Eventually, she was called to court, where her bail was increased by five times. Without the resources to pay, she was taken to prison.

“The conditions in the cell were very small, there was no natural light,” she said. “The first few days I was alone and then they moved me from cell to cell.”

Desperate for a taste of normalcy, she began to study her fellow prisoners – doing anthropology within the jail, scratching notes into the walls of her cell with the edge of her toothbrush.

“It was surreal, but it was like George Orwell’s 1984,” she said. “It became a lot easier to deal with.”

Hoodfar said there was no physical abuse but the psychological aspect could be brutal. Guards would tell her she would never get out; once, they played her the music that had been played at her husband’s funeral.  Suffering health issues with her vocal chords, the guards would force her to talk louder.

“They did other things to other inmates, but with me, they were trying to make me cry,” she said.

Bizarrely, she found some of the prison conditions oddly respectful, noting the guard’s would bring her food and wouldn’t swear at her.

The professor attributed some of that good treatment to the case of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who died after being imprisoned in Iran in 2003. She said the Iranian guards and government are aware of how that incident affected international perception of the country.

She was told she could be released if she promised to not partake in any political activities in Iran and expressed regret for what she had done.

“I said I have nothing to regret, but in my court case, I had objected to the verdict, which was seven years,” she said.

She was given bail, released and given permission to return to Canada.

Hoodfar returned to Montreal last week, having finally gained freedom after months of petitions from academics and diplomatic negotiations. She said she is overwhelmed by the support and discovery of the efforts made to gain her freedom, saying the flood of flowers and letters “feels like my wedding.”

“I’m back and sometimes I have to pinch myself that I can walk, or make a cup of tea or phone my friends if I want,” she said. “I haven’t started to process what happened.”