Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (23 page)

I don’t know how much time has passed when I am kicked on my side and a voice says: “Who said you could sleep, useless wimp?”

In my mind I think I’m dying, and can’t answer you. You turn me around with your foot. I open my eyes and see you for the second time. Involuntarily I mutter: “I’m getting rid of you ...”

You give me another hard kick in the ribs, and then flip my limp body onto my front with your foot. You lean down and put on my blindfold.

“What shit have you eaten, idiot?”

“Poison ...”

You must have looked around and seen the Parmoon bottle on
the floor. I hear the sound of slippers running down the corridor, and then the sound of many shoes arriving at a run. Brother Hamid must have shown the Parmoon bottle to someone. There is the sound of laugher. Hands grab me by my handcuffs and throw me onto the bed. I hear your voice, Brother Hamid: “What you have just swallowed was alcohol, you idiot. Do you know what punishment Islam specifies for drinking alcohol? Haj Aqa is here and has ordered eighty lashes.”

And you start. This time you count while you strike me. I don’t know what number you reach before I faint.

My little dog is yapping. Licking my feet. He wants me to take him out. His name is Sonny. He is my little boy, kind and loyal. He has no idea that under the pressure of the whip I too became a dog. He is the opposite of my broken, wounded and devastated self. But all this has nothing to do with my beautiful dog. He has no idea that once I had to bark before I was allowed to speak.

On this stormy Parisian morning, I am writing my fifteenth letter to you and to history, and am forced to return to the most bitter days of my life. To the time when my battered body was shaking on the torture bed, and my soul was running away to avoid surrendering to the devil.

You have left and I am twisting and turning on the blanket. My shoulders are in agony. My shoulder blades want to break away from my body. I want to find some calm, to sleep for a few minutes. But it’s not possible. I sit up with difficulty. I lean my head against the wall. The toothache has returned. I press my hand against the wall and stand up. I walk on my feet with difficulty. I get tired quickly and struggle to sit down. I am all ears. You might come back at any moment.

First we’ll show you your wife in her coffin. She’s like my own sister. She’s looking very pretty.

By the way, would you like to see your wife on the night of Eid?

My wife’s image appears. Then I see the row of coffins. I read the names, one by one. I know all of them. I have worked with all of them. Like me they wanted to help Iran reach a better tomorrow. Now they are sleeping inside their coffins. Back then, I had not read or heard anything about the coffin torture. Only later would I hear the full story.

The door of repentance is always open ...

Repentance, repentance. How remote and how hateful a word.

Repentance. Life. Revolution. The words repeat inside my brain and become one. I stretch out. I hold my head, which is feeling hot, between my hands. I try to get your words out of my head, Brother Hamid. I hear the voice of the woman prisoner:

“Dear Brother, please let me take these to my cell ...”

She wanted to take two small tree branches into her cell.

Yes, life is beautiful ...

We were walking along a dark tunnel. There was no light. I could hear the voice of my wife calling me from a distance, and I opened my eyes. I am in my cell. Cell number fifteen. The cries of a woman reach me from the room below.

Our aim is to save you. If I were you, I’d save myself, Mr Asadi. The door of repentance is open to everyone in Islam.

I sit down. A faint light is appearing at the end of this dark tunnel: it’s going to end. They are not going to hang me. They are not going to bring in my wife. They are going to believe me. They are going to believe that I have written everything I know. There is only one thing I haven’t written about. I am going to write that too. Even though I was only a witness, nothing more.

The whip descends.

“In the name of the Heavenly Fatimeh ...”

The sound coming from the tape recorder is even louder than the sound of the lashes: “Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”

The whip strikes: “Spy!”

“Yes. I am a spy. A British agent.”

He must still have my unintelligible handwriting in that damn file. He is laughing out loud.

I am confessing to being a British agent.

I stand up and try to push aside my thoughts. Anxiety or stress now triggers floods of urine. A souvenir that has stayed with me. I have smuggled an empty dishwashing detergent bottle from the bathroom into my cell, and I relieve myself into it. Behind the door, facing the wall, careful to not let the guard see me. I used to urinate into the food bowl, but once the guard came in while I was emptying the urine filled bowl into the toilet. He grabbed my collar from behind, turned me towards him, shouted: “Infidel ...”And punched me in the face.

I had to think of another solution. Eventually I emptied the plastic dishwashing liquid bottle into the toilet. I put it under my clothes and took it to my cell, concealing it from the guard. The bottle had become my saviour and I would get into trouble with the guards over it many times. No matter which guard it was, and whether they would beat me or not, they would all make me take the bottle and throw it into the toilet. It would then be ages before I could get a new bottle and secretly take it back to my cell.

“Throw in the bottle!”

“Throw in your hand grenade!”

I had only ever seen hand grenades on the day of the revolution. My brother had given me a box of grenades that he had found in an empty barracks. And I, in turn, had given the box to Rahman. Rahman said that he would take the box back and hand it in to the revolutionary army. Later on, I found out that he had hidden them.

If you take one step towards us, we’ll take a hundred steps towards you ...

A thought occurred to me. Well, I’ll just lie, as a tactic. I’ll lie. I despised myself. I was frightened of my own thoughts. I will have to do prayers. Hold a rosary in my hand. They’ll call me Haj Aqa. Haj Aqa.

I walk. I push my thoughts aside.

By the way, would you like to see your wife on the night of Eid?

How I long to see my wife. How I lust for her eyes. How she feared that they might arrest me. I remember the words that I had exchanged with Amir Nikayeen on one of the last days. I don’t know whether he too had been arrested. He had said: “They will imprison and kill us.”

And I replied: “Or maybe worse, they will make us repent.”

And Amir’s eyes had filled with tears and I was amazed. You, Brother Hamid, are opening the coffins one by one; you are laughing a devilish laugh and are saying: “Do you recognize this one? It’s Amir, right?”

And this one ...

And this one ...

Would you like to sleep next to your wife?

The final coffin is empty. It looks just like an Islamic coffin. Wooden with a tin plate. Dressed in my prison uniform, I get inside the coffin. You sit down on the coffin.

Save yourself, Mr Asadi.

A wave of sickness brings me back to my senses. I am shaking. I sit down and start shivering again and feeling sick. I throw up into the food bowl. I tell myself: I’d rather get into the coffin than repent.

And I’m shivering again and throwing up. When the door opens, I feel that my body can’t take it anymore.

“Who is Houshang?”

It’s the guard. He is taking me straight to the room downstairs where you are waiting for me.

“Hey, hey Mr Asadi, You’ve got yourself into a frenzy again!”

The guard pushes me onto the bed.

“Woof, woof.”

The two of you are laughing like devils. You are saying:

“Woof, woof. You’re late ...”

I am shivering. Someone is dragging me out of the cell and I try to pull myself up: “I am going to repent. Repent.”

I don’t recognize my own voice. But you are indifferent, and say: “Thanks for taking the trouble. After all, you are saving yourself for the hereafter. Your business is with God alone. But we, we have to give the people justice.”

I had stepped into the devil’s trap that terrible morning.

“Go and take a rest in your room. We’ve got lots to sort out together.”

When I return to my cell, I find a copy of the Qur’an, a religious book called
The Ornament of the Righteous
,
⁶²
a prayer rug,
⁶³
and a prayer stone.
⁶⁴
I am so tired and broken that I drop down on the blanket and lose consciousness.

I am in the middle of a nightmare; you have taken me to Toopkhaneh Square and have put me on display. A crowd is applauding.

You are saying: “If you hadn’t repented, these people would have torn you to pieces.”

The sound of Qur’an recitations is being broadcast all around the square. As if loudspeakers have been placed on all the old buildings and have been connected straight into my ears. I lift myself up into a sitting position with difficulty and encounter a new problem. The cell’s loudspeaker, which has been placed high up out of reach at the junction between the wall and the ceiling, is broadcasting Qur’an recitations. The cell door opens and the guard’s voice mixes with the recitations:

“Who is Houshang?”

I put on the blindfold and set off. It’s bathroom time. I pass by the blankets and notice bandaged feet throughout the corridor. I go to the toilet. I get out and wash my face.

“Well, don’t forget to perform your ablution.”

It’s the guard. I look at him, astonished.

“You don’t know how to do it, right?”

And he instructs me. I had seen my father perform his ablution, and my mother and my grandmother. I had seen Khamenei do it and Sheikh Karroubi. For me, performing ablution meant sitting by the side of the pool in the freezing winter, when the whole of the old square was woken up by the sound of the muezzin’s dawn call to prayers. I had lived thirty-three years in such company and been this removed from it. The guard finishes his instructions and we return to the cell.

“You probably don’t know how to pray either.”

He mixes his voice with the voice of the recitations and teaches me how to pray. I repeat the guard’s words and perform the very first prayer of my life.

After he left, the broadcasting of Qur’an recitations continued, and from that day on, they are broadcast every day, from dawn ’til dusk. I finish my lunch in disbelief. My heart and soul are not in tune with what I am doing. When I was taken to visit shrines as a child by my mother I would obediently kiss the gold-painted door handles before entering. When leaving the shrine, I would walk backwards and again kiss the door handles. I acted as expected, but I felt no emotion. I had the same lack of feeling again now, in my prison cell.

“Who is Houshang?”

It’s the same guard. The same conversation is being repeated, along the same lines, with a new ending: “What name have you given your father?”

I don’t even bother to explain that I hadn’t named my father. I say: “Mahmoud.”

“Your mother’s name?”

“May her soul rest in peace. Her name was Fatimeh.”

“So what’s your new name going to be?”

“My new name?”

“Yes, of course. Houshang is a communist name.”

It begins to dawn on me why he has been so sensitive about my
name. We reach the stairs: “Well, you know the way to the room. Don’t forget to think about your new name.”

I walk up the stairs with difficulty. This is the longest walk I have ever done. There are fifteen paces from the top of the stairs to the interrogation room. I am moving from one world into another one. I enter a room. I say hello. No one answers. I lift my blindfold. The room is empty. Two chairs and the sun, which is streaming through the window. I sit down facing the wall until your arrival.

“Hello.”

“Hello, good boy. Now pull down your blindfold and turn around.”

Your voice is much kinder than yesterday. I put on my blindfold and turn. You have seated yourself opposite me. You seem to be wearing the same clothes. There is some paper on the arm of the chair.

“Look, I want to do you a favour. The kind of favour I have never done for anyone else.”

Then you tear up the paper and give it to me.

“This rubbish you have written down! Now we have to start again, from scratch. Imagine it’s the first night of your interrogation. Write down the date at the top of the page. Write down the creed.
⁶⁵
Then your life’s political direction. Complete, correct, and precise.”

“The creed?”

“You don’t know it? The guard will teach you.”

I look at the pages. It’s my own handwriting. I put them on the arm of the chair. You take them and replace them with blank pages.

“Name on the top of the page with the date. You have to sign each page at the bottom. This is your last chance. Don’t even think about screwing up. All you have done is to repent. Most of your comrades repented on the first day. So many of them have repented that we are running out of prayer rugs.”

“Tell me what you want me to write and I will write it down.”

I realize that you have been waiting for this moment but you are pretending you have not and are feigning anger: “Man, we want the truth. The things that you know about. Spying, England, Russia, Afghanistan.”

This is your method and I am becoming more and more familiar with it every day. First I learn about the plot in your film script, and then I fill up the pages. Your words, which are the plot’s outline, become intelligence material as soon as I write them down.

You are leaving and I start writing. No lie could be bigger than the lie that I have told myself, and the sleeve of my shirt is still wet from my first ablution.

I write down the date of my arrest on the first page, 6 February 1983. I leave an empty space for the creed and when the guard comes in, I hurriedly fill that in. Then I recount the dramas that you have requested. A summary of the plot scenario that you have repeatedly outlined in an indirect manner, and which is now being completed on paper in my untidy handwriting.