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.
On one occasion after torture I was taken back to the corridor where I was ordered to lie down. I was exhausted. My feet were bleeding and I was completely unable to hold myself up. No sooner had the guards bundled me into a corner than a boot smashed into my back.
‘Leave me alone!’ I screamed. ‘Let me die!’
‘You son of a bitch!’ the guard yelled back. ‘You’re trying to identify me by looking underneath your blindfold! I’ll kill you!’
‘Why have you attacked me?’
I was too drained to even think. I knew this guard, and had suffered at his hands before. He was universally feared. As he was shouting at me, a religious figure who was one of the prison directors was passing by. He stepped in.
‘Haji Johary [the guard] has lost four of his children fighting the Great Satan [America],’ the director said. ‘Two of them in Kurdistan fighting the communists, the other two were just 14 and 16 when they gave their lives on the front against Iraq. Haji Johary himself continuously visits the front, where he is directing groups of Khomeini fedais. He lost his dearest brother during one such operation and was himself injured in an explosion.
‘We’re fighting America and Israel, and you counter-revolutionaries say that the Islamic Republic is importing guns and ammunition from them! Our great Imam and his children the Hezbollahis are fighting against American imperialism and Soviet atheists and communists and you accuse us of trading oil for guns with them! You had better open your eyes and ears. This war is not against Iraq but, as Imam Khomeini has said, against the superpowers and that is the secret of the holy war which is being supervised by the Imam on Allah’s behalf. That’s the important point that you unbelievers have missed.
‘Our brother Haji Johary is still carrying shrapnel fragments from the Iraqi missile that hit his bunker. It has affected his mental balance. When he gets angry with you, he cannot control himself. Haji Johary is the ears and eyes of the great Khomeini here.’
I made no response and my wounds went untreated as normal. Like all of the political prisoners who populated the corridors, I made almost no contact with my neighbours. At most, you could glance under your blindfold at those lying either side of you, or count the feet of those passing by on their way to the showers or the bathroom. But trying to distinguish your comrades from the guards and torturers by their shoes was dangerous. Some guards would sneak up on us wearing black plastic prison sandals. At night, when there were fewer guards moving back and forth, it was a little easier to see comrades lying across from you.
If the hands and feet of the man next to you were not bruised or bleeding, you were suspicious. This mistrust was necessary as you had to identify those you could trust. An index of this was how many wounds they bore. This told you how resilient they had been under torture. A man with smooth hands had been no trouble for the torturer.
It did not take long for me to decide that I needed to keep my mind active. I organised court proceedings in my head, in which I was the defendant. Each day I would present a very strong clear defence of freedom, democracy and social justice, explaining my reasons for participating in political activity and my struggle against the Islamic Republic. I repeated these court proceedings and each time I made them longer, until I fell asleep. But before long the cries of someone being tortured, my own pain, or a kick from a guard, would wake me.
Another pastime was following beams of light shining underneath cell doors late at night or rays of the sun glimmering through the doors to the balcony. But these distractions could do nothing to alleviate the mental effects of imprisonment and there can be no surprise in learning that in my corridor alone, some prisoners lost their minds completely. Their madness compounded the horror with their wailing, their banging of their heads against the walls, their tearing at their blindfolds, their cries for their mothers and fathers or their curses of Khomeini, God and Islam.
After about five months I was moved to what was called a solitary cell on the fourth floor. I pulled off my blindfold, expecting to find myself alone in a dark cell. But this three-by-three metre cell already contained more than 15 other prisoners. They sat, backs to the wall with their feet stretched out. After the soul-destroying isolation of the corridors, it almost felt like returning home to find a welcome party had been organised. But there were still drawbacks to life here. We frequently weren’t even given the chance to use the lavatory and we would have to use a plastic bag in the corner of the cell.
The inmates moved around to make room for me to sit and the introductions began. As I was clearly injured – the wounds on my feet were quite visible – I was given the best position. Once my back was propped up in a corner I was handed some blankets. I was given some biscuits that came from the families of prisoners who had been in the cell for over a year.
I was asked for my story and what I was charged with. I was wary in case there were any collaborators among my new cell mates. Some of them had not been tortured, though they were clearly shocked by my condition. I told them what I knew and I had some questions of my own. It emerged that ten of my cellmates were accused of membership of the Tudeh (Party of the Masses, a communist organisation). Five were there as a result of association with other left organisations: Rahe Kargar, Fedayeen Minority and Peykar (a Maoist organisation). There was also a young man from Kurdistan who was a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. He had been accused of infiltration and treason and had been in the cell for around two years. He couldn’t have been more than 20 years old. His beard was long and matted, and his face so pale and grey that it appeared that there was no blood in his veins. I was told that he continued to protest his innocence with unshakeable faith in the regime. Like so many of us, he was being held indefinitely without trial. He constantly exercised in his corner of the cell and made little effort to interact with the rest of us.
The ten Tudeh members had been captured through information given by their own leadership. General secretary Nooredin Kianoori announced the dissolution of the party on his own arrest and told members to give themselves up. Many did hand themselves over to Islamic prosecutors in Evin, Komiteh, or elsewhere. The party surrendered its membership lists with details of its structure throughout the country. In my cell the former Tudeh members had consensus on three points. Firstly, that the war with Iraq had been imposed on the regime by an imperialist conspiracy. Secondly, the regime was genuinely anti-imperialist. And thirdly, that it enjoyed mass popular support.
None of these ten men had been tortured… not yet, at least. They were mostly middle-class university students or professionals and I listened to their stories with great interest. Parvis used to work for an Iranian television station; Adel Zahmatkesh was a fourth-year dental student at the university of Tehran and had been Kianoori’s personal chauffeur for a time; another student, Mohsen, had been in his fourth year on an engineering degree; Shafagh was a doctor who told me that he had run a successful practice before he was arrested.
Parvis was adamant in his support for the regime’s war against Iraq, its genocidal policy against the Kurds, and the annihilation of left wing opposition – which stuck me as bizarre, since he himself was a victim of this. ‘If Imam Khomeini’s line