Letters to My Torturer

by Houshand Asadi

  There are no divisions separating political groups. The Mujahedin, a diverse group of leftists and monarchists, all live together. The revolution has thrown together a group of people with very diverse political views, from an ageing Maoist and excellent cook who, to cover the cost of studying in Europe had ended up serving the French ambassador in Spain, to the sergeant who appears to be kissing the Shah’s feet in that famous photograph that shows the exile of the last king of Iran.

  There is no pressure. Collective prayers are rarely performed. The Husseinieh is only used on special religious occasions, when speeches are delivered and mourning ceremonies held. The Jihad block in the Rajai Shahr Prison is the closest thing to that “place” that had been intended to function as a “university”. A place where free speech allows political prisoners opposed to the Islamic Republic to learn the truth of Islam and the fairness of the administration before they are freed again.

  This explanation starts and ends with Haj Aqa Sayyed Hussein Mortazavi, known as Haji by all. He’s a young cleric loyal to the Ayatollah Montazeri’s faction. Clinging to Haji is Brother Sajjad, a man with an angry face, always ready for service and dressed in military uniform. He belongs to the extremist faction. He used to be in charge of the administration at Moshtarek Prison. Back at Moshtarek Prison, we used to only hear the sound of his voice but now, we can also see his face. He knows the leftist convicts very well and makes no secret of his disagreement with Haji’s methods. The Haji’s soft shoes and Brother Sajjad’s tough boots are the two wings of the administration. The two walk together, each awaiting the demise of the other.

  Life here is bearable. With Amir’s help I manage to find a little desk. From then on, my bed becomes my office. I read and write as much as I can.

  To my right is Foroud’s bed, he spends most of his time thinking and reading. He is still sentenced to be hanged98 but from time to time his laughter shakes the prison cell. Right opposite Foroud is Hamid’s bed. Hamid’s father had been a diplomat during the Shah’s time and Hamid had returned to Iran together with his dentist wife to help support the revolution. His father, who had once served as the Iranian ambassador to the Soviet Union, had advised him against it, but he had returned anyway. He has a degree in law. He speaks and writes good English and we teach him to write in Persian. He had been employed at the Central Bank and later, because of his command of legal matters and English, he had been tasked with accompanying the Iranian delegation in charge of signing the Algerian contract for the release of American hostages.

  He lived a happy life in Tehran, socializing in diplomatic circles through his father’s contacts, unaware that the Islamic association was keeping an eye on him. Eventually, they raided his home on the night of his wife’s birthday and arrested him on the charge of espionage. He was imprisoned until the general amnesty which followed the mass killing of political prisoners. Today he lives in America.

  Foroud, Hamid and I become a team of three. Our conversations always revolve on literature. One day I come across an old film magazine, which takes me back to my love of cinema. I spent many years writing film reviews and now, this magazine (in a few years I will become the editor-in-chief of its rival) allows me to rediscover the world of the movies. I start thinking about writing a film script. I go to sleep with this thought in my mind.

  An unknown fear wakes me that night. I see my wife; it’s as if she’s just left my side. She’s dressed in a white nightgown, floating in the air like an angel. She reaches the window and passes through it. And all the while I worry that one of the many sleeping men will wake and see her in her thin nightgown. I still don’t know whether I saw that vision while awake or whether it just felt like I had been awake even though I had actually been asleep. Be that as it may, a name appeared in my mind and a storyline: Lady of the Lilies, about a woman who’s searching for her husband.

  The following day, I start writing. A few months later, during a New Year visit, I secretly gave the film script to my wife. She hid it under her chador and took it out with her. We sold the script for a good price after I was freed, which helped us to begin our lives all over again from scratch.

  My days are spent like this. I’ve already spent five years in prison, but only two of them count as part of my sentence. I have twelve long years ahead of me.

  Every so often they allow each family to bring three books for their prisoner. My wife is brilliant, making sure that I get three excellent books. One of them is Mario Vargas-Llosa’s first novel. I immediately start translating it. Whenever I get stuck, I ask Hamid for help and together we untie the knot. The translation was published after my release, introducing Vargas-Llosa’s The Time of the Hero to Iran for the first time.

  We also volunteer to sort out the prison library. We are locked into a spacious room full of books where we take it in turns to sort out the books and read. We are left undisturbed until the evening. Each of us smuggles a book out of the library, I choose a collection of Iraj Mirza’s poetry. He was a Qajar prince whose poetry pokes fun at religion and spirituality. In the evening, when we are taken back to our cell I devour it – this banned book has a completely different flavour when read stretched out on a prison bed supplied by the Islamic Republic.

  The regular, non-political prisoners have their own life and their own associations. They have leave over the weekends. When they return, they bring back fruit and sweets with them. Drugs have made their way into the prison too,99 and are distributed among the prisoners.

  Early one morning we are forced to get up quickly and go to the Husseinieh. We turn up, sleepy and with our faces unwashed. I am always quick to enter and find a place where I can lean against the wall. My legs have seized up as a result of my interrogation and I can no longer sit down cross-legged. Haj Aqa Mortazavi arrives, looking very happy and light-hearted. Brother Sajjad also turns up, sticking close to Mortazavi. Haj Aqa Mortazavi walks up and stands behind the microphone. His first sentence, after “In the name of God, the merciful,” is: “I have come to let you know that you’ll be freed soon and your places will be taken by the leaders of the international oppression.”

  There’s whispering in the Husseinieh and we are all looking at each other.

  What’s happened?

  Haj Aqa Mortazavi carries on. In summary, the people who are responsible for us being in prison are the heads of the world arrogance, the United States and the Soviet Union in particular. Once Islam’s flag is raised, they’ll be arrested and will be imprisoned here instead of us. He doesn’t offer any further explanation. We return to our cells, sleepy and dizzy. The loudspeakers start playing nationalistic war songs (this was during the Iran-Iraq War) and the presenter talks about the great victory of Muslim soldiers. Eventually it becomes clear that the night before, the Islamic Republic had won an important battle. Haj Aqa Mortazavi’s words were his own private interpretation of the world’s future. The head of our prison was as dreamy as we were. We saw socialism conquering the world, he saw Islam doing the same.

  On New Year’s Day, our visiting time is extended, which is more painful than the meeting that takes place with a glass screen separating the visitor from the prisoner. One is allowed to kiss one’s loved ones, to smell them, and then forced to return behind locked doors.

  Eventually, again with no warning, we are told to pack all our things and be ready. While we are busy packing up our belongings, it becomes clear that we are being transferred to Evin.

  They take us into the courtyard and do a thorough body search of each of us. They confiscate most of our belongings. They make us put on our blindfolds and then take us out.

  When we take off our blindfolds, we see a number of buses crowding into the prison courtyard, surrounded by Islamic Revolutionary Guards. We get on board and several tough-looking bearded men dressed in black leather lock our wrists to the arms of the bus seats with handcuffs. When the buses are filled, Haj Aqa Mortazavi turns up. He looks into every single bus, getting on and off each one. I see him speaking to s
omeone who appears to be the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Committee. They both get into the bus and we hear Mortazavi’s final words: “Unlock the handcuffs. If anything goes wrong, I’ll be responsible.”

  And the men in black grudgingly unlock the handcuffs. The buses set off, surrounded by black Mercedes Benz cars. We leave behind for good the Jihad block with its delightful courtyard. Tehran appears on the horizon. We circle around Azadi Square. We pass through the streets of Shahrak-e Gharb. Life is going on and we are merely passing through it, like strangers, unaware that the bloodiest days are yet to come.

  Chapter 24

  Genocide in the Islamic Republic

  In the course of one month, and on the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini, the judges passed the death sentence on thousands of men and women, Muslims and Jews, Armenians, Baha’is, communists, pregnant women and elderly men. They recreated the horrors of World War II throughout the country, hanging prisoners en masse, picking up people in trucks at night, and burying them in mass graves.

  I’ve seen Evin’s machinery of death, and I have written down everything that I saw and heard there.

  Hello Brother Hamid, I am writing my twenty-fourth letter to you.

  It’s past midnight and once again I couldn’t sleep because of the tension. I have been jolted out of sleep. We’ve finally arrived back in Evin, and are approaching the bloodiest days, the days of murder.

  Evin Prison, early summer 1988

  Once again I am in Evin. Haj Aqa Mortazavi is the new head of the prison, and has completely transformed it. The place I left two years ago is unrecognizable from the one I have arrived in. We have just been allocated to our “university” blocks.

  Bahram Danesh, a seasoned officer who’s now seventy-eight years of age, is on my block. He moves his head as if it were a pendulum. He has migraine, a splitting headache that tortures him. Every day he sends a message to a doctor for a tablet. He sits there, constantly moving his head until the pill arrives. I always go to him, hold him under his arms and together we walk up and down the block. He’s an aged officer whose life has been spent either in prison or in exile but he is still standing up for his convictions.

  We walk together and review our lives. I have always remembered his words: “We are tiny sparrows, twittering on a branch in the middle of a wild jungle full of predators.”

  Early in the spring I spot a newcomer standing in the corridor looking lost. He’s holding a plastic bag in his hand and looks very familiar. I go up to him. No, it can’t be him. This man’s beard is half white. But yes, it’s him alright. I call him: “Hussein Abi!”

  He stares at me. He throws himself into my arms. He says: “They have made my children orphans.”

  And he sobs, endlessly.

  “They have hanged Fariba.”

  “Fariba?”

  “My wife. She married me as Fatimeh but her real name was Fariba. They took us for a farewell visit. Fariba was crying. We kept pleading with them. We threw ourselves at the guard’s feet. They killed my wife. They took away my children. They tell me: ‘Go, get out, as long as you shut up.’ But if I went out, I’d shout ‘What’s happening here?’ I’d set fire to myself and my children.”

  Hussein Abi finds himself lost in a world between total clarity and complete madness. He doesn’t speak to anyone except me. He spends hours in front of his prayer rug, shedding tears. He says: “All my life I used to sit at the bottom of the prayer rug, talking to God. But now I am opening my heart to my wife, talking to her.”

  They come for me on 1 August 1988. I am made to sit down on a bench in front of an office door with a number of other people. I hear Kianuri’s voice, he’s speaking to someone. It’s a while before he comes out of the office and someone else is led in. The person sitting next to me keeps muttering about Kianuri. He’s extremely angry. I recognize the voice of the man who was in charge of the Party’s publicity section. I kick his leg unobtrusively and whisper my name. He grabs my hand. We ask after each other’s well-being. He first asks about his brother, who has left the country. He says: “Watch out. Kia is plotting to make us come to a compromise with these criminals.”

  At that moment, I am called in. I enter the office. Haj Nasser, the man in charge, says: “Take off your blindfold.”

  I do as I’m told, put on my glasses and say hello. Haj Nasser responds to my greeting and signals me to sit down on a chair in front of Kianuri’s desk. I see Kianuri for the first time since my arrest. I say hello to him as well. He half stands up in acknowledgement. I sit down. He asks after my wife’s well-being. Then he explains the Party’s situation. He says the Party has made mistakes, which we all should accept, but our position with regard to the Islamic Republic has been correct.

  He is pleading with his eyes for me to accept his words. In the past, Kianuri had spoken with determination, he did not plead. So I explain my situation: “I don’t want to be involved in politics at all. I’d like to do cultural work independently though in line with the constitution. That is, if they free me.”

  He seems relieved. He takes a breath and asks Haj Nasser: “Is there anyone else?”

  Haj Nasser tells me: “Go outside and wait until a guard comes for you.”

  While waiting I hear the voice of a young woman who is arguing with another woman. Later, I learn that the woman was Maryam Firooz, Kianuri’s wife. Kianuri had spoken to the men and Maryam to the women.

  The events of the following days clarify the meaning of Kianuri and Maryam’s discussions with the Party members. A few months later, when Kianuri and I become cellmates, he tells me the full story. Mortazavi had appealed for Kianuri’s help in trying to save the lives of the Party members. He asked Kianuri to talk to all the Party members, and somehow make them aware that they are in serious danger. At the time, Mortazavi didn’t clarify exactly what was happening, but later Haj Nasser told me that Mortazavi had voted against a proposal by a council preparing the ground for mass execution.

  It’s probably a day or two later when a talk being held in one of Tehran’s mosques is broadcast in the block. The speaker keeps shouting: “Kill them. Kill these people. Kill them.”

  I do not realize that he means us, we who are walking up and down these corridors, lost and anxious. Bahram Danesh is sitting in front of the entrance to the block and, as usual, is moving his head like a pendulum.

  This is the last voice from the outside that we hear. The radio stops. The television sets are taken away. They’ve stopped bringing in newspapers. What’s happened?

  On 25 July, the Mujahedin-e Khalq had entered Iran via Iraq, launching a new offensive called Forough Javidan (Eternal Light). The Mujahedin leadership had called up thousands of men and women from across the world to quickly come together in Iraq. They were given a few days’ military training and had been told that upon their arrival in Iran, the Iranian people would join them and help to bring down the Islamic Republic. The operation lasted three days and the Mujahedin, who had entered Iranian territory, were all killed.

  The Islamic Republic was thus given an excuse to organize and launch the biggest mass murder campaign in Iran’s history. The order to kill comes from Ayatollah Khomeini and so Iranian prisons are turned into institutions of mass murder.

  This is Ayatollah Khomeini’s ruling on the massacre:

  Since the treacherous Mujahedin do not truly believe in Islam and whatever they are saying is to deceive and create disunion and because their leaders have recanted Islam and also bearing in mind that they have waged war against God in the northwest and south of the country in cooperation with the Iraqi Ba’ath party and also because their spies are working for Saddam against our Muslim nation, and in view of their cooperation with the World Arrogance and their dishonourable damages from the beginning of the Islamic Republic until now, all those prisoners, throughout the country, who persist in their hypocrisy are considered Moharebs100 and must be sentenced to hanging. This issue will be decided in Tehran by a majority vote of Hujjatul Islam Nayeri, Mr Ish
raqi (Tehran’s Prosecutor) and a representative of the Ministry of Intelligence. Needless to say, caution is required, and consensus is preferred. As regards provincial prisons, even though a majority vote of Shari’a judges, Revoutionary Court prosecutors, and representatives of the Ministry of Intelligence is needed, showing mercy to those who have waged war against God is simple-mindedness. Islam’s decisiveness against God’s enemies is one of the overarching principles of the Islamic regime. I hope that by showing revolutionary anger and hatred towards God’s enemies, you will be able to attain God’s consent. The gentlemen who have been put in charge of this task should not doubt or hesitate. They should seek to strive hard against the unbelievers and hypocrites.101 To doubt the legal rulings of Islam amounts to dismissing the pure and immaculate blood of the martyrs. May peace be upon you.

  Following this, Evin Prison’s legal representative told the family of one of the prisoners: “Everyone’s fate is going to be settled soon.”

  First the prisoners are reassigned to different blocks in the prisons, and contact between the blocks is cut off. Political prisoners are no longer allowed to move freely between the blocks and the kitchen to carry the large pots of tea. Ordinary prisoners are put in charge of this task.

  Next they start to round up and take away the Mujahedin prisoners. Two of them, a pair of very young brothers, are on our block. One of them has been sentenced to ten years; the other has been sentenced to hang. Like a pair of swans, they always sit in a corner, heads on one another’s shoulders. They come for the one with the death sentence first. I will never forget the brothers’ farewell, that silence that was only broken by their sobs. Then they come for the one who has been sentenced to ten years. We can all sense that something is about to happen, but so far no one knows what, and there is no way we can find out.