LITMIR.BIZ

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feel the concrete against my nose. With my eyes still covered, I was now seriously disorientated. I tried to keep calm and not think about what was going to happen next. It emerged that I did not have to wait long to find out.

      Something struck from behind – not a fist, it was far too powerful for that – and my face and chest smashed against the walls in the corner where I stood. Badly winded and unable to breathe, I collapsed to my knees. I desperately fought for air but, like a fish on a slate, I was helpless. It was agony, like sharp bolts of electricity were being passed through my body. Someone tried to pull me to my feet but my legs wouldn’t support me.

      Once my system allowed me to swallow air again I saw, through the small slit above my blindfold, what had hit me. It was swinging from the ceiling and looked a bit like a punch bag, but bigger and filled with gravel. It was about a half a metre in diameter and a metre in length. When it slammed into you it felt like a train. While I was still on my knees, a heavy boot of one of the Hezbollahi delivered a swift kick to my head, then another to my back. The man grabbed my hand, pulled me up, and I was dragged, staggering and breathless, to another room.

      From beneath my blindfold I saw the feet of my torturers. From what I could make out there were at least four men in the room with me. I also saw an iron bed frame, covered with what would have been a mattress if it wasn’t made of wood. They forced me onto it, face down.

      One interrogator sat on my back, firmly placed a hand on the back of my head and forced my face into the wooden board. Two others strapped my ankles to the crosspiece of the frame and my wrists to the top. My arms were stretched out straight. Then they began their ‘holy duty’, lashing the soles of my feet with a length of thick, insulated cable. The pain was indescribable. It tore through every inch of me. I screamed like never before, all the while anger growing inside me. The guard on my back only pushed down harder, grinding my face into the wood. As the flogging intensified, so did my screams. One of the men pushed torn pieces of blanket covered with dirt, blood, dust and hair into my mouth to gag me.

      Throughout the ordeal the interrogator demanded names, times, places and houses of my ‘comrades’. He was fixated on the times and places of alleged secret meetings. I couldn’t have answered even if I had wanted to; with my mouth stuffed with rags it was difficult to breathe, let alone speak. The pain from the lashing was almost obscured by the feeling of blind panic that I was going to choke to death. Focusing what little energy I had, I was able to dislodge the rags in my mouth. They were trying to break me mentally as well as physically, claiming they knew the time and place of a certain meeting and demanded that I confirm it. I knew they were bluffing. What they really expected from me was detailed information leading to the capture and arrest of my comrades. Mercifully, I passed out.

      My body was covered with a cold sweat. It felt like I had been soaked in icy water. From under the blindfold I could see a narrow beam of light shining through a hole in the door of the torture room. The rags had been removed from my mouth. The chief interrogator told me that Haji Aghah – a priest and representative of the Ayatollah Khomeini in the prisons – gave him written permission to torture me to death.

      ‘Now, what are you going to do? Do you talk, or should I ask our brothers to make you talk? We have forced central committee members to talk. Do you want to be a hero? You’re a fool. No hero will emerge from this cell alive. Do you know where we’ll take your corpse? To a cursed hole where dogs will tear you apart.’

      ‘Brother,’ I said, sobbing, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini that you have made a mistake, I know nothing about these names and addresses.’

      The chief interrogator and two others took the straps off and sat me up on the bed, still blindfolded, so that I was facing the door. I heard more people entering the room and four more boots appeared on the ground, along with someone wearing plastic prison slippers. I assumed he was another prisoner, but had no idea who he was. The chief interrogator spoke again. ‘Farhad, take off your blindfold and tell us who this man sitting on the bed is.’

      With some hesitation, the prisoner said, ‘He is Karveh, a lecturer at the University of Tehran.’ Karveh was the secret underground name I was known by for 20 years and more while in the Rahe Kargar movement. He gave a list of names of people supposedly working under me and recited a statement that had obviously been dictated by prison officials: ‘My wife and I have both been captured. Our organisation has been attacked at the very top. We have given the brothers all the information that we have. You should do the same, otherwise you and your family will be destroyed.’

      Farhad. I knew that name well. And that voice was familiar, too… it was that of a cadre in Rahe Kargar. It took me a second to place him as he sounded different, broken and desolate. It was a tone that I had never heard before, although I now understood the reason for it. I was aware that anyone I said I knew would share my fate. A name would mean a death. I would be helping to destroy the struggle of which I was a part; the struggle for workers’ rights. Workers had no right of association, unions or bargaining power and it’s the same now. Rahe Kargar was helping to organise secret cells inside factories to fight for these rights. There was only one way to respond.

      ‘Why are you lying?’ I said, furiously. ‘Who are these people you are talking about? Why are you accusing me of having contact with them? Have you ever introduced any of them to me? I have never met any of these people.’

      ‘You are lying,’ the interrogator snapped. A fist connected squarely with my head. I heard Farhad being taken away. The torture was about to begin again. From under the blindfold, I glimpsed a deep pile of dried scraps of flesh and pools of blood. The macabre remains of those who had been tortured before me, who had died or were imprisoned in this hellhole. I knew that some of these ‘untouchables’ would have been no more than children: only 12 years old, boys and girls. Some would have been as old as 80. Yet the flesh was not so much revolting as inspiring: a testimony to those who, in the name of justice, had refused to break.

      ‘I must make a decision,’ I thought. ‘Should I give up all the values of democracy, freedom and justice that I have held for so long? Or should my blood join that of the others who resisted and remained firm in their commitment?’ I knew then that I would not jeopardise the lives or activities of my comrades. I would not be helping myself even if I did talk. Anyone brought in because of my confession would only be tortured until they produced more evidence against me. But would my silence protect me? Perhaps. Only if Farhad had not disclosed anything else about me and no other comrades from our organisation – especially those from the Rahe Kargar newspaper – were arrested.

      The interrogators worked for Savama, the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security. This was the secret police and they were experienced. Some had been employed in the time of the Shah and when he was overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979 they discovered their skills were still much in demand. The one the others called Haji Rahman shouted at me: ‘Motherfucker, we caught you red-handed in one big net. We’ll hang you all.’

      ‘Give this motherfucker to me,’ screamed another. ‘I will kill him and send him to hell right now.’

      ‘Hey, let’s hear from your own fucking mouth which counter-revolutionary group you belong to,’ said one more.

      ‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini, there is a mistake here. I have never been a member of any organisation.’

      Someone punched me again. Haji Rahman shouted, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini’s glorious spirit that if any of the information is withheld and if any of them get away, I will kill you with my own hands.’

      ‘We don’t just want details of your underground activities, we need passwords too.’

      ‘I swear I have no information or passwords to give!’

      ‘We won’t let you out of here alive. We have no time for heroes,’ Haji Rahman said. ‘Brothers, teach him how to talk.’

      The torture began. With each blow I screamed clear and loud. I blacked out and awoke to find myself in an infirmary, tubes attached to my body. The doctor – a prisoner from the Blaoch region – came to my bedside when he saw that my eyes

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