It is evening when we alight in front of the steps of unit number three. They divide us into blocks. They send me to cell number eight, I am sharing the cell with three other leftists and eight Mujahedin. The person in charge of the cell is, of course, one of them. In Evin, renegade Mujahedin were put in charge of blocks and cells. Here, the people loyal to the Mujahedin are in charge: the two sides of the same coin.
A meeting is held that evening. It’s been arranged to cast votes for and against changing the bedsheets. The person in charge of the cell introduces the issue. Then he collects votes. He asks for the views of every single Mujahed. He bypasses me and the three other leftists who happen to sit beside me, and says: “Approved unanimously.”
We leftists do not exist for them. A while later things become clear to me. There are poles that are opposite each other: the oppressive prison guards and the innocent prisoners. Each side desires nothing less than the total annihilation of the other. If an individual fails to obey the prisoners’ own rules, he is counted as an enemy who is siding with the guards. If he doesn’t conduct himself as the guards wish him to behave, he is considered an enemy of the administration. There is no grey zone between the black and white frontlines. If you tried to move towards the grey zone so that you could be true to yourself, you would be condemned by both sides.
A few days after my arrival, I notice that the leader of the Iranian Trotskyists, Babak Zahraie, is also here. Completely isolated, he is held in the first cell on the right side of the block. The cell is small and has become known as the cell of the “directionless”, those with no political affiliations.
I seek him out and we immediately become friends. He’s a sweet man, literate and open. We discuss Stalin. He’s confident that Stalin killed three million people, I argue that he killed only a few. Eventually, we agree on three hundred thousand people, laugh and shake hands.
That same night, Hussein Abi comes to find me. I used to truly love him. Now, he talks to me in a cautious manner. He says I shouldn’t speak to Babak, that he’s an enemy of the Party and a CIA spy. I tell him that the rest of the prisoners are also enemies of the Party, but there is no evidence that Babak is a CIA spy. Also, even if he were a spy, what secret do I have that might be useful to him?
Laughing, Hussein says: “Sod off. When you perform your prayers, I know that you’re faking it. And now you are hanging out with a CIA spy. Have you completely distanced yourself from us?”
I explained my position: “I have made up my mind. I don’t want to belong to any organization. I want to be independent.”
Our relationship becomes cold. I realize that after every meeting or conversation I have with Hussein, my relationship with most of the others becomes colder too. But a few of them remain friendly until the last day. Ismael is one of them; a tiny, military man, incredibly kind, he loves grapes. As at Evin, the Mujahedin have set up rules for this block. And, as at Evin, they have decided that eating fruit is a sign of greed. Hence, I am the only one that buys any of the fruit that is offered for sale. In the evening Ismael and I sit in the corridor, to chat and share my grapes.
In the middle of the night, the man in charge of the block wakes me up to take me out of the cell. He hands me over to Samad who resembles an Afghan bricklayer. He speaks quietly, muttering. After a few questions of a general nature, he starts asking about the Freemasons in Iran and their work, and the Intelligence Services’ operational methods. Alarm bells start ringing in my head. You have returned, Brother Hamid, dressed in a different set of clothing. I am overwhelmed by an intense feeling of danger.
A few days later, I am called up, and asked to pick up my belongings. I am taken to Evin in a private car and delivered to the sanatorium. An official collects me and makes me stand outside a cell, and angrily tells me to take my clothes off. I take off my clothes. I take off everything apart from my underpants. He shouts: “Take them off!”
I can’t believe it. I have only seen scenes like this in films. I begin to take off my underpants a little hesitantly. He abruptly drags them down.
“Bend over, you piece of filth.”
A mixture of fear and embarrassment floods over me. I bend slightly.
“More.”
With great reluctance I bend over a little more, every instinct screaming at me to refuse. My face is burning in shame.
“Now open up.”
I grip the two sides of my buttocks and pull them apart. My heart and my hands are trembling. Suddenly, a hand is thrust into my anus. I cry out involuntarily. The gloved hand is twisting around inside my anus and I am choking with hatred and anger. He takes off his dirty glove and gives it to me: “Throw it into the toilet.” Then he pushes me, naked as I am, into one of those infamous Israeli-style cells with a sink and toilet. I want to throw the glove into the toilet, but the toilet is blocked and filled to overflowing with a stinking mess of water and excrement.
I spend the whole night pacing the cell, breathing in the disgusting smell. I drink water from the tap, and am given nothing else. I am terrified that everything is about to start all over again. They come for me in the morning with my clothes, and I end up standing in a long corridor, facing the wall.
I hear a conversation between a man and a woman. I realize that they are husband and wife and have been brought together for a visit. Their voices sound very young. A bit later, I hear a child crying. From the words of the guard, who’s brought in the child, I gather that the child has been brought in so his parents can see him. They promise the child, who’s now stopped crying and is laughing, that they’ll soon be released and will not abandon him. Then, it seems that a guard has appeared and taken away the child. The woman’s crying takes over from the child’s weeping. Her husband is consoling her that this is only the first visit and that they’ll be able to be together with their child another time. Then I hear the guard’s voice: “Enough. Say goodbye to each other.”
They say their goodbyes and leave.
I hear a guard’s voice telling another guard: “They have taken them both,” meaning they are to be hanged.
I start trembling from head to toe. This had been the final meeting of a husband and wife with their child and none of them had been aware of it.
I wait for a while before someone comes for me. We set off. We walk down a steep road. We get into a private car parked by the gate. When we leave Evin, the driver says: “Take off your blindfold.”
I was seated in the back and there were two people in the front. I guessed from the route we were taking that we were returning to Moshtarek Prison. An hour later, inside Moshtarek Prison again, I put on the blue prison clothes, walk past the courtyard and enter an elongated cell neighbouring the toilets on the left side in block number one. The walls are slippery wet from dirty toilet water.
There is a constant sound of children playing in the corridor. I assume that I’ll be seeing you, Brother Hamid. I’ve really been missing you. But you are not here. A young man of around thirty, smartly dressed, comes into my cell. He shakes my hand. He asks me respectfully to sit down. Apparently, he wants information about Maryam Firooz, a princess from the Qajar dynasty and Kianuri’s wife. Her birthday, her family, her personal habits, her love affairs. And I have absolutely no idea about any of this. I have never even spoken to her. I quickly realize that they are interested in trying to discover if she has any relationship with the Freemasons, and if therefore they have influence on the Party. But how can they put me in the same category as Maryam? Where did they get this stupid idea from?
It is clear that your well-dressed successor did not believe anything I said. He repeats what Nayeri said, though in different words: “We’ve got to have a look at your file.”
I stay in the wet cell for a few days, listening to the sound of little girls playing, alone with my own thoughts until they call me up again. The usual routine. I get into a car. A hand pushes my head down. I wait for a long time in that position. There’s the sound of little girls being put into the car. The ca
r sets off. After a while a voice says: “Take off your blindfold and lift your head.”
I lift my head and put on my glasses. I first see Ferdowsi’s statue. Then the two little girls who are seated next to me. Then the pale face of a man with a long beard.
“Hussein Abi!”
We kiss each other on the cheeks.
The guard seated next to the driver asks: “Do you know this lunatic?”
He answers: “We shared a cell.”
The guard says: “Shut up. Never mind.”
Hussein Abi held my hand, pressing it, while he talked to the children: “When you see Mum, don’t start crying, okay? Don’t tell her that Grandma has gone to God. Okay Rana? Okay Ziba?”
He has told me before that Rana is just like her mother. I stroke his daughters’ heads. He smiles at me.
They drop Hussein Abi and his children off at Evin and take me to Ghezel Hesar. As soon as I enter, I request to be taken to the “directionless” cell. It is obvious that I am still walking on a knife edge. But I am even more determined to keep my independence.
There are three people in the cell. Two very young prisoners who tell me that they are Mujahedin supporters and have been put in charge of the block by their Party. The two men, belonging to the military wing of the Party, have been given short sentences. They have also decided to live their own lives and have requested to be transferred to this cell. The request meets opposition on the part of the block but the grey zone is beginning to take shape.
These days I shave my beard every day and I have trimmed my moustache. I dress carefully. I perform my prayers but spend most of my time either reading or talking to Babak Zahraie. Some Party members come to visit me. One of them is Dariush, who visits often.
When I heard that he had been hanged during the 1988 massacres, I cried for him, sobbing loudly.
There are many organizational rules in the prison block. Rules of hygiene have to be obeyed to the death. Bed sheets and curtains have to be changed frequently. Fruit can now only be eaten once a month. Biting into the rind of a watermelon is a sign of greed. We are not supposed to change our clothes in front of each other when getting ready for the washroom or to see visitors. We are supposed to go behind a curtain. We are forced to sleep in our trousers on hot summer nights. Getting into bed dressed only in underwear is regarded as decadent. The competition between the government and the Mujahedin to prove which one is more orthodox has reached a high point.
Babak Zahraie is the only one who disregards the rules. He sleeps in white sleeping shorts and doesn’t care if the blanket slips off. When others complain one day, he walks through the whole block wearing only those same shorts. There is pandemonium, but Babak will not submit.
Babak belonged to a different world. It was like having a leftist New Yorker on one side and revolutionary villagers from Tehran’s outskirts on the other. Two unfamiliar worlds that had been brought together in prison for the same reason – opposing the Islamic regime. With every passing day, I felt more and more cut off from the rest of the prisoners.
Eventually I asked to be transferred to the “workers block”. There is no sign of the “prison inside the prison” on this block. There is no secret organization managing it. It’s not as tidy as my previous blocks, there are no flowers or herbs in the courtyard, but I am no longer a prisoner of multiple regulations. I am allowed to choose my cell. In political blocks even doctors are not allowed to work, but in the workers’ block, everybody is busy. You choose an occupation from one of the various physical tasks in the prison. I put on a worker’s uniform and join the team in charge of harvesting chilli peppers. Along with the ordinary prisoners, mostly armed robbers, I go off to the huge fields enclosed by Ghezel Hesar’s high walls, which have been allocated to farming. There are horses that are said to belong to Haj Davoud.
The air is pleasant. We pick the peppers from beneath the low branches and put them into sacks. I feel well. I feel I am myself again. Just like the teenager I used to be back in the old days, working in a shoe factory in the summer.
A few days later, when we return, laughing and talking and with sacks filled with chilli peppers hanging over our shoulders, I come face to face with the man in charge of the cultural section. A fresh group of prisoners has been brought in and are climbing out of a minibus. He says: “Why have you opted for this sort of thing? You ought to be writing with that hand.”
I say to him: “I’d rather work in the mud than write things that I don’t believe in.”
The following day the cultural section bans me from picking peppers.
Chapter 23
Purgatory in Hell
A new prison was built during the Shah’s time to hold political prisoners. It’s located not far from Ghezel Hesar Prison. Initially, it was called Gawhar Dasht, after the newly built neighbourhood where it’s located. Work on the prison was completed after the revolution. But the name of the prison and the neighbourhood was changed after Mohammad-Ali Rajai, the Islamic Republic’s second president, was assassinated. In contrast to Evin Prison, no foreign reporter has ever visited this prison. There is no film footage from inside the prison.
Hello, Brother Hamid. You are no longer an unknown soldier. I talked about you in great detail during an interview with the Voice of America’s television channel. They even showed your picture on TV. This time, it’s I who have entered your life. You might find yourself forced to leave your work as a security official because of me and start looking at life from a different angle, an angle unrelated to torture or whipping.
Rajai Shahr Prison, autumn 1986
At dawn, we are woken and ordered to get ready quickly, and to pack all our belongings. People had been whispering that parts of Ghezel Hesar’s political sections would be dissolved, and now we find ourselves being transferred. Around seven in the morning we board the minibuses that have been lined up in front of the prison block. Then we are made to wait until the evening, after all the blocks have been emptied. The driver of our minibus gets irritated and keeps saying: “They hired us for four hours but we’ve been made to wait from the morning until now. Do they take us for fools?”
A uniquely witty and eloquent armed robber, who’s been given a life sentence, says in response to the driver: “Man, all these guys were called up to answer two questions but ended up eating porridge for five or six years.”
Laughter bursts out inside the minibus. By the time we set off, it’s dark outside. We keep asking where we are being taken, but the guards are silent.
It doesn’t take long for the walls of the Rajai Shahr Prison to come into view. We are told to put on our blindfolds.
The minibus door opens, and the icy air outside makes me shiver. We walk through an open space. Then we enter a corridor. Eventually, we are ordered to take off our blindfolds. I open my eyes and find myself inside a large hall. It’s a Husseinieh. The air is intensely cold. I am shivering so violently my teeth chatter. It is some time before a few blankets are thrown on the hall floor. Groups of three prisoners have to share two blankets. One to lie on, and one to cover ourselves with. A bit later, thin slices of bread and cheese are brought in. That’s our dinner for tonight.
We eat the bread and cheese, put our blankets on the freezing floor and stretch ourselves out on them. We put our belongings under our heads. The blankets are too short, so our feet stick out at the bottom, and too narrow, so they only properly cover the person in the middle. The two on the outside are freezing. We keep turning, twisting and laughing until the morning. The following day we are sent to the ordinary cells. There is no division of prisoners into political and non-political categories here and no organized body of prisoners in charge of the block allocating us to our cells. Neither is there the sort of internal organization to take charge of “the prison inside the prison”.
There are three prisoners in each solitary confinement cell. We put our belongings in a corner and start our new lives.
A few days later, we are taken to the Jihad block.97
A number of cells are located on the left of the courtyard. Inside one is a cleric from the north of Iran who the men have nicknamed Golden Willy. The cleric has been accused of taking advantage of his position as a Qur’an teacher by sleeping with thirty-five virgins on the pretext of helping them enter paradise by sleeping with a holy man. I watch him from afar, he’s always busy meditating and praying. Every week, he’s one of the first to go to the meeting hall to see his wife.
To the right of the courtyard there’s a very large cell that was obviously built later than the rest. There’s a shop and a barber’s stand at the entrance to the cell.
The cells are lined with barracks-style beds. Prisoners are allowed to live on their own or to share living costs with a group of others as they wish. There are newspapers in the block and a television set, and prisoners have put their names down for magazines that are brought in regularly, including a magazine about the cinema.
A spacious courtyard is located between the cell and the brick building. In the evenings, prisoners can walk up and down the courtyard, nicknamed “the boulevard”. The south of the courtyard lies on steep ground, and the sky, the mountains and the broad horizon are always visible from there. The boulevard is placed between two little gardens filled with flowers, and gently curves to the north. Further along is a volleyball court where prisoners play in the evenings. Mr Mortazavi, the prison head, sometimes joins them.
We take turns to do prison duties such as cleaning. The people in charge of the block are ordinary prisoners. Amir is in charge of our block. He is always busy with jobs like mopping the floors. Later, in the outside world, Amir became a composer of film music. While I watched his first film, I kept remembering him sweating over his mop.
Letters to My Torturer Page 27