Letters to My Torturer

by Houshang Asadi

  America had boycotted the Olympics but hundreds of foreign reporters were present in Moscow, carefully observing everything. I went to watch various events during the day and in the evening I phoned in my reports to Tehran. The hotel’s telephone hall was large, with many telephone boxes. Telephone numbers were handed in to the very beautiful, multilingual girls who were in charge of dialling them. The first time I handed over the newspaper’s telephone number, I sensed disdain in the Russian girl’s manner. I felt seriously offended. After all, we were all communists, members of the same family. The following night, watching the hall from above, I noticed the same look of disdain on the part of the majority of the girls and the waiters towards the third world reporters. In contrast, Westerners were given a great deal of attention. I was suffering – I was learning the truth about life in the country that had given birth to socialism.

  The second night, I went to the hotel bar. A large crowd of foreign reporters were drinking themselves into a state of oblivion, and the free alcohol was loosening their tongues. I knew some of them from Tehran and the days of revolution. They crowded around me, eager to talk about the situation in Iran. They were all intensely against the revolution while I defended it. Initially they assumed that I was joking but when they realized that I was serious, the discussion became heated. I remember that eventually I lifted my glass and shouted: “Viva Khomeini!”

  And they all laughed at me.

  One day, a young, almost shabbily dressed woman stopped me while I was leaving the hotel. She looked Vietnamese. She spoke in an unfamiliar language, asking for something that I didn’t understand. The next day, the same thing happened again. Eventually, she pulled a battery out of her pocket and pointed at the hotel. I went inside and bought her a battery. When I returned, there was no sign of her.

  The next day, I saw her again. I gave her the battery and her eyes lit up with happiness. Gesticulating with my hands and eyes, I made her understand that I wanted to see where she lived. I wanted to understand what was going on. I couldn’t believe that there were women in the Soviet Union in such desperate need of a battery. When she understood me, her eyes went dark and she ran away.

  This happened just before we were taken to the Lenin museum. Each of our small groups had a Russian guide, ours was a tall young man. When we reached the museum, we saw a very large picture of Leonid Brezhnev prominently displayed on the front of the building. The young man said quietly: “It wasn’t like this in Lenin’s time.”

  We looked round the museum and watched a subtitled film about Lenin’s life. Lenin was stroking a cat, responding to journalists’ questions and describing the future of socialism. The guide sitting next to me kept saying: “But that’s not how things have turned out.”

  When the other journalists had dispersed, I asked the young guide to show me around the city. He agreed. We went to a park. It was a bright, sunny day. Beside a statue of Yuri Gagarin, the first Soviet astronaut, the young man began to tell me what life in Russia was really like.

  Then we walked into the city to a statue of Philex Dejensky, the founder of the Soviet security system and a fairytale-style hero of communism. The young man pointed at the statue and said: “Our lives are in their hands.”

  I was reminded of that young man when the Soviet Union fell apart.

  One afternoon, I suddenly felt uneasy. I was walking away from the huge Lenin Stadium after watching a running race when I felt anxious without any obvious reason. When I reached the hotel, I went to the communication hall. I handed in the Party’s office number and waited. An unfamiliar voice came on the line. I said that I was phoning from Moscow and wanted to speak to one of the editors. The voice said: “He’s not here,” and hung up. Something must have happened, so I asked for the number to be called again. This time, someone else picked up the phone and said: “We have arrested your fellow spies.” And again, the line was cut off.

  We didn’t have a telephone at home. An idea suddenly occurred to me. I went to the telephone girl and asked her to please tell them that she was phoning from Germany, not Moscow. The girl hesitated a bit but then took the phone number. This time a third person picked up the phone. I said: “I am phoning from the Islamic Association of Frankfurt and would like to give you a press release.”

  The person at the other end of the line happily related that Hezbollah had raided the office of the traitor Tudeh Party and had obtained evidence of espionage. I put down the phone. So my uneasiness had not been without reason.

  Later, when I had got back to Tehran, I was told that the day after my telephone call, The Islamic Republic newspaper had announced: “Following the raid on the Tudeh Party office, Brezhnev had personally called to register his objection.”

  From Moscow I went to Frankfurt. My wife had arrived a few days earlier. Sadly, on the way to Frankfurt, she had miscarried. We stayed in Frankfurt for a few days. We returned from our trip abroad to days of peril and torture.

  A few days after my return, a letter arrived for me from the Party’s organization. It was Javid’s letter of complaint. He was very upset, protesting that factionalism had occurred within the Party, which is why he had been prevented from visiting the Soviet Union and the Olympic Games. I wrote a response, and underlined that “Our friends in the National Olympic Committee in the Soviet Union had reduced the number of guests at the last moment, which is why only reporters were allowed to attend.”

  I am in the room upstairs, writing to Khamenei with my swollen hands. I can no longer control my bladder. I knock on the door. The guard appears, like a genie. I hand over the letter. I say that I need the bathroom. He tells me to wait. He leaves, and returns: “Put on the blindfold, come on.”

  We go out. He tightens my blindfold. He hands me the tip of the stick. We enter a toilet block. I couldn’t have done my business sitting down, even if I were used to it. I wash my face several times with cold water. I see my reflection against metal. My beard has grown. For the first time in my life, I see myself with a long beard. There are knocks on the door. I am taking too long. I put on my blindfold and go back out. The guard tightens my blindfold. Then he hits me hard on my head:“Damn you, you piece of filth. Were you pissing standing up?”

  I do not yet understand what great importance peeing while standing up has in Islam. I’ll find out later on, in Evin prison.

  You come and take my writing away with you. The guard brings me food. I am allowed to lie down. But I can’t relax, constantly listening out for the shuffling sound of slippers. I turn and twist my wounded body on the blanket, trying to sleep. I draw my knees to my chest to protect my throbbing feet. I press my broken teeth together. When my left shoulder touches the floor, the pain makes me miserable. I lie on my right side. I see my wife’s eyes. She is looking at me, worried. I let myself drown in the darkness of her eyes.

  The warmth of sleep had not yet swallowed me up when something makes me jump. At first I don’t know what has alerted me, and then I hear the shuffling sound of slippers. I can’t believe it. Two people are whispering to each other. The door opens and I hear your voice: “Stand up, useless wimp!”

  I stand up. I put on my blindfold. I set off. I am scared. I am shaking. Night visits mean torture. What am I supposed to confess to this time? You grab hold of my jacket hem. We go to the room downstairs. You put me on the bed.

  “Have you remembered anything new?”

  I say: “I have said things ... even ...”

  I want to say: “I have even confessed to your words.”

  Fear stops me in my tracks. You say: “You have left the trench but you have not yet thrown down your hand grenade. Pull up your blindfold.”

  I do it. You hold a piece of paper up to my eyes. It’s the letter that I wrote in response to Javid’s complaint. You pull down my blindfold again.

  “We know everything! And the comrades have become very talkative, singing like nightingales.”

  A question has filled my brain: “Where did they get hold of the letter?” />
  Later on, I learn that the letter and other documents had been found after the arrest of one of the advisors to the Party’s Central Committee, when his house had been searched.

  I say: “But I have written about this.”

  “No, as I said, you have not yet thrown your hand grenade. This, ‘our friends’, who are they?”

  “Our friends?”

  This time you give me the paper. Your voice suddenly turns angry: “Look carefully.”

  I look. The sentence is my own sentence. My signature.

  “Our friends in the National Olympic Committee.”

  I say: “Our friends meaning the people in the Soviet National Olympic Committee who wanted to reduce the number of people coming on the trip.”

  “Do you have Russian friends, Mr Asadi?”

  “No.”

  “So what do you mean by ‘our friends’?”

  I am still searching for an answer when you take hold of my arm and, as if suddenly remembering something, you ask: “You definitely don’t know who Khosrow is?”

  Khosrow? You have also arrested my brother? But he has nothing to do with the Party. He is not political at all.

  You hit me on my head with several slow hits.

  “Khosrow? Comrade Khosrow?”

  I suddenly remember the pieces of paper, they were the colour of the skin of yellow onions, that used to arrive at the Mardom office. They were about people’s lives and sometimes workplace matters. Written on all of them was the name Khosrow. I used to think that it was Rahman who, while writing about the Party’s history, was also writing these. I said:

  “Ahhh, Khosrow.”

  “Do you know him?”

  I say: “I think he’s Rahman Hatefi.”

  You said: “We’ve figured that out. We are figuring out the rest. We’ll get to ‘our friends’ as well. You poor sod, you still keep playing games. The others are telling us everything about you.”

  You become silent. This too is part of the interrogation. A silence that is a hundred times more horrific than talking or even the whip. When you start talking again it feels like a thousand years have passed: “By the way, would you like to see your dear comrades?”

  Chapter 13

  Visiting the Dead

  The 1980s were called the “Decade of the Great Terror” in Iran. The “Spring of Freedom”, as Iranians dubbed the months immediately following the 1979 Revolution, turned out to be very short, just like the Iranian spring itself. The bloody clampdown on both armed and unarmed opposition groups that had begun in the summer of 1980 reached a climax in 1983. By the beginning of that year, only the Tudeh Party remained, which after joining forces with Fedayeen had become Iran’s largest leftist political party. But from the start of the decade, important events had been taking place under the skin of the city that eventually culminated in its decimation.

  Vladimir Kuzichkin, the KGB’s Intelligence Officer at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, and the Russian contact for the Tudeh Party, disappeared in 1982, and later that year reappeared in London. Having defected to Britain through the British Embassy in Tehran, he shared his insider information with MI6. In a secret meeting that took place in Islamabad, Pakistan, an MI6 agent in turn handed over the information on the Tudeh Party and its leadership to representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  With this information in hand, the Intelligence Officers of the Revolutionary Guards Corps intercepted a member of the Central Committee of the Party as he left one of the KGB offices in Tehran that operated under the cover of a commercial company. They copied the communications that he was carrying from the KGB to the Tudeh Party, and threatened the lives of his daughters if he were to warn the Party. These letters reached Khomeini, who immediately issued orders for the arrest of the Party’s members.

  And so here I am in prison, writing my “confessions” for you Brother Hamid. And this is what the elimination of the Party means.

  Throughout the night, a storm is raging, the wind howls and the lashes of the whip are hitting heaven and earth. Through the whole night I have revisited that horrific winter of 1983. I have been wrestling with ghosts. It’s been a week since the doctor ordered me to stop writing, but this fearful night has taken me back to you, Brother Hamid. I have returned to write my thirteenth letter. You must have had many such nights of pleasure, torturing the innocent to their graves. And you perform your prayers with profound purity of heart.

  Moshtarek Prison, 11 March 1983

  I feel as if I am in a timeless place, a nowhere place, when a heavy blow hits my side, making me jump. I put on my blindfold. I no longer bark only when it’s time for writing. I have become like Pavlov’s dog.

  It’s you saying: “We’ve got a meeting with the comrades. They can’t believe that this is who you really are.”

  You drag me down the stairs. We enter the courtyard. The freezing cold is making my whole body shake, opening up my wounds. I hear your voice: “It’s time for you to throw down your hand grenade.”

  I try to make my brain interpret this sentence. We enter a corridor. I guess it’s the same one that leads to the bathrooms. I don’t know whether I am right or not. We pass through turnings, or maybe you have made me swirl around myself. My impression is that I am walking along a timeless nowhere tunnel. I don’t know why, but I’m reminded of Tabari’s words. Recently he had kept saying: “We are moving along a dark tunnel in the blind hope of some direction.”

  Then we apparently reach a courtyard. You say: “Wait. Now lift your blindfold, but don’t turn around.”

  I do as I’m told. It’s as if a light has been switched on.

  Without my glasses and in the dim light I see the vague contours of some coffins that have been lined up against the wall. What is their purpose? Where are we? Am I dreaming? Your voice is filled with pleasure: “The comrades are sleeping here.”

  A tremor goes through my whole body. I have always feared corpses and am frightened now. I have always fled from corpses and I want to flee now. I didn’t even dare to look at my own mother’s face after she died. A famous song comes into my mind: “They are taking the dead from street to street ...”

  And your voice: “Right, I am going to choose one of them, the one you like best.”

  The image of corpses being carried flashes through my mind. There’s the sound of something being opened. Is it a door? Wooden? No, metallic. You grab my head and move me along.

  “Do you know him?”

  I look down at Manuchehr Behzadi’s56 moon-shaped face. In my imagination, he’s opening his eyes for a moment and then closing them again. But no, the eyes were closed. Involuntarily, I sink to my knees and throw up. This man, who is lying so still inside the coffin, used to be the editor-in-chief of a newspaper. Quiet, literate and a man of few words. He loved his family, his daughters. Now you have forced him to sleep, for days on end, inside a narrow wooden box, one of the most ingenious devices in the service of the Islamic Republic where, apparently, there’s no torture.

  You hit me hard on my head: “Stop playing movie games! Useless wimp!”

  You make me stand up.

  “You piece of filth!”

  You drag me along while you speak: “It’s your turn now. You are getting it and you’ll be sleeping comfortably alongside the others. The British agents together with the Russian agents.”

  My body is shaking. I keep feeling like throwing up but fear is stopping me. We stop. I sense that we are in Under the Eight.

  First we will show you your wife and then we’ll give you the coffin next to hers.

  My knees cannot take it anymore. Unwillingly, I have doubled up. I am trying not to throw up. You grab me under my arm and make me stand up: “You are going to your cell. You have only one option. Hand over the hand grenade, okay?”

  I can’t hold myself upright. I sink down. You are being kind. You are sitting down yourself. I lean against the wall. I keep feeling sick, my stomach is in my mouth. I hear your voice: “You are now going bac
k to your cell. This is your last chance.”

  I start to get up. I am desperate to get to a bathroom. Diarrhoea is about to join the vomit. You won’t let me go. You are holding me back. You are laughing and asking: “Did you recognize Comrade Manuchehr?”

  I shake my head.

  “Was he dead or alive?”

  At last you hand me over to the guard and leave. When the shuffling sound fades out of earshot, my fear lessens and I say to the guard: “For God’s sake ... bathroom.”

  I am lucky that it’s the shepherd guard. He takes me to the bathroom. I run to the toilet. When I get out, I go to the sink and throw up. I am shaking and throwing up. I re-enter the toilet and relieve myself. I get out and place my head underneath my country’s most refreshing, coldest water. To no avail. The vomit and diarrhoea keep coming in waves. The guard takes me back to my cell. He gives me a bowl and leaves me. I shake until dawn. I throw up into the bowl. I relieve myself inside the bowl.

  Manuchehr’s face appears. That man who was, in the truest sense of the word, decent, sleeping inside the coffin in his prison clothes. His face has no colour. Asleep, unsmiling. A tomb which is both gravestone and grave is one of the achievements of a revolution that does not know torture. Everything is done in line with Islam, and Shari’a law.

  “You must throw in your hand grenade.”

  I can see the line of coffins in my mind’s eye. They have names engraved over them. The names are spinning and becoming one.

  First we will show you your wife.

  I can see my wife’s face. She has gone to sleep forever, and she has averted her eyes from me in the eternal night. I hit my head against the wall. I throw up. I wish the night could be endless. I fear the morning. I don’t know what “throwing in my hand grenade” means, but I suspect that there will be more torture. My whole body is aching. Toothache has made me restless. My feet are wounded. I can’t hold my back straight. When my shoulders touch the ground, the pain makes me cry out. In order to sleep, I sit down, leaning against the wall. What do they want from me? I have written down everything about my activities and my life. The final stages of our activities were obvious. We had defended them. We had nothing to hide. We weren’t even spiteful. Many of the groups had announced a war and had mentally prepared themselves. But we had shouted “Imam, Imam,” until the last day. I had shouted right in the heart of the land of infidels, right in the centre of Red Square: “Viva Khomeini!”