Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (10 page)

My eyes have not yet closed when the door opens.

“Get up. Treatment.”

He’s the special officer from the treatment room.

“Put on your blindfold.”

He grabs my shirtsleeve and drags me over to the middle of the corridor.

“Put your hand on the shoulder of the man in front.”

The line of men starts moving. We enter the courtyard. The line moves to the symphony of slippers shuffling over melting snow and making splashing sounds. We skirt the pool, and enter a space that looks like a lane.

“Get in.”

We hear the sound of a sliding door opening. One by one we climb awkwardly into a van. We sit on the floor. We are made to wait a while before the van sets off. I try to figure out where we are heading, but to no avail. All I can hear is traffic noise. Normal life is carrying on outside the van. It isn’t long before we reach our destination. The guard takes us out one by one. When I get out, he says: “Take off your blindfold.”

I take it off and in the glaring sunlight shining on snow-covered fir trees, I see a large garden with an open-sided pavilion in the middle. The guard takes me to a corner under the fir trees. I put on my glasses. There is a group of us and they have spaced us out so that it is impossible to hold a conversation. I study the others closely but don’t recognize any of them. I can now clearly see a beautiful old courtyard. Later, I was told that the house had belonged to Dr Muhammad Mossadeq, and had been turned into the Revolutionary Guards’ medical treatment centre following its confiscation. When Brother
Davoud takes away some of the people, it occurs to me that it might be easy to escape from this place. There is no one apart from us in the whole of the large courtyard. The heavy, old door on the far side opens directly onto the road and I can’t see any guards. The sense of freedom makes my heart swell. It’s been such a short time but I had already forgotten that outside prison there is freedom, life and the sun. I was still blissfully unaware that in the days to come I, a young man of the pen who was in love with the revolution, would be turned into a British spy and a dirty Savak agent, either of which, according to Brother Hamid, is preferable to a Tudeh dog since at least it means one is not a communist.

I’m one of the last in the group that the guard comes to collect. The beautiful old house has been turned into a fully equipped dental surgery. A number of dentists are busy working inside the spacious salon with its tall, stained-glass windows. The guard takes me to one of them. I blurt out a greeting. The young dentist gives me a look of hatred and instead of answering, he commands: “Sit down.”

I sit down.

“What’s up?”

I show him some broken and pain ridden teeth. He carelessly hits each one: “Which is the most painful?”

I point with my finger to the first molar on the right.

He says: “I’ll pull it out.”

He is chatting away, while getting the tools ready: “The likes of you should be killed. Instead they bring you here for treatment.”

He means me. But how am I supposed to respond?

“Shall I administer anaesthetics to this fuck?”

I am not sure whether he’s asking himself or the guard.

Against my own will, I am reminded of the film,
Marathon Man
. Someone inside me is asking: “Is this place really a dental surgery or is this part of the interrogation?”

I automatically look around me. The other dentists are busy, treating other patients. I close my eyes. I open my mouth. I have no
option. I have to allow this interrogator/dentist to get on with his task. His hand remains in my mouth for a while. I feel the stinging sensation of the anaesthetic needle. A little hesitation. Then I hear the sound of a drill. Pause. I sense he’s pulling out my tooth. He is using force. The root is putting up resistance. Someone is tapping my shoulder. It’s the guard’s voice: “Get up.”

I open my eyes.

The interrogator/dentist says: “I haven’t finished.”

He pulls at my sleeve.

“Don’t keep us waiting!”

I get off the dentist’s chair. The guard drags me away. Before we leave the room he orders: “Put your blindfold on.”

I put it on. He grabs hold of the hem of my shirt and sets off running, dragging me along. We reach a car. Someone gets out of the car and pushes me in. I regain my balance. I am seated between two people. One of them pushes my head down as the car speeds off.

What’s happening? Where are we going?

My mind is racing, frantically trying to work it out. I assume that “Soviet friends” have kidnapped me. The piercing toothache has returned. The anaesthetic has apparently worn off. I can hear the voice of the interrogator/dentist: “Half-finished?”

The car is moving fast and I am groaning. A rough hand keeps my head pushed down, not letting me move an inch. When the car stops I hear the sound of a heavy door opening, I realize that we have returned to Moshtarek prison, the one that the interrogators kept insisting is actually Evin prison. A hand grabs me and drags me out of the car and hands me over to someone else. It’s you, Brother Hamid. You have been waiting for me, running out of patience: “Useless wimp, who told you that you could leave?”

I am curling up in pain. You drag me through the wet snow. We enter the room downstairs. You throw me unceremoniously onto the bed and ask: “Which hand?”

Without giving me the chance to make use of my Islamic freedom
to choose, you take my right hand and pull it up. Before I know it, I am handcuffed and hanging from the ceiling. And you, Brother Hamid, you leave the room, without a single question or explanation. After the whip, hanging is the most common form of torture, or “moral education”, as you call it. This torture comes in two forms. In the first, the hands are pulled up and handcuffed together behind the back. The handcuffs are then connected to a rope that is hanging from the ceiling. The prisoner is hauled up until the tips of his toes almost touch the floor. The second option involves handcuffing the prisoner by his feet and then hanging him up. In this position, the prisoner’s head hovers just millimetres above the floor. Either the tip of the head, or the toe, just about touches the floor, which remains tantalizingly out of reach, and the prisoner thinks that he’ll be back on his feet as soon as he shares the information he has or the information that his interrogator asks him for.

I find myself in the first position. I am yelling and yelling. The pain from my tooth, the pain from my foot, the pain from my shoulder, they all shoot through my body in waves, spilling into my yelling. My heart is racing. I fall silent with the sound of the door opening. It is you, Brother Hamid: “I have done my ablution and been given the order for your moral instruction. Whenever you feel like talking, just bark: ‘woof, woof’. In the name of Heavenly Fatimeh ...”

The lash descends. There is no sign of the recording machine. I jerk every time the whip hits my wounded feet. I recoil in pain and arch back.

“Told you you’d start barking! Spy! Savak shit!”

The lashes keep coming: “Spy! Savak agent!”

These insults hurt more than the lashes.

I yell: “I am not a spy! I am not a Savak agent!”

The lash descends and I break into pieces.

“The more resistance you put up, the more serious your secret, right?”

The lash descends and my body fragments. The pain from the soles of my feet locks with the toothache and burns my heart, which keeps racing. I don’t know how much time passes until there is silence. Then you untie me, Brother Hamid. You are out of breath. The pain mixes with the pleasure of the handcuffs being removed. My shoulders have seized up.

“Shake your hands, spy!”

I can’t. You, Brother Hamid, take my hands and shake them. I give out a heart-rending yell.

“Now keep walking and shake your hands and collect your thoughts. We know everything. How you became a spy. How you went to Savak.”

Brother Hamid walks out and I am left alone. I hobble with difficulty and force myself to shake my hands. My whole body has turned into an uninterrupted mass of pain. A voice is echoing inside me: “Spy. Savak spy.”

I feel like crying. The sob is stuck in my throat. I have no voice left for crying. I hear the sound of the door opening. Even if I was wearing a watch, I wouldn’t have any idea how much time has passed. Under the blindfold, it’s always night and time becomes meaningless. Five minutes might feel like five years or vice versa. My hands are brought together. The handcuffs are locked, accompanied by the sound of death.

“If you feel like talking, you have to bark first: ‘woof, woof’.”

And I am hanging. I gather up the last bit of energy left in me: “Just kill me and get it over with. I am not a spy or a Savak agent. The spies are those who are doing this to me.”

“Woohoo! Listen to the bride’s mother, how she’s talking! Hey, don’t worry about us killing you. We’ll sort you out in no time.”

You say these words and then leave, Brother Hamid. I have no option but to yell. But I have no energy left to yell. It’s as if I have spilled all my life’s energy into that one sentence. Like those cancer sufferers who suddenly rediscover their energy just before dying.
They sit up. They hold a lively conversation for a few minutes. And then they die. I am also dying but I’m not aware of it. I am killing myself a little bit more and at your hands, and I am not aware of it. The time is passing or not passing. I have no idea. I am yelling or not yelling. I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I hear the sound of the door opening. From far away. Very far away. I want to reach my blindfold with my hands and put it on. But my hands are tied up. I hear your voice, Brother Hamid: “You are only pretending to have fainted.”

I can’t believe it is me who is saying: “Woof, woof.”

You are laughing: “What’s up?”

“Woof, woof.”

“You are late, little lion.”

“I am a spy ...”

“Well done! Whose spy are you?”

“A Soviet spy ...”

You laugh in mockery: “That’s obvious. The Tudeh party is entirely composed of Russian spies. But who are you spying for?”

I say it again: “A Soviet spy.”

“You are not getting it. A Savak agent cannot be a Soviet spy. Now get to the heart of the matter”, you say ...

... and you leave.

Yes, Brother Hamid, you have left and I am yelling. I yell for as long as I can breathe. You come in every now and then, lower me to the ground, and force me to move my hands and feet. The blood rushing back into my fingers and toes brings new agonies. You tie me up again and leave. Without a sound. You don’t even say a word. All I get is the smell of onions. What perfume, what spirituality you are displaying. Your words are spinning round and round in my head. The pain reaches a climax and floods my brain. Deep inside me a silent struggle is taking place between life and death. Somebody is saying: “Spare me and I’ll talk. I can’t bear it anymore.”

Someone else answers: “No. Never accept his filthy accusations.”

Whoever wins this battle between the handcuffs and the bones and flesh, whoever wins this unequal struggle between suffering and soul, is the one who’ll decide the prisoner’s fate. I remember the comment that the Athens police chief made to Oriana Fallaci during an interview: “Only one in a million can withstand torture.”

Everyone would like to be the one. I am vacillating between being the one and the rest. I am hanging from a ceiling in the cellar of Moshtarek prison, my body swinging back and forth. The one who wants to be released is going to find the answer. He is analysing Brother Hamid’s words: “You are a spy. But not a Soviet spy ... Therefore you must be a ‘Western’ spy.”

The one who’s putting up resistance protests, driven by righteous anger: “No! No! All my life I have hated the CIA and MI6. I despise the West and I hate the thought of spying for anyone ...”

The one who’s intent on getting himself released, whispers: “So, it’s a lie ... But there’s no harm in it for anyone. When you get to court, you’ll simply admit that you lied.”

The battle carries on, back and forth, at the heart of my inner struggle.

“This kind of confession can get you hanged.”

“Never mind. The main issue is not to talk about the Party.”

The door opens at that exact moment and you come in. It’s as if you have been following on a monitor the inner battle between my two selves. I am still able to identify the shuffling of your feet amid a thousand similar sounds. A thousand years pass until you reach me. The final decision is taken by a part of me that I have only just begun to get in touch with in my frenzied inner battle.

“Brother Hamid ...”

“You have forgotten, little lion. You have forgotten to bark.”

The part of me that has won obeys: “Woof, woof ...”

You are laughing and are untying me. You are placing me on the bed. You are removing the handcuffs, taking them off my body. This
“handcuff kindness” has a far greater effect than the violence. As a prisoner, you are ready to give your whole being in return for having the handcuffs removed, not to experience the agony of being strung up, not to hear the sound of the metal lock clicking into place.

I blurt out a question: “What am I supposed to say?”

You explode in such anger that you slap me on my ear. The slap is even harder than the one on the first night.

“You are asking me? Try answering it yourself. We know everything. We want you, in your own words, to talk about the espionage!”

“I’ve already told you that I am a Soviet spy.”

“Shut up, useless wimp. This place is full of Soviet spies. They have started singing like nightingales. It only took one slap. Kianuri has already filled four hundred pages.”

“You can ask him about me as well.”

You laugh out aloud.

“Don’t try to teach us our job. Keep your expertise to yourself. Comrade Kia is equally interested in finding out which embassy you have been supplying with information about the Party.”

Then you drag me to my feet. You haul me up into the air again, and leave. I am spinning helplessly, and yelling. When I come back to my senses, I find myself back in my cell, with my hands tied behind my back. They’ve even inserted a line into my arm for some sort of liquid. The door is open. The guard, a shepherd who’s sitting in the doorway, looks over at me and says gently: “What have you done for them to treat you like this? Why do you refuse to confess?”