Letters to My Torturer

by Houshang Asadi

  Moshtarek Prison, winter 1983

  The cell door opens on the morning of 20 December 1983. A tall man dressed in civilian clothing, with a group of guards standing respectfully behind him, asks me how many visitors I have had so far.

  “None.”

  “How often have you had phone calls?”

  Again I answer: “None.”

  He looks at the guards, astonished. And says: “When were you arrested?”

  I answer: “The sixth of February 1983.”

  He frowns, surprised, and asks: “Are you sure you are not mistaken? You haven’t even had a phone call in all this time?”

  I say: “No.”

  He asks my name and writes it down on a piece of paper. I suspect it’s for visitors. I say: “My wife has also been arrested. I just want to see her.”

  He writes down my wife’s name and leaves. He returns a little later: “Have you given us your wife’s name correctly?”

  I repeat her name.

  “We don’t have anyone by that name.”

  I am so happy that I nearly grow wings and fly. I realize that my wife has not been arrested after all.

  “It’s very strange that you have not had phone calls. After three months, everyone ...”

  He swallows the rest of his words and leaves. It doesn’t take long for the guard to come for me. I put on my blindfold, grab hold of the stick and set off. In the courtyard, when you grab my arm, I realize that once again I’ve been given the honour of visiting you.

  “Hello.”

  You reply: “Hello and fuck you. Why didn’t you ask me to let you make phone calls, useless wimp?”

  Then you take me to a place where the sound of ringing telephones can be heard: “How can we contact your wife? Give me the numbers.”

  My heart swells with pleasure. I am feeling certain that my wife has not been arrested. I start giving you numbers of places where my wife could be found. You take down the numbers, Brother Hamid. I can hear the sound of a telephone ringing. You say: “Not in. They have all disappeared into the rat’s hole.”

  You ask for another number. I give it to you. You hit my head twice, it feels like bombs have been dropped on my head.

  “During interrogation, you couldn’t remember a thing. But now, your brain is working like a computer, useless wimp.”

  Suddenly, I recall the telephone number of a close friend. My dear Reza, who last year fell silent for good in Vienna. He had an intensely clear insight into things and no inclination towards any political group. He knew most of them and was critical of their outlook. On one occasion, he asked me: “So why are you supporting the clerics?”

  I said: “Because they are opposed to imperialism.”

  He laughed out loud and said: “The clerics are anti-everything. Why have you picked on their anti-imperialism?”

  His wife was a descendant of a daughter of the grand poet of the constitutional revolution, Mirzadah Eshqi, who was assassinated at home. A lovely and very cultured family.

  In that darkness in which I was losing hope of getting hold of my wife, I reluctantly give you their number. The phone rings a few times and you, Brother Hamid, are handing over the telephone to me. It’s the lovely voice of dear Firoozeh, Reza’s wife. Upon hearing my voice, she cries out enthusiastically: “Where are you, our dear Houshang?”

  Suddenly, I feel my throat contract in a sob. I compose myself. I say that I want to get hold of my wife so I can talk to her. But Firoozeh keeps asking: “Are you okay? Have you been harassed? Is your health okay? I can’t believe it!”

  Eventually, it becomes clear that by sheer coincidence my wife had visited her the night before and they had arranged for her to call Firoozeh today. You, Brother Hamid, who are listening to the conversation through another receiver, are slowly whispering into my ear:

  Arrange a call for the day after tomorrow at four in the afternoon.

  I do as he says. When I put down the phone, you hit me hard on my head: “Who was that whore of a woman who kept saying lovely things to you?”

  I say: “But you are a Muslim. Why are you saying such things about a married woman?”

  Again you hit me on my head: “Do not lecture me about morality, useless wimp!”

  And you pull at my hand and take me out of the room.

  “So what is this woman’s business?”

  I explain that she is not at all political and has only a straightforward friendship with us. You say: “Sod off. Go now. Tell the guard about the day after tomorrow.”

  I return to my cell and sit down in a corner. Firoozeh’s voice has brought the first breeze of freedom to my soul. But even now, when her name is mentioned or when I speak to her, the thought of that revolutionary Muslim brother’s dirty insult makes me shiver.

  Fear and excitement are my companions for forty-eight hours. I am excited that my wife has not been arrested and that I will soon be able to hear her voice from the freedom of the outside world. I also fear that this might be another trap. I imagine you have discovered Firoozeh’s home address from the telephone number. That there has been a raid and she and her children have been detained. Fear doesn’t leave me. After forty-eight hours, I am allowed to speak to my wife for four minutes. After saying hello, we both just cry. You are holding the other handset in your hand, Brother Hamid.

  From this time onwards, a monthly ten-minute phone conversation is added to the life of the prisoner in cell number fifteen. We are rounded up in the courtyard. We are made to stand up or sit down, blindfolded. Later, a guard calls us out, one by one. He takes the phone numbers.

  He keeps one handset and gives me the other one. The phone call cannot stray beyond saying hello and enquiring about each other’s wellbeing. Even hinting at torture is absolutely banned, causing the phone call to be terminated. For anything aside from greetings and questions about health, a separate permit is required. When I ask them to allow me to ask my wife to bring me a pair of glasses, they agree, but only if I say to her: “My glasses have fallen off and broken.”

  On a sunny March day, we are called up. We place our hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us in the line. Exactly thirteen months after my arrest, I am permitted a visit. We set off, our eyes blindfolded. We walk on roads for a short distance. We stop. They tell us to take off the blindfolds and put them in our pockets. We walk on again and soon find ourselves beside a large gate, which I later understand to be the entrance to the Swiss school on Palestine Road. It’s the place closest to Moshtarek Prison, and also to the King’s Palace, which at that time had not yet become the headquarters of Ayatollah Khomeini. When the prisoner queue enters, the courtyard suddenly takes on the atmosphere of a meeting place in a desert. The yelling and cries of the wives and mothers rise up from the ground. Children are shouting, searching for their fathers, searching faces to find the one familiar to them amid all the people dressed in blue. Whenever someone finds a loved one, they embrace him and cry, showering him with kisses. The mothers hit their chests with their fists, the fathers use their walking sticks to try to clear the way to their offspring. It really is like Judgement Day, the last day when the dead are brought back to life. The scene repeats itself each time a new line of prisoners arrives.

  We enter the courtyard, and I am taken to the right, up a long staircase. I enter a place like a classroom. I sit down on a school chair next to somebody else. A little later someone calls out:

  “Houshang!”

  I hear the voice of the person next to me ask: “Which Houshang? There are two Houshangs here.”

  My God. It’s Amir (Houshang) Nikayeen. With his beautiful, humanist smile.

  The guard is saying: “That one.”

  And is pointing at me.

  As soon as I stand up, I see my wife. Wrapped in a black chador she is dragging herself towards me. She stands still and says: “Is this my husband? No ... What have you done to him? What have you done to him?”

  She sees me with my bushy beard, bloated stomach, dressed in my
prison uniform and slippers, and for a moment she’s horrified. She throws herself into my arms and shouts out for everyone to hear: “I love you!”

  She hands me my new glasses. I put them on. For the first time in months I am able to see everything clearly again.

  When we walk down the stairs, we see people dressed in the blue prison uniform filling all corners of the courtyard. Blankets have been neatly spread on the ground and a guard is seated in the middle of each one. Like the rest of the people, my wife and I sit down on opposite sides of a blanket. After thirteen months and in the company of total strangers, what else could we say apart from repeating, yes, I am well and how are you? In the middle of this exchange, I ask her: “How is uncle?”

  Apart from Rahman, we had no other uncle, but I had not seen Rahman in the crowd. My wife shook her head. I don’t know what would have happened had she told me then and there that Rahman was no longer with us. Would that have made a difference to the way I felt or the decision I had made? The visit ends too quickly. I return to the prison with a box of sweets. On the way back, the men whisper to each other and share the news that ten individuals from the Party’s secret organization have been executed.

  The lines I have carved on the wall to count the days, the pigeons’ cooing, the spring breeze and the pleasant air all tell me that the New Year holiday is almost upon us. For a second time, I am to be your guest on New Year’s Day, Brother Hamid. I am not permitted to see anybody apart from the prison guard. I am only allowed to hear my wife’s voice once a month. Each time, after the excitement of going to the telephone, I am plunged into the deepest depression when the phone call ends. I return to my cell and I spend my days crying and memorizing poetry.

  I’ve been quarantined, and kept completely cut off from the outside world. I read the Qur’an from cover to cover many times. I read The Book of Eloquence again and again and finally, the long journey of my quest for truth leads me back to Rumi and Hafez. By now, I understand full well that the path that I had taken in the past was of no use to me. I am a poet. I don’t belong in politics. I had lost myself in

  politics but am rediscovering my lost self in poetry.

  I don’t even have access to newspapers, although the “news” is broadcast every day at two in the afternoon. I have reviewed my life a thousand times and my resolve has grown with every day that passes: “I’ll try to stay alive, if I can do it without hurting others. I shall be independent and have nothing to do with politics. If I can, I’ll write, and finish what needs to be finished.” Then I become agitated. I feel I am running out of time and my creative energy is going to be lost forever. My spirits sink. I throw myself against the walls and the door. I want to be taken to the court soon. I want them to make up their minds: either finish me off or let me find a way to the future.

  I celebrate New Year’s Day alone and preoccupied. For this New Year’s ceremony, I seek out seven items beginning with the letter ‘s’. For sabzi, greenery, I use a green leaf. I have been saving an apple (sib) for just this purpose, and I have a safety pin (sanjaq) and a piece of wire (sim). I use the butt of a cigarette (sigar) for another ‘s’ and a piece of soap (saboon, though it is not the right ‘s’), so I have most of my seven items starting with ‘seen’ ready for the New Year’s ritual. I sit down, facing the seven items. At the moment I assume the New Year has started, I kiss the imaginary image of my wife, and open the book of Hafez’s poetry to a random page in the hope of finding a clue about my future hidden in the poem. And I cry, quietly.

  The next day, the door opens. It’s Brother Rasouli. He sits down by the door, watching me compile my list of books, and says: “I’ve been feeling bad since the day you received your visitor. We’ve been told that communist women are loose. That family doesn’t mean anything to them and that everyone is having an affair with someone else. But the visit confused me. I haven’t seen this much love and warmth in a family before.”

  I don’t know what to say. I talk about my love for my wife and our simple life. He picks up the list and asks: “Do you need anything? I am about to leave this place and the Corps altogether.”

  I say: “A dictionary, if that’s possible.”

  He says: “I’ll try.”

  He stands up. We shake hands and kiss each other. A few days later, when I return from the bathroom, I see a little dictionary on the cell floor. I’ll never see Brother Rasouli again, but to this day, I can remember his face.

  Chapter 20

  Sex in the Torture Chamber

  The Ornament of the Righteous was penned by the renowned Shi’a scholar Muhammad Baqir Majlisi. The book was written in the seventeenth century at a time when the ruling Safavid dynasty in Iran had made Shi’ism the official religion of the country. This popular book offers advice on recommended customs and modes of behaviour, organized by topic. Certain sections of the book deal with sexual matters, which in places read like modern pornography.

  The book was seriously in demand in the prison. Initially, they were pleased that a canonical work of Shi’ism had so many readers in a prison full of communists. Later on, when they realized that the prisoners were only interested in the book’s sexual content, they took it away.

  This twentieth letter has no direct connection to you personally, Brother Hamid. But it reveals the depths of the culture you believe in. After the revolution, you assumed that by censoring the sexual content of this book,83 which is one of the most important reference works for Shi’ism and an essential source of all of the Ayatollahs’ writings, society’s morals would be protected. Just as you thought that you would kill all thought except for your own Taliban-style way of thinking by killing and torturing the best of Iran’s sons and daughters.

  Moshtarek Prison, autumn 1984

  Iqbal (an Arabic and Kurdish name meaning good fortune) was only twenty-four when the Islamic Republic clamped down on Iran’s Kurdistan region. Thousands fled to safety, among them Iqbal, who sought refuge in Tehran. He was eventually arrested and for a few days in 1984 became my guest in the solitary confinement cell.

  In search of employment and a roof over his head, Iqbal went to a public loans office,84 run by a religious couple in the south of Tehran. Some men who work in Islamic institutions are addressed by the common title of Haj Aqa and their wives, who are wrapped in black chadors, are referred to as Haj Khanum.

  As luck would have it, when Iqbal arrived at the loans office, Haj Khanum was in the director’s office. He managed to sweet-talk her into employing him. When Haj Aqa arrived, Haj Khanum explained that the helpless young Kurd should be hired because he had lost all his family. Unlike most Kurds, they were Shia Muslims, and the enemies of Iran had killed them.

  Haj Aqa believed the lies that Iqbal had fed to his wife and so Iqbal was hired. He was a hard-working young man, and more importantly, he was seriously committed to fulfilling his religious duties. He never missed his prayers, performing them exactly on time and taking part in all of the religious rites and ceremonies. On Monday nights, he attended prayer ceremonies where radical believers placed the Qur’an on their heads and punched their chests, weeping profusely. He had even been spotted performing the Jafar Tayyar prayer85 in the middle of the night. On Friday nights he would certainly attend the Kumayl prayers86 and his Fridays were spent fasting as well as attending the Nudbah87 prayer ceremony at Tehran’s large cemetery. Whenever he had time off work, he either read the The Book of Eloquence or The Ornament of the Righteous. Iqbal was one of the latter book’s devotees, and he used to tell me: “You are stupid. Prayer is not going to help you, no matter how much you pray. You have to study this book so that you can act in line with Shia scholars’ instructions from early in the morning when you get up to go to the toilet, until the night when you lie beside your wife.”

  He would then stand up and walk. He would pace up and down the tiny cell and ask:

  “In your view, is it allowed to kiss a woman down there?”

  I would laugh and say, “Drop it, Iqbal.”
/>   He used to reply, “Fear not.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that it is possible. There are a thousand hadith88 about this.”

  Then he would walk up and down, reciting the hadith. When he reached the “fear not” passage, I’d join him and we would read together, laughing out aloud:

  They asked what will happen if the man and woman’s clothes are removed at the moment of intercourse. He said, fear not, it’s allowed. Again, they asked, what if the woman’s vagina was kissed? He said, fear not, it’s allowed.

  It has been related in numerous credible hadith verses that there should be no speaking during the moment of intercourse. But looking at the vagina and kissing it is allowed.

  They asked if someone undressed his wife and looked at her, what would happen to them. He said that there is no pleasure greater than this. They asked what if he played with his wife or slave’s vagina with his hands and fingers? He said, it’s allowed but nothing should be placed inside the woman unless it’s part of the human body. They asked is it allowed to have intercourse in water pool and he said, fear not, it’s allowed.

  They asked explicitly about having intercourse in a bath and he said, it’s allowed.

  It has been related that if someone has intimately embraced a slave and wanted to sleep with another slave before performing the ritual bath, he should perform the ablution. They asked, is a man allowed to sleep with two slaves? He said no, it’s banned. What about sleeping with two free women? He said, that’s allowed.

  We kept holding sex education classes in our little cell. But making him talk about the rest of his life was not easy, although his life story was worth listening to.