A speech is delivered in front of the United Nations office. We get back on the buses and this time we set off in the direction of the Rudaki Hall. Rudaki is the name of the first Iranian poet. They could not handle the name of this hall, which used to serve as an opera house during the Shah’s time, and have now changed it. I have many memories of this place; the first time I held the hand of my future wife was in that hall. She’s now waiting for me, like the rest of the families.
We are taken into the hall. I take a seat in the back row. One or two people give speeches. Then it’s Kianuri’s turn. He walks up to the microphone, limping, his back bent. The prisoners applaud him. He pulls out a text he has already prepared. He coughs a bit. I don’t know what is going through his mind, but he puts the paper back into his pocket and says:
Our Party has achieved a great deal, and has made many mistakes. I take full responsibility for the mistakes. I have been the main decision-maker in the Party and have single-handedly made decisions about some issues. I am offering you all my apologies. I apologize to all those members of the Party who have been killed ...
And suddenly he starts crying, loudly:
None of my colleagues is to blame. None of you are to blame.
And the sound of his crying permeates the hall. I’ve seen the Swan Lake ballet on this stage and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. And now, I am watching Nurrudin Kianuri.
And the show still goes on.
We get back in the buses and are driven to the front of the parliament building. The parliament, which looks like the one in Paris, used to be a senate before the revolution. From the bus windows we see all our families, their arms filled with bouquets of flowers, waiting to greet us. When the buses arrive, they start a commotion from behind the barriers that are holding them back.
The survivors of this decade of intense horror, those who have escaped death, at last return to the arms of their mothers, fathers, wives, husbands and children. When we get out of the buses, children squeeze themselves through the bars and run past the guards, and disappear in their fathers’ arms.
They make us sit down on the asphalt in front of the marble steps leading to the parliament. My mind goes back to fifty years ago, and the house of my childhood. In my mind, they’ve killed the fish in the pool and destroyed the pots of geraniums. The stairs to the ancient cellar are covered in mud. No one is sleeping on the roof any more. The house of freedom has been occupied by clerics. Sitting on beds and smoking hookah have been banned. My eyes search for Abgie. The scent of jasmine and chubak shrub is in the air. A woman wrapped up in a white chador is brought out and made to stand in front of the stairs. Led by a cleric, a group of women dressed in thick black chadors turn up and clear a path. My mother is not there to call my name from behind the bars. But my father is behind the bars, crying and swearing. The cleric moves to the front. I think he’s Aqa Seyyed, who’s become Parliamentary Chief. What a fat belly he now has. The chadorwrapped women are running after him. They pick out someone from the middle of the crowd, take him, and place him next to the woman in the white chador. It’s Babak Zahraei. I think he’s the son of a poet who had studied abroad and then had returned to Iran.
I am reminded of Afaq Khanum, my mother’s Baha’i aunt. Some leaders of the Baha’i community had also been imprisoned in Evin. They were waiting for their turn to be hanged. One of them knew Afaq Khanum. He told me that her husband had been killed in the early days of the revolution and she and her children had become homeless.
Aqa Seyyed reaches the steps. Kianuri is made to stand up in respect. The grandson of Sheikh Fazlollah Noori, now in his seventies, bent and holding his side with his hand, is facing a follower of his own grandfather. Aqa Seyyed speaks in praise of liberty. He says Iran is one of the freest countries in the world. The followers of all religions and sects are free to practice their faith.
You could see the whole of Iran’s contemporary history summarized in that scene on that sunny afternoon. We stand up and return to the buses. The buses set off in the direction of Azadi (Liberty) Square.104 We were coming to the end of the show. They had made sure that the main roads were lined with crowds. The buses took us via side streets and then they made us disembark. We were still standing in a line, surrounded by prison directors and officials. We were still waiting for them to let us go.
Haj Mojtaba seeks me out and tells me to talk to the prison director. My heart sinks. On the way, I ask myself a thousand questions. Then I reach him. The prison director says: “You need to come to the prison tomorrow, at six in the evening. Haj Aqa wants to see you.”
A shiver goes up my spine. Haj Aqa is the head of Evin’s Intelligence Office. I ask him in a shaky voice: “But have I not been released?”
He says: “Of course you have been freed. But Haj Aqa has some unfinished business with you.”
The timing of this smells of you, Brother Hamid. So far, no one has confirmed that my file has been closed. I hear your voice, which is coming from the depths of the torture chamber: “I would like to shoot the final bullet myself.”
And it mingles with the mockery of the cultural events’ official: “It’s not like the Shah’s time when you could leave prison as heroes. You’ll leave either dead or with your reputation in ruins.”
I try one last time: “My family is waiting for me, they are anxious.”
Haj Mojtaba talks into a walkie-talkie and says: “Alright. Go ahead. But be at Evin tomorrow at six.”
I feel like I have grown wings. I run in the direction of the place where the families are gathered. In the middle of the Islamic Republic’s tenth anniversary, the freed prisoners are losing themselves in the arms of their families, shedding tears of happiness.
I cannot see my wife anywhere. I turn around, looking. I’m standing in the shade in Azadi Square. Someone inside me is saying: “You have been in prison for six years but now you are free. Be happy!”
Someone else is responding: “You are not free. You have left freedom behind forever inside the prison blocks, the torture chambers, and with the voices of the companions who walked to the gallows ...”
The sound of my wife’s voice, which is the sound of happiness and freedom, rises above all the noise and commotion. I turn in her direction; she’s moving towards me, like a swan with open wings. For a moment, we lose ourselves in each other’s embrace.
Oh the warmth of love. The scent of life.
We walk, then run, and get into our car, a car we had bought back in the days when life was like a dream. My wife is driving through familiar streets. Tehran, my city. Its streets have now begun to resemble the streets in Pakistan. Its cinemas are either burned down or in ruins. Its women have disappeared under the obligatory hijab. Its guards are all bearded.
My wife is giving me a piece of good news: “I’ve baked a pizza for you.”
And I give her the first bad news: “I have to go back at six tomorrow.”
And the barely gained freedom disappears again. It turns bitter. My wife asks: “But why? Haven’t you been released?”
I have no answer. We drive down the steep road. The house is still green. A house where exceptionally talented Iranians used to live on every single storey. But after the revolution they disappeared, one by one. The smell of burning fills the stairway. I say: “Hey, you’ve burned my lunch again?”
We run up the stairs. After six long years, I open the door to my house. With its familiar sounds and smells. I embrace my mother-in-law and my wife disappears into the kitchen. Minutes later, I am seated at the dinner table, having washed my hands and face with apple scented soap. The pizza is totally burned. I look at my wife. Her lips are smiling but her eyes are full of tears.
At six o’clock the next day I get out of the car in front of Evin Prison. I hold my wife’s hand until the very last moment. She asks: “Will you come back?”
I have absolutely no idea whether I’ll be coming back. I shake my head. I give the guard my name. I throw one last gla
nce at my wife. I go in through the small pedestrian gate. Once again I put on the blindfold and the guard takes me to the ministry block, making me sit down on a bench. It’s as if the large building has been deserted. There’s not even the sound of footsteps. I stand up and start pacing. I sit down again. I picture my wife, who’s waiting for me outside. I think I hear the sound of shuffling slippers and focus, listening. No. There’s no one around. A few times I call out: “Brother! Brother!”
My voice echoes and twists in the emptiness of the corridor but there’s no sound. I hear Hussein Abi’s early morning whispers and see myself, hanging from the pipes, my thick tongue sticking out, my glasses on the floor.
In the ensuing silence I once again review my whole life. It’s as if I’m watching a rapidly moving film that’s being projected onto my blindfold. Childhood and youth. A country that I had not known at all. Becoming a young man and an understanding that came through the words of a green-eyed man, and then blossomed into full truth. A dream that appeared real. We were young men and women who walked on mountainous roads, who could see that tomorrow lay only one step ahead. Socialism was going to be victorious. Capitalism would be buried, just as Lenin had predicted, humanity would be freed, and people would be equal. We lived for this dream and we went through torture chambers for this dream and some of us died on the gallows for this dream. Inside me, there’s always been a rebel, trying to get away from the confinements of these thoughts. I was a poet and writer, a man perpetually in love. The beautiful eyes of a woman could send a shiver down my spine and her smile could make my heart soar.
After all the torture, the pretence of repentance, and the fake prayers, I had not lost my faith, even a tiny bit. But performing prayers had shown me that those who were religious also lived for a dream, just like the infidel. Our dream was supposed to come true on earth, theirs in paradise, which was in a different world. But I came to realize that the world was bigger, more complex and more ruthless than this dream. These thoughts, step by step, took me away from ideology, and back to poetry and literature. Rahman’s death, which meant the end of the source that had fed my thinking, gave me the courage to think freely and for myself for the first time in my life. The story of Eden Pastora’s life had a serious impact in changing my way of thinking. He was a former revolutionary, a man known as Commander Zero. He had played a leading role in the revolution in Nicaragua and not long after the revolution, a difference of opinion had emerged between him and his comrades. The great commander had rounded up his men and had taken them to a jungle on the border of the country to bring the war to an end. The CIA had established contact with him and had offered him financial support. He had gone through a period of intense reflection and had eventually made an important decision. He released his men. He threw himself into life in the border region, together with his wife and children. For me, he was a role model, an example of a man who had turned his back on politics, and escaped the claws of the terrifying forces of reality.
Later on, the collapse of the Soviet Union, a country I had visited at the height of its power, took with it the last fragments of my beliefs. I had freed myself from myself. And now I was waiting for a meeting that would either end with me, a man who had nothing left in his life but love, beer and literature, being returned to prison, or to Evin’s gate being opened wide and freedom.
A hand touches my shoulder: “What are you doing here at this time of the night?”
I don’t know why I reply: “What time is it, brother?”
“Eleven at night. You didn’t tell me what you are doing here.”
“I’ve been told that Brother Zamani wants to talk to me.”
“Wait here.”
He leaves and it takes maybe a thousand years for him to come back.
“Get up, come on.”
He grabs hold of my arm and takes me with him. We turn a corner. A door opens. I sense that the room is spacious.
“Are you okay, Mr Asadi?”
I can hardly recognize my own voice: “Thank you.”
“You are going to go back home, right?”
“I was going home when they told me that you ...”
“Yes. I have just one more question for you.”
He puts an object into my hand.
“Lift your blindfold slightly, you know how.”
I pull up the blindfold just enough to look down. It’s the photograph of a woman dressed in a white chador. Brother Zamani is talking, but it’s your voice, Brother Hamid, that is ringing in my ears: “Who is this woman?”
Endnotes
1 The term “Under the Eight” is used in all Iranian prisons to refer to the entrance to the detention centre where the guards stand watch. The term started to be used in the Shah’s era. At the time, the guards were military men whose rank looked similar to the letter eight in Farsi numerals, which is the shape of a triangle.
2 The term Party in this book refers to the Iranian Communist Party or Tudeh Party, which was supported by the former Soviet Union. The Party’s full name is Hezb-e Tudeh-e Iran or the Party of the Iranian Masses. Established in 1941, it is Iran’s oldest organized union of communists. At the time, World War II was still raging and the allied forces, who had used Iran as “a bridge to victory” to defeat Hitler in the former Soviet Union, had not yet left Iran. Reza Shah Pahlavi, the first ruler of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–79), had been exiled and his son, Muhammad Reza, a young king, was on the throne and Iran was facing a decade of freedom – or chaos. In that period, a group of educated Iranians abroad, especially in Germany, who were greatly influenced by the Bolshevik revolution, set up the foundations of a pro-Soviet political party. The Party rapidly gained strength and transformed itself into a very powerful organization. Its intention was to establish a socialist government in Iran and it aligned itself in support of the former Soviet Union and against the so-called imperialist governments, particularly the United States and Britain.
The Tudeh Party had considerable influence in its early years, and played an important role during Mohammad Mosaddeq’s campaign to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, but it was brutally suppressed following the Anglo-American coup of 1953 against Mosaddeq, which resulted in power being handed to the Shah. A group of the Party’s secret military wing were executed, its leaders fled to communist countries, and its influence waned. The Party actively supported the Islamic revolution, aligning itself with Ayatollah Khomeini’s anti-Western and anti-capitalist sentiments, and his declared intention of overthrowing the Shah’s regime, which was undemocratic and supported by the US. After the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979, the Party’s leaders, consisting mainly of aging individuals, immediately returned to Iran, resurrecting the Party, and pursued a policy supportive of the Islamic government. Although the Party never opposed the Islamic Republic, in 1983 the gradual suppression of political groups reached the Tudeh Party, and its cadres and members of the Central Committee were arrested on the third anniversary of the revolution. The Party’s leaders later appeared on the Islamic Republic’s television channel and confessed to spying for the Soviet Union. Many years later, when the Party’s first secretary, Nurruddin Kianuri, was released from prison and placed under house arrest, he wrote in a number of letters that the confessions were all false and had been extracted under horrific torture. Kianuri is also the grandson of Sheikh Fazlollah Noori, the spiritual father of the current Islamic government. The majority of Party cadres and people close to its leadership were executed during the Islamic holocaust, the account of which is given in this book. See also note 100.
3 Ablution, in original Farsi wuzu, is an Islamic-Arabic term that translates as rooshanaayee or light. Ablution involves a ritualistic washing of the hands, face and front of the feet. A prayer performed without ablution is considered invalid. Shia believers also perform ablution in preparation for reading the Qur’an. At the start of the war with Iraq, it became commonplace for fighters to perform ablution in preparation for entering a minefield or engagin
g in combat. It signified that they were preparing for a holy task and entering paradise. Prison interrogators equally performed ablution in preparation for the interrogation process.
4 Fatimeh is the name of a woman who in Shia Islam is considered a saint equal to the Virgin Mary. She was the daughter of Muhmmad, the prophet of Islam. At the age of nine, she became wife to Ali, the third Muslim caliph and the first Shia Imam. Her sons, Hassan and Hussain, are the second and third Shia Imams and are the pillars of the Shia faith. Hassan, who entered into an agreement over a conflict with the caliph of the time, exemplifies peace for the sake of protecting shi’ism. His brother Hussain, who rebelled against the caliph, could only persuade seventy-two individuals to follow him. They all died in the desert in Karbala. In the Shia faith, Hussain embodies the struggle against oppression. Upon Hussain’s martyrdom, the title Sayyed Al-Shohada (Lord of the Martyrs) was given to him. Shia believers mourn his death every year in the first ten days of the month of Muharram, which was the month in which his battle with the caliph took place.
5 Foot whipping, or bastinado, is a common form of corporal punishment, involving beating the bare soles of the feet with a cane, rod or whip. Due to the congregation of nerve endings in the soles of the feet, and the many small bones and tendons, it is extremely painful, and the wounds take a long time to heal.
6 Karbala, which is in present-day Iraq, is the location of Imam Hussain’s martyrdom, the third Shia Imam, whose tomb is also in Karbala. During the Iran-Iraq war, Ayatollah Khomeini used to say: “The path to Quds goes through Karbal,” meaning that his troops should first conquer Iraq and then move on to Jerusalem in order to “liberate” Israel into the sea. These words of Khomeini were incorporated into war songs called “Nuha” and were played on the radio and television throughout the war with Iraq. Prison interrogators also made use of these songs as musical accompaniment to the torture process.
Letters to My Torturer Page 31