…I heard an unfamiliar voice. It was a Pasdar [1] asking me why they had brought me here. For a few questions, I said. Yes, he said, they all come for a few questions, but once they go under the lash hidden weapon stores and the team-houses [2] come out. Then a few questions is answered by execution. I did not reply. I just waited for the two pasdars who were supposed to come back.
It was 10.20 when one of the pasdars came back and said get up. He took the corner of my chador [3] and led me. Where I did not know. My whole head [encased in the hood] was bathed in sweat, my heart did not have its normal beat and my head was spinning. They led me up a few steps and sat me down in a corridor. I asked the pasdar to remove my hood and instead bind my eyes himself in any way he wanted. He agreed.
In the corridor silence ruled. Occasionally you could hear the sound of someone coming and going, that was all. At an opportunity that I thought appropriate I pulled the chador over my head and pushed up the blindfold under the chador. You could see nothing but a large corridor with a few closed doors. There was no one to be seen either. I did not know where I was. After about 25 minutes a pasdar came and told me to get up. He pulled the corner of my chador, opened a door, threw me inside and closed the door without uttering a word. I stood for some time. I did not know where I was, or heard a sound. After a few minutes I peeped from beneath the blindfold. There was nothing and no one. I realised I was in a cell. I took off my blindfold. It was a cell the length and width of a military blanket, no more and no less. It had a high roof with a circular fluorescent light, that is all. No sink, no toilet, no vessel, nothing else.
I sat down on the floor and pondered: what will happen, what will they do to me. At this moment the light went out and absolute darkness took over the cell. I tried to make a noise so that if at least someone was in the next cell they would become aware of my presence and I could find out where I am. But no sound came back. Reluctantly I lied down. I could not sleep. The ground was hard and cold and me anxious of what tomorrow would bring.
I do not know how much time had passed, perhaps two hours, perhaps a little more, when I heard the howling of a young man and the savage voice of a pasdar who was kicking him and threateningly telling him, you bastard [4] you are being executed tomorrow. The youth said nothing, he only screamed and shouted. I think they were beating him outside the door of my cell. After a while the pasdar and left the youth just there outside the cell door. His screaming had turned to moaning and delirium. I tried to get his attention with some sounds. I kicked the door, coughed, but it seems that pain and the pressure of torture stopped him from thinking of his surroundings. He moaned till the morning and talked deliriously. I sound of someone talking reached my ear but it was unintelligible. I tried hard to understand but did not succeed.
I again do not know how much time elapsed when that same savage voice hit my ears and brought me, who had fallen asleep, back to the prison setting. The pasdar was kicking the youth, telling him to get up since in a few minutes he would be sent to hell. The boy said nothing. Soon afterwards they took him away. I don’t know who he was and what he had done. All I can remember is when they came to take him the pasdar was telling him “at least repent perhaps God will forgive your sins” the boy said nothing. After that I heard nothing.
Soon afterwards the fluorescent light came on again. I looked at my watch. It was five past seven. I was so terrified of the surroundings that I had forgotten that I had not even had water for about nineteen hours. I sat down again. I began fiddling with my blindfold. I took out a few strands and realised that it does not effect its exterior. I pulled out a few more strands so that when I placed it over my eyes I got a blurred view of my surroundings.
I was occupied with this game for some time when I realised that it was seven thirty and no one had come for me. I started beating on the door. I continued to beat for a quarter of an hour until a voice called out “what do you want”. I want to go to the toilet, I said. I heard no reply. After a few moments a pasdar opened the door and asked who brought you here? I was surprised that he did not know. I said I don’t know. When did you arrive here he asked? I said about eleven thirty last night. He asked my name and left. I beat the door again and asked to be taken to the toilet. Another pasdar came. He too seemed surprised at my presence. Put on your blindfold, he said. He took me through last night’s corridor to a place with two toilets and two wash basins and no one but me was there. I washed my hands and face and anxious of what will happen waited for the pasdar to come.
On the way back to the cell I told the pasdar who was taking me that they had brought me here to answer some questions, and I don’t know why no one has come to take me, I have a three-year old son at home waiting for me. Most of those who are brought here are under suspicion and we have no evidence in our hands, but we bring them to their senses so well that a number of team houses emerge from the arms of each and every one of them. Then he took me to the cell and left.
An hour went by before a pasdar came and asked, when were you arrested? Last night, I replied. Where were you arrested? At home. For what crime? They have brought me here to answer some questions. Bind your eyes and come, he said. I bound my eyes with that same tampered blindfold. I came out of the cell and followed the pasdar. After a short while we came to a place where some boys were sitting on the floor with wounded feet. The pasdar stood them up, lined them up and placed me, the only girl in that group, at the end of the line. He then gave the coat tail of one of the prisoner boys for me and said hold tight.
They led us as a group into the courtyard of Evin prison. I had this advantage that at least I could see my surroundings from the gaps in the blindfold. But like the others I knew nothing of where we are going or what awaits us. The courtyard was a hive of activity, many lines of prisoners each one being led by a pasdar from one section of the prison to another. In a corner of this space was the guard soldiers’ restroom. Apparently it was leisure time for the soldiers, and as they went about their own business they kept us under their indifferent stare. It was a sunny day but I was very anxious, an anxiety made worse from the noise which was worsening by the minute. As we went further, the noise turned into shouts and those slogans so familiar in those days: death to the hypocrite under the banner of Mojahed [5]. Death to Rajavi [6]. Greetings to Khomeini… we covered a fairly long distance among these shouts and slogans until we came to an area full of boys and girls, sitting or standing blindfolded surrounded by pasdars guarding them. They ordered us too to stop. At this moment a pasdar girl, who might have been in charge of the kitchen as she smelt of vegetable strew approached me. She was not wearing the chador, but only a scarf and loose frock. She brought her head close to mine and said you will soon see something that will make you repent at once. Come and have pity on your youth and divulge all you know. I said nothing. But my nervousness as to what could be waiting for us increased.
Now there was not just the sound of shouting and slogans. Overshadowing these was a din of screams and cries which were totally unfamiliar to me until that day. All of a sudden they ordered, take down your blindfold, but only look ahead. A dreadful scene suddenly appeared in front of the eyes of tens of prisoners. A second of stunned silence and then screams, shrieks and howls. We could not believe what our eyes were seeing. It was more a nightmare than real.
The body of a youth was dangling and twisting from a tall tree. His hands were bandaged to the elbow. His feet were torn to the knee by the savage blows of a cable-whip. He was barely 20. He had black hair and a thin moustache. His thin body had become blue from the pressure of the rope round his neck and his head was gently leaning to the side. A man in pasdar uniform was standing on a table beside the body, stick in hand. The pasdar, who was 25 to 30 years old, medium height and a little fat, and a stare that was totally blank – neither pride, nor shame, nor mischief, nor pity – with an expressionless face as if it were not a human face, as if he was presenting the carcass of a sheep for sale, turned the body with his stick and with his dry, expressionless voice kept repeating: “look well, it is real”. As if even he knew that this ugly scene is so unreal.
On a piece of cardboard stuck to the corps’ chest was written in a childish hand: Habibollah Eslami.
The show being over, they lined us up. Girls one side, boys the other. Our hand lay on the shoulder of the one in front and the first person held a piece of plastic piping the other end of which was grasped by a pasdar [7]. They took us through many passages until we came to the interrogation corridor. They had gathered a number of prisoners there many of whom were with blanket and blindfold. Apparently they had spent the night in that passageway. Some of the girls had a white linen over their heads. It later emerged that they had been captured in the street without a chador and had been given the linen in Evin as a chador substitute.
The corridor was full of prisoners, so that even the noise of heir breathing created a hubbub. I was standing for about a quarter of an hour. Apparently I had shown some clumsiness when looking around me because a pasdar bent down and looked at me and thought that I had loosened my blindfold. You can see, he said and hit me hard on the temple with his hand, and then tightened my blindfold such that blood stopped flowing to my head. I became dizzy. A few minutes later I furtively loosened the blindfold under the chador.
A voice asked: who has not seen the corpse? Some said me. A pasdar asked me if I had seen the corpse. Yes, I replied. Don’t you want to see it again, he said? No, I replied. On the contrary, he said, I think you should to see it again. They lined us up and took us to the place of the corpse. The same scene repeated, they took us back again.
Again the same voice asked, who has not seen the corpse. There was no answer. The pasdar asked who wants to see the corpse again. Some boys and girls replied “I”. The pasdar said those who want to see the corpse again stand up. He then came over to me and asked: don’t you want to see the body? I have, I said. Again, he said. I have seen it again, I said. He said nothing and left. After a while the girl next to me asked quietly when were you arrested. Last night I said. For what offence? I don’t know. In relation to what group?…
I asked what about you? She said she was arrested eight days ago and is still being questioned. She has spent eight days in the passageway blindfold, and is a Mujahed. The kids [8] used every opportunity of the coming and going of the pasdars to communicate. Have you been tortured, I asked? Twice she said. Her wounded legs stretched in front of her spoke of a great deal of torture.
It was eight thirty in the morning when they called my name. I raised my hand. A young man sat in front of me and asked: are you so and so. Yes I replied. He asked where is your child. I had some guests, I said, I left her with them. I don’t know where he is now. Get up he said. I got up. He placed the other end of his biro in my hand, led me to a room and sat me down in a chair facing the wall and said: let me tell you straight, they have given away everything about you. If you too divulge everything you can return to your child this very day. I said, I will tell you everything I know. With whom did you work, he asked? I was not involved in any activity, I said. He repeated his question. I replied that I am a housewife and household duties and child care doesn’t leave much time for anything else.
An unfamiliar voice addressed my interrogator. “We should not behave like this with these. They wont come to their senses unless beaten.” Then turning to me he said “do you think you are Marzieh Oskui or Ashraf Dehghai? [9]. I answered they have brought me here for some questioning and everything I say is the exact truth.
Have you seen the corpse, he asked? I have, and quickly added, twice. What do you say to that, he asked? I said, I have no objection to your rulings. He said, did you know that he did not repent even to the last moments? I made no answer. He added, that is what we do to the guilty. We will smooth the path for Mehdi [10] such that he could rule without such trash as yourselves. They showed me a paper they had found when searching my house and said, what is this? A leaflet, I said. Who gave it to you, he asked? I found it in the alley, I replied. The other person, who seemed to be an assistant interrogator said, this bitch will not be come to her senses.
They laid me down on the floor.Tookoff socks and pulled the chador over my head. There were five or six other prisoners in the room in addition to me, two boys being tortured on the floor, and two girls and a boy who were being interrogated. The noise of shoutings and wailings in the corridor and the rooms did not stop for a second: mamman… stop it… I will tell… water…
The first cable blow which hit my bare feet, I got up and started running round the room. They caught me, laid me down and this time tied my hand and feet and began beating. I was shouting. The cable blows rained on the soles of my feet, calves, thighs, and waist. They threw a blanket on me to stop the chador falling off my head and exposing my hair through my struggling. This made it difficult for me to breathe. For a moment I tried to pretend I was unconscious, hoping they may leave me alone. For this reason I tried not to utter a cry, for which the torturer gave me a few hard blows, just to be sure. I could not bear the second and cried out and this caused me not only to be tortured, but also penalised. They rained the blows harder and many more.
I don’t know how long the beating went on, but when they stopped beating and gave me white aspirin-like tablet, it was near noon. I was shaking all over and could not move from the waist downwards.
I asked to go to the toilet. They called two pasdar girls over. They lifted me barefoot – my shoes no longer fitted me – to take me to the toilet. Because I could not walk, I had to crawl to the toilet on all fours. There I undid my blindfold and looked at my feet. Blood was streaming from beneath both toenails. My feet had swollen so much that I involuntarily laughed. After I had washed my face I was returned to the cross-examination room and sat on a chair. My whole body was shaking. The interrogator asked, have you eaten anything. I have not eaten since noon yesterday, I replied. Well, it will soon be time to dish out lunch, he said. He gave me a thick wad of paper and said, “look here. You have to fill up all these pages”.
My hands could not hold the biro. I could not sit. My whole body was filled with sweat, pain and shivers. With difficulty I filled the top of the page which was for the prisoner’s particulars. When I gave it back he said, do you want to be beaten again? I did not understand why he was saying this. I said what has happened. Why have you written a lie, he said? But you brought my identity card yourselves, the name is the same one I have written, I said. I know this is your name, he said, but why have you written your religion as Islam? But I am a Muslim, I said. How dare you, he said, you are a communist and in front of religion you must write communist. I replied, my religion is Islam.
He said nothing and began writing the first question: write down all your activities from the first year at university and through the revolution, and explained that your answer must be at least 30-40 pages. I began to write. The pen fell out of my hands because of the pains from the torture. I could not write and could not sit on the metal chair. I was sweating profusely and desperately needed water.
I said above that in that interrogation room they were torturing two other youths. In a convenient moment I was able to see the one nearest to me. He was a man, thirty odd years old who was lying face down blindfolded, with hands and feet tied and was being beaten savagely with a cable-cord. He said nothing. Occasionally he would shout out for water which they denied him. After a while he went silent.
When t a prisoner became silent under torture, after a few experimental blows to make sure this was not a sham unconsciousness, they push needles under the prisoners nails to awaken them. I don’t know what they did to this prisoner, but suddenly the room went silent and the interrogators, who were speaking in whispers so that we did not find out what was happening, sent after the doctor. One of them was shouting: where is this bastard Sheikh [they meant Dr Sheikholeslam-Zadeh [11]? After a while they dragged the prisoner to the prison dispensary. I do not know what happened to him. All I know that the number of prisoners who died under torture were not few.
After that prisoner was taken to the dispensary the grilling resumed. A girl who had given an unsatisfactory answer to her interrogator was slapped hard across the face and burst into tears, and the cries of a boy who was being interrogated once again raised the ceiling. Apparently they had a photograph of him holding a gun. They wanted him to tell where the handgun is and who gave it tom him. In the end, after a few more blows of the cable, the prisoner agreed to phone his friend and set up a meeting. I don’t know what words passed forwards and backwards, but I heard that they agreed to meet his friend at 5.30 that same day. After the telephone conversation the interrogator resumed beating the prisoner saying “traitor, why did you betray your friend!”
In the meantime I had answered my interrogator’s question with only two lines, he had asked for 30 – 40 pages. When he peered over my shoulder and saw these two lines he screamed: I will torture you again. You don’t answer the question. Do you think you can escape without telling the truth? Those bigger than you have said it all, and you little twits want to resist… He then turned to the other interrogator and said all our headaches is from these supporters, otherwise their leaders spilt all after only a few blows (I later heard the same things from Lajevardi in Ghezel Hessar prison). I replied that I will answer all your questions truthfully, but don’t feel well today and cannot write.
It was about four thirty that he told me to put on my blindfold and get going. He again gave me the end of his biro and led me out of the interrogation room, barefoot with my shoes under my armpit.
The corridor was crowded. And full of rooms. From each room came the cries of a number of people. In front of me, beside me, the whole passageway, was full of prisoners. Most were sitting with bandaged feet and some slept with a blanket pulled over them. Apparently some slept in those naked corridors blindfolded.
Half an hour later they called my name. I thought there was going to be another interrogation session. I replied. Get up, he said. They led me, along with some others, through a corridor to a place they called Apartment 246. The pasdar taking us knocked on the door. The iron door, with its windows of thick glass, opened and a female pasdar, who tried to hide herself behind the door, took some papers from the pasdar and called us in.
It was a narrow passage. In front of the door were a few plastic buckets containing food, and further on two iron tables and a carton containing scarves and blindfolds; and a few pieces of cut hosepipe leaning against the wall; and steps that led up. They kept us, about 20 in number, for a time in a corner blindfolded. Meanwhile the pasdars, all women calling each other sister, dished out the food from large buckets into small plastic pots, all the while shouting at us not to talk, to look down (even though we were all blindfolded).
After half an hour, they called out our names and sent us into the cell block one at a time. I was one of the last the female pasdar called. She said come forward straight ahead. I went close to the table. Stop, she said, why are you wearing a chador? Is this not the law in Islam, I answered? She said, you are a communist and disfigure this sacred form. The chador belongs to us. I said nothing. She entered my name into a big book, told another female pasdar to take me to Block 1, and handed me a melamine tray, an aluminium spoon and a plastic cup.
They gave these utensils to only one in ten of those they let into the cell block. Move, she said. When we got close to the steps, I saw that climbing the stairs with blindfold, chador and tray would be difficult. Could I take off my blindfold, I asked. If you don’t look back and bend your head down, you can, she replied. I took off my blindfold and threw it into the carton. Having climbed seventeen or eighteen steps we came to a kind of hall from which three closed doors were visible. The pasdar opened one of these, sent me inside, and closed it behind me.
I stood there. In front of me was a hall, and an L-shaped room that opened to the hall through two doors. Beside the hall was a toilet and a sink. The room and the hall was filled with prisoners, some were sitting down, some talking, some alone, and some walking and … suddenly a three year old boy ran towards me. I immediately picked him up, recalling my son, whose whereabouts I did not know, or what he was doing, and for a few seconds closed my eyes and pressed him to me. Then, I looked for his mother. A young woman answered. I asked her, why is your son here. He shares my crime, she replied, and explained that she was arrested in a demonstration with her son. They had brought both of them here and without questioning had thrown them into the cell block. The boy was thin and sallow. It was some two and a half months since their arrest and during this time the mother had no news of her husband and their six-year old daughter.
The girls surrounded me and began questioning – or as we prisoners called it “interrogation”: when were you arrested? Where? For what crime? What is your job? And …
My eyes scanned the kids one by one. Faces youthful and full of excitement and feet tortured. The girls asked are you hungry. I then remembered that except for two glasses of water I had had nothing for 29 hours – sorry, I forgot, except for the beatings. Yes, very, I said. They brought me some lavash bread and cheese. I couldn’t eat. They said wait, in half an hour they will bring supper, perhaps you can eat that.
I was curious to see the cell block. It transpired that in addition to the L-shaped room, which the girls had named the common room, there were two other rooms, one occupied by the Tudeh and Fadai’ (majority) supporters [12], and the other the “death-sentence room” since the majority of the kids who had been executed from this cell block were from that room. They took me to the “death-sentence room”. I removed my chador and rubbed my eyes which had been under a blindfold for about twenty hours. With a wink and a smile I started a friendship with a young girl who was sitting next to me, and was staring at me.
Her name was Sheida [13]. A girl aged about 19. She had been arrested 16 days earlier in the street as “suspicious”. At first she had been badly tortured, you could see that from the number of needles that had been driven under her nails to revive her. She herself said: they had beaten me such that I lost consciousness. They brought me round by sticking a needle under my nails. I asked to go to the toilet; my interrogator who was also my torturer – occasionally they were not the same – took me to the toilet; all I remember is that I pulled down my trousers and then remember nothing; I found myself in the Evin dispensary some days later. Her feet which had been torn by the blows from the cable whip and had become purulent – after torture the prisoner cannot put on their shoes, if following torture the skin is broken it will inevitably become infected. She was putting a soothing cream on it, the only thing they had in the cell block. She said she has been urinating blood for sixteen days. This sickness lasted about two months. I asked her what did you disclose. She shrewdly answered: everything.
They had tortured her a lot and had returned her to the cell block without getting a single word out of her and had not called for her any more. This was their way: when they arrested someone on whom they had suspicions but had nothing on them, they would torture them first and if she resisted and did not say anything, they threw her in the cell block and left her for an indefinite period until they would either be betrayed or would themselves ask to be cross-examined. In short until in one way or other they got some information on them. There were none too few such prisoners.
The average age of the girls in the cell block was 17 to 18, of course excluding that three-year old child and a 14 year old who had been arrested in a demonstration with a molotov cocktail and had her death sentence already dished out.
We had supper and slept next to each other with the single military blanket which was our ration. The burning and pain in my feet, thighs and waist troubled me. I was feverish and was worried that I might be delirious in my sleep. I asked my friend if I had said anything in my sleep. She said no. Or at least she, who slept beside me, had not heard anything.
In the morning when we woke up all our breaths smelt as we had no toothbrushes. We had no visitors, and they did not allow us to shop in the prison. The girls who had been in prison for two or three months had yellow teeth and their gums were pussy. They had asked the authorities many times to buy a toothbrush but had had no reply.
They brought in the breakfast at seven thirty which was made up of a small lavash bread, baked in the prison itself, for each with one sugar lump for the whole day and about a nail-breadth of cheese. The breakfast had not been distributed when the cell block door opened and some of the girls were called for questioning.
Slowly I began to enter into a dialogue with the girls. There was a mother who had been arrested with two sons and a daughter. She had no news of her sons but said when my daughter was being tortured I was taken to her and they told me to ask her to tell them everything she knows. They had tortured my daughter a lot and I no longer know what they did to her or where she is, she said. She herself was imprisoned for the offence that her children were political. Outside, she had been under psychiatric care. She suffered from her nerves, yet despite her condition and the separation from her children, they would not let her use her pills. She was in a bad way. She cried, she laughed, she remained silent and mute. She asked everyone who came back form the interrogation: has someone called Fariba had been called by name. She constantly asking about her daughter from the girls. Her sister had been arrested on in June 20 [14]. When I later met her sister in Ghezel Hessar prison, she told me that she had been arrested for seven to eight months and had been given life sentence without either questioning or a court appearance. She too suffered from psychiatric disease. She was so happy when she learnt that I was with her sister in Evin and asked me about her and children. I told her a part of what I knew, taking into consideration her state.
One day mother Simin woke up and asked to see her daughter. The pasdar laughed at her and said “where do you think you are. Have you forgotten that you are a prisoner here. If you were fit to bring up your child you would have educated her when she was with you. Now the religious judge orders us to enlighten her away from you. You mothers an fathers are poison to your young and dangerous.”
Mother Simin who was very upset and jumpy began shouting and swearing at Khomeini. The pasdar immediately closed the cell-block door and left, and came back in a few minutes and took her for interrogation. Our attempts to quieten mother Simin was useless. Her anger was beyond anything that we could guess, and the other side of which is calm.
They took her for interrogation and after torturing her and keeping her blindfolded in cold empty corridors for three days and nights they returned her. In order not to upset her any more we did not ask any questions. She too said nothing and quietened down. She slept most of the time and as before asked about her daughter from any new arrival or the girls who had gone for questioning.
One task the girls were required to do was to bring back any the names they had heard during interrogation or when waiting in the corridor. In this way the girls would know if anyone they shared a file with was being questioned, or a relative or organisational superior was arrested, or… and this could be a help, no matter how small, for the girls.
Two of those who had been taken for interrogation at 8 am returned at 11.30. We surrounded them to tell us what they had done to them. They had been taken straight, with 96 other male and female prisoners to [judge] Gilani [15] that morning. Gilani had passed a mass death sentence on all of them, adding that if anyone was prepared for a [videoed] interview it might effect their sentence. They had been condemned to death in a court without a charge, blindfolded. Only when they were asked to sign their death sentence was their blindfold lifted.
They laughed. They were full of energy and excitement. The effects of the torture on their legs was still such as to make walking difficult. They waited for execution. We had lunch together and joked. One, Azadeh, was 18 and the other, Fariba was 16. Fariba had been brought up in a very poor family from the south of the city. She had been arrested for twenty two days. She had no news of her family, nor them of her. It was half past one in the afternoon when they called both of them. They said goodbye to the girls and left the block. Next evening we read their names in a list of 98 mohareb [16] prisoners who had been executed in Evin prison.
It was afternoon when a new batch of twenty or so prisoners were brought into the cell block. In that group was a very sick looking girl who because of chronic illness had lost all her hair. All that was left her was a sallow face and a handful of flesh and bones. She had duodenal bleeding and came to the block with a carrier bag full of medicine and a large X-ray envelope of her stomach and intestines. Dr Sheikh had said that if she had been admitted to the best hospitals with the best food and rest, maybe her condition might have subsided somewhat. He had not been able to help her himself, only succeeding in getting permission for her medicines to go into the cell block with her.
After a week she went to court and was issued a death sentence. But the moment she was about to sign the execution order, Gilani had noticed her face and build and had said: give her life! give her life! Her interrogator had replied that life is only a slow death for her, it would have been better to execute her. She came with a death sentence to the cell block. A week later they took her from the block. Her name was Afsar. For a long time we had no news of her until later I saw her more ill and weak in Ghezel Hessar. She could not tolerate Ghezel Hessar and after many faints and fits she was returned to Evin. Afterwards no one had any news of her.
I was walking inside the cell block when the door opened with the sound of shouting and argument between a pasdar and a woman. We all froze where we were. Such a thing was unknown. The woman was angrily demanding her Qur’an and the pasdar swore and said that they were not going to give her a Qur’an with translation. You will misuse it and dupe the other prisoners, he was saying. And turning to us warned that anyone found speaking with this mother increases their offence.
She was a woman around 65, her immensely swollen feet bore witness to her age and infirmity. When the pasdar had gone, she walked straight into the block and spread her prayer bundle, which she had brought with her, and without a word to us stood to prayer. She had a strange countenance. Her brows were still knotted from the anger of her confrontation with the female pasdar. But it was as if she was somewhere else, she paid no attention to her surroundings. When her long namaz [daily prayer] ended she sat to pray on her prayer mat. While praying she occasionally looked over towards us as we sat encircling her. I sensed that she is praying for us. For one second she turned to the girl nearest to her and said it is better not to talk to her: “I don’t want them to harm you. These ungodly people are mad”.
The day I was going to be moved form Evin, she whispered in my ear when saying goodbye. “If you see my daughters in Ghezel tell them that their brother Ja’far had betrayed them. Tell them that I have haram [religiously forbidden] him my milk [17]. Tell them I am well and not worry about me.” I did not see Mother Sakineh’s [18] daughters in Ghezel, but I later heard that Mother was executed after being tortured a number of times. I have here only recalled a corner of her will, but I have to say that her presence gave the girls courage and endurance.
About 20 to 30 new prisoners were daily being brought into the cell block, so that in a week the number of inmates rose to 250. We had real difficulty in sleeping and in particular in going to the toilet. The food quota stayed the same despite the larger number of prisoners. At noon they brought the same plastic bowl of food that previously was brought for 125 people now had to feed two hundred and fifty. Most of the time we were troubled by hunger. There was nothing else to eat other than what they gave us as food, since we did not have the right to buy things, and our parents were also not allowed to send anything in.
Bath time for 250 persons consisted of a single shower which had warm water morning to noon one day a week. We went in fours and each person was allowed to shower for five minutes. None of us had any clothes, other than what we wore, to change after bathing, and we dried ourselves with our chadors. The rest of the week we used the shower to wash the dishes. To shower at any time other than designated days was a crime, and punished. They gave one bar of soap for every four persons which we had to use for washing ourselves and our underclothes.
They only gave us two sanitary towels a day for 250 girls. The girl we had designated to dish them out only gave it to those on the first or second day of their periods. The rest had to do without sanitary towels, which considering the lack of any change of clothes, or any other means, was yet another problem which we had to face. But “thankfully” because of the large amount of camphor added to the food, many of the girls stopped having a period and this, despite all the associated psychological and physical distress, had the one advantage of reducing the problem of shortage of sanitary towels.
I was one of the lucky girls who had a dress in addition to my cloak [19]. One day Hoori [20] who had been arrested a month and a half ago, asked to borrow my dress so that she could wash her clothes which had been unwashed since her arrest. She wore the dress and soaked her clothes in the bowl when she was called up for questioning. Next evening I found her name among the list of those executed. She was sixteen.
The only reading material they gave us was Keyhan and Ettela’at newspapers every afternoon. We had neither radio or television. Yet our block was, according to the girls, one of the favoured cell blocks. The same building that housed our Cell Block 1 prison was another block which our girls called the June 22 block [see note 14]. The girls in that block had neither paper, nor saw a new prisoner, nor went for interrogation. The door of the block only opened three times, morning noon and night, for food. Most of those locked up in that block were called by number. The prisoner stayed in that block until they found some evidence against them so that they could be taken for interrogation. Anyone who was taken for questioning was never brought back to that block.
One girl who had been taken from that block for grilling and then transferred to ours recounted: “We could only guess day or night from the food deliveries. We had lost all count of days and months. We heard the assassination of [president] Rejai’ and [prime minister] Bahonar from the Evin loudspeakers. We had been totally forgotten there. Unless someone did us the “kindness” of betraying us, or they found some trace or sign of us somewhere. The pasdar who brought us food kept telling us: all of you will get a death sentence.
At 7 am on the day Beheshti and his circle were assassinated [21], pasdars of both sexes savagely fell on us with klashnikovs, totally unawares, some sleeping, others praying, and forced us out of the block even in our underclothes. They screamed that today we will have a mass execution. They bound our eyes and while they beat our backs, waist and arms with the butt of their klashnikovs took us to the Evin courtyard and sat us down.
Our ears were assailed by the non-stop noise of machine gun fire and single shots. They were beating girl prisoners and even more the boys such that their screams filled the whole prison area. Meanwhile a pasdar boy kept shouting: brothers! Imam [Khomeini] has said swallow your anger, deal with them according to the sharia’.
The noise and commotion made it like the day of judgement when a thunderous cry rang over all the other noises: in the name of God and the heroic people of Iran. And then a burst of machine gun fire. I myself saw Kachooi’s brain spilt on the ground. With this the situation changed and all the attacks were directed at the voice. The sounds of catch him, don’t let him get away, shoot at his legs, was heard from all directions. And then the falling of someone from a height and a unremitting shout. They immediately ushered us back to the cell block. We later learnt that the person who had assassinated Kachooi’ had jumped from the roof.”
Among the prisoners they brought were girls who had been kept eighteen even twenty days in the interrogation corridors. A girl said: our eyes hurt and our bodies was exhausted from lying on the bare cold floor Even worse was hearing the cries of those being tortured left no spirit for us. We suffered from filth and were not allowed to bathe. At nights the entire interrogation passageway was filled with prisoners, to which in daytime were added fresh prisoners, and other inmates brought from the cell blocks for questioning.
One week after my first interrogation, I was recalled again….
To be continued
Translator’s footnotes
1. Revolutionary guard
2. Team-house: where a “team” of political activists live.
3. The shroud like head-to-toe covering of women: compulsory attire for women prisoners.
4. Pedar sag: literally dog-father. A common Iranian swear word.
5. Organisation of Peoples Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI)
6. Massoud Rajavi leader of the PMOI
7. The guards try to avoid directly touching prisoners who they consider unclean.
8. Affectionate way of referring to fellow prisoners.
9. Two revolutionaries from the Organisation of Fadai’ Guerrillas of Iran imprisoned by the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK. Both were savagely tortured. Oskui was executed. Dehghani made a spectacular escape and now lives abroad
10. The twelfth Imam Mehdi is believed by Shi’ites to have been occulted in the tenth Century AD and will return to save the world.
11. Minister in the Shah’s regime who was imprisoned in Evin. He was an orthopaedic surgeon and was used by the Evin authorities to attend to fellow inmates.
12. Who at that time supported the regime.
13. Sheida Behzadi
14. The big demonstration by the Mujahedin in June 1981, which unleashed the state terror that was to last till 1983.
15. The chief religious judge in Evin
16. Person who fights against Islam
17. Meaning I denounce him as a son
18. Sakineh Mohammadi Ardehali (Zakeri)
19. Islamic outfit: loose cotton overcoat worn with trousers and scarf.
20. Hoorieh Alai’ni
21. When a Mujahedin bomb killed many leaders of the Islamic Republic Party in June 1981.