LITMIR.BIZ

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body has been affected.’

      My first thought was that they could not push me further. I was relieved. They didn’t want to kill me… not yet, anyway. I was in the infirmary for days. I began to feel a little better and my wounds began to heal but I knew that it was only a matter of time before the interrogators returned. They still wanted information. Sure enough, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the one they called Haji Samad, the chief interrogator, returned me to the cells. ‘The original information we wanted from you is useless. All the meetings will have taken place by now, and they’ll know that we have you,’ he said coldly. He threatened to take me to Lanat-Abad, the infamous mass graves for communist victims, where he would finish me ‘with one shot’.

      ‘Haji,’ I cried, ‘I beg you to kill me. What you’ve done to me is unbearable. I’m blind in my right eye, my right arm and foot have lost their power to move, my feet are covered in scabs and open sores. My bladder is bleeding and my urine is full of blood. Living like this is worthless. Kill me then I’ll feel relief from the pain and wounds you’ve inflicted on me. At least I know I’ll be remembered by our people for resisting.’

      ‘You think the people support you?’ he scoffed. ‘You’re nothing. All of our people are Hezbollah. They despise you. If we handed you to them they’d tear you apart.’ He removed the blindfold and handed me a pen and stack of paper with a list of questions. ‘Answer all these questions and anything else you know. I’ll be back.’

      It was not until around midnight, nine hours later, that an interrogator entered and asked me if I had finished writing. ‘No,’ I replied, taking the opportunity to add, ‘My medicine is still in the infirmary. I have to take it every three hours. Now nine have passed. Would you please take me to the infirmary?’

      He reluctantly agreed and, after reapplying the blindfold, led me away.

      Every two or three days, Haji Samad or another of the interrogators would demand information. One day, while I was sitting on that now familiar bed frame, a Hezbollahi came over and whispered in my ear. He knew my name and talked about where I used to work. ‘I know you weren’t a bad guy,’ he said, ‘but I warn you, if you don’t co-operate, you won’t get out of here alive.’

      I never saw that man again. Or if I did, I was not aware of it. But then I never actually saw the faces of my interrogators, as my time with them was spent blindfolded and turned against the cold prison walls. Not long after that strange encounter the Hezbollahis tried a new approach. I was taken to the torture rooms as usual, then Haji Samad entered with two others. ‘The information you’ve given us is rubbish,’ he said. ‘Are you going to tell us what we need to know, or not?’

      ‘Haji,’ I replied, ‘you have all the information I’ve got.’

      ‘Hang him from the meat hook.’ he ordered, ‘and keep him there until he’s more talkative.’

      The two men bound my wrists together behind my back with one elbow behind my head pointing up and the other pointing downwards. They picked me up and hung my wrists over a meat hook fastened to the ceiling. My entire body weight was now supported by my shoulder joints at an agonising angle and my toes barely scraped the floor. Ribs, spine and shoulder joints were instantly put under enormous stress. This is a form of crucifixion and it severely restricts breathing. I could only prevent asphyxiation by making my legs rigid and standing on tiptoes. But I couldn’t take this forced position for long and my legs soon started shaking with exhaustion. I was forced to take the stress back on my chest and shoulders. I alternated from one agonising position to the other. They took me off the hook for short periods, during which I was fed and taken to the toilet.

      This torture is known as ghapani after the system used to weigh lamb carcasses. It was used as far back as the Shah’s reign and many of the unfortunates who are hung up in this way would lose all sensitivity around their shoulders. They are left with great pain in their neck and back which persists for years. My own time on the ghapani only ended because I could no longer be kept conscious long enough to be tortured. On the third day the stress on my body caused my left collar bone to snap. I screamed in agony, again and again. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand. At last I couldn’t get any more air into my lungs and, thankfully, passed out.

      The Hezbollahis had at last seen there was little point in probing my immediate political activities and moved onto broader issues. ‘We understand you teach at the university.’

      ‘That is correct.’

      ‘There are lots of pretty girls there. Did you have sex with them?’

      ‘My job is to educate our youth. It’s to enrich our country through its people. It pays peanuts for what it is but it’s a job I’m honoured to do. When I enter a lecture room, it’s like entering a mosque. The youth before me are like a congregation to whom I have responsibility, every bit as strong as to my own children. I have a part in moulding our people’s future for the better in what I can teach. Do you think I’d abuse that? If you need a straighter answer than that for your records: no, I don’t sleep with them.’

      It was important to give an unambiguously negative answer to this line of questioning as unapproved sexual relations in Iran can be punishable by death. They changed tack. Had I smoked dope? Tried opium? Drank alcohol? All carried heavy sentences and every prisoner was asked these questions. Extensive background enquiries would be made in which the authorities would look at intelligence computer files dating back to the time of the Shah.

      If anything, my interrogators were less interested in political questions than they were in morality. They were obsessed with the sexual habits of all us prisoners. One 75-year-old woman that I spoke to was pressed to confess the misdemeanours of her youth to the eager listeners. They got a licentious kick from forcing our peccadilloes from us.

      The various lines of questioning seemed to go on without end. How long had I been here? It was difficult to tell, but I reckoned about three months. Three months… and already I was a wreck. During the rare moments of peace, I thought of my wife and children, wondered what had happened to them and tried to recall the events leading up to my arrest.

      The Hezbollahi first raided my home some two months before I was eventually taken away. My family were sitting on the floor, enjoying the evening meal and watching one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches on television (an attack on ‘leftist stooges of American imperialism’, I think). Aunty went to see who it was. Before the lock was properly off the latch, the door was flung open, trapping her against the wall. There was a clatter of boots. One man began shouting orders.

      I was taken to my study by two armed guards, the older of the two clearly the leader. He started firing questions at me, making notes of my answers. The questions were textbook secret police: ‘What’s your contact with the left, counter-revolutionary organisations?’; ‘Are you a member or sympathiser?’; ‘Do you know anyone who is?’; ‘Have you ever read their papers?’ I was also asked broader questions about what I thought about the nature of the Islamic regime and the war with Iraq.

      While I played safe with non-committal answers, the younger man began rifling through my bookshelves and the notes I prepared for the following day’s lectures while others ransacked the rest of the house. As the search proceeded their disappointment became evident. Someone had obviously led them to believe that this was a safe house, brimming with wanted activists from clandestine organisations and everything from left-wing pamphlets to missile launchers. They were not in luck.

      This was early 1981, a period marked by regular clashes in the streets that frequently led to the indiscriminate killing of demonstrators. Raids on private houses were commonplace and I had taken the precaution of getting rid of anything that could be deemed counter-revolutionary. On the wall of my study there had once been posters supporting workers’ rights and the Kurdish national struggle. There was now a banner supporting the taking of American hostages in the US embassy in Tehran. I had made a small bonfire on the roof several days earlier and ashes were all that remained of my piles of left-wing pamphlets, papers and books. It had not been easy to burn 15 years of agitation, propaganda and debate.

      The

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