Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (40 page)

My wife is giving me a piece of good news: “I’ve baked a pizza for you.”

And I give her the first bad news: “I have to go back at six tomorrow.”

And the barely gained freedom disappears again. It turns bitter. My wife asks: “But why? Haven’t you been released?”

I have no answer. We drive down the steep road. The house is still green. A house where exceptionally talented Iranians used to live on every single storey. But after the revolution they disappeared, one by
one. The smell of burning fills the stairway. I say: “Hey, you’ve burned my lunch again?”

We run up the stairs. After six long years, I open the door to my house. With its familiar sounds and smells. I embrace my mother-in-law and my wife disappears into the kitchen. Minutes later, I am seated at the dinner table, having washed my hands and face with apple scented soap. The pizza is totally burned. I look at my wife. Her lips are smiling but her eyes are full of tears.

At six o’clock the next day I get out of the car in front of Evin Prison. I hold my wife’s hand until the very last moment. She asks: “Will you come back?”

I have absolutely no idea whether I’ll be coming back. I shake my head. I give the guard my name. I throw one last glance at my wife. I go in through the small pedestrian gate. Once again I put on the blindfold and the guard takes me to the ministry block, making me sit down on a bench. It’s as if the large building has been deserted. There’s not even the sound of footsteps. I stand up and start pacing. I sit down again. I picture my wife, who’s waiting for me outside. I think I hear the sound of shuffling slippers and focus, listening. No. There’s no one around. A few times I call out: “Brother! Brother!”

My voice echoes and twists in the emptiness of the corridor but there’s no sound. I hear Hussein Abi’s early morning whispers and see myself, hanging from the pipes, my thick tongue sticking out, my glasses on the floor.

In the ensuing silence I once again review my whole life. It’s as if I’m watching a rapidly moving film that’s being projected onto my blindfold. Childhood and youth. A country that I had not known at all. Becoming a young man and an understanding that came through the words of a green-eyed man, and then blossomed into full truth. A dream that appeared real. We were young men and women who walked on mountainous roads, who could see that tomorrow lay
only one step ahead. Socialism was going to be victorious. Capitalism would be buried, just as Lenin had predicted, humanity would be freed, and people would be equal. We lived for this dream and we went through torture chambers for this dream and some of us died on the gallows for this dream. Inside me, there’s always been a rebel, trying to get away from the confinements of these thoughts. I was a poet and writer, a man perpetually in love. The beautiful eyes of a woman could send a shiver down my spine and her smile could make my heart soar.

After all the torture, the pretence of repentance, and the fake prayers, I had not lost my faith, even a tiny bit. But performing prayers had shown me that those who were religious also lived for a dream, just like the infidel. Our dream was supposed to come true on earth, theirs in paradise, which was in a different world. But I came to realize that the world was bigger, more complex and more ruthless than this dream. These thoughts, step by step, took me away from ideology, and back to poetry and literature. Rahman’s death, which meant the end of the source that had fed my thinking, gave me the courage to think freely and for myself for the first time in my life. The story of Eden Pastora’s life had a serious impact in changing my way of thinking. He was a former revolutionary, a man known as Commander Zero. He had played a leading role in the revolution in Nicaragua and not long after the revolution, a difference of opinion had emerged between him and his comrades. The great commander had rounded up his men and had taken them to a jungle on the border of the country to bring the war to an end. The CIA had established contact with him and had offered him financial support. He had gone through a period of intense reflection and had eventually made an important decision. He released his men. He threw himself into life in the border region, together with his wife and children. For me, he was a role model, an example of a man who had turned his back on politics, and escaped the claws of the terrifying forces of reality.

Later on, the collapse of the Soviet Union, a country I had visited at the height of its power, took with it the last fragments of my beliefs. I had freed myself from myself. And now I was waiting for a meeting that would either end with me, a man who had nothing left in his life but love, beer and literature, being returned to prison, or to Evin’s gate being opened wide and freedom.

A hand touches my shoulder: “What are you doing here at this time of the night?”

I don’t know why I reply: “What time is it, brother?”

“Eleven at night. You didn’t tell me what you are doing here.”

“I’ve been told that Brother Zamani wants to talk to me.”

“Wait here.”

He leaves and it takes maybe a thousand years for him to come back.

“Get up, come on.”

He grabs hold of my arm and takes me with him. We turn a corner. A door opens. I sense that the room is spacious.

“Are you okay, Mr Asadi?”

I can hardly recognize my own voice: “Thank you.”

“You are going to go back home, right?”

“I was going home when they told me that you ...”

“Yes. I have just one more question for you.”

He puts an object into my hand.

“Lift your blindfold slightly, you know how.”

I pull up the blindfold just enough to look down. It’s the photograph of a woman dressed in a white chador. Brother Zamani is talking, but it’s your voice, Brother Hamid, that is ringing in my ears: “Who is this woman?”

1
The term “Under the Eight” is used in all Iranian prisons to refer to the entrance to the detention centre where the guards stand watch. The term started to be used in the Shah’s era. At the time, the guards were military men whose rank looked similar to the letter eight in Farsi numerals, which is the shape of a triangle.

2
The term Party in this book refers to the Iranian Communist Party or Tudeh Party, which was supported by the former Soviet Union. The Party’s full name is
Hezb-e Tudeh-e Iran
or the Party of the Iranian Masses. Established in 1941, it is Iran’s oldest organized union of communists. At the time, World War II was still raging and the allied forces, who had used Iran as “a bridge to victory” to defeat Hitler in the former Soviet Union, had not yet left Iran. Reza Shah Pahlavi, the first ruler of the Pahlavi dynasty (1925–79), had been exiled and his son, Muhammad Reza, a young king, was on the throne and Iran was facing a decade of freedom – or chaos. In that period, a group of educated Iranians abroad, especially in Germany, who were greatly influenced by the Bolshevik revolution, set up the foundations of a pro-Soviet political party. The Party rapidly gained strength and transformed itself into a very powerful organization. Its intention was to establish a socialist government in Iran and it aligned itself in support of the former Soviet Union and against the so-called imperialist governments, particularly the United States and Britain.

The Tudeh Party had considerable influence in its early years, and played an important role during Mohammad Mosaddeq’s campaign to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, but it was brutally suppressed following the Anglo-American coup of 1953 against Mosaddeq, which resulted in power being handed to the Shah. A
group of the Party’s secret military wing were executed, its leaders fled to communist countries, and its influence waned. The Party actively supported the Islamic revolution, aligning itself with Ayatollah Khomeini’s anti-Western and anti-capitalist sentiments, and his declared intention of overthrowing the Shah’s regime, which was undemocratic and supported by the US. After the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979, the Party’s leaders, consisting mainly of aging individuals, immediately returned to Iran, resurrecting the Party, and pursued a policy supportive of the Islamic government. Although the Party never opposed the Islamic Republic, in 1983 the gradual suppression of political groups reached the Tudeh Party, and its cadres and members of the Central Committee were arrested on the third anniversary of the revolution. The Party’s leaders later appeared on the Islamic Republic’s television channel and confessed to spying for the Soviet Union. Many years later, when the Party’s first secretary, Nurruddin Kianuri, was released from prison and placed under house arrest, he wrote in a number of letters that the confessions were all false and had been extracted under horrific torture. Kianuri is also the grandson of Sheikh Fazlollah Noori, the spiritual father of the current Islamic government. The majority of Party cadres and people close to its leadership were executed during the Islamic holocaust, the account of which is given in this book. See also note 100.

3
Ablution, in original Farsi
wuzu
, is an Islamic-Arabic term that translates as
rooshanaayee
or light. Ablution involves a ritualistic washing of the hands, face and front of the feet. A prayer performed without ablution is considered invalid. Shia believers also perform ablution in preparation for reading the Qur’an. At the start of the war with Iraq, it became commonplace for fighters to perform ablution in preparation for entering a minefield or engaging in combat. It signified that they were preparing for a holy task and entering paradise. Prison interrogators equally performed ablution in preparation for the interrogation process.

4
Fatimeh is the name of a woman who in Shia Islam is considered a saint equal to the Virgin Mary. She was the daughter of Muhmmad,
the prophet of Islam. At the age of nine, she became wife to Ali, the third Muslim caliph and the first Shia Imam. Her sons, Hassan and Hussain, are the second and third Shia Imams and are the pillars of the Shia faith. Hassan, who entered into an agreement over a conflict with the caliph of the time, exemplifies peace for the sake of protecting shi’ism. His brother Hussain, who rebelled against the caliph, could only persuade seventy-two individuals to follow him. They all died in the desert in Karbala. In the Shia faith, Hussain embodies the struggle against oppression. Upon Hussain’s martyrdom, the title Sayyed Al-Shohada (Lord of the Martyrs) was given to him. Shia believers mourn his death every year in the first ten days of the month of Muharram, which was the month in which his battle with the caliph took place.

5
Foot whipping, or bastinado, is a common form of corporal punishment, involving beating the bare soles of the feet with a cane, rod or whip. Due to the congregation of nerve endings in the soles of the feet, and the many small bones and tendons, it is extremely painful, and the wounds take a long time to heal.

6
Karbala, which is in present-day Iraq, is the location of Imam Hussain’s martyrdom, the third Shia Imam, whose tomb is also in Karbala. During the Iran-Iraq war, Ayatollah Khomeini used to say: “The path to Quds goes through Karbal,” meaning that his troops should first conquer Iraq and then move on to Jerusalem in order to “liberate” Israel into the sea. These words of Khomeini were incorporated into war songs called “Nuha” and were played on the radio and television throughout the war with Iraq. Prison interrogators also made use of these songs as musical accompaniment to the torture process.

7
The Cat
is the name of a novel written by the author of this book and published in 2007 in Farsi. It focuses on the story of the stoning of a famous Iranian actress during Muhammad Khatami’s presidency.

8
During the 1970s, hundreds of political dissidents were held, and often tortured, at Moshtarek Prison by the Anti-Sabotage Joint Committee, a branch of Savak, the Shah’s secret police. Renamed Tawhid after the Islamic Revolution, it continued to serve as a notorious prison until 2004, when as a propaganda measure it was
transformed into Ebrat Museum, where public guided tours now remind the visitors about the brutality of the Shah’s regime.

9
Kayhan
was founded in 1943, and became one of the largest circulation newspapers in Iran with a circulation in the region of one million prior to the 1979 revolution, publishing separate editions in Iran and London. During the 70s, many of the employees were members of the Tudeh Party, including the deputy editor-in-chief and several key staff. Its assets were seized after the 1979 revolution, and it is now published under the direct supervision of the office of the supreme leader. It is regarded as the most conservative newspaper in Iran, and today has a circulation of about 70,000.
Kayhan
also publishes special foreign editions, including the English-language
Kayhan International. Kayhan London
is an independent weekly newspaper, that was edited for many years by the original editor of
Kayhan
.

10
An Iranian lawyer and human rights activist and the 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate.

11
Abgie is a colloquial term, meaning sister in Farsi. In Farsi script, Abgie differs in only one letter from Angie, the shortened version of Angela. The two words sound very similar in Farsi.

12
Chubak, or
Acanthe phylum bracteatum
, is a type of shrub, from the family of coryophyllaceae, which is used as a medicinal plant for its diuretic and anti-inflammatory effects.

13
Ferdowsi, whose birthplace was in western Khorasan, was the world’s greatest warrior, his weapon being his poetry. In the early centuries of Iran’s conquest at the hands of sword-bearing Arabs, Ferdowsi wrote an epic,
The Book of Kings
, which is comparable to Homer’s
Odyssey
. The epic was one of the factors that prevented Iranians from taking on an Arab identity, and Iran remained one of the few Muslim countries that retained its own language and culture. Khayyam, a philosopher, scientist and poet, spread the Epicurian worldview through his quatrains. He stood up against the official religion, which advocated abstinence from worldly pleasures, and instead praised such pleasures as wine-drinking and love-making. Hafez was born after these two poets. He is one of the most popular poets in Iran, and his collection of poems is to be found in almost every Iranian household, next to a
copy of the Qur’an. My mother was dying during the 2500-year celebration of the Iranian monarchy in 1971, lying in a bed in a large staterun hospital. She quoted these verses from Hafez just before dying, “Leave the tavern Hafez, you are too old.” She was only forty-seven.