A State of Fear (2 page)

I
could hear a terrible sound. As I stepped into the open prison yard, I realised what it was: the sound of torture. Once you hear those screams they stay with you forever. They penetrated the walls and echoed down the corridors and inside my skull. I can still hear those echoes today. I particularly remember the sickening sound of a woman screaming out for help. These hellish sounds grew louder and more piercing as we ventured inside.

I was hurried along a long corridor. As we came to some steps I stumbled and fell to my knees, almost smashing my head on the ground. A guard grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back on my feet. I already knew why he had grabbed my sleeve rather than my arm: I was considered ‘untouchable’ by my devout captors. Further inside the prison I hit my forehead against what must have been a low ceiling. It made a sickening, dull thud and I collapsed for a second time.

This corridor was the narrow gate to hell. Every ‘untouchable’
would have walked along it. Every prisoner would have fallen on that step and hit their head on that ceiling. This journey was a blunt and somehow fitting introduction to a world of psychological disorientation. We came to a room and I was pushed down into a chair. I could just make out a simple desk standing in front of me. I heard men filing in.

‘We’ve captured all of you bastards now,’ someone said. ‘You can die together.’

‘Brother Rahman, hand him to me,’ another of them shouted. ‘I’ll send him straight to hell.’

They began incessantly cursing me and members of my family. It almost sounded like an incantation, a ritual they repeated for every new prisoner. I tried to convince myself that these taunts were the punishment, but inside I knew that they were just psyching themselves up before they began. Eventually, it started.

‘Tell me, which organisation do you belong to?’

‘Brother, there has been a mistake. I’m not a member of any organisation.’ I was in fact a member of an underground workers’ organisation called Rahe Kargar, which literally means ‘Workers’ Way’. Trades unions were banned, so secret cells of Rahe Kargar sprang up around the country.

He struck the back of my neck with the edge of his hand. It was followed by a wild flurry of punches to my head and face.

I was taken to an adjoining room. Still reeling from this initial beating, I was pushed into a corner. I was so close to the walls that I could feel the concrete against my nose. With my eyes still covered, I was now seriously disorientated. I tried to keep calm and not think about what was going to happen next. It emerged that I did not have to wait long to find out.

Something struck from behind – not a fist, it was far too powerful for that – and my face and chest smashed against the walls in the corner where I stood. Badly winded and unable to breathe, I collapsed to my knees. I desperately fought for air but,
like a fish on a slate, I was helpless. It was agony, like sharp bolts of electricity were being passed through my body. Someone tried to pull me to my feet but my legs wouldn’t support me.

Once my system allowed me to swallow air again I saw, through the small slit above my blindfold, what had hit me. It was swinging from the ceiling and looked a bit like a punch bag, but bigger and filled with gravel. It was about a half a metre in diameter and a metre in length. When it slammed into you it felt like a train. While I was still on my knees, a heavy boot of one of the Hezbollahi delivered a swift kick to my head, then another to my back. The man grabbed my hand, pulled me up, and I was dragged, staggering and breathless, to another room.

From beneath my blindfold I saw the feet of my torturers. From what I could make out there were at least four men in the room with me. I also saw an iron bed frame, covered with what would have been a mattress if it wasn’t made of wood. They forced me onto it, face down.

One interrogator sat on my back, firmly placed a hand on the back of my head and forced my face into the wooden board. Two others strapped my ankles to the crosspiece of the frame and my wrists to the top. My arms were stretched out straight. Then they began their ‘holy duty’, lashing the soles of my feet with a length of thick, insulated cable. The pain was indescribable. It tore through every inch of me. I screamed like never before, all the while anger growing inside me. The guard on my back only pushed down harder, grinding my face into the wood. As the flogging intensified, so did my screams. One of the men pushed torn pieces of blanket covered with dirt, blood, dust and hair into my mouth to gag me.

Throughout the ordeal the interrogator demanded names, times, places and houses of my ‘comrades’. He was fixated on the times and places of alleged secret meetings. I couldn’t have answered even if I had wanted to; with my mouth stuffed with rags it was difficult to breathe, let alone speak. The pain from
the lashing was almost obscured by the feeling of blind panic that I was going to choke to death. Focusing what little energy I had, I was able to dislodge the rags in my mouth. They were trying to break me mentally as well as physically, claiming they knew the time and place of a certain meeting and demanded that I confirm it. I knew they were bluffing. What they really expected from me was detailed information leading to the capture and arrest of my comrades. Mercifully, I passed out.

My body was covered with a cold sweat. It felt like I had been soaked in icy water. From under the blindfold I could see a narrow beam of light shining through a hole in the door of the torture room. The rags had been removed from my mouth. The chief interrogator told me that Haji Aghah – a priest and representative of the Ayatollah Khomeini in the prisons – gave him written permission to torture me to death.

‘Now, what are you going to do? Do you talk, or should I ask our brothers to make you talk? We have forced central committee members to talk. Do you want to be a hero? You’re a fool. No hero will emerge from this cell alive. Do you know where we’ll take your corpse? To a cursed hole where dogs will tear you apart.’

‘Brother,’ I said, sobbing, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini that you have made a mistake, I know nothing about these names and addresses.’

The chief interrogator and two others took the straps off and sat me up on the bed, still blindfolded, so that I was facing the door. I heard more people entering the room and four more boots appeared on the ground, along with someone wearing plastic prison slippers. I assumed he was another prisoner, but had no idea who he was. The chief interrogator spoke again. ‘Farhad, take off your blindfold and tell us who this man sitting on the bed is.’

With some hesitation, the prisoner said, ‘He is Karveh, a lecturer at the University of Tehran.’ Karveh was the secret underground name I was known by for 20 years and more while in the Rahe Kargar movement. He gave a list of names of people supposedly working under me and recited a statement that had obviously been dictated by prison officials: ‘My wife and I have both been captured. Our organisation has been attacked at the very top. We have given the brothers all the information that we have. You should do the same, otherwise you and your family will be destroyed.’

Farhad. I knew that name well. And that voice was familiar, too… it was that of a cadre in Rahe Kargar. It took me a second to place him as he sounded different, broken and desolate. It was a tone that I had never heard before, although I now understood the reason for it. I was aware that anyone I said I knew would share my fate. A name would mean a death. I would be helping to destroy the struggle of which I was a part; the struggle for workers’ rights. Workers had no right of association, unions or bargaining power and it’s the same now. Rahe Kargar was helping to organise secret cells inside factories to fight for these rights. There was only one way to respond.

‘Why are you lying?’ I said, furiously. ‘Who are these people you are talking about? Why are you accusing me of having contact with them? Have you ever introduced any of them to me? I have never met any of these people.’

‘You are lying,’ the interrogator snapped. A fist connected squarely with my head. I heard Farhad being taken away. The torture was about to begin again. From under the blindfold, I glimpsed a deep pile of dried scraps of flesh and pools of blood. The macabre remains of those who had been tortured before me, who had died or were imprisoned in this hellhole. I knew that some of these ‘untouchables’ would have been no more than children: only 12 years old, boys and girls. Some would have been as old as 80. Yet the flesh was not so much revolting
as inspiring: a testimony to those who, in the name of justice, had refused to break.

‘I must make a decision,’ I thought. ‘Should I give up all the values of democracy, freedom and justice that I have held for so long? Or should my blood join that of the others who resisted and remained firm in their commitment?’ I knew then that I would not jeopardise the lives or activities of my comrades. I would not be helping myself even if I did talk. Anyone brought in because of my confession would only be tortured until they produced more evidence against me. But would my silence protect me? Perhaps. Only if Farhad had not disclosed anything else about me and no other comrades from our organisation – especially those from the
Rahe Kargar
newspaper – were arrested.

The interrogators worked for Savama, the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security. This was the secret police and they were experienced. Some had been employed in the time of the Shah and when he was overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979 they discovered their skills were still much in demand. The one the others called Haji Rahman shouted at me: ‘Motherfucker, we caught you red-handed in one big net. We’ll hang you all.’

‘Give this motherfucker to me,’ screamed another. ‘I will kill him and send him to hell right now.’

‘Hey, let’s hear from your own fucking mouth which
counter-revolutionary
group you belong to,’ said one more.

‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini, there is a mistake here. I have never been a member of any organisation.’

Someone punched me again. Haji Rahman shouted, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini’s glorious spirit that if any of the information is withheld and if any of them get away, I will kill you with my own hands.’

‘We don’t just want details of your underground activities, we need passwords too.’

‘I swear I have no information or passwords to give!’

‘We won’t let you out of here alive. We have no time for heroes,’ Haji Rahman said. ‘Brothers, teach him how to talk.’

The torture began. With each blow I screamed clear and loud. I blacked out and awoke to find myself in an infirmary, tubes attached to my body. The doctor – a prisoner from the Blaoch region – came to my bedside when he saw that my eyes were open. ‘God has had mercy upon you. You have had a stroke due to the trauma to your head. You’ve been unconscious for three days, very close to death. The right side of your body has been affected.’

My first thought was that they could not push me further. I was relieved. They didn’t want to kill me… not yet, anyway. I was in the infirmary for days. I began to feel a little better and my wounds began to heal but I knew that it was only a matter of time before the interrogators returned. They still wanted information. Sure enough, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the one they called Haji Samad, the chief interrogator, returned me to the cells. ‘The original information we wanted from you is useless. All the meetings will have taken place by now, and they’ll know that we have you,’ he said coldly. He threatened to take me to Lanat-Abad, the infamous mass graves for communist victims, where he would finish me ‘with one shot’.

‘Haji,’ I cried, ‘I beg you to kill me. What you’ve done to me is unbearable. I’m blind in my right eye, my right arm and foot have lost their power to move, my feet are covered in scabs and open sores. My bladder is bleeding and my urine is full of blood. Living like this is worthless. Kill me then I’ll feel relief from the pain and wounds you’ve inflicted on me. At least I know I’ll be remembered by our people for resisting.’

‘You think the people support you?’ he scoffed. ‘You’re nothing. All of our people are Hezbollah. They despise you. If we handed you to them they’d tear you apart.’ He removed the
blindfold and handed me a pen and stack of paper with a list of questions. ‘Answer all these questions and anything else you know. I’ll be back.’

It was not until around midnight, nine hours later, that an interrogator entered and asked me if I had finished writing. ‘No,’ I replied, taking the opportunity to add, ‘My medicine is still in the infirmary. I have to take it every three hours. Now nine have passed. Would you please take me to the infirmary?’

He reluctantly agreed and, after reapplying the blindfold, led me away.

Every two or three days, Haji Samad or another of the interrogators would demand information. One day, while I was sitting on that now familiar bed frame, a Hezbollahi came over and whispered in my ear. He knew my name and talked about where I used to work. ‘I know you weren’t a bad guy,’ he said, ‘but I warn you, if you don’t co-operate, you won’t get out of here alive.’

I never saw that man again. Or if I did, I was not aware of it. But then I never actually saw the faces of my interrogators, as my time with them was spent blindfolded and turned against the cold prison walls. Not long after that strange encounter the Hezbollahis tried a new approach. I was taken to the torture rooms as usual, then Haji Samad entered with two others. ‘The information you’ve given us is rubbish,’ he said. ‘Are you going to tell us what we need to know, or not?’

‘Haji,’ I replied, ‘you have all the information I’ve got.’

‘Hang him from the meat hook.’ he ordered, ‘and keep him there until he’s more talkative.’

The two men bound my wrists together behind my back with one elbow behind my head pointing up and the other pointing downwards. They picked me up and hung my wrists over a meat hook fastened to the ceiling. My entire body weight was now supported by my shoulder joints at an
agonising angle and my toes barely scraped the floor. Ribs, spine and shoulder joints were instantly put under enormous stress. This is a form of crucifixion and it severely restricts breathing. I could only prevent asphyxiation by making my legs rigid and standing on tiptoes. But I couldn’t take this forced position for long and my legs soon started shaking with exhaustion. I was forced to take the stress back on my chest and shoulders. I alternated from one agonising position to the other. They took me off the hook for short periods, during which I was fed and taken to the toilet.