Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (20 page)

Then we apparently reach a courtyard. You say: “Wait. Now lift your blindfold, but don’t turn around.”

I do as I’m told. It’s as if a light has been switched on.

Without my glasses and in the dim light I see the vague contours of some coffins that have been lined up against the wall. What is their purpose? Where are we? Am I dreaming? Your voice is filled with pleasure: “The comrades are sleeping here.”

A tremor goes through my whole body. I have always feared corpses and am frightened now. I have always fled from corpses and I want to flee now. I didn’t even dare to look at my own mother’s face after she died. A famous song comes into my mind: “They are taking the dead from street to street ...”

And your voice: “Right, I am going to choose one of them, the one you like best.”

The image of corpses being carried flashes through my mind. There’s the sound of something being opened. Is it a door? Wooden? No, metallic. You grab my head and move me along.

“Do you know him?”

I look down at Manuchehr Behzadi’s
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moon-shaped face. In my imagination, he’s opening his eyes for a moment and then closing them again. But no, the eyes were closed. Involuntarily, I sink to my knees and throw up. This man, who is lying so still inside the coffin, used to be the editor-in-chief of a newspaper. Quiet, literate and a man of few words. He loved his family, his daughters. Now you have forced him to sleep, for days on end, inside a narrow wooden box, one of the most ingenious devices in the service of the Islamic Republic where, apparently, there’s no torture.

You hit me hard on my head: “Stop playing movie games! Useless wimp!”

You make me stand up.

“You piece of filth!”

You drag me along while you speak: “It’s your turn now. You are getting it and you’ll be sleeping comfortably alongside the others. The British agents together with the Russian agents.”

My body is shaking. I keep feeling like throwing up but fear is stopping me. We stop. I sense that we are in Under the Eight.

First we will show you your wife and then we’ll give you the coffin next to hers.

My knees cannot take it anymore. Unwillingly, I have doubled up. I am trying not to throw up. You grab me under my arm and make me stand up: “You are going to your cell. You have only one option. Hand over the hand grenade, okay?”

I can’t hold myself upright. I sink down. You are being kind. You are sitting down yourself. I lean against the wall. I keep feeling sick, my stomach is in my mouth. I hear your voice: “You are now going back to your cell. This is your last chance.”

I start to get up. I am desperate to get to a bathroom. Diarrhoea is about to join the vomit. You won’t let me go. You are holding me back. You are laughing and asking: “Did you recognize Comrade Manuchehr?”

I shake my head.

“Was he dead or alive?”

At last you hand me over to the guard and leave. When the shuffling sound fades out of earshot, my fear lessens and I say to the guard: “For God’s sake ... bathroom.”

I am lucky that it’s the shepherd guard. He takes me to the bathroom. I run to the toilet. When I get out, I go to the sink and throw up. I am shaking and throwing up. I re-enter the toilet and relieve myself. I get out and place my head underneath my country’s most refreshing, coldest water. To no avail. The vomit and diarrhoea keep coming in waves. The guard takes me back to my cell. He gives me a bowl and leaves me. I shake until dawn. I throw up into the bowl. I relieve myself inside the bowl.

Manuchehr’s face appears. That man who was, in the truest sense
of the word, decent, sleeping inside the coffin in his prison clothes. His face has no colour. Asleep, unsmiling. A tomb which is both gravestone and grave is one of the achievements of a revolution that does not know torture. Everything is done in line with Islam, and Shari’a law.

“You must throw in your hand grenade.”

I can see the line of coffins in my mind’s eye. They have names engraved over them. The names are spinning and becoming one.

First we will show you your wife.

I can see my wife’s face. She has gone to sleep forever, and she has averted her eyes from me in the eternal night. I hit my head against the wall. I throw up. I wish the night could be endless. I fear the morning. I don’t know what “throwing in my hand grenade” means, but I suspect that there will be more torture. My whole body is aching. Toothache has made me restless. My feet are wounded. I can’t hold my back straight. When my shoulders touch the ground, the pain makes me cry out. In order to sleep, I sit down, leaning against the wall. What do they want from me? I have written down everything about my activities and my life. The final stages of our activities were obvious. We had defended them. We had nothing to hide. We weren’t even spiteful. Many of the groups had announced a war and had mentally prepared themselves. But we had shouted “Imam, Imam,” until the last day. I had shouted right in the heart of the land of infidels, right in the centre of Red Square: “Viva Khomeini!”

The door flies open with a terrifying bang. I jump. No, it’s not you, Brother Hamid, you who my heart longs to never see again. It’s time for the morning visit to the bathroom. I who have shitted myself. The guard throws me a clean uniform: “Change your clothes.”

We go to the bathroom. The waves of vomit and diarrhoea keep coming. My empty stomach is only throwing up bitter-tasting liquid and making terrible noises. I wash my underwear with dishwashing
detergent under the cold tap. I put on the clean clothes and return to my cell. They have brought in breakfast. What pleasure there is in hot tea. It moves over my broken teeth and when it reaches my stomach, it comes up again. I put aside the red plastic cup. I lean against the wall. My whole existence wants you not to return. But I know that you are coming back. And something inside my head makes a thudding sound. Like a woodpecker pecking a tree. Then there is an aching. How I long for you to come here and find me dead. The headache has settled in my temples. It stays there and will accompany me for many long years. Even now, it pays me a visit now and then.

The loudspeaker has been turned on. It’s seven in the morning on 11 March 1983. Ayatollah Prozac
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has begun talking. I cannot believe it. A month has passed. Automatically I touch my beard. It’s grown full.

Night comes but there’s no sign of you. The food arrives. We go to the bathroom in the evening. The corridor is covered in blankets. Everyone’s feet are in bandages as if we have been wounded in a war. My underwear is dry and I put it on. We return to our cells. The lights go off. I stretch myself out. I try to sleep. It’s not happening. Headache. Suddenly I miss my pillow back home; it was always clean, and scented with perfume. Toothache. I am back home, flossing my teeth. I hear my wife shouting: “You have made everything dirty, Houshka.”

My wife and I had just finished reading Alexei Tolstoy’s
The Road to Calvary
trilogy, and she had taken to calling me Houshka after one of the book’s characters.

Aching shoulders, wounded feet, but worse than everything else is the constant dread that is wandering around my soul, directionless. As soon as my eyelids begin to droop, I think I hear the sound of shuffling slippers and jerk awake. But there’s no sign of you. The night, the whole night is spent in pain and with the nightmare of the approaching sound of slippers. In the morning, one of “God’s fathers” opens the cell door: “Who is Houshang?”

I answer: “That’s me.”

That’s me? I feel like I am running away on my wounded feet, distancing myself from myself. If I dare to turn around, I’ll see Houshang Asadi sniggering at me.

I am holding the tip of the stick and am being dragged along. If the guard comes to pick you up, that means your situation is not very dangerous. We cross the courtyard. The guard is not giving up: “Why haven’t you called yourself Ali? Why not Muhammad?”

He’s shouting from the depths of a culture that has come to power and, like an idiot, I am failing to get it. A few years later, in Ghezel Hesar prison, the cultural official theorized about the guard’s folkloric question: “From our point of view, you intellectuals, the Houshangs, the Kiumars, and the Nimas,
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you are all polluted.”

Door, stairs. First floor. Right turn. First room. The usual chair. I sit down, facing the wall. I take off my blindfold and wait. The door opens two or three times. No, it’s not you. Someone comes in, asks my name and leaves. Then, suddenly, a hand hits my shoulder and I hear your voice: “How are you, little lion?”

When did you get here? I hadn’t heard the sound of shuffling slippers. Maybe you had come in before me and were watching me. The sound of the shuffling slippers allows me to prepare my body for defence. You, who in your own words are “a master of making people talk”, have taken away this small comfort from me, the prisoner.

I blurt out: “Hello.”

This time you answer: “Hello, good boy.”

I hear the sound of a chair being dragged and then your voice: “Put on your blindfold. Get a move on!”

I do as I’m told. I see from underneath the blindfold that you are seated on a chair in front of me. You are wearing the same military trousers. You have your boots on. I see a pair of hands that have tortured me. You start talking. Your voice has become very kind: “It is clear from what you have written that you are very attached to
the revolution. We too have given up our lives for the revolution. I myself was a student at the University of Science and Technology. If I had done one more year, I would have qualified as an architect. But I delayed my studies because the revolution was under threat.”

You pause. A long pause. Then you say: “What beautiful long hands you have, Mr Asadi.”

You must see me trying to hold my hands together and maybe you have noticed that I am embarrassed. Then you say: “No, this is not a good place. Let’s go to a better place.”

You do not bother to get a stick, but grab my hand and make me stand up. I am being dragged alongside you. I cannot hold my tongue: “You are polluting yourself.”

You say: “Is your hand wet?”
⁵⁹

I am dragging myself and moving. You keep saying: “Watch out ... get on the stairs ... to the left ... right ...”

We pass through a triangular courtyard. I feel the sun’s warmth. My feet are making a slurping noise over melted snow. I shake from the inside. We are on our way to the room downstairs. But no. We walk past Under the Eight and walk up the stairs. You hold me under my arm and are helping me. What astonishing kindness. My whole body is aching. Going up the stairs has become harder than ever. The same stairs that I ran up with open eyes and a gun in my hand on the day of the revolution’s victory. I pause when we reach the balcony. You let me catch my breath.

During one of these pauses I hear a curious conversation. First I see a white chador. Then I hear a woman’s voice: “Brother, allow me to go to my cell.”

A harsh voice, which must belong to an interrogator, asks: “Where have you got hold of these two pathetic bits of branch?”

The woman’s voice is pleading: “Please, Brother. I will put it into a glass so it can grow roots.”

We walk on and lose track of the voices. Who was that woman?
Where had she got hold of two pathetic bits of branch? She wanted to put them into a glass and let them grow roots inside this house of death and lashes to help her stay alive. We walk up the stairs. The woman’s voice is there again and she is pleading and crying. We walk up the stairs and reach a place where we lean against the railings. I feel the sun’s warmth and see from underneath my blindfold a courtyard covered in snow.

“How many days have you been without the sun?”

I cannot tell. I saw the sun for the last time on the morning of the sixth of February. A bird is singing faraway and I hear the distant, very distant, sound of traffic. I imagine the streets around me, which must be filled with passers-by, life and shouting. It’s your voice that is bringing me back to reality: “Look, Mr Asadi. We did not plan to put you under pressure. This is your own interpretation. We didn’t want this to happen, even before Mr Khamenei read your letter and put in a special request on your behalf. To you, we are a backward people.”

I said: “We never regarded you as backward. We defended you.”

You carry on talking: “But we too have a heart, are humans. It is true that we punish in line with the Shari’a law but our heart is not in it. We too know something. We have evidence. How else could we have rounded you all up in one day? Our intention is to save you. If I were in your shoes, I’d save myself. Islam’s door is open to everyone who repents.
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Getting information is not that important to us. We’ll get it sooner or later. You saw Comrade Manuchehr. He came to his senses and returned to his cell. Had it not been for the Ayatollah’s request, it would have been your turn to go to sleep in his stead.”

A wave of vomit is coming up. Your blows are raining down on me, one after another. You immediately strike again: “By the way, we are aware that your wife is running here and there trying to save you.”

You grab my hand and we set off. A door opens and everything goes dark. We walk down the stairs. There’s silence until we reach Under the Eight.

“Now go to your room. If I were you, I’d save myself.”

You must have signalled to the guard with your hand because he’s coming and taking hold of my sleeve. You say: “I am telling you one last time. Throw down your hand grenade. Tell the truth. If you take one step towards us, we’ll take a hundred steps towards you.”

Then I hear the shuffling of slippers. You are leaving. The guard says: “Watch what’s in front of your feet.”

I step over the railing and enter the block. A hand is touching my back. It’s you.

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

The torture chamber: a metal-framed bed with a metal-spring base but no mattress, a wooden chair, a rope hanging from a hook in the ceiling. And on the chair, a bottle of Parmoon.