The door flies open with a terrifying bang. I jump. No, it’s not you, Brother Hamid, you who my heart longs to never see again. It’s time for the morning visit to the bathroom. I who have shitted myself. The guard throws me a clean uniform: “Change your clothes.”
We go to the bathroom. The waves of vomit and diarrhoea keep coming. My empty stomach is only throwing up bitter-tasting liquid and making terrible noises. I wash my underwear with dishwashing detergent under the cold tap. I put on the clean clothes and return to my cell. They have brought in breakfast. What pleasure there is in hot tea. It moves over my broken teeth and when it reaches my stomach, it comes up again. I put aside the red plastic cup. I lean against the wall. My whole existence wants you not to return. But I know that you are coming back. And something inside my head makes a thudding sound. Like a woodpecker pecking a tree. Then there is an aching. How I long for you to come here and find me dead. The headache has settled in my temples. It stays there and will accompany me for many long years. Even now, it pays me a visit now and then.
The loudspeaker has been turned on. It’s seven in the morning on 11 March 1983. Ayatollah Prozac57 has begun talking. I cannot believe it. A month has passed. Automatically I touch my beard. It’s grown full.
Night comes but there’s no sign of you. The food arrives. We go to the bathroom in the evening. The corridor is covered in blankets. Everyone’s feet are in bandages as if we have been wounded in a war. My underwear is dry and I put it on. We return to our cells. The lights go off. I stretch myself out. I try to sleep. It’s not happening. Headache. Suddenly I miss my pillow back home; it was always clean, and scented with perfume. Toothache. I am back home, flossing my teeth. I hear my wife shouting: “You have made everything dirty, Houshka.”
My wife and I had just finished reading Alexei Tolstoy’s The Road to Calvary trilogy, and she had taken to calling me Houshka after one of the book’s characters.
Aching shoulders, wounded feet, but worse than everything else is the constant dread that is wandering around my soul, directionless. As soon as my eyelids begin to droop, I think I hear the sound of shuffling slippers and jerk awake. But there’s no sign of you. The night, the whole night is spent in pain and with the nightmare of the approaching sound of slippers. In the morning, one of “God’s fathers” opens the cell door: “Who is Houshang?”
I answer: “That’s me.”
That’s me? I feel like I am running away on my wounded feet, distancing myself from myself. If I dare to turn around, I’ll see Houshang Asadi sniggering at me.
I am holding the tip of the stick and am being dragged along. If the guard comes to pick you up, that means your situation is not very dangerous. We cross the courtyard. The guard is not giving up: “Why haven’t you called yourself Ali? Why not Muhammad?”
He’s shouting from the depths of a culture that has come to power and, like an idiot, I am failing to get it. A few years later, in Ghezel Hesar prison, the cultural official theorized about the guard’s folkloric question: “From our point of view, you intellectuals, the Houshangs, the Kiumars, and the Nimas,58 you are all polluted.”
Door, stairs. First floor. Right turn. First room. The usual chair. I sit down, facing the wall. I take off my blindfold and wait. The door opens two or three times. No, it’s not you. Someone comes in, asks my name and leaves. Then, suddenly, a hand hits my shoulder and I hear your voice: “How are you, little lion?”
When did you get here? I hadn’t heard the sound of shuffling slippers. Maybe you had come in before me and were watching me. The sound of the shuffling slippers allows me to prepare my body for defence. You, who in your own words are “a master of making people talk”, have taken away this small comfort from me, the prisoner.
I blurt out: “Hello.”
This time you answer: “Hello, good boy.”
I hear the sound of a chair being dragged and then your voice: “Put on your blindfold. Get a move on!”
I do as I’m told. I see from underneath the blindfold that you are seated on a chair in front of me. You are wearing the same military trousers. You have your boots on. I see a pair of hands that have tortured me. You start talking. Your voice has become very kind: “It is clear from what you have written that you are very attached to the revolution. We too have given up our lives for the revolution. I myself was a student at the University of Science and Technology. If I had done one more year, I would have qualified as an architect. But I delayed my studies because the revolution was under threat.”
You pause. A long pause. Then you say: “What beautiful long hands you have, Mr Asadi.”
You must see me trying to hold my hands together and maybe you have noticed that I am embarrassed. Then you say: “No, this is not a good place. Let’s go to a better place.”
You do not bother to get a stick, but grab my hand and make me stand up. I am being dragged alongside you. I cannot hold my tongue: “You are polluting yourself.”
You say: “Is your hand wet?”59
I am dragging myself and moving. You keep saying: “Watch out ... get on the stairs ... to the left ... right ...”
We pass through a triangular courtyard. I feel the sun’s warmth. My feet are making a slurping noise over melted snow. I shake from the inside. We are on our way to the room downstairs. But no. We walk past Under the Eight and walk up the stairs. You hold me under my arm and are helping me. What astonishing kindness. My whole body is aching. Going up the stairs has become harder than ever. The same stairs that I ran up with open eyes and a gun in my hand on the day of the revolution’s victory. I pause when we reach the balcony. You let me catch my breath.
During one of these pauses I hear a curious conversation. First I see a white chador. Then I hear a woman’s voice: “Brother, allow me to go to my cell.”
A harsh voice, which must belong to an interrogator, asks: “Where have you got hold of these two pathetic bits of branch?”
The woman’s voice is pleading: “Please, Brother. I will put it into a glass so it can grow roots.”
We walk on and lose track of the voices. Who was that woman? Where had she got hold of two pathetic bits of branch? She wanted to put them into a glass and let them grow roots inside this house of death and lashes to help her stay alive. We walk up the stairs. The woman’s voice is there again and she is pleading and crying. We walk up the stairs and reach a place where we lean against the railings. I feel the sun’s warmth and see from underneath my blindfold a courtyard covered in snow.
“How many days have you been without the sun?”
I cannot tell. I saw the sun for the last time on the morning of the sixth of February. A bird is singing faraway and I hear the distant, very distant, sound of traffic. I imagine the streets around me, which must be filled with passers-by, life and shouting. It’s your voice that is bringing me back to reality: “Look, Mr Asadi. We did not plan to put you under pressure. This is your own interpretation. We didn’t want this to happen, even before Mr Khamenei read your letter and put in a special request on your behalf. To you, we are a backward people.”
I said: “We never regarded you as backward. We defended you.”
You carry on talking: “But we too have a heart, are humans. It is true that we punish in line with the Shari’a law but our heart is not in it. We too know something. We have evidence. How else could we have rounded you all up in one day? Our intention is to save you. If I were in your shoes, I’d save myself. Islam’s door is open to everyone who repents.60 Getting information is not that important to us. We’ll get it sooner or later. You saw Comrade Manuchehr. He came to his senses and returned to his cell. Had it not been for the Ayatollah’s request, it would have been your turn to go to sleep in his stead.”
A wave of vomit is coming up. Your blows are raining down on me, one after another. You immediately strike again: “By the way, we are aware that your wife is running here and there trying to save you.”
You grab my hand and we set off. A door opens and everyt
hing goes dark. We walk down the stairs. There’s silence until we reach Under the Eight.
“Now go to your room. If I were you, I’d save myself.”
You must have signalled to the guard with your hand because he’s coming and taking hold of my sleeve. You say: “I am telling you one last time. Throw down your hand grenade. Tell the truth. If you take one step towards us, we’ll take a hundred steps towards you.”
Then I hear the shuffling of slippers. You are leaving. The guard says: “Watch what’s in front of your feet.”
I step over the railing and enter the block. A hand is touching my back. It’s you.
“By the way, would you like to see your wife on the night of the Eid holiday?”
Chapter 14
Drinking Hard Liquor in the Islamic Torture Chamber
The torture chamber: a metal-framed bed with a metal-spring base but no mattress, a wooden chair, a rope hanging from a hook in the ceiling. And on the chair, a bottle of Parmoon.
Every time I feel like a drink, I am reminded of that bottle of Parmoon and of you. I have to drink more and more to forget what kind of drinking companion you were. I drank the last drop from the blue bottle so that I could die. So I could be saved. I drank every drop. In one go. Without cucumber yoghurt.61 Without taste. No, with the taste of the pain that was running through my body. With the bitterness of suffering and the sweetness of death that was coming to take me away. I don’t know whether you drink when you are on your own. No. No. You are pious. You don’t touch alcohol. You certainly perform ablution before you perform torture. You pray. You are not like me, I who am still washing away my sorrow with a glass of spirits or a pint of beer. You have prepared yourself for the intoxicating streams running through paradise. You are expecting God to offer you a fine, fair houri in return for each strike of your whip. And for now, your purity is no hardship, for you take such pleasure in the beating and killing.
Yes, lovely Brother Hamid, my fourteenth letter is about drinking in the torture chamber where you were the one with the whip. Think about it. If you had written about the other side of the drama that you watched unfold, in which you played such a big part, together we could have written a timeless masterpiece.
Moshtarek Prison, 12 March 1983
The final hours of the night. I should celebrate my wedding anniversary. The light has been turned off, so I know it’s past eleven o’clock. I lean against the wall. I search with my hands for the two pieces of sugar cube that I saved from breakfast. We married five years ago. Where is my wife now? Is she, too, inside a cell, remembering our wedding? I close my eyes. I fantasize about holding her hand. In my fantasy she is saying: “You are very tired. Sleep ... sleep.”
I wake up to the sound of the door opening. A guard takes me to the bathroom.
“Knock on the door when you have done your business.”
I go in. There is no mirror. I try to see my reflection against the metal cubicle wall. I wash my face. My scalp is itching. I wash my hair with some of the dishwashing detergent that stands in for soap at Moshtarek, and rinse my head under the cold water. The water at Moshtarek prison comes from one of Tehran’s oldest springs and is among the coldest, most refreshing waters of the world. My head almost freezes and my shirt gets wet. I knock on the door and the shepherd guard arrives. I am taken back to my cell. The guard leaves and comes back with a clean prison shirt for me.
As always, the door opens suddenly: “Who’s Houshang?”
There is no one else in the cell, except me, so I must be Houshang. I stand up and we set off. On the way, there’s the usual argument: “Why have you called yourself Houshang?”
As soon as we reach the courtyard, someone grabs my shirt collar and punches me hard in the stomach, and when I come back to my senses, I find myself on the metal bed. A fist is hitting my face. A voice is saying: “Start it, Brother Haykal.”
“Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”
Punches and kicks rain down on me. Together they drag me into a standing position and then hit me so that I fall against the metal bed and the bed’s springs dig into my body. I hear the heavy breathing of someone I cannot see and words are tearing at my ear and burrowing deep inside my brain.
“Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”
And you are hitting me again. Suddenly a fist lands on my mouth. It’s Brother Haykal. Do you remember him, Brother Hamid? You both hit me, and the two of you are laughing.
I don’t know how much time passes before I hear your voices. You are circling me: “Spy. Torturer. Useless wimp. Savak agent. We don’t need evidence. He’s the evidence. He’s a piece of filth. His stink is everywhere.”
Then you leave. I hold my head in my hands. I listen carefully. There’s no sound. I pick up my blindfold. My clothes are covered in the blood that’s spilling from my mouth. I spit and a broken tooth falls out. I feel a piercing pain in my molar teeth. The torture chamber is the size of a cell. A room where I will be a guest for a long time. Its walls are covered in blood. I can vaguely see the shape of a rope hanging from the ceiling. A black chair and a metal bed.
“Put on your blindfold.”
I put it on. The door opens. Someone drags me out, pulls me up the stairs and throws me into a room.
“Wait until your interrogator arrives.”
I am sitting and waiting for you to arrive, Brother Hamid. You are preceded by the sound of shuffling slippers. You put a pile of paper on the desk: “This time I don’t want anything vague, or wishy-washy. A lot of things have changed in the last few days. You have to get straight to the point, right now. We want facts.”
And you leave.
You are right, Brother Hamid. It does seem like there’s some sort of chaos going on. Doors are opening and closing. From that night onwards I keep hearing the terrible sound of screaming. You leave and I start writing.
I don’t know, Brother Hamid, how many hours I’ve been writing. I am eager to finish quickly. My face is burning, my mouth is full of blood. A pain for which there’s no cure has afflicted my poor teeth that have broken under the onslaught of your fists. Even as I write, I spit out bits of tooth. I am frightened to knock on the door. I tell myself that you’ll be coming back soon and I’ll be able to go to the bathroom. But you don’t come. I can hear the incessant sound of shouting coming from the corridor. Doors keep opening and closing. I guess it’s one of those days when interrogation takes up the whole twenty-four hours and you and your colleagues take confessions in three shifts.
When I’m taken back to my cell, the light is on and will not be switched off again.
From that time of endless light, that was also a time of endless darkness, all I remember is insults, shouting and lashes. Nights ran into days. First I lost all track of time, and then I lost myself. The one that was me remained forever in that torture chamber, and another me left; a me whose creator was neither God nor nature, a handcuffed me, a lashed me, a beaten, broken me.
The overwhelming pressure makes me knock on the door. After a while someone appears and asks from behind the door what I want. I answer. He says he has to ask. You are in charge, Brother Hamid. They even have to ask for your permission for me to go to the bathroom. You must have given your permission because the guard comes and takes me away.
I take off my blindfold in that life-saving toilet, I put on my glasses, and I see my reflection in the metal cubicle wall. I am horrified. Blood has dried on my face. My eyes are swollen. I rinse out my mouth and touch my teeth. Two molar teeth, one on the right and one on the left, are gone and a front tooth is loose.
The guard knocks on the door. The bathroom time is short. I do my business and we return upstairs and again I start writing. I write more quickly, using few words.
All my teeth are aching and it has made me restless. I keep standing up and walking. Then I sit down and write. Then I walk again. I knock on the door. Someone comes. He asks from behind the door: “What’s up?”
I say: “The pain is killin
g me.”
He says: “Keep walking. The marks of punishment will get better.”
I say: “My mouth, my teeth.”
He laughs: “Have they managed to lower your pain threshold? Who’s your interrogator?”
I answer: “Brother Hamid.” And he leaves.
And I walk. The sound of shuffling slippers arrives. I put on the blindfold and face the wall. “Finished?”
I say: “My teeth.”
“Shut up, useless wimp.”
You pick up what I have written so far and then leave. I am being left behind, with my toothache. I am left behind with the blank paper. I should finish quickly. I should write quickly, maybe then they’ll take me back to my cell and do something about my teeth.
Eventually, someone comes. He takes my sleeve silently and leads me away. The cold in the courtyard is piercing. I shuffle over snow. It’s clear that it has snowed heavily. My socks are soaking wet by the time I reach you. You say: “You’ll see my true face now. You’ll understand why they call me ‘The Torturer’.”
There are many torturers in this world, with whips, and handcuffs, just like you, and with your way of thinking – if someone doesn’t share your views, you must kill him. With the wounds of the whip, the tip of the pen or the lashes of the tongue.
Letters to My Torturer Page 16