Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (41 page)

14
Iran’s Constitutional Revolution in 1905, which was the first of this type of revolution in the developing world, was organized by a group of Iranians who had studied abroad, and was modelled on the French revolution. When the revolution was about to fail, Sattar Khan, who was in Tabriz, the capital of Azerbaijan Province, carried on fighting in the only street that was still controlled by the revolutionaries and so spurred on the people and secured the revolution’s success. Following victory, Sattar Khan was wounded at the hands of a Russian soldier and died. In 1925, another oppressive monarchical dynasty came to power, of which Reza Shah Pahlavi was the head. He founded modern Iran on the basis of an authoritarian government that combined modernization and secularization with strict censorship and state propaganda. Visits to Sattar Khan’s tomb, which is located just outside Tehran, were banned after the Islamic revolution.

15
The Qur’an is the holy book of Islam.

16
Muhammad Mossadeq was prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, when he was brought down in a coup d’etat on 19 August 1953 organized and carried our by the United States’ CIA, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

17
Haj is a title bestowed on those who have undertaken the haj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca. Religious men are sometimes referred to as Haj Aqa in Iran.

18
Muhammad is the name of the Prophet-Founder of Islam.

19
Ali is the name of Muhammad’s son-in-law, and the first Shia Imam. A large percentage of Iranian men are called either Muhammad or Ali.

20
The Book of Eloquence
, or
Nahj al-Balaghah
, is the most famous compilation of Imam Ali’s sermons, letters and sayings, and for Shia Muslims is ranked in importance only after the Qur’an and the Prophet’s sayings (hadith).

21
During the Shah’s regime, Iran had two anthems, a national anthem and a royal anthem. The latter was in praise of the king and had more
or less replaced the national anthem. The royal anthem would be played in cinemas just before the start of the film, and viewers would stand up to show respect while it was played.

22
Savak stands for
Sazeman-e Ettela’at va Amniyat-e Keshvar
(National Intelligence and Security Organization) and was the internal security and Intelligence Service in Iran from 1957–79. Formed in 1957 under the guidance of the United States’ CIA officers and later instructors from Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Service, Savak developed into an effective secret agency with as many as 5,000 full-time agents at its peak. Tasked with placing political opponents under surveillance and repressing dissident movements, it had the power to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs and – using all means necessary including torture – to hunt down (and sometimes assassinate) dissidents. Savak gained a deserved reputation for brutality: with unlimited powers of arrest and detention, it ran its own detention centres such as Evin Prison in Tehran, and interrogation techniques included a wide range of torture techniques. The torture of choice was the bastinado, beating the soles of the feet, but in addition they resorted to sleep deprivation, extensive solitary confinement, standing in one place for hours on end, nail extractions, electrical shocks with cattle prods, cigarette burns, near-drownings; the humiliation of being raped, urinated on, and forced to stand naked, and mock executions. It has been accused of the torture and murder of thousands of political opponents in its twenty-two-year history. Savak was shut down shortly before the 1979 revolution, and the majority of its central staff and agents were hunted down and executed. It was quickly replaced by the much larger Savama (
Sazman-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Melli-e Iran
), also known as the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran, which continued to employ many of the mid-level Savak staff. After its disbandment, a museum was opened in Ebrat Prison, Tehran to display and document the atrocities of Savak.

23
“Full or Empty” is a very simple game in which the players are divided into two groups. Each group has a leader who gives a small item to a member of the group, and the other group has to figure out who is hiding the item.

24
Sheikh Mehdi Karroubi, who belongs to the leftist wing of the religious party, first led the Martyrs’ Foundation and then became Chairman of Parliament. Following Muhammad Khatami’s victory, he joined the reformist front and established a semi-conservative party called The National Trust. In 2009 he ran for the presidency in a controversial election, the result of which was widely disputed. He went on to become one of the most prominent figures in the Green Movement, a populist opposition movement in Iran.

25
Houris are exceptionally beautiful women and slaves are teenage boys, both of which have been promised to pious Muslims as a reward in the afterlife.

26
Established in 1963,
Hezb-e Motalefeh-ye Eslami
is the oldest-running conservative religio-political group in Iran. Known as the Islamic Coalition Society, the group played a major role in providing Khomeini and his religious supporters with important financial and military support in the years leading up to the 1979 revolution. The group, which changed its name to the Islamic Coalition Party in 2004, has exerted a huge influence over the political and economic sectors in post-revolutionary Iran. While it advocates a statist government in the political sphere, Motalefeh backs controlled liberalization of the economy. Despite serious disagreements over economic strategies between Motalefeh and the government of Ahmadinejad, they remain close allies.

27
Naderi Cafe is a very famous cafe located right behind the southern wall of the British Embassy in Tehran. For fifty years the cafe has been the meeting place of the Iranian intelligentsia.

28
A controversial Italian journalist and war correspondent whose memoir,
A Man
, was written to her late lover, Alexandros Panagoulis, the Greek anarchist who attempted to assassinate junta leader Georgios Papadopoulous in 1967.

29
A well-known Iranian poet who was forced into exile because of his beliefs, and died in Vienna in 1996. Some of his more revolutionary poems served as anthems for political parties.

30
Arranged marriages in this context were marriages of convenience that men and women from different political parties entered into in
order to provide each other cover allowing them to carry on with their political activities.

31
A member of the Organization of Iranian People’s Fedayeen, the largest socialist party in Iran, which opposes the Islamic regime.

32
“
Bismillah
” means “In the name of God”. All surahs (chapters) in the Qur’an apart from one begin with this phrase. People who have strong religious beliefs begin every action with Bismillah, including before a man enters a woman during intercourse. According to one of the hadith, it is essential to recite the phrase, “In the name of God” before penetration; otherwise, if a child is born, it will be the offspring of the devil.

33
Saqi was the name of a notorious torturer during the Pahlavi regime. An aggressive man, who held the rank of a guard, Saqi hated the prisoners who surrendered and loved those who put up resistance even under torture.

34
The National Front is one of the oldest political organizations in Iran. Muhammad Mossadeq was its leader. Shahpour Bakhtiar, one of the oldest members of the National Front, left Iran for Paris shortly after the revolution where he led the National Movement for Iranian Resistance, but he was assassinated by the Iranian regime in 1991.

35
Behazin is the
nom de plume
of Mahmud Etemad Zadeh, a famous Iranian writer and translator. As a young man, he had served in the navy and lost a hand. Subsequently, he turned to literary and political work. After the Islamic revolution, he became a member of the Tudeh Party’s Central Committee. He was arrested and spent twelve years in prison and many more under house arrest. He died in 2006. He was one of the founders of the Iranian Writer’s Association and for many years he served as its director.

36
On 1 February 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran from exile in France on a chartered Air France Boeing 747. Every year the period from 1 February, when Khomeini arrived in Iran, to 11 February, the official date of the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is celebrated as the “Decade of Fajr”. Designated the “Islamic Revolution’s Victory Day”, 11 February is a national holiday in Iran, with state-sponsored demonstrations around the country.

37
Early in the revolution, Imam Khomeini would call security officials “the unknown soldiers of the hidden Imam” and so ascribed to them the status of saints. The hidden Imam is the twelfth Imam and Shias believe that he will emerge at some point in time.

38
The Revolutionary Council of the Islamic Revolution of Iran was a group of clerics and political figures selected by Ayatollah Khomeini that was set up secretly in Iran during the last days of the Shah’s regime to manage the revolution, and to legislate for the Interim Government of Iran.

39
Ayatollah Yusuf Sane’i is a high-ranking cleric of the Islamic Republic, and Ayatollah Khomeini paid a great deal of attention to him. He is now a supporter of the reformist front.

40
Adas polow is a very popular Iranian dish. The simpler form is made of rice and lentils. Dates, raisins and meat, typically cubes of lamb, can be added to the rice.

41
Established in mid-1979 by a few prominent clergymen,
Hezb-e Jomhouri-ye Eslami
, the Islamic Republican Party, was known for its unfaltering loyalty to Khomeini and its hostility to liberalism. Thanks to its close ties with the Revolutionary Guards Corps, it managed to crush all rival political parties before Khomeini ordered it to disband in 1987 as the internal conflicts within the IRP intensified. Of note, the most serious of these conflicts is said to have been between the then President Ali Khamenei and Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the very same figures who represent the establishment and opposition in Iran today.

42
In Farsi,
Jomhouri-e Eslami
, the official newspaper of the Islamic Republic.

43
Rastakhiz is the name of a party set up by the Shah’s government during its final years and at the request of the Shah himself. There was also an eponymous newspaper called
Rastakhiz
.

44
The Nojeh Coup or Uprising on 11 July, 1980 was an attempt by officers loyal to the Shah to overthrow the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran, and the government of Abolhassan Banisadr and Ayatollah Khomeini. It was staged by officers and servicemen from the air force, army and the Secret Service under the leadership of the
former imperial prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, who had been operating from Baghdad following the Islamic revolution. It was decisively crushed, and 300 officers involved in the plot were executed. The majority of the officers were serving at the Nojeh airbase, hence the name of the coup.

45
Captain Bahram Afzali was the commander of the Islamic Republic’s navy and a member of the Tudeh Party’s secret organization. He was hanged in 1983 on the charge of being a Tudeh Party member.

46
Shortly after the revolution Ayatollah Khomeini’s government launched a fierce campaign against The People’s Mujahedin of Iran, an Islamic socialist organization that supported the overthrow of the Shah.

47
The Fedayeen-e Khalq was the most popular leftist political organization in Iran, and later on united itself with the Tudeh Party.

48
Toopkhaneh Square in Tehran is the oldest square in Iran and is located around 200 metres from Moshtarak Prison.

49
Literally, the Party of God. In the Iranian context, Hezbollah is a common term used by pro-Khomeini revolutionaries to refer to supporters of the Islamic revolution. According to this terminology, people either belong to the Party of God or to the party of Satan.

50
Hafizullah Amin (1929–79) was the second president of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Educated at the universities of Kabul and Columbia, NY, Amin became a teacher before entering politics. He joined the Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan and became a prominent member of the Khalq (aka People) faction. He went on to become joint deputy prime minister (with Babrak Karmal), and as the Khalq faction gained ascendancy, Karmal was exiled to Europe and Amin became prime minister. In September 1979, Amin took President Nur Mohammad Taraki prisoner and assumed the presidency. His rule was notable for its brutality, costing the lives of some 15,000–40,000 Afghans, and lasted only 104 days, before he was in turn the object of a violent coup, and Babrak Karmal took over the presidency. On 27 December 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, members of the KGB and Spetsnaz GRU stormed the Presidential Palace and assassinated Amin, and Babrak Karmal assumed the presidency with Soviet support.

51
Babrak Karmal (1929–96) was the third president of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. A Kabul University graduate in law, Karmal was a founding member and the secretary of the Communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and when the party split into the Khalq and Parcham factions, he became the leader of the more moderate Parcham (Flag) faction. He went on to serve as a member of the National Assembly of Afghanistan, and deputy prime minister before he was installed by the Soviets as Afghanistan’s president in 1979. His lack of international support and failure to fulfil his ambitious programme of reform resulted in civil war, which finally convinced the Soviets to force him to step down from office in 1986. In the remaining years of his life, he divided his time between Afghanistan and Moscow, where he died.