Speaking about his time in prison, Ebtehaj said: “They kept me blindfolded in a hallway next to a toilet for 84 days. I slept on the floor tiles. They moved me to a small cell afterward.” In an interview, Ebtehaj recalled the day he and his cellmate heard the iconic song, Ey Saraye Omid” (“Place of Hope”), played on the prison’s loudspeakers. “I broke into tears as soon as the song came on the loudspeakers,” Ebtehaj said. “My cellmate asked me why I was crying. I said because I wrote the lyrics for that song. He asked why I was in prison if I had written that song.”