Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (2 page)

Every night, yes, every night, my day ends at eleven o’clock, my life reaches its limit and I enter a dark tunnel. I find myself in pitch blackness and I never know whether I’ll manage to get out of the tunnel or not.

It’s exactly eleven o’clock in the evening. I’m lying in the corridor, facing the wall. I’ve loosened my blindfold and put on my glasses.
Since around eleven o’clock this morning, my life has been reduced to the width and length of the blanket. I’ve learned a number of rules; the most important ones are about the blindfold. When I’m facing the wall, I’m allowed to pull up the blindfold. The damn thing is very coarse, pulling out my eyeballs. Under all other circumstances, I have to tighten it up again.

A hand touches my shoulder. It makes me jolt against my will. Quickly I grab hold of my glasses. I sit up. I place the glasses inside my shirt pocket. I put on my brown jumper – it was a birthday present. I’m exactly thirty-two years old. No, thirty-two years and one month. I’m at the beginning of the thirty-third year of my life. I adjust the blindfold. A voice shouts my name into my ear. It makes me jump again. The voice says: “Come on.” I stand up. I put on my slippers, which I had placed by the side of the blanket. My spirits lift: “They’re going to release me. They’re going to release me ...” We walk along the corridor and I stumble on something. Someone has come to collect and release me. That someone pulls at my shirtsleeve and announces yet another rule: “Pull up your blindfold just enough so you can see what’s underneath your feet.”

I do as I’m told. I see everything in a slightly darker shade. I see the ground. I see a pair of military boots and trousers. “It’s the Revolutionary Guards Corps. Yes, it’s them.” My hope grows. The Corps was basically
set up
to defend the revolution. I myself have written a number of complimentary articles about them. We go through the “Under the Eight”,
¹
which is a triangular courtyard. I recognize this courtyard. I’ve passed through it many times during earlier detentions. The guard accompanying me says: “Be careful. There’s a step.”

I can’t see the step. I find it with my foot. There are two of them. I don’t know yet that for years to come I’ll have to watch out for these steps when passing through the courtyard. My companion has a kind voice. My heart lights up. “The Revolutionary Guards must have spent the entire morning defeating the American coup and are
now freeing us.” My optimism is based on the analysis of Iran’s Communist Party,
²
of which I was a member. Like many political analyses, it is rooted in a particular worldview. “The revolutionary democrats are our allies; the government is in their hands. If the Party were ever crushed, it could only be as a result of an American coup.”

We hadn’t yet reached the other side of the courtyard when my mind finds the question that I must ask the guard: “Excuse me. Is my wife coming?”

My wife was also arrested that morning. I am trying to figure out her situation as well as my own. “God willing, she’ll come to pick you up tomorrow morning.”

I feel a sweet sensation in the pit of my stomach. “In the morning, in the morning, in the morning. They’ve freed my wife. She is coming to pick me up tomorrow morning.”

We enter another triangular courtyard to the left. I hear the sound of the guard’s tramping boots but to me they sound like the drums of freedom. He opens a door. I enter. It’s a narrow corridor and turns left.

“Pick up the iron rods and follow me.”

I pick up the iron rods. It’s cold. We walk up the stairs to the first floor.

“Turn around.”

I turn around.

“Remove your blindfold and sit down, facing the wall.”

I do as I’m told. A chair is placed in the middle of the room. I sit on it. It’s wooden, a pale brown school chair.

I look around me. The room is large. The windows, framed on both sides by iron bars, have been painted over. I position myself on the chair and wait. There is silence.

Then I hear the sound of shuffling feet. The sound is coming from a long way off and is moving in my direction. The door opens. The shuffling sound has entered the room. The door closes and you, Brother Hamid, enter my life for good. You who didn’t believe a single word I said.

You must at least acknowledge after twenty-five years, as your picture gradually builds up on my computer monitor, that I did hear the shuffling of your slippers that day. Living abroad, in a foreign country – this fact in itself represents a continuation of your presence in my life – I was simply sitting in front of my computer when the messenger alert pinged and the following message appeared: “Have a look. Have you seen this picture?”

And the picture slowly materialized. I had a feeling deep in my gut that it would be you, and that once again you were about to enter my life, as if you were tired of having spent twenty-five years away from me. I’m sure you’d be happy to know that when your photograph finally emerged in full, my body began to shake. A sharp pain went through my back. The soles of my feet started burning. Surely you remember me?

I used to say: “Hello.”

You used to respond: “Fuck you.”

You used to make me lie on the bed. Face down. You used to ask me whether I had performed my ablution.
³
You used to say “Remember, not performing it is a punishable offence.” You used to say that your name was Hamid, but we all called you “The Torturer”. And then you would start: “In the name of the Heavenly Fatimeh ...”
⁴
And you whipped me. First strike. Second strike. The harder you beat my feet,
⁵
the louder your voice became. After you had tired yourself out, you would switch on the tape machine:

“Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”
⁶

Twenty-five years later, my scars are still stinging and that night, when I saw your photograph, they caught fire. Praise be to Allah a million times, you’ve grown fat. Your double chin sticks out above your official embassy uniform. Apparently this photo was taken at a dinner party at the Iranian Embassy in Tajikistan. In it, you are looking viciously at someone who’s not visible in the photo. And I was shaking. The soles of my feet were on fire.

A new message popped up on my screen.

“Do you know him?”

“Yes.”

“Who is he?”

“Brother Hamid, my interrogator.”

“Are you sure it’s him?”

Yes, I’m sure. I have seen you. I’ve seen you three times, Brother Hamid. You were very careful to ensure I wouldn’t see you. But I did. The first time was when you had taken the prisoner in the cell next to mine outside – the one who was working for you and who had used Morse code to try to get information out of me. You were talking to him and I saw you. On the upper part of all the prison cell doors there were little round openings made of metal that were locked from the outside. By chance, the opening in my cell door had been broken and covered with cardboard. Someone had used a needle to make a little hole and I could see out through that hole.

I saw you through that hole. You had positioned the prisoner against the wall. He was blindfolded. He was talking and you were listening. You used to be slim back then. A guard’s uniform and slippers. Those damn slippers. And the second and the third time? Do not rush me, Brother Hamid. We are still at the beginning of the story. A story that turned into a horror film. A film that you directed. I was obliged to write the script for the role that you made me play, and then to act it out.

I am sitting on that brown school chair, facing the wall. The guard orders me to put my blindfold back on. I hear the sound of shuffling feet. The sound stops behind me. A hand is placed on my shoulder. Your voice is authoritarian but young. Much younger than mine.

“We know everything.”

Then you step in front of me. I see your military uniform from under the blindfold. From the waist down and slightly obscured. I have described you in detail in my novel
The Cat.
⁷
Get the novel and read it. You see, you have even entered literature with me. That was a novel, but this is the truth.

You said: “Spying. Coup d’etat. No beating about the bush. Tell us everything you know.”

I adjust myself on the seat. I follow the Party’s instruction; I have come to believe it myself: “Firstly, we are not spies ... and then ... I am not going to answer these questions. They are against the constitution.”

And I see stars. No, that’s an old-fashioned way of putting it. Fireworks go off in my head. You say: “That was the first article of the constitution. Now lift up your blindfold slightly.” I do as I’m told. You open your military coat. I see the vague outline of a pistol. “And this is the final article, but before we get to this one there will be lots of other articles along the way ...”

I understand that
your
constitution is different from the Islamic Republic’s. As you utter these words you position yourself behind me: “Now get up. Think about it ... until tomorrow morning. Remember, we know everything. Spying. Coup d’etat. Just write about those.”

The sound of shuffling feet moves away. The door opens and then closes. Complete silence.

A pigeon is cooing outside the window. I take off my blindfold and put on my glasses. The cream-coloured walls and I have been left alone. I don’t know yet that years will pass and the walls and I will be alone. I hear a blowing sound in my head. My cheek is burning. Someone inside me keeps asking questions but is not given any answers.

“There’s been a coup? But he was wearing the uniform of the Revolutionary Guards Corps? Could they be working for the Americans? Could it be that the Party’s analysis of the situation, its instructions, have been mistaken? Could it be? A coup? Have they staged a coup themselves and are now trying to stick it on us? Me, a spy? This must be the work of the CIA ...”

My ears, which have been learning to do the job of my eyes, are waiting for a voice to come for me and take me away. My heart is naïve, it is still waiting for me to be released.

“By the way, where is my wife right now?”

The silence is complete. That pigeon is cooing again, or maybe it’s a different pigeon, one of the many pigeons I become acquainted with during my three-year stay in Moshtarek prison.
⁸
These pigeons build their nests in one of the most horrifying torture chambers of the world. When spring arrives, they pay no attention to the cries from the torture chambers, or to the men and women who are taken away at dawn to be hanged. They lay eggs. The eggs hatch.

The only sound that breaks the silence is the bird’s cooing. For the first time, I stand up cautiously and walk a few steps. I learn to listen out for his voice so that when I hear it approach I can throw myself on to the chair and sit down, facing the wall. As I sit there waiting, in my mind I keep replaying the morning of my arrest.

Early in the morning, the doorbell rang. Three short rings, one long one. I looked out of the window. It was Fereydoun, the man in charge of my Party cell. I opened the door and went down the steps. He was frightened. Pale. He was trembling while we talked.

“The arrests have started. Inform everyone you can,” he said, and left. His shoulders were shaking, either out of fright or because he was crying.

I had seen him a few days earlier. When I had rung his bell the usual three times, two short rings and one long one, I was surprised to find that he didn’t come down as soon as he heard that special ring. Instead one of his daughters opened the door. She went back inside and it took a long time for him to appear. He called me into the courtyard. We talked next to his parked Toyota. His daughters were watching us from the balcony. I was surprised. He gave me a package and said: “Don’t come back here. They’re going to arrest us. They are going to kill us. All of us.”

And now he had come to my home. I stepped out into the street and watched him as he walked away. He was out of breath walking up the steep road, and that four-wheel-drive car was still parked on
the other side of the street, right in front of our house. Later, I realized that from very early on they had been watching our home from inside that car. Did Rahman, the deputy editor-in-chief of
Kayhan
⁹
newspaper and one of the leaders of our clandestine Party, know about this? Is that why he didn’t come himself? What had happened during this last month? Why didn’t he warn us? He had always worried for my wife. I went upstairs. I woke my wife; she slept late and only after taking sleeping pills.

I gave her the news. Waves of worry washed over her face and have never left since. She jumped up, quick as lightning.

“What time is it? Manuchehr Khan might be stranded.”

Nooshabeh, my wife was very fond of that calm, kind, likeable man, and even though she was neither interested in politics nor a Party member, she was always ready to help him. The bell rang again. This time it was one of the members of the Party Central Committee. He had assumed that Manuchehr Behzadi, a fellow member of the Central Committee and editor-in-chief of
Mardom
,
The People’s Letter
, the Party’s official newspaper, would be with us and had come to let him know that the Guards had gone down early that morning to the building where Manuchehr lived. I said: “We have to collect Manuchehr Khan at eight o’clock, so we will let him know what is happening. But you shouldn’t go home. Stay somewhere else for a few days.”

He left, and I heard later that he had managed to get out of the country. I told my wife that we had better leave the house.

Nooshabeh was rushing to get ready to collect Manuchehr. “Pack up everything we need,” she said, “I’ll be back very quickly.”

I insisted that she stayed so that we could go together, but she was worried about Manuchehr, and left the house in a hurry. First of all, I tore up Party paperwork, and threw it into the toilet. I grabbed a small bag into which I put any books that I thought might appear compromising, and my passport, which had a stamp from my trip to the Soviet Union. I put the bag in the cellar. I went back upstairs. I
picked up another small bag. I tried to make sure that my wife’s mother, who was living with us, wouldn’t notice. I threw in basic necessities. I considered phoning the
Mardom
office, but instead quietly left the house with the bag in my hand and phoned the
Mardom
office from a public phone box nearby. Usually, one of the guys I knew well picked up the phone, but this time an unfamiliar voice answered. I realized from the way he spoke that the authorities had already taken over the office. I put down the phone. I didn’t know what to do. For a while I waited at the side of the street for Nooshabeh to get back, but there was no sign of her. I couldn’t leave without her. I went back into the house. Since then, I’ve asked myself a thousand times whether I was stupid to do that.