Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (30 page)

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:

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 shrine
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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.
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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.
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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.

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.

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?”

I repeat her name.

“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?”

I said: “Because they are opposed to imperialism.”

He laughed out loud and said: “The clerics are anti-everything. Why have you picked on their anti-imperialism?”

His wife was a descendant of a daughter of the grand poet of the constitutional revolution, Mirzadah Eshqi, who was assassinated at home. A lovely and very cultured family.

In that darkness in which I was losing hope of getting hold of my wife, I reluctantly give you their number. The phone rings a few times and you, Brother Hamid, are handing over the telephone to me. It’s the lovely voice of dear Firoozeh, Reza’s wife. Upon hearing my voice, she cries out enthusiastically: “Where are you, our dear Houshang?”

Suddenly, I feel my throat contract in a sob. I compose myself. I say that I want to get hold of my wife so I can talk to her. But Firoozeh keeps asking: “Are you okay? Have you been harassed? Is your health okay? I can’t believe it!”

Eventually, it becomes clear that by sheer coincidence my wife had visited her the night before and they had arranged for her to call Firoozeh today. You, Brother Hamid, who are listening to the conversation through another receiver, are slowly whispering into my ear:

Arrange a call for the day after tomorrow at four in the afternoon.

I do as he says. When I put down the phone, you hit me hard on my head: “Who was that whore of a woman who kept saying lovely things to you?”

I say: “But you are a Muslim. Why are you saying such things about a married woman?”

Again you hit me on my head: “Do not lecture me about morality, useless wimp!”

And you pull at my hand and take me out of the room.

“So what is this woman’s business?”

I explain that she is not at all political and has only a straightforward friendship with us. You say: “Sod off. Go now. Tell the guard about the day after tomorrow.”

I return to my cell and sit down in a corner. Firoozeh’s voice has brought the first breeze of freedom to my soul. But even now, when her name is mentioned or when I speak to her, the thought of that revolutionary Muslim brother’s dirty insult makes me shiver.

Fear and excitement are my companions for forty-eight hours. I am excited that my wife has not been arrested and that I will soon be able to hear her voice from the freedom of the outside world. I also fear that this might be another trap. I imagine you have discovered Firoozeh’s home address from the telephone number. That there has been a raid and she and her children have been detained. Fear doesn’t leave me. After forty-eight hours, I am allowed to speak to my wife for four minutes. After saying hello, we both just cry. You are holding the other handset in your hand, Brother Hamid.

From this time onwards, a monthly ten-minute phone conversation is added to the life of the prisoner in cell number fifteen. We are rounded up in the courtyard. We are made to stand up or sit down, blindfolded. Later, a guard calls us out, one by one. He takes the phone numbers.

He keeps one handset and gives me the other one. The phone call cannot stray beyond saying hello and enquiring about each other’s wellbeing. Even hinting at torture is absolutely banned, causing the phone call to be terminated. For anything aside from greetings and questions about health, a separate permit is required. When I ask them to allow me to ask my wife to bring me a pair of glasses, they agree, but only if I say to her: “My glasses have fallen off and broken.”

On a sunny March day, we are called up. We place our hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us in the line. Exactly thirteen months after my arrest, I am permitted a visit. We set off, our eyes
blindfolded. We walk on roads for a short distance. We stop. They tell us to take off the blindfolds and put them in our pockets. We walk on again and soon find ourselves beside a large gate, which I later understand to be the entrance to the Swiss school on Palestine Road. It’s the place closest to Moshtarek Prison, and also to the King’s Palace, which at that time had not yet become the headquarters of Ayatollah Khomeini. When the prisoner queue enters, the courtyard suddenly takes on the atmosphere of a meeting place in a desert. The yelling and cries of the wives and mothers rise up from the ground. Children are shouting, searching for their fathers, searching faces to find the one familiar to them amid all the people dressed in blue. Whenever someone finds a loved one, they embrace him and cry, showering him with kisses. The mothers hit their chests with their fists, the fathers use their walking sticks to try to clear the way to their offspring. It really is like Judgement Day, the last day when the dead are brought back to life. The scene repeats itself each time a new line of prisoners arrives.