Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (29 page)

Again, a wave of crying starts and slowly dies down to intermittent sobs. I feel as if the ground underneath my feet has been pulled away and I am going down. My heart is empty and I have nothing to rely on. Everything has gone to the wind.

I recall the early golden days of revolution in the summer of 1981. Men and women, boys and girls, had come together in political organizations, with their heads held high and their hearts filled with the hope of freeing Iran. The Party members were happier and luckier than everyone else. The anti-imperialist, anti-oppression revolution was progressing under the leadership of Imam Khomeini. The American Embassy had been seized. Farmland was to be distributed to farmers. Workers were to have unions. We had to take this historical turn alongside the revolutionary democrats in order to reach socialism. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The age of imperialism was on the wane, the sun of socialism was rising on the horizon. During the ceremonies, which were held surrounded by members of Hezbollah who carried self-flagellation chains, we used to hold hands and sing:

My wife was bound to cry at some point during the song. In which cell was she being held? Later, I would learn that on that horrific night, she had placed her head on Firoozeh’s shoulder and both of them had sobbed. They had seen the footage of the confessions, while I had only heard the voices. The golden days had gone with the wind now. We had been a small group of Party members. We used to come together almost every night. We spent holidays together. We used to go for walks together. We used to play together. We used to make a circle together and shout: “Death to America!”

Years later, quite by chance, I came across a very short roll of 16mm film that had been recorded on an old-fashioned cine camera back in those halcyon days. How happy we were. How young. How hopeful. We were on a calm island in the middle of a stormy sea. I am reminded of the words of Bahram Danesh, an old soldier who was hanged during the mass killing of political prisoners in 1988. He was seventy-eight. “We are tiny sparrows, twittering on a branch in the middle of a wild jungle full of predators.”

On that spring night of 1983, my world collapsed inside me. Not long before, I had pretended to repent my beliefs under horrific torture and now those beliefs had turned to ashes. When the lights were turned off, the sound of the last cries were still audible.

I felt absolutely defenceless. For the first time in my life, I felt the need to pray. I put the prayer stone on a piece of paper and with a mixture of astonishment and excitement, I stood in front of it to
begin my prayers. That night was the first time that I felt so vulnerable that I sought refuge in prayer. The God that I prayed to was a creation of my own mind. Years later, I see him again in a hospital in Paris, just before a heart operation. How different this God is from the God of prison. That God resembled Brother Hamid, he was dressed in black and was holding a whip. This one has light green eyes and resembles the doctor who operated on me. I moulded God in the shape that appealed to me. Just as I saw the Party the way I had shaped it in my mind. I suppose everybody does this, whether consciously or unconsciously.

I am alone in my cell. No one bothers with me any more. So I am left alone with loneliness. The Qur’an, the prayer book, and
The Ornament of the Righteous.
I start reading. I try to discover the truth in the Qur’an. Maybe we have all been wrong. Maybe everything is contained in the Qur’an. I am also reading
The Ornament of the Righteous
very carefully. One section of this book, which offers a very thorough examination of sexual issues, astonishes me. For any man left alone in a cell, reading that section must be arousing. It’s only merit is that it is realistic, it is unintentionally drawing me back to the real world, a world from which I have been cut off now for four months.

I soon realize just how much I appreciate this involuntary solitude in cell number fifteen. The chance to read and to think, think, think ...

Then the old feelings return, and the sorrow of the sunset fills my heart. I have read somewhere that this feeling of tightness and alienation has it roots with the Africans who were stolen from Africa and taken to Western shores. Every night, when the sun goes down, they are filled with sorrow. Outside prison, I seek a cure for my feelings of alienation in drink. But here, I seek refuge in prayer. A strange thought occurs to me: alcohol shares some of the same intoxicating qualities as prayer. Later on, my thoughts expand and I discover that
sin and the avoidance of it create similar sensations of pain and pleasure. There is little difference between Zorba the Greek and the oppressed of the past. Belief and disbelief also share these attributes. And I take more and more refuge in prayer. There’s no one around to take any notice of this, so my newfound dedication to prayer cannot affect my future. When the prisoner repents during the interrogation, he has reached the stage where he is completely broken. The expert interrogator is aware that the act of repenting is a farce, but nevertheless the act of confession still has a powerful impact on the prisoner. He is broken inside, and for the interrogator this means he has accomplished his objective. The interrogator is the one who discovers the path towards spiritual meaning: he turns an infidel into a believer.

And cell number fifteen becomes my home. In the evening, the guards play football outside the window, and their shouts intrude on the comforts of solitude. One night, just when the lights go off, I hear a cry from the courtyard below: “Everyone! Look at what they are doing to us!”

It’s Rahman’s voice. He had said many times that he felt like shouting out right in the middle of Toopkhaneh Square, telling people who he really was, yet he had no choice but to hide his membership of the Tudeh Party. And that night, it was as if he was crying in the middle of Toopkhaneh Square. He was either on his way to or from the torture chamber.

Two years later I will find out that the following day his lifeless body had been found inside his cell. He had torn open the veins in his wrists with his teeth.

I don’t know how I would have reacted had I been aware of Rahman’s heroic death that night. Or what I would have done had I known his body had been left outside the window of my cell for forty-eight hours.

A few days later, a guard opens the door and takes me with him without a word. We walk up an old stone stairway. A door opens. The guard orders: “Take off your blindfold and go in.”

I do as I’m told. The door closes behind me and the sun’s glare hits my eyes. I find myself in the fresh-air section on the roof of Moshtarek Prison, which has been carefully covered and enclosed with metal bars. Pigeons have perched themselves on the bars. The sky is blue and a hot summer sun is shining. I cannot bear standing up. I sit down and lean against the wall. It takes a long time for my eyes to get used to the light.

Day by day, I am losing myself in the intoxication of prayer. The Arabic words are becoming meaningful. There is a short distance between atheism and true belief in God. Theism and atheism are two sides of the same coin, and when the two become absolute, they change shape, turning from spiritual tools into material means. When my hand reaches for the book, I read a passage that says that for mystics, saying a prayer is like drinking wine in paradise. A famous mystic had said about his lengthy prayer sessions that it was as if wine was bubbling up in his mind. Everybody moulds his God in the way that appeals to him.

One day, a tall guard turns up. He’s in charge of the library. He gives me a list of books to choose from. Two days later, I receive two books of poetry, one by Rumi, the other by Hafez. I drown in the poetry, it washes away the filth of my days. My heart grows sadder and I pray even more. It doesn’t matter what time of the day it is. As soon as I become sad, I perform my ablution and pray. I am somehow finding refuge in not having a refuge. Then I seek refuge in poetry.

One day, I spot this poem by Siavash Kasrai scribbled in tiny letters in pencil in the margin of the book I’m reading:

I read it. Ten times. A hundred times. After a while I hear my wife’s voice: “Houshka ... Houshka ...” But no: she is not calling the Houshang who is sitting here; she wants the me who has been lost. I am just a puppet.

The following day is a Friday. I have had nightmares the whole night. At the end, I am standing on the top of the cliff from which Steve McQueen jumps at the end of
Papillon
. My wife is down there, in a boat. She’s shouting: “Houshka, Houshka, don’t be afraid. Jump. Jump.”

I wake up with a jolt. I am full of sorrow, from my head to my toes. I knock on the door and go to perform my ablution. In the middle of my prayer, the door suddenly opens. I am prostrating so I do not lift my head. Someone kicks me hard on my side with his boots:

“Useless wimp, is this the time for prayers?”

I recognize your voice, Brother Hamid. You who have forced me to repent.

“Put on the blindfold and face the wall.”

I do as I’m told. I sense that you have seated yourself by the door.

“What are you up to these days?”

I explain and you listen and then ask: “Need anything?”

“Of course I do. I’ve been here for a long time. Aren’t you taking me to court?”

You sigh and say: “I’ve been waiting for this longer than you have. When the sentence is passed, I would like to shoot the final bullet myself.”

There is the sound of a door closing. For a while I just sit there, blindfolded and facing the wall. Then I lift the blindfold. My restlessness intensifies, coming over me in wave after wave.

Who was I? What have I become?

What wonders that heartless kick did for me. The man who had thrown me into hell with the cut of a lash had pulled me out of it with a kick. For which one of these acts will he be rewarded and which
punished? Would the God on whose behalf he was administering the lashes, and handcuffing me, and feeding me shit, reward the repentance that he had ordered, or would he reward the repentance that he had triggered inadvertently? My repentance, though initially false, had now become my refuge.

What place does this incident have on his path of leading me to God? How easy is it to simplify the complexity of a man’s existence and to prepare the scales of oppression for the sake of political expediency?

You save me, Brother Hamid. I am clawing my way out of a dark tunnel. There is a light at the far end, and even if it’s the light of the final bullet that you have promised to shoot, even so, it still signifies release.

I am returning to myself, I who am no longer that self. It’s as if a hat made of lead has been lifted from my head. The wind of tomorrow is touching my face, burning my wounds and setting fire to my heart. The fire is warming me and the whole of my past is coming back with the warmth. Childhood, hunger, and poverty. Youthfulness and running. Hope and revolution. The hungry are rising up, and changing the world.

My whole soul has been ploughed. Dust and excrement have been mixed. Stray weeds and perfumed herbs. I am running over this newly ploughed ground on my wounded feet in search of myself. No, I want to sow myself in this field. I am still thirty-three years old and if I come out of here alive, I can be myself again.

I return to the world and rediscover myself. I randomly open the book of Hafez’s poetry, and my eye falls on this poem:

I start to shake. I read the poem, maybe a hundred times. I imagine the sound of my wife reading it in her pleasant voice. And all I want is to be myself again.

My life inside cell number fifteen slips into a routine. Bathing once a week, and before bathing there’s the distribution of nail clippers. Fresh air once a week. Hair cut once a month. Brother Rasouli, the tall, young guard, gives me books. But only morally uplifting ones.

I am reviewing my old life, bit by bit, while I am living this life in my cell. I don’t know how often I succumb to feelings of regret. Sorrow fills me. I weep, and eventually I decide, not knowing that this is going to be the most difficult decision of my whole life, that I want to remain independent. I want to stay alive without causing harm to anyone else.

And inside me, blood is raining, wind is blowing, there’s a storm and the icebergs are breaking up, like in Pudovkin’s film
Mother
⁷⁸
when the water forges a path through the ice.
The Downpour
,
⁷⁹
arrives and it’s as if I am looking for something inside that abandoned storage room. I am searching for myself. I am paddling with my feet and hands from dawn to dusk. I bob up and down in the water. I have a fever. The sites of my wounds ache. My feet are burning with a piercing pain. I tighten my bandana. I press against my teeth with my fingers. I lean against the wall. I sit down and stand up. I don’t know when it is that my tears become a flood and drown my eyes. It’s a spring that first starts with a slow trickle before bursting its banks. I sob for hours and spill out all the filth that they have pushed down inside me. I am not even aware that I am sobbing loudly and reciting passages from
Jean-Christophe
: