Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (21 page)

Every time I feel like a drink, I am reminded of that bottle of Parmoon and of you. I have to drink more and more to forget what kind of drinking companion you were. I drank the last drop from the blue bottle so that I could die. So I could be saved. I drank every drop. In one go. Without cucumber yoghurt.
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Without taste. No, with the taste of the pain that was running through my body. With the bitterness of suffering and the sweetness of death that was coming to take me away. I don’t know whether you drink when you are on your own. No. No. You are pious. You don’t touch alcohol. You certainly perform ablution before you perform torture. You pray. You are not like me, I who am still washing away my sorrow with a glass of spirits or a pint of beer. You have prepared yourself for the intoxicating streams running through paradise. You are expecting God to offer you a fine, fair houri in return for each strike of your whip. And for now, your purity is no hardship, for you take such pleasure in the beating and killing.

Yes, lovely Brother Hamid, my fourteenth letter is about drinking in the torture chamber where you were the one with the whip. Think about it. If you had written about the other side of the drama that you
watched unfold, in which you played such a big part, together we could have written a timeless masterpiece.

The final hours of the night. I should celebrate my wedding anniversary. The light has been turned off, so I know it’s past eleven o’clock. I lean against the wall. I search with my hands for the two pieces of sugar cube that I saved from breakfast. We married five years ago. Where is my wife now? Is she, too, inside a cell, remembering our wedding? I close my eyes. I fantasize about holding her hand. In my fantasy she is saying: “You are very tired. Sleep ... sleep.”

I wake up to the sound of the door opening. A guard takes me to the bathroom.

“Knock on the door when you have done your business.”

I go in. There is no mirror. I try to see my reflection against the metal cubicle wall. I wash my face. My scalp is itching. I wash my hair with some of the dishwashing detergent that stands in for soap at Moshtarek, and rinse my head under the cold water. The water at Moshtarek prison comes from one of Tehran’s oldest springs and is among the coldest, most refreshing waters of the world. My head almost freezes and my shirt gets wet. I knock on the door and the shepherd guard arrives. I am taken back to my cell. The guard leaves and comes back with a clean prison shirt for me.

As always, the door opens suddenly: “Who’s Houshang?”

There is no one else in the cell, except me, so I must be Houshang. I stand up and we set off. On the way, there’s the usual argument: “Why have you called yourself Houshang?”

As soon as we reach the courtyard, someone grabs my shirt collar and punches me hard in the stomach, and when I come back to my senses, I find myself on the metal bed. A fist is hitting my face. A voice is saying: “Start it, Brother Haykal.”

“Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”

Punches and kicks rain down on me. Together they drag me into a standing position and then hit me so that I fall against the metal bed and the bed’s springs dig into my body. I hear the heavy breathing of someone I cannot see and words are tearing at my ear and burrowing deep inside my brain.

“Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”

And you are hitting me again. Suddenly a fist lands on my mouth. It’s Brother Haykal. Do you remember him, Brother Hamid? You both hit me, and the two of you are laughing.

I don’t know how much time passes before I hear your voices. You are circling me: “Spy. Torturer. Useless wimp. Savak agent. We don’t need evidence. He’s the evidence. He’s a piece of filth. His stink is everywhere.”

Then you leave. I hold my head in my hands. I listen carefully. There’s no sound. I pick up my blindfold. My clothes are covered in the blood that’s spilling from my mouth. I spit and a broken tooth falls out. I feel a piercing pain in my molar teeth. The torture chamber is the size of a cell. A room where I will be a guest for a long time. Its walls are covered in blood. I can vaguely see the shape of a rope hanging from the ceiling. A black chair and a metal bed.

“Put on your blindfold.”

I put it on. The door opens. Someone drags me out, pulls me up the stairs and throws me into a room.

“Wait until your interrogator arrives.”

I am sitting and waiting for you to arrive, Brother Hamid. You are preceded by the sound of shuffling slippers. You put a pile of paper on the desk: “This time I don’t want anything vague, or wishy-washy. A lot of things have changed in the last few days. You have to get straight to the point, right now. We want facts.”

And you leave.

You are right, Brother Hamid. It does seem like there’s some sort of chaos going on. Doors are opening and closing. From that night
onwards I keep hearing the terrible sound of screaming. You leave and I start writing.

I don’t know, Brother Hamid, how many hours I’ve been writing. I am eager to finish quickly. My face is burning, my mouth is full of blood. A pain for which there’s no cure has afflicted my poor teeth that have broken under the onslaught of your fists. Even as I write, I spit out bits of tooth. I am frightened to knock on the door. I tell myself that you’ll be coming back soon and I’ll be able to go to the bathroom. But you don’t come. I can hear the incessant sound of shouting coming from the corridor. Doors keep opening and closing. I guess it’s one of those days when interrogation takes up the whole twenty-four hours and you and your colleagues take confessions in three shifts.

When I’m taken back to my cell, the light is on and will not be switched off again.

From that time of endless light, that was also a time of endless darkness, all I remember is insults, shouting and lashes. Nights ran into days. First I lost all track of time, and then I lost myself. The one that was me remained forever in that torture chamber, and another me left; a me whose creator was neither God nor nature, a handcuffed me, a lashed me, a beaten, broken me.

The overwhelming pressure makes me knock on the door. After a while someone appears and asks from behind the door what I want. I answer. He says he has to ask. You are in charge, Brother Hamid. They even have to ask for your permission for me to go to the bathroom. You must have given your permission because the guard comes and takes me away.

I take off my blindfold in that life-saving toilet, I put on my glasses, and I see my reflection in the metal cubicle wall. I am horrified. Blood has dried on my face. My eyes are swollen. I rinse out my mouth and touch my teeth. Two molar teeth, one on the right and one on the left, are gone and a front tooth is loose.

The guard knocks on the door. The bathroom time is short. I do
my business and we return upstairs and again I start writing. I write more quickly, using few words.

All my teeth are aching and it has made me restless. I keep standing up and walking. Then I sit down and write. Then I walk again. I knock on the door. Someone comes. He asks from behind the door: “What’s up?”

I say: “The pain is killing me.”

He says: “Keep walking. The marks of punishment will get better.”

I say: “My mouth, my teeth.”

He laughs: “Have they managed to lower your pain threshold? Who’s your interrogator?”

I answer: “Brother Hamid.” And he leaves.

And I walk. The sound of shuffling slippers arrives. I put on the blindfold and face the wall. “Finished?”

I say: “My teeth.”

“Shut up, useless wimp.”

You pick up what I have written so far and then leave. I am being left behind, with my toothache. I am left behind with the blank paper. I should finish quickly. I should write quickly, maybe then they’ll take me back to my cell and do something about my teeth.

Eventually, someone comes. He takes my sleeve silently and leads me away. The cold in the courtyard is piercing. I shuffle over snow. It’s clear that it has snowed heavily. My socks are soaking wet by the time I reach you. You say: “You’ll see my true face now. You’ll understand why they call me ‘The Torturer’.”

There are many torturers in this world, with whips, and handcuffs, just like you, and with your way of thinking – if someone doesn’t share your views, you must kill him. With the wounds of the whip, the tip of the pen or the lashes of the tongue.

You say: “Take off your socks.”

I take them off.

You say: “Are you writing the truth? Or shall I start ...”

“I have written the truth!”

And I am afraid. I assume you want me to write about the organization. About the Party members, about my wife and ... But I am mistaken. As usual, you are talking to me in code. Meaning, you are indirectly telling the prisoner what you want to hear.

“I am going to start. I want the truth about how you became a Savak agent. Open and close your hand ...”

And in the blink of an eye I am thrown onto the bed. The springs are cutting into my flesh. You are tying my hands. Another person, who must be Brother Haykal, is tying my feet and it is starting ...

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

The lash descends.

“Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”

And you are striking. The blows hit the soles of my feet and echo in my head. I don’t know how many lashes you will administer. You must have been given an order in line with Shari’a law and you will not exceed the lawful number of allocated lashes.

I am yelling. Something is being put into my mouth. It’s my wet socks. Were you aware that due to sinus problems I can only breathe properly through my mouth? I am suffocating. The socks are putting pressure on the broken teeth. I prefer being lashed to being gagged. For the first time it occurs to me to open and close my hand. I do just that. A hand removes the socks; it’s as if I have just emerged from under water.

“Right. First confess it verbally.”

I can only hear my own voice with difficulty: “About what?”

“How you became a Savak agent and why you infiltrated the Party.”

There’s a piercing sound in my brain. These words are more painful than the lashing of the whip. You must be bluffing. When the whip strikes, I cry out. The socks are stuffed back into my mouth and the blows continue. I tell myself: “I’d rather die than accept this lie.”

The blows descend until I escape into deep darkness. When I come round, I am seated by the side of the bed, whining. The soles of my feet are on fire. I can’t lift them. I touch my feet. They are bleeding. I hear your voice: “Now stand up and move around. It’s good for you.”

Later, I will come to understand that walking has a special place in torture. Interrogators have been taught exactly when to stop whipping the feet to prevent nerve cells from dying. That’s why they make their victims walk and move their feet; it’s to keep the cells alive. Doing this to swollen feet is a new form of torture as well as preparation for the torture session to come. Victims who are aware of this try to avoid walking and I, without knowing anything about it, always tried to avoid walking. I just couldn’t walk on my feet. You are whispering in my ear: “You must have been given thorough training, little lion. Keep walking.”

You are calling me little lion. Whenever you are feeling well, I become little lion and you, The Torturer.

And I walk.

And then, loud and deafening: “Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”

Again, two people grab me roughly and throw me onto the bed. They tie my hands and feet. They push the socks back into my mouth.

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

And the whip descends. The more I twist, the more the rope puts pressure on my hands and feet, cutting into them.

“The more resistance you put up, the more obvious it becomes that you are keeping secrets.”

This is another lesson in the science of torture. And I am suffocating. I can’t even twist myself around. A heavy weight is pressing me down. I hear your voice: “Sit further up, Brother Haykal, so he can’t move. This one, he’s well trained.”

And the blows rain down on me with great force. And I don’t
know when I drown in darkness. The intense burning sensation in my feet brings me back to my senses. I have been untied. Someone is rubbing something on the soles of my feet. It’s the guard/doctor. When he finishes his task, he grabs me under my arms and makes me stand up: “Have pity on yourself. In the end, everybody gives in.”

And he takes me out of the torture chamber. A few steps further, and he hands me over to someone else. I hear the guard’s voice: “Your interrogator wants you to walk. Face the wall and just move your feet around.”

I start moving my feet. I move them slowly. They are very swollen. I hear someone being dragged along and thrown into the room downstairs. A little while later, there’s yelling.

The voice of a woman.

The voice of a man.

The piercing cry of a woman.

The yelling of a man.

I am moving my feet and listening to the yelling. I feel a strange pressure in my stomach. I try to look around me under the corner of my blindfold. With my eyebrows I manage to push the blindfold up a tiny bit. Over there, I can see the vague shadow of iron bars and a cooking stove with a perpetually steaming kettle on top of it and next to it, a chair. I free myself, as if automatically. And then I hear the sound of my bowels emptying themselves and I fear someone might come. I am embarrassed. I hear a voice. It’s not the shuffling of slippers. It’s the stamping of boots. A hand is touching my shoulder. It’s the guard. Laughing he says: “Seems you haven’t moved your feet properly. I am leaving so you won’t be embarrassed. Keep moving your feet.”

And the drama carries on. I am tired in a horrible way. I lift my hand. I hear a voice from a distance: “What’s up?”

I gesticulate with my hand that I want to go to the bathroom. The guard walks up: “Keep moving your feet until I’ve asked your interrogator.”

He leaves and I move my feet. The yelling has stopped. Once or twice I squat and then stand up until a hand grabs my sleeve and takes me with him. We pass by the blankets that carpet the corridors. We reach the bathroom.