The guard, who’s a bathroom specialist, accompanies me. He tells me to leave the toilet door open. He’s standing and watching me. He immediately starts shouting: “Finish and come out!”
I finish. Even now when I remember that guard my bowels give up. He’s taking me back, quickly. This time we pass through the courtyard and walk up the stairs. I take a breath. I am feeling relieved.
It turns out the coup d’etat story is a lie. Or at least, I don’t know about it.
We are not going back to the interrogation room. We are two floors above that room. Again, I can see from under my blindfold a group of people dressed in military uniform, sitting down and reading some papers. Someone grabs me under my arms and takes me to a room, which seems to be large hall.
“Lift your blindfold. Open those blind eyes of yours.”
It’s you, Brother Hamid. I do as I’m told. You hand me two pages of interrogation results.
“Read.”
One of the main Party leaders has confessed that the Party had intended to stage a coup d’etat.
Then you show me a video clip. Another Party leader is saying the same thing.
You pick up the papers and take me downstairs. We walk slowly and again you have become gentle: “We know everything. The military wing. The weapons. Everything. Everything. We are finding out all about the ins and outs of the coup. You bastards assumed that Iran is like Afghanistan ...”
We go to the room downstairs. You string me up and then leave. The blow is sudden and incapacitating. The words on the paper run before my eyes. I see images of the Party leaders, hanging from the ceiling, and confessing to a coup d’etat. My mind refuses to cooperate and fails to come up with any lies. The thought of the Party launching a coup is as ridiculous as saying that Lenin is going to enter the room to untie me. Our Party’s strategy has been to maintain the policy of “unity and criticism”, even if we find ourselves facing the noose. Besides, even if there were plans for a coup, what have I got to do with it? They have arrested the main leaders of the Party, and they even have the intelligence guys. Compared to them, who am I to know anything about the coup? These thoughts are meandering through my mind and I just keep yelling, and am now shouting “O Master of the Age!”71 Maybe it’s my father’s voice, reaching me through the years and resonating through my mouth. I keep yelling until I faint. Then they bring me back to my senses. They forcefully shake my hands and then hang me up again. The only solution left to me is suicide. As I am hanging between the ground and the air, I think that I should save myself in any possible way. First, I try to push myself towards the wall so I can hit my head. The rope is too short for this and the increased pressure adds to the unbearable pain.
You keep coming, Brother Hamid. Following the strict rules of interrogation, you are obliged to untie my hands at specific intervals. You make sure I shake my hands, and as soon as the muscles come back to life, you tie me up again and leave.
“Your comrades started talking after the first threat. The more resistance you put up, the more obvious it is that you are keeping an important secret.”
I don’t know whether it’s day or night when you come back and untie me, and leave me unhandcuffed. I assume from the smell of kebab that you have ordered something special for me to prevent my body from collapsing. The prisoner has to be kept alive, he must have enough energy to talk. This is the best time for me to put my thoughts into practice. I say my goodbyes to life, to my wife and to the spring. I break the lens of my glasses. The same glasses that were trampled under the feet of the crowds inside the police station’s weapons arsenal on 11 February, the day of the revolution’s victory. First, I cut the veins in my wrist. Then I swallow the bloodied bits of glass and calmly stretch myself out on the floor. I feel the blood oozing out of me. Now, when I look at the scars on my wrist, I am reminded of that time when I found death to be so much sweeter than life. I wet my hand with my blood and drag myself close to the wall and write: “I am neither a Savak agent nor a spy. The confessions were taken from me under torture.”
I imagine they’ll publish my photograph along with my confession of being a Savak agent and a spy, and that this nightmare will follow me into death.
When I regain consciousness, I find myself unable to move. At first I assume I have been buried. But no, I can hear a familiar voice. People seem to be talking in whispers. I open my eyes. Next to me there is a thin, white curtain, and behind the curtain are two people, talking. You are one of them, Brother Hamid, and my whole body shakes in terror.
Then I realize that an intravenous drip is going into my hand. My wrists have been bandaged and tied to the bed. The guard/doctor sticks his head round the curtain and smiles. Then he comes to take my blood pressure, checks my heartbeat, and unties me: “Put on your blindfold ...”
I stand up with difficulty. I put on my blindfold and am being handed over to you on the other side of the curtain. “Woohoo, Mr Hero.”
You take my arm and help me walk into the prison courtyard. I can feel the sun. I smell the scent of spring and hear the sound of a bird singing somewhere. Then it gets dark and we walk down the stairs.
“Obviously you are hiding a serious secret if you are even prepared to die for it.”
In a voice sounding as if it is coming from deep inside a well, I say: “I don’t know anything. My previous confessions were all fabrication ...”
You are laughing: “We shall see ...”
When we reach the Under the Eight, I hear a cry from the courtyard: “Bring in Mrs Amiri.”
Amiri is my wife’s surname. Initially, I don’t understand the meaning of these words. Then, the words connect to each other one by one in my brain and I see my wife being dragged along, her hands handcuffed.
We enter the room downstairs. You make me sit on the edge of the bed. The unfinished death has given me new courage. I am not barking.
You hand me a tall white bottle.
“Drink this.”
Inside the bottle is a thick, tasteless white liquid. You force me to drink it. Then you put a plate next to me. You pick something up from it and give it to me.
“Eat all these potatoes. Wash them down with the water.”
I touch the potato. It’s large, unpeeled, and covered in mud. With my fingers I touch the plate. It’s full of raw potatoes. You hand me a jug: “Go, fill this up with water and come back. Whatever shit you need to do, get it over with. You’ll be here for quite a while ...”
I drag myself along, the jug in my hand, and enter the block. The left side has been all but emptied of people; apart from a figure wrapped in a black chador, sleeping on a blanket. My legs are shaking. So far I have not seen women in this block. I drag myself to the bathroom. I fill the jug with water and return. I stand over the woman and look at her from underneath my blindfold. There is no one in the corridor. I whisper my wife’s name: “Nooshabeh?”
The woman, who’s been lying on the blanket, collects herself upon hearing my voice, but she’s not speaking. Again, I say: “Nooshabeh?”
I hear the guard’s voice: “Why have you stopped?”
I start moving again, and go to the Under the Eight. My hands are shaking and the water is spilling. The guard is taking me into the room downstairs and we sit down on the edge of the bed. You say: “Start eating.”
I pick up one of the raw potatoes and bring it towards my mouth. I can’t bring myself to bite into it. You say: “If you wish, I could call your wife to clean them for you.”
And you cram the potato into my mouth. I take my first bite and taste the mingled flavours of mud and raw potato. I chew with my broken teeth and force myself to wash the potato down with the water.
Later I find out that they had realized from the wounds on my lips that I had swallowed the broken glass from my lenses and were trying to clear my stomach. The white liquid was a laxative. I don’t know how many potatoes I have swallowed when a woman’s piercing screams make a shiver go down my spine. I can hear the sound of whipping fro
m somewhere, and the woman screaming. You say casually: “I don’t think your wife is going to put up as much resistance as you.”
The first movement of my bowels is imminent. All of a sudden the pressure is intense and accompanied by a cramping stomachache. I grab my stomach and gasp out: “Bathroom!”
It’s as if you’ve been waiting for this moment. You snap the handcuffs around my ankles and before I know it, I am hanging from the ceiling by my feet, with only the tip of my nose reaching the floor. On cue, my bowels start heaving. A dreadful warmth is trickling down in the direction of my head and reaches my neck. My only solution is to yell. When I fall silent, I can hear the cries of the woman who is crying: “Help me ...”
I don’t know how much time passes before you come back and untie me. I take off my filthy underwear and trousers, still hearing the cries of the woman (my wife?) in the background. You give me another pair of trousers and again, I am up in the air, hanging, turning. This time, my filthy trousers and underwear are put underneath my nose and mouth. A new wave of bowel movements grips me. Again you untie me so I can change my trousers. Every time I am strung up, my mouth and nose dive deeper into the excrement, and every time I take a breath, the foul-smelling discharge enters my body through my nose and mouth.
This goes on until I finish eating all the potatoes, washing them down with three jugs of water. My stomach is throwing up everything it contains and my mouth is pushing down what the stomach has discharged.
You have at last lived up to your earlier promise, Brother Hamid: You are forcing me to eat my own shit.
Four or five days later, when you untie me, I have no heart or energy left for resistance.
“Say ‘I ate shit.’”72
“I ate shit.”
“Again: ‘I ate shit.’”
“Now bark, spy.”
“Woof, woof.”
“Sit down on the floor, dog. Walk on all fours and bark.”
I do as I’m told.
By the time you untie me, I am utterly, totally broken. I am wracked with waves of vomit and diarrhoea. My headache intensifies. I am cold and shaking uncontrollably. I am empty. I have nothing left to lean on. That is exactly why there’s repentance. Repentance holds a special place in Islamic theory. It is one of the tools of interrogation. For both the prisoner and the torturer. The prisoner wants to be freed. The interrogator, who under huge pressure relies on Islamic compassion, wants to get into the inner world of the prisoner by forcing him to repent. The whip and the handcuffs are there to overcome the prisoner physically. Repentance is there to overpower the soul. It’s as if you open up your own chest to allow a spear to strike through to your heart. The interrogator knows very well that claiming to repent is yet another lie told by the prisoner, another role acted out by the prisoner. He also understands that confessing to having repented pulls away the ground from beneath the prisoner’s feet, breaking him.
The ideologically driven interrogator takes pleasure both in extracting confessions and making use of confessions. This type of interrogator, be they employees of a Stalinist system or the likes of Brother Hamid, reach their climax when intellectuals throw themselves at their feet, repenting and laying down the banner that represents their worldview. To repent is to be both disarmed and to be hanged. As soon as one repents, the benefits and advantages that come from repenting are relegated to the hereafter, and to God’s judgement. The interrogator is in charge of the earthly rewards of repentance, and if you repent, he stops torturing you, he gives you freebies, allows you visitors or keeps promising you that you’ll be allowed visitors. The interrogator always wants the prisoner to take yet another step to prove that his repentance is authentic. And eventually, a point is reached when the prisoner turns up in the execution square, firing bullets at his own wife, mother and father.
I cannot eat food. I cannot even drink water. Everything smells of excrement. Everything has become shitty. My stomach is discharging and my mouth is vomiting. Deep inside, my lungs are filled with shit. Your diagnosis, Brother Hamid, is that I am acting out a new role. You distrust the Baluch doctor as well. The poor man is pleading with you in that accent of his. You order them to grab hold of my hands and feet and throw water into my mouth. Water mixed with compote, and I throw all of it up.
I have lost track of time, space and myself. I have difficulty even recalling my wife’s eyes. Instead I hear her cries; she is hanging from the ceiling and screaming. The only person I interact with is you, Brother Hamid, only you. The sound of shuffling slippers is nearing. For days you don’t let me go back to my cell. I am either in the room upstairs, in the corridor outside, or in the room downstairs, a place close enough for you to push me quickly if you are in a rush. We sit down on the bed. I say: “I ate shit.”
I am on all fours, crawling and barking and telling you the story of a coup. Step by step, you communicate to me your ideas, bringing other people’s written confessions so I can add interest to the soup, adding oil and onions so I am not returned to the ritual of eating my own shit. You must be doing the same thing to others, too.
I am no longer myself. I have become what you tell me, Brother Hamid. And you tell me that in May 1982, the British instructed me to arrange a meeting in Tehran with the Soviet representative. The meeting place was Paprika restaurant, at the top of Villa Road. The British had come to an agreement with the Mujahedin to launch a coup with the support of the Tudeh Party. I made sure the news of the agreement reached Rahman and to ensure my complete safety, I broke off all contact with the editorial staff at Kayhan and stopped going to the newspaper office. A few days prior to my arrest, the British representative arranged a rendezvous with me in his car under the Hafez Bridge and announced the designated day for the coup, which was 1 April 1983. He told me that the Soviets had informed the Party via a separate source.
I now realize how my previous confessions have been used. The words of a Mardom reporter – who nine months prior to his arrest had severed ties even with the editorial desk, who had no serious, organizational responsibilities in the Party, and was totally unaware of its secret network – would not be considered evidence by anyone. But the situation changes if he’s a British spy who is also an agent for Savak and the KGB. I can’t believe such a ridiculous story even for a moment. I have no doubt that the Party is incapable of launching such a coup; besides the Party is not getting along with the Mujahedin. You insist that this is the truth, and of course I am not sharing my thoughts with you, Brother Hamid. In order to help you develop your film script, I’d report to meetings between the British, the Soviets and Kianuri, and you would insist that I had been in charge of delivering information to Rahman. So I wrote down what you wanted me to write down.
I drink a bit of water and compote juice. I am breaking into pieces, day by day. I smell of shit. I think I’ve got lice. I drag a particular blanket around with me wherever I go. I put my slippers under my head and go to sleep. I sleep in Under the Eight, outside the room downstairs or in the room upstairs. The room upstairs is best; it’s warm and I can see the ghost of my face reflected in the metal wall of the bathroom.
I am fully at your service, Brother Hamid. I, who have become your tongue. You read me the Party leaders’ confessions to the coup. Moshtarek Prison is full of hustle and bustle. Work is going on, day and night. The sound of crying can be heard. The business of extracting confessions is going well. Then it’s time to determine the coup regime. You become animated and say: “Congratulations Mr Asadi, you have become the head of both the radio and television.”
“I?”
“Yes, you. The coup regime has given you the chair.”
I say: “The most responsibility I would be given would be that of a reporter for a newspaper.”
You say: “Don’t be modest, please.”
And you show me someone’s handwriting, I don’t know whose, but he has introduced me as the head of the radio and television. Okay, I accept this, and become a TV boss. There are other officers identifi
ed as well. If my memory serves me right, Kianuri is to be the president, Amoui the commander of the air force, Shaltouki the commander of ground forces, Hatefi the minister of culture, Khodayee the minister of intelligence, Kayhan the minister of labour, Amir Nikayeen the minister of agriculture.
According to this plan, the Soviet forces will be entering via the Afghan and Tajik borders. The Mujahedin are being organized by the British.
Chapter 17
The Night of the Coup
Ali Shamkhani73 was the deputy chief of the Revolutionary Guards Corps back then. He had asked me: “The coup story, is it true?”
I had insisted it was a lie. He slapped me on my ear, then shook me hard. Later, whenever I saw him smartly dressed in his post as minister of defence in Khatami’s reformist cabinet, my ears would make a whistling sound.
I spent the whole night of the supposed coup twisting and turning, between sleep and wakefulness. You came and went, and each time you hit me on my head. My tooth is still aching as it did on that night, even though it was pulled out yesterday. No pain relief seems to work on it. It’s cold and I am writing. Do you remember, Brother Hamid? That night you were wearing a mask. The rest of them were also wearing clothes that revealed their true nature: you all looked like members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Moshtarek Prison, the night of 2 April 1983
How many nights have I spent sleeping outside the door of the room downstairs or the room upstairs? I don’t know. You have been kind and haven’t taken away my blanket. During these days I struggle to drink water and eat compote. I try very hard not to throw up. You are right, Brother Hamid. Shit has taken over my whole body, has even gotten into my heart. Since the eat-your-shit ceremony – I don’t even know which day of the month it is – I have written down whatever you wanted me to write.
Letters to My Torturer Page 20