It was during a break, after six months of imprisonment, that I first discovered where I was being held. Usually the guards hurried us along, but on this occasion we were left to ourselves. A young man called Adel helped me get onto his shoulders so I could look through a small window. I immediately recognised the main communications tower in central Tehran and, from this, we figured out where we were.
We were permitted a quick shower only every two or three weeks. First the prisoners in the so-called ‘solitary’ cells were taken. After they had been it was the turn of those in the corridors, balconies and hallways. Each prisoner was given a piece of black, dried-out, stony soap. Between three to five prisoners would huddle under each of the five showerheads. The shower also served as a laundry and we would wash our uniforms as best we could. Under the showers we could take our blindfolds off, allowing a rare chance to see the faces of our fellow prisoners. In truth, these were my happiest moments in prison. Of course, the guards were always watching, making sure that we did not try and communicate. When 20 minutes were up, we would put on our dripping clothes and leave.
Mealtimes were not so much of a relief. We ate every eight hours, sitting down facing the wall and remained blindfolded. The prison food was tasteless, colourless and meagre. The heat was sometimes unbearable – the temperature can hit 44 degrees celsius in Tehran – and the thick grey walls were dank from sweat. Cigarettes were, of course, not permitted although we were given one cup of what resembled tea every 24 hours. This was between three and five o’clock in the morning, depending on the time of morning prayer. The yellow and foul-smelling drink was accompanied by between two and four cubes of sugar to last the whole day.
The prison had only one doctor, himself a prisoner, and once a week he was allowed to administer nothing more powerful than painkillers under the watchful eyes of the guards. Any smile or kind word would lead to severe repercussions. Prisoners in great pain would have to plead for medicine but unless they were dying the guards would often stop the doctor. ‘We need the medicine for the Islamic devotees fighting a holy war against Iraq,’ they would say.
Many prisoners had vicious wounds on the soles of their feet and contracted infections so severe that some of them died. Others were bleeding and in constant pain from broken bones. A few had even lost their sight in one eye. There were few who did not have some form of skin infection. Unsurprisingly, there was an ever-present stench from untreated wounds. Some of my fellow prisoners caught severe fevers, chest infections and tuberculosis. Lice were everywhere.
The warmth of the sun, the smell of trees, the stars at night… all were distant memories. Each of our movements was calculated to form part of our torture. You might think that going to the bathroom would bring some relief to the prisoner who had been lying on a floor, blindfolded, facing the wall for ten hours. But not when one had to urinate or defecate in a matter of minutes surrounded by people in severe pain, many bleeding. I had blood in my urine for a long time. Others were affected by stomach disorders and needed more time than we were allowed.
All our activities were accompanied by an orchestra of horrifying noises. The most disturbing was the sound of cars stopping at the entrance late at night and in the early morning. They were bringing more victims. The main door would screech open and, within ten or twenty minutes, the prison would be filled with the chilling sound of someone experiencing the torture room for the first time. Each scream reminded me of the torture I experienced. It was impossible to block that sound out, let alone sleep through it. Listening to others being tortured was more demoralising for us than experiencing it personally.
Then there was the prison tannoy system. The authorities subjected prisoners to a constant barrage of readings from the Koran and other religious texts. They relayed speeches by leading clerics and government officials, from Khomeini downwards. Sometimes they played military marches or entreaties to support the regime’s war with Iraq, accompanied by constant bulletins crowing about the defeat of Iraqi forces and the supposed advance along the road to Baghdad and Jerusalem. Guards ran down the corridors while the reports blared, kicking us in the back indiscriminately and shouting, ‘You have turned your backs on God, Islam and Khomeini! You must repent or die!’ Some guards had themselves come from the frontline and were shell-shocked and unhinged. They were deliberately chosen to ‘guard’ their enemy. Mainly young, illiterate peasants, they were fooled into accepting the hell of the here and now by the promise of the next world.
There were just three sounds that were welcome: the food trolley, birdsong – a rarity in this urban prison – and the whirr of the overhead fans. I would breathe a sigh of relief when I heard one of those old fans spinning, heralding a much-needed breeze.
We never knew how long we had before torture began again. Day and night the guards would go back and forth, picking on prisoners. We were kept in a state of fear; a blow from a fist, clubs or boot could come at any time. You could be beaten for anything: putting your hands over your head, scratching your nose, touching your blindfold. An attack frequently resulted in bleeding ears, eyes and noses, or broken teeth and jaws.
On one occasion after torture I was taken back to the corridor where I was ordered to lie down. I was exhausted. My feet were bleeding and I was completely unable to hold myself up. No sooner had the guards bundled me into a corner than a boot smashed into my back.
‘Leave me alone!’ I screamed. ‘Let me die!’
‘You son of a bitch!’ the guard yelled back. ‘You’re trying to identify me by looking underneath your blindfold! I’ll kill you!’
‘Why have you attacked me?’
I was too drained to even think. I knew this guard, and had suffered at his hands before. He was universally feared. As he was shouting at me, a religious figure who was one of the prison directors was passing by. He stepped in.
‘Haji Johary [the guard] has lost four of his children fighting the Great Satan [America],’ the director said. ‘Two of them in Kurdistan fighting the communists, the other two were just 14 and 16 when they gave their lives on the front against Iraq. Haji Johary himself continuously visits the front, where he is directing groups of Khomeini fedais. He lost his dearest brother during one such operation and was himself injured in an explosion.
‘We’re fighting America and Israel, and you counter-revolutionaries say that the Islamic Republic is importing guns and ammunition from them! Our great Imam and his children the Hezbollahis are fighting against American imperialism and Soviet atheists and communists and you accuse us of trading oil for guns with them! You had better open your eyes and ears. This war is not against Iraq but, as Imam Khomeini has said, against the superpowers and that is the secret of the holy war which is being supervised by the Imam on Allah’s behalf. That’s the important point that you unbelievers have missed.
‘Our brother Haji Johary is still carrying shrapnel fragments from the Iraqi missile that hit his bunker. It has affected his mental balance. When he gets angry with you, he cannot control himself. Haji Johary is the ears and eyes of the great Khomeini here.’
I made no response and my wounds went untreated as normal. Like all of the political prisoners who populated the corridors, I made almost no contact with my neighbours. At most, you could glance under your blindfold at those lying either side of you, or count the feet of those passing by on their way to the showers or the bathroom. But trying to distinguish your comrades from the guards and torturers by their shoes was dangerous. Some guards would sneak up on us wearing black plastic prison sandals. At night, when there were fewer guards moving back and forth, it was a little easier to see comrades lying across from you.
If the hands and feet of the man next to you were not bruised or bleeding, you were suspicious. This mistrust was necessary as you had to identify those you could trust. An index of this was how many wounds they bore. This told you how resilient they had been under torture. A man with smooth hands had been no trouble for the torturer.
It did not take
long for me to decide that I needed to keep my mind active. I organised court proceedings in my head, in which I was the defendant. Each day I would present a very strong clear defence of freedom, democracy and social justice, explaining my reasons for participating in political activity and my struggle against the Islamic Republic. I repeated these court proceedings and each time I made them longer, until I fell asleep. But before long the cries of someone being tortured, my own pain, or a kick from a guard, would wake me.
Another pastime was following beams of light shining underneath cell doors late at night or rays of the sun glimmering through the doors to the balcony. But these distractions could do nothing to alleviate the mental effects of imprisonment and there can be no surprise in learning that in my corridor alone, some prisoners lost their minds completely. Their madness compounded the horror with their wailing, their banging of their heads against the walls, their tearing at their blindfolds, their cries for their mothers and fathers or their curses of Khomeini, God and Islam.
After about five months I was moved to what was called a solitary cell on the fourth floor. I pulled off my blindfold, expecting to find myself alone in a dark cell. But this three-by-three metre cell already contained more than 15 other prisoners. They sat, backs to the wall with their feet stretched out. After the soul-destroying isolation of the corridors, it almost felt like returning home to find a welcome party had been organised. But there were still drawbacks to life here. We frequently weren’t even given the chance to use the lavatory and we would have to use a plastic bag in the corner of the cell.
The inmates moved around to make room for me to sit and the introductions began. As I was clearly injured – the wounds on my feet were quite visible – I was given the best position. Once my back was propped up in a corner I was handed some blankets. I was given some biscuits that came from the families of prisoners who had been in the cell for over a year.
I was asked for my story and what I was charged with. I was wary in case there were any collaborators among my new cell mates. Some of them had not been tortured, though they were clearly shocked by my condition. I told them what I knew and I had some questions of my own. It emerged that ten of my cellmates were accused of membership of the Tudeh (Party of the Masses, a communist organisation). Five were there as a result of association with other left organisations: Rahe Kargar, Fedayeen Minority and Peykar (a Maoist organisation). There was also a young man from Kurdistan who was a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. He had been accused of infiltration and treason and had been in the cell for around two years. He couldn’t have been more than 20 years old. His beard was long and matted, and his face so pale and grey that it appeared that there was no blood in his veins. I was told that he continued to protest his innocence with unshakeable faith in the regime. Like so many of us, he was being held indefinitely without trial. He constantly exercised in his corner of the cell and made little effort to interact with the rest of us.
The ten Tudeh members had been captured through information given by their own leadership. General secretary Nooredin Kianoori announced the dissolution of the party on his own arrest and told members to give themselves up. Many did hand themselves over to Islamic prosecutors in Evin, Komiteh, or elsewhere. The party surrendered its membership lists with details of its structure throughout the country. In my cell the former Tudeh members had consensus on three points. Firstly, that the war with Iraq had been imposed on the regime by an imperialist conspiracy. Secondly, the regime was genuinely anti-imperialist. And thirdly, that it enjoyed mass popular support.
None of these ten men had been tortured… not yet, at least. They were mostly middle-class university students or professionals and I listened to their stories with great interest. Parvis used to work for an Iranian television station; Adel Zahmatkesh was a fourth-year dental student at the university of Tehran and had been Kianoori’s personal chauffeur for a time; another student, Mohsen, had been in his fourth year on an engineering degree; Shafagh was a doctor who told me that he had run a successful practice before he was arrested.
Parvis was adamant in his support for the regime’s war against Iraq, its genocidal policy against the Kurds, and the annihilation of left wing opposition – which stuck me as bizarre, since he himself was a victim of this. ‘If Imam Khomeini’s line is really a revolutionary one, why is it that the Islamic regime has arrested hundreds of thousands of the democratic and revolutionary forces, and killed and destroyed tens of thousands of them?’ I asked.
‘You people deserve what you get!’ said Parvis. ‘You have risen up against a popular revolutionary and anti-imperialist regime which is also an ally of the Soviet Union. Your politics does not support our people or any revolutionary cause – it only serves the interests of American imperialism.’ We hunched together for such discussions, speaking in hushed voices. Our exchanges became sharper rather than louder and other cellmates shuffled closer to hear. Tudeh members supported Parvis with their contributions. The others listened too, nodding and grunting as we spoke. They were more hesitant about expressing their own opinions, perhaps because they were more conscious of the danger we were in. The pro-Khomeini Tudeh members were, after all, an unknown quantity.
‘What about the genocide against minorities: the Kurds, the Bah’ais? The suppression of freedom and civil liberties? The subjugation of women under the veil?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘who are those women who came out and demonstrated against the Islamic government? Prostitutes, monarchists and those who sought sexual self-gratification. As for the Kurds and the Baha’is, the leaderships of these movements are part of the American imperialist conspiracy against the Islamic regime. The suppression of civil liberties is only a problem for a handful of intellectuals. The workers and peasants in the factories and fields throughout the country are concerned with improving their condition. The Islamic revolution works for their well-being. You oppositionalists are frustrating this process.’
I had heard these arguments before. Some of the academic staff at the university of Tehran who belonged to the Fedayeen Majority had replied in exactly the same way. Not even the brutality of this regime shook them out of their fantasy. ‘How can a regime that has obtained weapons from America and Israel and their allies for use in the war with Iraq and the civil war against the democratic forces be described as a revolutionary regime?’ I said.
‘The Chinese received US aid against Japan in World War II. That did not make China counter-revolutionary.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but how can the regime be improving material conditions? It has wiped out the workers’ councils which arose from the revolutionary overthrow of the Shah. Millions of hectares of land were liberated when the Shah was overthrown. Now they are being confiscated by the Pasdars and given back to feudal landlords.’
He answered, ‘The Islamic shoras [people’s councils] are the revolutionary answer to independent organisations. Anyway, they were being used as counter-revolutionary bases against the Islamic regime by the left. The Islamic regime will develop its own land reform programme which will lead to the orderly handing over of land to the peasants.’ I ended our discussion. I could not yet trust everyone in the cell and, more importantly, I could tell that there was no way that he would see reality.
Adel, the dental student, was a young man with tremendous energy and vitality. By contrast with Parvis his own defence of the regime had become more qualified since his arrest. He was the one on whose shoulders I stood to look out of the window when we went to the bathroom. Now I knew where we were being held. I would have been more wary of this offer had it come from any other prisoner. None of the other Tudeh prisoners would have taken a risk like that.
Adel maintained a good relationship with all other left-leaning prisoners. His dental training came to good use too and he was always willing to examine the teeth of other prisoners, irrespective of their politics. A passionate figure, he participated in unified prison resistance movements and was killed in
a mass execution of political prisoners in 1989. Parvis, on the other hand, refused to take part, even when other Tudeh members were involved. I later learned from some of the prisoners that served with him in Evin that he had been accused of co-operating with prison officials. I saw him again in another prison in 1987 and was warned to keep well clear. But we shared a history and I tried to maintain a cordial relationship. Whether he actually co-operated with the authorities or not, he also went to the gallows in 1989.
There was solidarity between the other four leftists in my cell. They, like me, strongly opposed the regime. None of them could have been described as middle class and they had all been tortured. Taregh, one of the two Fedayeen Minority members, was a high school student and only 16 years old. He was the most energetic of the four. Morad, the other Fedayeen, was a school teacher arrested after being informed on by Islamic students – ‘the ears and eyes of Khomeini’. Ahmed was a worker from a factory in Karaj, an industrial city about 40 miles outside Tehran. He had been arrested as a result of a strike in his factory and was a member of Peykar. The fourth, Kaveh, was a member of Rahe Kargar and had been arrested due to his political work at a car plant. All kept their distance from their Tudeh cellmates.
Open political arguments were dangerous, but I couldn’t stop myself from chipping in with references to the defeat of the 1979 revolution or to the nature of the regime. Yet there was little point. Everyone had very set positions in order to protect themselves.
CHAPTER 3
ROOTS
These days, as I stare up at the ceiling, unable to sleep because of constant nagging pains from my injuries, I sometimes ask myself how the hell I got into such a mess. My answer starts with the stories of Iran’s own tragedies. It was once Britain’s unofficial colony. During the 19th century it was strategically important but took on a new importance with oil. When BP moved in, the British government was not far behind. They began to buy off the backward tribal chiefs and destabilise the democratic government introduced after 1907.
A State of Fear Page 3