Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran (8 page)

The two minutes were allocated to solitary confinement cells, but in reality it didn’t make any difference whether you were alone or
four of you shared a cell. Prisoners were expected to manage whatever time was allocated to them. We were supposed to undress quickly, nip in and out in no time, get dressed and dash back out. There was no time or inclination to look at others.

But the situation was more complicated with my new cellmate. They made us run almost all the way to the showers. We stood in front of the black curtain. We ran when the guards shouted. I undressed quickly, and went under the shower. I picked up the soap and rapidly rubbed my head with it and when I passed it on to Khamenei, I saw that he was showering, dressed in his underpants. Then our time was up. We ran out of the shower; got dressed and returned. When we reached the cell, I saw that my cell companion’s trousers were wet. I turned to face the wall so he could undress. But he had no trousers left. Forced by necessity, he wrapped himself up in a blanket. I kept joking, and while drying myself with my prison shirt, I kept repeating: “Hey, I am not looking. Seriously ...”

The following week, the incident was repeated and this time round, we were given even less time. We both returned to our cell, having barely managed to wash ourselves, Khamenei still dripping in his wet underwear. My cellmate insisted that it was a sin for a man to see the private parts of another man. Having showered many times in male-only bathrooms with fellow footballers or prison inmates without thinking twice about it, I used to tease him. I finally joked: “Sir. It’s not like it’s a special gift, all wrapped up, that one isn’t supposed to open. After all, I myself possess a specimen – a superior specimen.”

Eventually the predicament was resolved with me promising to turn my back to him as soon as we entered the shower and for us not to look at each other until we were fully dressed. The following time, we did just that but for a second, when I turned to hand him the soap I saw that for the first time Khamenei had taken off his underwear. He quickly covered his private parts with his hand, using the free hand to wash his hair. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to carry on washing myself.

When I look back at that scene, which took place several decades ago, I realize that behind what I saw as a joke, a subject of youthful mockery, lay two separate worldviews, two separate cultures. Two separate worlds that an oppressive regime had brought together under the same roof. Apparently, of the two worlds, one was supposed to leave and the other to stay. One world was to return home, the other to be sent into exile. Maybe if someone from my world was in power, many in my cellmate’s world would have ended up in exile. I am glad that my world failed to come to power, so that the lovers were not transformed into torturers. I know that until the two worlds find some sort of compromise, my life is not going to change.

A month passed in this manner inside the tiny cell intended for solitary confinement, where the two of us were kept. Khamenei was called up for interrogation once or twice and I too was called up once more. The questions, written in illegible handwriting on a piece of paper, were a repetition of the ones I had been asked on my arrest. They focused on my earlier arrest in Ahvaz, and the way my father had handled the court procedures. And I wrote down the beliefs that I used to hold in those days and mixed them with the scenario dictated to me by Rahman. I wrote: “I have lost interest in politics. I just want to get on with my life.”

I was in a constant state of anxiety that they might ask me to cooperate with them. I was prepared to refuse, no matter what the consequences. At that time I still had no idea what it meant to find oneself caught in a trap set by a security agency.

One night, around midnight, the cell door opened and someone was thrown in. He was a slight teenager, with badly beaten feet. We sorted out a corner for him. We kept asking him questions but he wouldn’t reply. He just kept crying. We stayed up the whole night and asked the first guard that took us to the bathroom for help. The guard ignored us. We dragged the teenager to the bathroom and brought him back. We kept banging on the cell door, requesting a guard, but nothing happened until the evening. Eventually, a guard
turned up and opened the door. Khamenei said: “This boy is dying!”

The guard glanced down at the youngster and said: “So what?” and left. I don’t remember how much time passed before they finally came back, to take him away and then return him with bandaged feet. Later, when he started to say a word or two, we found out that his name was Sasan and that he had been a supporter of a guerrilla group called Fedayeen-e Khalq, a Marxist guerrilla organization. He had been beaten severely and had suffered a nervous breakdown. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t sleep and worst of all, he couldn’t eat. We began to try out different ways of getting food into his body. We finally figured out that he reacted to the threat of physical violence, jolting back to himself momentarily and allowing his otherwise perpetually sealed teeth to open a bit. Once we discovered this solution, when the food arrived I would play the role of the interrogator while Khamenei dipped his hand into the bowl, pulling out small pieces of meat. The food was always a piece of meat, always served in a metal bowl filled with water, and we were forced to eat with our hands.

I would threaten Sasan with physical violence and as soon as his mouth opened a bit, Khamenei would pop the meat into his mouth. That is how we kept him alive. I recently traced Sasan, who is now living in exile in Germany.

Another night, the cell door opened around midnight and this time a tall young man was thrown into the cell. He had been arrested in a town near Tehran when he had turned up in the main square carrying a bag of explosives, intending to blow up the Shah’s statue. He had already been interrogated on his arrest and had been transferred to Tehran for further questioning. He was convinced he was going to be hanged. When he noticed Khamenei, his manners became very respectful. We soon knew everything about him. His name was Ali Husseini, and years later, while in exile, I was to see a photograph of him with some reformists during the sixth parliamentary elections. The court of the Islamic Republic had summoned him on charges of opposition to the administration. The tall eighteen-year-old that I
had met in 1975 had, by 2002, turned into a bald man, who spoke with sorrow about his memories of imprisonment, and about his release following the revolution. He had immediately signed up to fight in the war with Iraq, where he had been captured and spent a few years in an Iraqi prison. Now he was talking of “reform” and of “soft revolution”, but that wintry night long ago, he had one answer to every single question I posed: “Revolution means bang, bang!”

And he would hold an imaginary pistol in his hand. We would laugh, Khamenei laughing harder than the rest of us. We were now four people in a solitary confinement cell. There was just enough space to allow us, the two leftists and the two religious people, to squat around the food bowl or to sleep side by side. Today the four of us are on opposing sides, but I sometimes wish I was back in that cold winter of 1975 and we were still together.

First they took Ali away, and then Sasan. Both were given jail sentences and were still in prison when the revolution began and they were freed. Once again, Khamenei and I were left alone together. Just like before, we went for walks around the cell and talked about the past. We spent the long, freezing winter nights shivering under thin blankets. We heard the never-ending sound of crying and moaning from the corridor. Days turned into weeks and we always ended up laughing under the shower, with me repeating my joke: “I can boast a superior specimen.”

And we would return to our cell. My cellmate occasionally talked about an Islamic project without mentioning any specific names or plans. I would listen to him and quickly change the topic with a joke. In my intellectually oversimplified world, there was no room for religion.

Three months, more or less, had passed; three months that had more depth than three years. Never again was I to become so attached to someone in such a short time or to become as close to someone else. One day, the door opened and the guard called out my name: “Pick up your blanket and get ready.”

This meant that I was being allocated to a different cell. We had often discussed how and where we might meet on our release. We embraced each other and wept. I felt that my cellmate was shaking. I assumed that it was the winter cold that was making him shiver so I took off my jumper and insisted he should take it. He refused. I don’t know what made me say: “I think I am going to be released.”

He took the jumper and put it on. We embraced each other. I felt the warm tears that were running down his face and his voice, still ringing in my ears, said: “Under an Islamic government, not a single tear would be shed by the innocent.”

The guard said: “Come on, get out.”

I placed my jacket over my head and walked out. We walked down the corridor and up the stairs. I was telling myself: “I am going to be released.”

I saw Khamenei again two years later when Rahman and I made a trip to the east of Iran on a story assignment. Together we went to Khamenei’s house. Khamenei was waiting for us in a sparsely decorated room. We hugged and kissed each other on the cheeks and reminisced a little about our time in prison, and I introduced Rahman. The conversation turned to politics and went on for three hours. Rahman and Khamenei debated while I listened to them. Rahman was his usual self, assertive but speaking softly and repeatedly flicking his hair. Khamenei spoke firmly and kept smiling. Tea was served.

When the debate ended, we stood up to say goodbye. Just as we were about to leave Khamenei put his hand on my arm and asked me to stay behind. Once Rahman had left, he asked me: “This friend of yours, who is he?”

I said: “The deputy editor-in-chief of
Kayhan
. He is a close friend.”

He pressed my arm and asked again: “I really would like to know who he is.”

I repeated my answer. Khamenei laughed and with his arm through mine, he walked me to the door. He said quietly: “He is one of the communists’ most important leaders.”

We shook hands and bid each other a lengthy farewell. I took Khamenei’s phone number. He waved to me and shut the door with a smile. We were walking out of the drive into the main road when Rahman asked me: “This friend of yours, who is he?”

I said: “He’s a cleric, of course. We were in prison together.”

Rahman said: “He is one of the most important leaders supporting Ayatollah Khomeini.”

These two men of politics had summed each other up very astutely.

Greetings, Brother Hamid. As I write, Sheikh Mehdi Karroubi is courageously standing up to the oppressive regime for which you have been both torturer and ambassador. When he ran for the presidency in 2009, you were probably in charge of security for the administration. But you probably weren’t even born when we used to play Full or Empty
²³
with Mehdi Karroubi
²⁴
in a prison cell during the Shah’s regime. This is a very straightforward children’s game. Sheikh Mehdi, who, to be fair to him, was a kind man, never managed to learn how to play it. But later, he proved that he was a master of the political games, and now he’s leading one of the main opposition parties in the country.

You are now reading my fifth letter, Brother Hamid. That day, when you took me out of the cell and straight into the room downstairs and with absolutely no warning launched into administering a “punishment”, gave you such pleasure. And just think how much more pleasure it’ll give you later on, in the afterlife, when in return for doing your religious duty you will be rewarded with a thousand houris
²⁵
and dare I say, a thousand male slaves.

I am in the room upstairs at the moment. I am lifting my blindfold and putting on my glasses. My feet are hurting. I look at them; they are only slightly swollen, but they’re excruciatingly painful. There are a few spots that have turned red and are throbbing, like a red light that keeps going on and off. Two of the spots are on my calf, one on the
medial cuneiform bone of the foot. Even now, on this cold summer morning in Paris, when I recall those days, the three spots begin to throb again. The paper is on the table, and I carry on writing.

We left the tiny cell where I had been locked up with Khamenei, and walked down the corridor, up the stairs, and through Under the Eight. We went through the door and immediately, another door opened. Cell number nine, block number five. They threw me in. I removed my jacket from my head. A number of people were standing around in a spacious cell, looking at me. We shook hands and sat down. An hour later, we had already become acquainted with each other. To begin with, there were seven of us.

Sheikh Karroubi, now a key figure in the Islamic Republic, had the same personality then that he has now. Sometimes it seems to me that he hasn’t changed a bit. Hot tempered and outspoken, but very straightforward and incredibly kind. He had been prescribed a small bottle of milk every day because of his stomach ulcer. Initially, he would insist everyone took a sip of the milk before he gulped it down. “Everyone” even included the leftist inmates.

Karroubi spoke in a very simple way, typical of rural Iran, and said that this was not the real Islam. One had to look to Mr Khomeini in order to understand true Islam. Everyone called him Mr Khomeini in those days; it wasn’t until much later that he gained the title of Imam. Karroubi spoke with such passion that his mouth started foaming. He said that Islam was capable of creating the true Plato’s Republic. Recently, he has said in interviews that when he was young, he wanted to recreate Plato’s Republic. Everyone would be free in that republic. Islamic scholars would debate with representatives of other worldviews. Moshtarek prison would be destroyed and its ruins turned into a park.