`I Feel Like A Real Rip Van Winkle' -- American Kept Hope 11 Years In Iranian Prison

SAVANNAH, Ga. - For some, bread is the staff of life. For David Rabhan, during 11 years in Iranian prisons, bread was the stuff of sanity.

Rabhan, 64, returned home to the United States barely 26 hours after being set free by his captors in Iran. In his hand, he clutched a small, tattered cardboard box.

Inside was a meticulously detailed sculpture, no more than 4 inches high, of an American eagle, its talons extended, snatching a surprised rabbit from the underbrush.

Sculpted from bread. Six years ago. In his cell.

``A lot of other prisoners, some of the younger ones, spent a lot of time remembering old experiences, wanting their lives to be like they were,'' Rabhan recalled as he flew home last Friday from Tehran. ``I kept myself busy. I kept myself distracted. And it kept me sane.

``When I was a kid my mother used to send me to my room, and she collected all my toys. I learned how to play alone. That witch,'' he said with wry affection. ``She taught me how to cope . . .''

Erwin David Rabhan, inmate at 13 Iranian jails since he was first arrested in August 1979, is a survivor. A businessman from Georgia, he was charged with violating Iranian financial laws and then, on suspicion of spying, lived through solitary confinement, the psychological hell of repeatedly postponed freedom and physical mistreatment.

Rabhan's imprisonment drew little attention in the United States, and the State Department never classified him as a hostage. Besides his family and an old friend, former President Jimmy Carter, few were aware of his plight. Rabhan was once Carter's pilot.

Upon his release, Rabhan's weight was down, and his skin was sallow and slack from years behind bars. But he had lost none of the inner strength ascribed to him by family and friends. Rabhan said his toughness was his most valuable resource in a world within walls.

Rabhan did not give many details of his treatment in prison. He fears retribution against friends and the loss of his financial investment in Iran, which remains substantial. Rabhan said only that his treatment for the past two years in Evin Prison in northwestern Iran was ``far better'' than it had been earlier.

On the flight home, Rabhan tried to unburden himself of the memories of his ordeal. Not used to speaking English for long periods of time, he occasionally lapsed into Farsi, the Iranian language, and his jokes were tinged with bitterness.

``People have asked me how the food was in jail,'' he said. ``I told them: `Don't go to jail for the food.' ''

His cellmates included fellow American Jon Pattis, 54, Englishman Roger Cooper and German Helmut Szcmkus, all accused of spying. Pattis remains in prison.

In jail, Rabhan made his own clothing. On the plane, he removed a pair of shoes he had received since his release from Evin Prison, and put on a pair of green woolen socks, which Rabhan had reinforced on the sole and ankle with pieces of carpet.

``I lived in these,'' he said.

He said one of his methods of passing time in his cell was to work intently with bread. He would remove the doughy centers from his bread ration, moisten them and carefully fashion sculptures of eagles, other animals or human heads. The one he brought home was protected for years.

Rabhan said he also used bread to make beads, which he used to time his exercise routines - mostly pacing in his cell - after his electric watch gave out. When he completed a ``lap,'' he moved one of the beads along a string.

``If you're going to jail,'' Rabhan joked, ``take a watch that you can wind.''

``I was in a conscious coma,'' he said of his imprisonment. ``I feel like a real Rip van Winkle.''

Both Rabhan and Iranian authorities have said his friendship with Carter was a factor in his lengthy detention. When Carter ran for governor in Georgia in 1970, Rabhan had been his pilot.

Carter, who greeted Rabhan at Atlanta's Hartsfield airport, downplayed his role in helping secure Rabhan's release.

``Eventually the Iranians reassessed David's case and found that he really wasn't guilty of any crime,'' said Carter, who was accompanied by his wife, Rosalynn, and son Jeff.

Ninty minutes later, Rabhan, his blue-gray eyes red from exhaustion and wet from emotion after saying farewell to the Carters, could not explain the change in the attitude toward him by the Iranian authorities. But he said the motives were likely political, part of the ongoing power struggle between conservatives and hard-line Moslem fundamentalists.

``I don't know why I was there in jail for so long, so I cannot determine whether I was a hostage,'' said Rabhan. ``I was accused of being a spy, but I don't really know what they wanted me for. I knew I was being held for reasons other than supposed violations of law.''

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Rabhan had developed a number of successful businesses in Iran, including ones that produced mother's-milk substitutes, grain-based food supplements, snacks and breads made with fish-protein concentrate and children's clothing.

Rabhan said he earned seven-figure profits, employed more than 200 Iranians and produced goods needed by the developing nation's economy.

``The people that arrested me didn't care about their own country,'' Rabhan said angrily. ``They just wanted to feather their own nest by capturing an American.''

In 1988, Carter wrote on behalf of his old friend to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offering to serve as a ``neutral channel'' to encourage the release of Americans.

Iran's supreme leader rejected the offer but shortly afterward the treatment of Rabhan and Pattis, who has been imprisoned since 1986, began to improve. They were allowed to send and receive mail and receive small packages of food and clothing.

Rabhan said Pattis is resigned. ``He doesn't fight it. He believes the issue of his freedom is based on nothing more or less than the relationship between Iran and the United States,'' he said.

His sister, Joan Jacobson, accompanied him on the flight by commuter plane to Savannah Airport. Shortly before the landing, Rabhan's gruff, wisecracking exterior finally gave way. Both he and his sister wept.

He had toughed it out for so long. Finally, he was home.

A boyhood friend, Phillips Hamilton, met Rabhan and Jacobson at the airport. At the apartment of his mother, Frances Rabhan, Rabhan spoke by telephone with his three children, planning visits to Florida, Missouri and New York to meet his nine grandchildren for the first time.

His sister seemed almost more relieved than her brother at the end of the family nightmare. ``David is still David,'' Jacobson said.