And cell number fifteen becomes my home. In the evening, the guards play football outside the window, and their shouts intrude on the comforts of solitude. One night, just when the lights go off, I hear a cry from the courtyard below: “Everyone! Look at what they are doing to us!”
It’s Rahman’s voice. He had said many times that he felt like shouting out right in the middle of Toopkhaneh Square, telling people who he really was, yet he had no choice but to hide his membership of the Tudeh Party. And that night, it was as if he was crying in the middle of Toopkhaneh Square. He was either on his way to or from the torture chamber.
Two years later I will find out that the following day his lifeless body had been found inside his cell. He had torn open the veins in his wrists with his teeth.
I don’t know how I would have reacted had I been aware of Rahman’s heroic death that night. Or what I would have done had I known his body had been left outside the window of my cell for forty-eight hours.
A few days later, a guard opens the door and takes me with him without a word. We walk up an old stone stairway. A door opens. The guard orders: “Take off your blindfold and go in.”
I do as I’m told. The door closes behind me and the sun’s glare hits my eyes. I find myself in the fresh-air section on the roof of Moshtarek Prison, which has been carefully covered and enclosed with metal bars. Pigeons have perched themselves on the bars. The sky is blue and a hot summer sun is shining. I cannot bear standing up. I sit down and lean against the wall. It takes a long time for my eyes to get used to the light.
Day by day, I am losing myself in the intoxication of prayer. The Arabic words are becoming meaningful. There is a short distance between atheism and true belief in God. Theism and atheism are two sides of the same coin, and when the two become absolute, they change shape, turning from spiritual tools into material means. When my hand reaches for the book, I read a passage that says that for mystics, saying a prayer is like drinking wine in paradise. A famous mystic had said about his lengthy prayer sessions that it was as if wine was bubbling up in his mind. Everybody moulds his God in the way that appeals to him.
One day, a tall guard turns up. He’s in charge of the library. He gives me a list of books to choose from. Two days later, I receive two books of poetry, one by Rumi, the other by Hafez. I drown in the poetry, it washes away the filth of my days. My heart grows sadder and I pray even more. It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is. As soon as I become sad, I perform my ablution and pray. I am somehow finding refuge in not having a refuge. Then I seek refuge in poetry.
One day, I spot this poem by Siavash Kasrai scribbled in tiny letters in pencil in the margin of the book I’m reading:
Though once again they’ve closed the tavern doors
Though they’ve smashed our bottles
Though they’ve extracted
from lips, repentance
from hands, the glasses
Tell the vice patrol to be on the lookout
As I’m still drunk with wine every night.
I read it. Ten times. A hundred times. After a while I hear my wife’s voice: “Houshka ... Houshka ...” But no: she is not calling the Houshang who is sitting here; she wants the me who has been lost. I am just a puppet.
The following day is a Friday. I have had nightmares the whole night. At the end, I am standing on the top of the cliff from which Steve McQueen jumps at the end of Papillon. My wife is down there, in a boat. She’s shouting: “Houshka, Houshka, don’t be afraid. Jump. Jump.”
I wake up with a jolt. I am full of sorrow, from my head to my toes. I knock on the door and go to perform my ablution. In the middle of my prayer, the door suddenly opens. I am prostrating so I do not lift my head. Someone kicks me hard on my side with his boots:
“Useless wimp, is this the time for prayers?”
I recognize your voice, Brother Hamid. You who have forced me to repent.
“Put on the blindfold and face the wall.”
I do as I’m told. I sense that you have seated yourself by the door.
“What are you up to these days?”
I explain and you listen and then ask: “Need anything?”
“Of course I do. I’ve been here for a long time. Aren’t you taking me to court?”
You sigh and say: “I’ve been waiting for this longer than you have. When the sentence is passed, I would like to shoot the final bullet myself.”
There is the sound of a door closing. For a while I just sit there, blindfolded and facing the wall. Then I lift the blindfold. My restlessness intensifies, coming over me in wave after wave.
Who was I? What have I become?
What wonders that heartless kick did for me. The man who had thrown me into hell with the cut of a lash had pulled me out of it with a kick. For which one of these acts will he be rewarded and which punished? Would the God on whose behalf he was administering the lashes, and handcuffing me, and feeding me shit, reward the repentance that he had ordered, or would he reward the repentance that he had triggered inadvertently? My repentance, though initially false, had now become my refuge.
What place does this incident have on his path of leading me to God? How easy is it to simplify the complexity of a man’s existence and to prepare the scales of oppression for the sake of political expediency?
You save me, Brother Hamid. I am clawing my way out of a dark tunnel. There is a light at the far end, and even if it’s the light of the final bullet that you have promised to shoot, even so, it still signifies release.
I am returning to myself, I who am no longer that self. It’s as if a hat made of lead has been lifted from my head. The wind of tomorrow is touching my face, burning my wounds and setting fire to my heart. The fire is warming me and the whole of my past is coming back with the warmth. Childhood, hunger, and poverty. Youthfulness and running. Hope and revolution. The hungry are rising up, and changing the world.
My whole soul has been ploughed. Dust and excrement have been mixed. Stray weeds and perfumed herbs. I am running over this newly ploughed ground on my wounded feet in search of myself. No, I want to sow myself in this field. I am still thirty-three years old and if I come out of here alive, I can be myself again.
I return to the world and rediscover myself. I randomly open the book of Hafez’s poetry, and my eye falls on this poem:
Spring and its lovely flowers have come and gone,
And you, who has broken his promise of repentance,
Watch the beauty of the flower and uproot sorrow from your heart,
Tell the story of the wine, and the beauties,
Listen to Hafez, the wise man who knows.
I start to shake. I read the poem, maybe a hundred times. I imagine the sound of my wife reading it in her pleasant voice. And all I want is to be myself again.
My life inside cell number fifteen slips into a routine. Bathing once a week, and before bathing there’s the distribution of nail clippers. Fresh air once a week. Hair cut once a month. Brother Rasouli, the tall, young guard, gives me books. But only morally uplifting ones.
I am reviewing my old life, bit by bit, while I am living this life in my cell. I don’t know how often I succumb to feelings of regret. Sorrow fills me. I weep, and eventually I decide, not knowing that this is going to be the most difficult decision of my whole life, that I want to remain independent. I want to stay alive without causing harm to anyone else.
And inside me, blood is raining, wind is blowing, there’s a storm and the icebergs are breaking up, like in Pudovkin’s film Mother78 when the water forges a path through the ice. The Downpour,79 arrives and it’s as if I am looking for something inside that abandoned storage room. I am searching for myself. I am paddling with my feet and hands from dawn to dusk. I bob up and down in the water. I have a fever. The sites of my wounds ache. My feet are burning with a piercing pain. I tighten my bandana. I press against my teeth with my fingers. I lean against the wall. I sit down and stand up. I don’t know when it is that my tears
become a flood and drown my eyes. It’s a spring that first starts with a slow trickle before bursting its banks. I sob for hours and spill out all the filth that they have pushed down inside me. I am not even aware that I am sobbing loudly and reciting passages from Jean-Christophe:
Life! Oh Life! I have understood. I have been looking for myself in you. My being crumbles inside me, air is entering from the inside of my wounds, I am breathing and am discovering you, oh life!
There are loud knocks on the wall. Behazin, the book’s translator, is in the cell next to mine. I fall silent. He says in a loud voice: “My son, whoever you are, be calm.”
I sit down. Some time passes. Is it a minute or a year? Then, an old song surfaces from somewhere and is running over my lips:
I went with you, and returned without you,
From her abode, O my crazy heart!
I hid, in the ashes of sorrow,
All those hopes, O my crazy heart!
Oh my crazy heart, Oh my crazy heart, Oh my crazy heart! Now I am weeping and singing. I feel released from my chains. The ice in my soul melts away. The stone in my heart cracks open. I become myself and come out of myself. All of me comes out, and spins around. All life rises ...
These days, I have a new guest in my cell.
Hussein Abi had finished performing his prayers at the Imam Reza shrine80 in Mashhad and had prayed to God to find him a good wife to relieve him of his loneliness. He had just turned thirty. He was short and stocky, with a big, round belly. In Mashhad’s bazaar, everybody knew him as Hussein Abi, Hussein the Blue. He was mad about football and supported the Blues and was dead against the Reds.81 He was walking and thinking about the noon prayers he was supposed to perform after lunch, and about returning to his little shop, when the sound of sobbing caught his attention. He walked in the direction of the noise and saw a woman draped in a black chador. She was crying and her shoulders were shaking. He hesitated, rubbing his hands awkwardly, and asked the woman in a shy voice: “Excuse me, Sister. Are you alright?”
The woman explained that she had lost all her family in an Iraqi attack in the south of Iran and that she herself had fled, fearing rape at the hands of Iraqi soldiers. She had come to the city of Mashhad to seek protection under the auspices of Imam Reza, the city’s patron saint.
Hussein Abi told her that if she wished, she could stay with his old mother for a couple of days. The woman accepted the offer as if she had been anticipating this sort of invitation and set off with Hussein. Hussein, who was a traditional, religious man, walked ahead and the woman, whose name he didn’t know, followed him. From time to time, when Hussein Abi turned his head to check whether the stranger was following him, he noticed under her chador the outline of a good figure, and this would make him feel restless; he saw a pair of sparkling eyes that made his heart soar. The walk to his home took a long time because Hussein Abi had chosen an unfamiliar route to avoid bumping into his business colleagues.
Fatimeh Khanum, who was called Fati, ended up staying with them. Hussein Abi’s mother told everyone that the woman was a distant relative and had come from the south, having lost her family in the war. The beautiful, olive-skinned Fatimeh Khanum, who was a woman of few words, soon found her place in the community. And then, one day, the neighbours heard the news that Hussein Abi had quietly married her.
Hussein Abi was madly in love with his wife. He loved her more than he loved the Blues and believed that she was a gift from Imam Reza.
In the first year of their marriage Fati Khanum gave birth to baby girl. She looked fresh and beautiful like a bunch of flowers and they called her Ziba, or Beauty. Three years later the little girl became sister to a new baby girl, Rana.
It was on the night of Rana’s birthday that the family heard loud knocks on their door. The house was soon filled with men and machine-guns. Fatimeh Khanum and her husband were both taken away.
When Hussein Abi, my new cellmate, reaches this part of his story, he becomes silent and tears run down his face. When he first arrived in the cell, he was extremely agitated and depressed. He didn’t talk, didn’t eat, and didn’t walk. His feet are still in bandages and it took him days to warm to me and to talk to me in his thick Mashhadi accent.
The prisoners are tortured from the moment of their arrest, and Hussein is asked to provide information about organizational matters. He has never been exposed to this type of vocabulary before, so he doesn’t understand and has no answers for them. And since he is not answering their questions, they assume that he’s a real professional. They send him to Tehran and even under torture in Tehran all he does is to call out God’s name in praise. Eventually, Fatimeh gives in to torture and starts talking. When she is brought face-to-face with her husband, she says: “I’ve been telling you lies, Haj Aqa. My family is alive. I am an active member of the Peykar organization.82 When the rest of them were arrested, I fled and came to Mashhad with a fake ID. That’s when I met you. Divorce me. I am not into politics anymore. I have fallen in love with the simple life that I’ve been leading with you. Go away and look after our children.”
A cleric, who is present at the meeting, says: “This woman is forbidden to you. She is a communist, a polluted infidel.”
Hussein Abi answers: “My beloved saint, Imam Reza, gave her to me as a gift. She was married to me in line with the Prophet’s traditions. You, who are torturers, cannot forbid me what God has allowed me. I have no idea what this Peykar thing is about. I am not going to leave without my wife. If you make me leave, I’ll go straight to Mashhad’s main market, and I’ll shout and yell, and set fire to myself and my children, there and then.”
This ordinary man had fallen for a communist woman. He doesn’t care about her real name, whether she’s a Muslim or an infidel. Every time he says her name, he cries. He says: “The feet of my wife, the mother of my children, have swollen to the size of pillows.”
I, who am usually a supporter of the Blues, suddenly decide to back the Reds and day in, day out, Hussein Abi and I argue over the relative merits of the Blues versus the Reds.
Two weeks pass. He stops performing his prayers. He knows Khamenei, but now can only insult him.
Early in the summer of 1983, they come for him one incredibly hot day and take him away.
Where has he been taken? What’s going to happen to him?
I am afraid for his wife, a woman I have never met, and for his two beautiful daughters.
Chapter 19
My Wife’s Voice and her Eyes
The Islamic Republic has now turned Moshtarek Prison into a propaganda museum, displaying statues of Savak torturers wearing ties. Maybe they are hoping that the Islamic Republic’s very own torturers will be forgotten.
This is my nineteenth letter to you, Brother Hamid. You, who have deprived me of even the minimum prisoner’s rights. For nine months, you didn’t let me hear my wife’s voice. Even though you had completed your interrogation of me and of all those connected with me, you still kept me locked up, and led me to believe that my wife had also been imprisoned.
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?”
“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?”
Letters to My Torturer Page 23