A State of Fear (10 page)

Five or so who had been Tavabs at Evin stood up. They were told to walk over to the far side of the hall. ‘So, you refuse Islam’s mercy – you prefer to go to Hell, do you? Well, we will be sending you there soon enough!’ Haji Davoud bellowed at those of us who remained.

‘Take these infidels and hypocrites off to quarantine – they are inhuman, just animals, donkeys even!’ The guards pulled us to our feet and prodded us sharply with their gun barrels into groups of five or so. As the heavy footsteps of Haji Davoud left the hall, he shouted over his shoulder ‘I’ll see you in quarantine!’

W
e marched through the maze of grey corridors and I could hear prisoners in each block – they were calling out, talking between themselves or moaning from their injuries. At the end of this journey we found ourselves in the block called quarantine. Sounds like we are in for some special treatment here, I thought. We will probably be kept here together until our resistance is broken before we are integrated into the normal prison blocks.

The Golden Fortress had four sections and the political prisoners were kept in the first three. The regular police ran the fourth section for everyone else. Each section had four large blocks, and four small blocks called mujaradi – solitary. Each block had 16 small cells, measuring around 1.5 by 2.5 metres. These were designed to hold two to four prisoners. There were also eight large cells that were about 3 by 5 metres and were supposed to hold about twice as many. In practice, up to 40 prisoners were squeezed into the larger cells and 15 to 20 in the small cells.

Hardline prisoners were permanently locked down in block 1. Each section would hold between 2-2,500 prisoners, excluding solitary cells which were built to hold 20 prisoners. Some 11,340 political prisoners were held in the main three blocks with 750 prisoners kept in section four.

Quarantine was a special block with 16 identical cells, each measuring 2.5 metres by 1.5 metres and about 3.5 metres high. Three bunk beds were stacked against one wall for inmates who were either newly arrived from other prisons or judged to be ‘intransigents’ – men and women who the Tavabs decided showed signs of resistance to the Islamic regime. In reality, it wasn’t possible to be a troublemaker. The Tavabs ensured that communication and association between prisoners was almost non-existent. The Tavabs presented false evidence when they took a dislike to a prisoner..

In the third block of section three was the quarantine area for women prisoners, irrespective of their age, who were in any way suspected by officials or Tavabs of being intransigents.

Blindfolded as I was, my first impression of my new ‘home’ was the salty, sour stench of human sweat that hit me when the cell door opened. It was unbearably humid, like a steam bath. I was pushed over the threshold, the door clanging shut behind me. I removed my blindfold. Thirty-five people, crushed together in a tiny space, stared at me expectantly. At my back was an iron barred sliding door, through which the other four new arrivals and I had just been pushed. On the left side of the cell were three bunks. The top two had wooden bases, the bottom one nothing, so that it provided a frame within which seven people could sit, knees cramped against their chests. Seven people sat on each of the two bunks above; backs to the wall, with the cell so narrow that the soles of their feet pressed against the opposite wall. Seven others sat on the floor opposite, facing the seven below the bunks. Six of us sat with our backs to the iron barred door and six opposite. Some hung off the bunks
racked against the wall. People were stacked up like baked bean tins in a supermarket, crammed in like slaves on a prison ship. You could stand up and, picking your way between the others’ legs, walk from one end to the other to relieve the cramps in your legs, and try and release some of the stress through this micro-stroll.

One of the 35 watchers rose and welcomed us to quarantine on behalf of the cell commune. He introduced himself as Farid and while we talked, he went to fetch us some food, stored in old plastic bread wrappers hanging from the corners of the bed frames. ‘You must be starving’, he said, ‘New arrivals from Evin always are.’ We ate stale bread and dried dates from this cell larder. Still, it tasted like kebabs to us and we were locked away from Haji Davoud and the guards.

Farid asked everyone else to introduce themselves to us. When this small ceremony was over, Farid laid down the cell ground rules. ‘We have organised the cell as a commune. Everything here is common property – except your toothbrush and spectacles. What money we have goes into a common fund, as does the money sent from our families each month. All individual expenses are paid out of the common fund – that includes stuff like your toothbrush and so on. When anyone leaves the cell, we give them an emergency stipend from the fund, so they have cash to tide them over for a while. But if any of you would like to go it alone, then you can do so at your discretion and still count on our help and co-operation.’

We five expressed our willingness to join in the communal arrangements, handed in the cash in our pockets and were allocated spaces which changed daily so that no one was stuck in the worst corner. Farid supervised this. I was the oldest and, as a result of Komiteh, 209 and elsewhere, I was the most frail. Farid suggested I should get a top bunk place close to the corner. Everyone agreed and I got the cell equivalent of the penthouse suite.

The others shifted position every two hours, those sitting on the floor against the narrower walls moving up to the bunks, giving them two hours of relatively comfortable sleep. We would also take it in turns to walk up and down the centre of the cell – although there was never any room for more than one person at a time to do this.

Each prisoner was given one aluminium spoon, one dirty plastic plate, and one plastic cup – black with ground-in grime, though it had once been red. Two hours after our arrival, I heard the rumble of trolley castors trundling down the corridor. The undefinable lentil mush and bread was pushed into the cell and the cell monitor called after the guard to remind him that the food we had was barely enough for 35, and our cell population had just risen by five. The guard shouted back, ‘We’d rather kill you than feed you’ and carried on his way.

It was very difficult for our monitor to divide such scant fare among us. The broth was so watery it was possible to count the lentils floating in it. Its only seasoning was the prison cook’s special – bromide. We also had a bucket of yellowish water, looking like it had been drawn off a rusty oil drum. This served as tea. Every 24 hours, each prisoner would be given three cups of this, along with four sugar cubes. Shortly after the meal, a guard came to escort us to the bathroom to wash up.

Once every day, the cell door would be opened for about 10 minutes to allow us to hurriedly wash our shirts and dishes, or revive ourselves by cooling down in the corridors, or douse ourselves in cold water. Two people would be delegated to wash up the dishes in one bowl, and the rest of us would use the three or four other bowls to wash ourselves. This gave each of us about one to one-and-a-half minutes to wash and go to the lavatory. If we overran, we would be beaten by the guards.

Every 15 days we would be allotted 15 minutes to shower, with as many as ten of us cramming under one of the three shower heads. We crossed the corridor and were able to hear
voices from other cells. Quarantine living had its own peculiarities. The physical and mental pressures of having to survive, 40 to a box, were horrendous. We had the all-pervasive prison broadcast system: Koranic catechisms all day and all night. After a week I was sure that I would never get out of it alive. At least there were no Tavabs to note our every action and we all looked after one another. I have never experienced comradeship like it, even from prisoners who were not left wing.

But the pressure was unbearable. Some were crushed by it and their collapse was a devastating blow to those who had come so close to them in quarantine. Habib was a Mojahed supporter of about 16 who had been in the cell for about five months when we arrived. His mental condition was sound but incessant squatting had given him chronic piles and incontinence. He had to sit with his hand between his legs to keep his rectal passage inside him. Every minute was torture for him. Others had infected bladders, could not hold their water or, like me, pissed blood when they did. The guards were deaf to our appeals for more time at the lavatory, and beat everyone when we protested. We kept a bucket in the cell.

In the cell opposite us, there was a young man who would scream, cry and curse at the guards, Khomeini, Islam and the Koran. The guards retaliated by tying him to an iron bed frame and giving him up to a hundred lashes from his neck to his ankles. We could all hear the crack of the whip and his screams. But it didn’t stop him. He was too far gone. There were others like him and their sounds became familiar but always horrifying to hear. One evening after we had eaten and the whole of quarantine was engaged in subdued discussion, the calm was shattered by a scream of hysterical laughter. There was no joy in it: it was insane and terrifying. It started a chain reaction. The deranged young man in the cell opposite joined in this hellish wail. From the far corner of the corridor, another voice howled out in solidarity with his comrades in madness. Everyone else
was shocked into silence. You could feel the block inmates hold their collective breath, awaiting the outcome of this manic eruption. The inmates of one cell began to drum on their door. Soon we all joined in, hammering out an angry beat with spoons, plates, cups and fists. The whole block was beating out a rhythm of hate against the prison system that had sent those who had started this crazy demonstration over the edge.

The guards had left their usual vantage points along the corridor to attend prayer. Twenty of them returned and charged in with clubs, fists and boots. In the centre of this pack was Haji Davoud. They hauled the screamers out of the block, beating them as they went. Then the rest of us were ordered out of our cells, forming two lines along the corridor, blindfolded, faces to the wall. The guards systematically attacked us from behind. Haji Davoud’s wolves went from one side to the other until they were too exhausted to continue. Then they ordered our human wreckage back to the cells. ‘The next time you riot, it will be the firing squad!’ Haji Davoud shouted.

One week later, the three screaming prisoners who had been taken out were brought back. They looked extremely frail. They had been put in solitary for a week, and repeatedly beaten. They had broken jaws, gashes on their heads, and were black and blue. Two had slashed their wrists, including the young man from the cell opposite ours.

B
etween June 1981 and the end of 1982, some of those who had been arrested in street battles – particularly in the Mojahedin militia and left groups who had taken up arms, were given a stark choice – go to the firing squad to be shot or go to the firing squad to do the shooting.

Those of us who remained in our cells while the massacres went on around us were revolted at living with those who had chosen to kill our comrades. When they returned from the firing squad, you could see and smell the blood on their clothes, and the horror of death on their faces. But even this became commonplace and they began justifying what they were doing. Gradually, they came to see their actions in these slaughterhouses as a defence of the Islamic regime. They became proud to be Tavabs.

This phenomenon, of Tavabiat, embryonic in Evin, was transformed into a mass force in the Golden Fortress. In Evin, the Tavabs comprised less than one per cent of the total prison
population. In the Golden Fortress, this disease had reached epidemic proportions. More than ten per cent were hard core Tavabs, and another ten per cent were passively. The regime hoped to erode the morale, political identity and discipline of its jailed opponents through the physical assaults of the Tavabs and the demoralisation which we felt because of their very existence. Then there were the Tudeh and Fedayeen Majority, who still supported the Khomeini regime. Prisoners from those organisations formed another divisive force. And finally political prisoners who had overthrown the Shah were deliberately mixed with prisoners from that era.

I was dropped between these opposing forces when I was moved out of quarantine into the regular cells in section 3’s block 1 in the autumn of 1982. On my arrival I was surrounded by a group of Tavabs. After some questioning, they decided into which cell I should go. Between one and three Tavabs were put with each group of prisoners. Each was expected to make a daily report on the cell.

The central block corridor was about three metres wide, with cells either side. The large cells were at the far end of the corridor. The further down the corridor you were, the more anti-regime you were seen to be. The prisoners from cell 17 onwards were intransigents. Cells 6 to 10 held the prisoners who leaned towards the Tavabs but would not actively collaborate. Cells 10 to 16 held those whose sympathies lay with the intransigents. These were the ‘passives’.

The most vicious Tavabs congregated in cells 1 to 3. The first cell was called the control room and housed the chief Tavab. He allocated cells rather than the prison authorities. He was the link between the block and the officials, handpicked by them on the basis of atrocities he had carried out for the regime in previous prisons. His underlings lived in the cells around the control room. There was a division of labour between them: one gathered information from the
prisoners, another took charge of food distribution and a third would take prisoners to interrogation. They ran a gangster-like operation.

While we were held in 24-hour confinement, the Tavabs would sit on top of the bunk beds. There they could observe everything we did or said. In the small cells we had three lots of three high bunks – in the larger cells up to 15 beds, so the Tavabs would be watching in three different positions. On one occasion they were able to implicate a group of seven intransigents with trying to write a manuscript on political developments in the government. All seven were shot.

Any indication of fellow feeling for another prisoner could endanger you. It was seen as ‘communal activity’ or propagating ‘communist spirituality’. Anyone convicted would be sent either to quarantine or to ‘doomsday’.

About 30 prisoners were kept in my cell. At meal times individual plastic plates would be given out by the Tavabs to ensure that we all ate on our own. You could not even help the injured to eat. To help another prisoner to eat his food would be seen as fomenting ‘spiritual resistance’. In this ‘Islamic University’, organised by Imam Khomeini and managed by Haji Davoud, any human relationship would be seen as a great crime against the Islamic regime.

I was being held in a closed cell – I was under lockdown, under constant Tavab observation. Even in the blocks of the Golden Fortress where some free movement was allowed, prisoners were constantly followed. Tavabs followed conversations between inmates, made notes of what was said and then passed them to the control room. Usually, prisoners would be taken away for questioning as a result.

However, if the subject of discussion was considered to be especially serious, such as criticism of the regime or political opposition, the Tavabs would beat the prisoner and often make him stand blindfolded through the night. I was beaten and
punched by the Tavabs many times. On occasion I was made to stand for ten hours.

The Golden Fortress was governed by a scrap iron dealer with a yard in South Tehran. The south of the city was the epicentre of the black market, drug dealing and prostitution, and this man was one of the organisers of an Islamic Committee in the area. In this way he came into contact with the office of the Islamic Revolutionary Prosecutor, and so wormed his way into being the sole representative of Khomeini in the Golden Fortress.

He was an obese man. It was said he could eat a whole sheep in one sitting. He did the rounds of the prison blocks himself, flanked by guards, intermittently stopping to cuff an unfortunate prisoner or send another flying by buffeting him with his stomach. He was bald, with a large black beard almost entirely covering a bloated face in which were embedded a pair of piggy little eyes. His nose was a bulbous monument to heavy drinking. Flat-footed, broad-shouldered and immense, he waddled rather than walked with a heavy step that shook even the concrete prison floors. He was also sentimental. The mere mention of Khomeini would have him dabbing his eyes in remembrance of his benefactor. The lives of more than 10,000 men and women were placed in his hands.

As a result of his elevation from scrapyard to slaughter house, he began to consider himself a theorist. In his own eyes he became a great authority on every subject from imperialism to the atom and would inflict a lecture on these matters at any provocation. He believed he was an expert on political prisons and their inmates. Yet this devout servant of the Imam was also a dirty old man. He forced one group of women involved in prison resistance to confess in public alleged sexual activities in safe houses. This performance was filmed. The women were so broken by the brutality of quarantine and doomsday that they acquiesced to this show trial in the hope that it would get them
out. As much as they tried to plead the sincerity of their repentance, the Tavab section of the crowd would shout ‘Death to the hypocrites and communists! Down with Israel, America and the Soviet Union! Long live Khomeini, Imam of the epoch!’ Following the orchestrated barracking, a pronouncement would be made: ‘You have not passed this test of sincerity. You will stay here until you rot.’

These show trials took place many times, usually in the early afternoon, and would go on till eight or nine at night. The Tavabs would direct the prisoners from each block down to the main corridor and order them to sit. Thousands of prisoners provided an audience for hours at an end, crammed in, squatting on the floor, with the privileged Tavabs in the front row seats. It was not simply those on the platform who were undergoing psychological torture. The audience was a seething mass of the injured, diseased and infected.

This was not the only public duty of the prisoner. Each was required to pray five times a day. Imagine, six to seven hundred prisoners in a block, all forced to leave their cells to pray in the corridors. We would be assembled into groups of six, sometimes more than a hundred rows of us. The front were always reserved for the Tavabs. One of them would lead the prayer session. Nobody could avoid attending prayer sessions. All but the Tavabs despised them and would try to conduct their own prayer afterwards with their own appointed Imam. Some prisoners suggested that prayers should be conducted individually, not en masse led by Tavabs, arguing that God would accept individual prayer. But the ritual was part of the brainwashing prison system.

Groups of prison guards or Hezbollahi (hand-picked thugs, trained in the martial arts and conditioned to attack without provocation) were tasked to attack prisoners following Tavab reports. Sometimes a cell would be singled out, sometimes even the entire block. They would come with wooden clubs and
whips made from steel cabling. These raids would also occur if the regime had suffered a setback in the war, had been humiliated by Saddam Hussein, when an assassination attempt had been made on the regime and on holy days.

The Islamic guards would be assembled in the corridor. They would be singing or shouting ‘God is great!’, ‘Khomeini is Imam!’, ‘Down with hypocrites, down with communists!’ Then they would launch their attack. Anything in their way would be broken up. Prisoners would be taken away with them on Tavab intelligence. Three or four guards would attack a single prisoner.

Those not selected would be sent out into the prison yard. The guards would then launch a search and destroy operation, ransacking cells, searching through belongings for any material that constituted opposition to the regime or subversive material. They would attempt to locate an owner to interrogate. Sometimes everyone in the cell would be taken for questioning. Whatever the outcome of these raids, the guards would leave a complete mess behind them. All of our belongings would be thrown across the floor, many items would be ripped up or broken. It would take us hours to clear up and restore normality, or at least what we understood as normal life. Despite covert attempts by prisoners to help those injured by the guards, the Tavabs would be on the lookout to report any signs of
co-operation
. Indeed, they would often take part in the raids. A report would be made by the Tavabs on the effectiveness and findings of the raid, directly precipitating torture and even the death of many prisoners.

Everyone in the Golden Fortress had a unique tale to tell. Each revealed the upheaval that had shaken our whole country – particularly its poorer sections, the landless peasants, the workers and the youth. One story was that of Mohsen, who left the land and came to the tin shanty towns on the edge of Tehran. At 14, he became active in the upheaval against the Shah and went on
to be an organiser in his shanty town, distributing leaflets and papers. He was a well-known activist of the left.

In 1981 he was picked up by the local Islamic committee and brought to Evin. He went through all the stages of interrogation, was sentenced to five years by an Islamic court and sent to the Golden Fortress. His conduct in the prison was good: he stood by his comrades and so he was sent to cells where the intransigents were kept. He came across another boy, Mohammed, from a similar background in his neighbourhood, but who had become a Tavab. Both were around 16 or 17 at the time. Mohsen told me that he was talking to the Tavab to convince him to at least become neutral. As a result of these discussions, both of them moved to a passive cell.

Mohsen was picked up from the block and sent to the prison central office. All of us associated with him became worried. Maybe he had been singled out because of his links with other prisoners. Three days later he returned, exhausted and beaten about the face. He told us that he had been made to stand for three days and nights and that he had been beaten with a stick.

Mohsen had been singled out, he said, because Mohammed had claimed that Mohsen had made a sexual advance towards him. Mohsen went back to the intransigents, Mohammed back to the Tavabs.

In truth, it was the Tavabs who were guilty of uninvited sexual advances. A physical attack on a prisoner could turn into a sexual assault, especially for women prisoners. Young people would often be put under the care of Tavabs, to protect them from ‘corruption’ by the intransigents. These youths – often only children – would be vulnerable to sexual abuse by the Tavabs and had no way out.