A State of Fear (3 page)

This torture is known as ghapani after the system used to weigh lamb carcasses. It was used as far back as the Shah’s reign and many of the unfortunates who are hung up in this way would lose all sensitivity around their shoulders. They are left with great pain in their neck and back which persists for years. My own time on the ghapani only ended because I could no longer be kept conscious long enough to be tortured. On the third day the stress on my body caused my left collar bone to snap. I screamed in agony, again and again. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand. At last I couldn’t get any more air into my lungs and, thankfully, passed out.

The Hezbollahis had at last seen there was little point in probing my immediate political activities and moved onto broader issues. ‘We understand you teach at the university.’

‘That is correct.’

‘There are lots of pretty girls there. Did you have sex with them?’

‘My job is to educate our youth. It’s to enrich our country through its people. It pays peanuts for what it is but it’s a job I’m honoured to do. When I enter a lecture room, it’s like entering a mosque. The youth before me are like a congregation to whom I have responsibility, every bit as strong as to my own children. I have a part in moulding our people’s future for the better in what I can teach. Do you think I’d abuse that? If you
need a straighter answer than that for your records: no, I don’t sleep with them.’

It was important to give an unambiguously negative answer to this line of questioning as unapproved sexual relations in Iran can be punishable by death. They changed tack. Had I smoked dope? Tried opium? Drank alcohol? All carried heavy sentences and every prisoner was asked these questions. Extensive background enquiries would be made in which the authorities would look at intelligence computer files dating back to the time of the Shah.

If anything, my interrogators were less interested in political questions than they were in morality. They were obsessed with the sexual habits of all us prisoners. One 75-year-old woman that I spoke to was pressed to confess the misdemeanours of her youth to the eager listeners. They got a licentious kick from forcing our peccadilloes from us.

The various lines of questioning seemed to go on without end. How long had I been here? It was difficult to tell, but I reckoned about three months. Three months… and already I was a wreck. During the rare moments of peace, I thought of my wife and children, wondered what had happened to them and tried to recall the events leading up to my arrest.

The Hezbollahi first raided my home some two months before I was eventually taken away. My family were sitting on the floor, enjoying the evening meal and watching one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches on television (an attack on ‘leftist stooges of American imperialism’, I think). Aunty went to see who it was. Before the lock was properly off the latch, the door was flung open, trapping her against the wall. There was a clatter of boots. One man began shouting orders.

I was taken to my study by two armed guards, the older of the two clearly the leader. He started firing questions at me, making notes of my answers. The questions were textbook
secret police: ‘What’s your contact with the left, counter-revolutionary organisations?’; ‘Are you a member or sympathiser?’; ‘Do you know anyone who is?’; ‘Have you ever read their papers?’ I was also asked broader questions about what I thought about the nature of the Islamic regime and the war with Iraq.

While I played safe with non-committal answers, the younger man began rifling through my bookshelves and the notes I prepared for the following day’s lectures while others ransacked the rest of the house. As the search proceeded their disappointment became evident. Someone had obviously led them to believe that this was a safe house, brimming with wanted activists from clandestine organisations and everything from left-wing pamphlets to missile launchers. They were not in luck.

This was early 1981, a period marked by regular clashes in the streets that frequently led to the indiscriminate killing of demonstrators. Raids on private houses were commonplace and I had taken the precaution of getting rid of anything that could be deemed counter-revolutionary. On the wall of my study there had once been posters supporting workers’ rights and the Kurdish national struggle. There was now a banner supporting the taking of American hostages in the US embassy in Tehran. I had made a small bonfire on the roof several days earlier and ashes were all that remained of my piles of left-wing pamphlets, papers and books. It had not been easy to burn 15 years of agitation, propaganda and debate.

The police finally gave up at 11pm. According to their warrant they were looking for material linking me to specific organisations; a printing machine, and evidence that the flat was used as a safe house. Instead, they found a family sitting down to tea, watching Khomeini on television. The oldest Hezbollahi went outside to radio in his report and wait for instructions before the police finally left with the house a mess – but still
standing. After my arrest the whole house – and some of the homes of my relatives – would be stripped bare. This was common. Confiscating ‘evidence’ – which included everything from money and jewellery to TVs, stereos and cars – and selling it on was highly profitable.

The oldest raider turned to me as they left and said, ‘We’re sorry about this, brother. Our information is normally accurate. After all, it was one of your relatives we heard it from.’ It was certainly an inconvenience but it was also a warning that my name was on the Hezbollahi’s list. I told comrades from my organisation not to come to the house. I was torn: should I flee the country or await arrest? I decided to sit tight and see what would happen. Back then I thought that going to prison for my political convictions at this time was the right thing to do. Sitting in my cell, looking back, it seemed like a very long time ago. A different world.

I still had no idea which prison I was in, but I guessed it was the country’s main interrogation centre, known as Evin. I was mistaken. I found out about four months later that I had been held in Komiteh Moshterak (Centre for the Committee of Anti-Subversive Activities). It had been established by the Shah’s Savak – which was later replaced by the Savama – as a special complex for the interrogation of political dissidents. The majority of its inmates were members of the Fedayeen and Mojahedin, the two guerrilla organisations fighting against the Shah. Under the new regime Komiteh Moshterak and other prisons continued to exact a terrible revenge on political prisoners. Reports filtered out that made the persecution of political prisoners under the Shah look tame by comparison.

Komiteh Moshterak had been built by the last Shah’s father, Reza Shah and it once held hundreds of fighters for freedom, democracy and socialism. Although prisoners were allowed deliveries of home-cooked food, conditions were generally far
from humane. A revolutionary poet named Farokhi was put to death by having air injected into a vein. His executioner was Pezeshk Ahmadi, a veterinary appointed the position of prison doctor. The Shah’s father also imprisoned those responsible for establishing the Group of 53, the first communist party of Iran.

Just as they did with almost everything else in Iran, Khomeini’s regime Islamicised the names of the prisons. Mine became known as The Centre for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. It was supposed to hold a hundred maximum security prisoners at a time but now packed in around 2,500. They occupied every conceivable space available: lavatories, yards, balconies of upper floors and hallways. There were queues everywhere. Prisoners lined the corridors. On each side of every passageway they laid head to foot, blindfolded and facing the wall. I lay like this for a period of four months, only moving to be taken for torture and interrogation or to the bathroom. On these breaks we would be taken, perhaps ten at a time, and given one or two minutes despite there being only three or four cubicles. This happened three times a day, once after each meal. If we had time and could get to one of the sinks, we could use this short visit for washing dishes, hands, faces, and even our prison uniform.

As long as a prisoner was under intense interrogation, he or she would be kept inside the torture room and witness others being tortured or outside waiting their turn or in the yard adjoining the torture block. Those who survived with terrible wounds would be taken to the cramped, crowded hallways or balconies. If they were lucky, they might end up on a more spacious corridor if other prisoners were taken away to other jails – or taken away to be shot. There was absolutely no information – written or otherwise – from the outside world and communication between prisoners was risky. Once I was approached by a man who stood behind me and whispered in my ear.

‘Would you like to read the Koran?’

‘Brother, I can’t read Arabic.’

‘I can help you to read it,’ he said.

‘I’m bleeding internally. I can’t keep my mind focused.’

‘Those who have not repented,’ he hissed, ‘will be wiped out from the face of this earth!’ With this sweet thought he departed, thankfully never to be encountered again.

It was during a break, after six months of imprisonment, that I first discovered where I was being held. Usually the guards hurried us along, but on this occasion we were left to ourselves. A young man called Adel helped me get onto his shoulders so I could look through a small window. I immediately recognised the main communications tower in central Tehran and, from this, we figured out where we were.

We were permitted a quick shower only every two or three weeks. First the prisoners in the so-called ‘solitary’ cells were taken. After they had been it was the turn of those in the corridors, balconies and hallways. Each prisoner was given a piece of black, dried-out, stony soap. Between three to five prisoners would huddle under each of the five showerheads. The shower also served as a laundry and we would wash our uniforms as best we could. Under the showers we could take our blindfolds off, allowing a rare chance to see the faces of our fellow prisoners. In truth, these were my happiest moments in prison. Of course, the guards were always watching, making sure that we did not try and communicate. When 20 minutes were up, we would put on our dripping clothes and leave.

Mealtimes were not so much of a relief. We ate every eight hours, sitting down facing the wall and remained blindfolded. The prison food was tasteless, colourless and meagre. The heat was sometimes unbearable – the temperature can hit 44 degrees celsius in Tehran – and the thick grey walls were dank from sweat. Cigarettes were, of course, not permitted although we were given one cup of what resembled tea every 24 hours. This
was between three and five o’clock in the morning, depending on the time of morning prayer. The yellow and foul-smelling drink was accompanied by between two and four cubes of sugar to last the whole day.

The prison had only one doctor, himself a prisoner, and once a week he was allowed to administer nothing more powerful than painkillers under the watchful eyes of the guards. Any smile or kind word would lead to severe repercussions. Prisoners in great pain would have to plead for medicine but unless they were dying the guards would often stop the doctor. ‘We need the medicine for the Islamic devotees fighting a holy war against Iraq,’ they would say.

Many prisoners had vicious wounds on the soles of their feet and contracted infections so severe that some of them died. Others were bleeding and in constant pain from broken bones. A few had even lost their sight in one eye. There were few who did not have some form of skin infection. Unsurprisingly, there was an ever-present stench from untreated wounds. Some of my fellow prisoners caught severe fevers, chest infections and tuberculosis. Lice were everywhere.

The warmth of the sun, the smell of trees, the stars at night… all were distant memories. Each of our movements was calculated to form part of our torture. You might think that going to the bathroom would bring some relief to the prisoner who had been lying on a floor, blindfolded, facing the wall for ten hours. But not when one had to urinate or defecate in a matter of minutes surrounded by people in severe pain, many bleeding. I had blood in my urine for a long time. Others were affected by stomach disorders and needed more time than we were allowed.

All our activities were accompanied by an orchestra of horrifying noises. The most disturbing was the sound of cars stopping at the entrance late at night and in the early morning. They were bringing more victims. The main door would
screech open and, within ten or twenty minutes, the prison would be filled with the chilling sound of someone experiencing the torture room for the first time. Each scream reminded me of the torture I experienced. It was impossible to block that sound out, let alone sleep through it. Listening to others being tortured was more demoralising for us than experiencing it personally.

Then there was the prison tannoy system. The authorities subjected prisoners to a constant barrage of readings from the Koran and other religious texts. They relayed speeches by leading clerics and government officials, from Khomeini downwards. Sometimes they played military marches or entreaties to support the regime’s war with Iraq, accompanied by constant bulletins crowing about the defeat of Iraqi forces and the supposed advance along the road to Baghdad and Jerusalem. Guards ran down the corridors while the reports blared, kicking us in the back indiscriminately and shouting, ‘You have turned your backs on God, Islam and Khomeini! You must repent or die!’ Some guards had themselves come from the frontline and were shell-shocked and unhinged. They were deliberately chosen to ‘guard’ their enemy. Mainly young, illiterate peasants, they were fooled into accepting the hell of the here and now by the promise of the next world.

There were just three sounds that were welcome: the food trolley, birdsong – a rarity in this urban prison – and the whirr of the overhead fans. I would breathe a sigh of relief when I heard one of those old fans spinning, heralding a much-needed breeze.

We never knew how long we had before torture began again. Day and night the guards would go back and forth, picking on prisoners. We were kept in a state of fear; a blow from a fist, clubs or boot could come at any time. You could be beaten for anything: putting your hands over your head, scratching your nose, touching your blindfold. An attack frequently resulted in bleeding ears, eyes and noses, or broken teeth and jaws.