Letters to My Torturer Page 4

  Ameneh, my paternal grandmother, had fled to Tehran with her two sons and two daughters from the opposite side of Iran. Iran is like a big sleeping cat lying in the heart of Asia. She is the remnant of the grand and ancient Persian Empire that, 2,500 years ago, ruled almost two thirds of the known world. Azerbaijan, my father’s birthplace, is in the northwest; on a map of Iran it is by the cat’s ears. Its high peaks are covered with snow, and the valleys that spread out between the mountains look like a mini Switzerland. In this dream-like landscape, my maternal grandfather owned land and water that had been handed down to him by his ancestors. Ameneh Khanum, his first legally wedded spouse, who died many years later in Tehran at the age of 103, recalled her husband carrying a gun over his shoulder, leaving home to help Sattar Khan, one of the heroes of the constitutional revolution of Iran14 in the first decade of the twentieth century. Sattar Khan was an ordinary man, a horse thief, who ended up saving the revolution. An era of revolution had begun, and my birth coincided with its final years.

  When my paternal grandfather, Isa Khan, died fighting Reza Shah’s troops, Ameneh took charge of his affairs. She gave both his lawful wives and concubines their share and even provided his mistresses, who had suddenly turned up from left, right and centre, with their share. Since the rest of Isa Khan’s possessions had been confiscated by the government, Ameneh hid her children inside sacks of wheat and descended from the high mountains in a carriage bound for Tehran.

  Iran was going through a period of turmoil in the year of my birth. The very night of my birth, 13 January 1950, was cold and terrifying. My mother, worried that she may not be able to feed her newly born child, wanted to smother me with a pillow. My father talked her out of it. A few nights later my father, who had become exasperated by my ceaseless crying, lost his temper and threw my swaddled body into the cold pool water. My mother saved me and rushed me to a doctor. I was blue and shivering uncontrollably. The doctor said: “He’s finished. Give him some watermelon juice. If that doesn’t work, put him in a corner and leave him to die.”

  My mother and father set off in search of a watermelon in the icy coldness of the winter night. My father eventually broke into a fruit shop and stole one. They dribbled the juice into my mouth and waited for me to die. But death didn’t come. Death, who had prepared himself to accompany this about-to-die-child, would only clear the pathway to life at the very last minute. A child whose mother, against her husband’s wishes, had picked a name for him from Ferdowsi’s epic Shahnameh, a classic similar to Homer’s Odyssey. My father had intended me to become a Muhammad, but my mother’s resistance ensured that I became a Houshang. Again and again this child would find himself inhaling the air of death. The reason why this death, which had seemed so certain, had been delayed, would remain unclear.

  One day, I asked my mother: “Why did you name me Houshang?”

  She laughed and said: “Because you are a smart boy.”

  She was referring to the meaning of my name. I, who had just become interested in reading and books, replied: “Houshang is the name of the second of the ancient Iranian kings. He discovered fire, and the Iranians are his descendants.”

  Overwhelmed with joy, my mother started kissing my face, never imagining that years after her death I’d be forced to account for my name in one of Iran’s most horrifying prisons.

  Unlike my mother, my father was bad-tempered. In the 1920s, he was an active member of the shoemakers’ syndicate in Tehran. At home, he followed the established patriarchal traditions of the time. On Friday nights, he recited the Qur’an15 in a loud voice until the early hours of the morning. During the rest of the week, he read us the catchlines that were printed at the bottom of the newspaper’s pages.

  The child, weak and on the verge of death from the very beginning of its life, felt a peculiar attraction for these newspaper stories, but didn’t like those endless nights of Qur’an recitations. From opposite sides of Iran, both my grandfathers had married multiple wives. Lust for women ran in their veins but in me, their first grandchild, desire had turned into love. And love arrived on moonlit nights, and merged with geranium flowers, and the moonlight and the fish, before disappearing under the water. I’d stop breathing. I’d push myself so far forward that I’d come close to falling off the rooftop. I’d clutch the roof edge until she resurfaced.

  Linked to politics from birth, I was almost four years old when I took part in the 28 Mohrdad demonstrations (19 August 1953), the Anglo-American sponsored military coup d’etat against Muhammad Mossadeq16 who, as prime minister, had attempted to overthrow the Shah’s government. The crowds were walking through our neighbourhood, shouting slogans against Mossadeq. I had somehow ended up joining them, and marched along with them. They shouted abusive slogans and I repeated them. Upon hearing this story from my mother, my father, who had gone out onto the streets to search for me and had returned home empty-handed, hit me on the ear and so gave me my first political slap.

  And in primary school, I attended two demonstrations, one for and one against the regime. As with the first demonstration, these also happened without my being fully aware of what I was doing. The first one was on the birthday of Reza Pahlavi, the Shah’s eldest son. The class had been dismissed and the kids rushed into the playground to celebrate the birthday of someone who is now on the other side of the same world of exile from where I am writing these lines. The second demonstration was the Teachers’ Day protest that ended in violence and the killing of a teacher at the hands of the police. It was already evening when I arrived home from the protest, covered in dust and with my clothes torn. My father was waiting for me by the door. He gave me a hard slap on the head and said: “Go back to wherever you’ve been. I’ll break your legs if you come back.”

  He slammed the door and left. How was I supposed to know that he had been dismissed that very day? His many love affairs had finally affected his chance of getting into the oil business. That day, the head of the National Iranian Oil Company had walked into his office and found my father right in the middle of making love to a woman. My father’s response to the man’s objections had been to slap him, and he had been summarily sacked on the spot and sent home. Back home he had discovered my disappearance and had scoured the whole neighbourhood with my tearful mother, searching for me.

  The distraught boy, thirsty and starving, was sobbing when the door to the house was quietly opened later that evening. It was her. She beckoned me with her hand. She left the door ajar, and disappeared. I slipped into the courtyard, but the only hiding place I could think of was the water reservoir. It was dark and the old steps were steep and worn. Water was dripping down the walls. The further down you went, the wetter and darker it became. I was touching the wall with my hand and carefully feeling my way down the steps. When I reached the large water-tap, I turned my head and saw the sky above the stairs. It looked like a blue stain. With difficulty I turned on the tap, and placed my head underneath it. I drank my fill. I put my school bag on the floor and sat on it. I was shaking and frightened. Suddenly, everything went dark. The blue stain had disappeared. But then it reappeared, looking like a new moon, and I saw a shadow that was slipping and moving in my direction.

  What if it’s my father?

  I was dying of fear. No. The smell was saying, no. The smell that was wafting down the stairs was saying no. The shadow reached me. Called me. Took my hand in the dark and placed an object into the palm of my hand. A bunch of grapes that still felt hot from the sun. Amid silence and darkness, she pulled off a grape and popped it into my mouth.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have one condition. Do not call me Abgie.”

  “Okay Angie.”

  At first, the voices came from far away. They circled at the bottom of the mouldy brick steps and then broke into a thousand pieces.

  “Aaangie!”

  Then, beams of light bounced down the stairs. Suddenly, we found ourselves immersed in a cacophony of sound and movem
ent. A pair of hands grabbed us and dragged us up the stairs. Angie was being dragged ahead of me, and I was frightened for her. They made us stand by the pool, under the light of the lanterns. Everyone seemed to be there. First, they looked us over and checked our clothes. I closed my eyes. A pair of hands suddenly grabbed me and threw me into the pool. It was my father, administering my punishment. I fell deep into the water and cried out. I paddled with my arms and legs, trying to scramble out, but as soon as I left the water and reached the air, a hand would push me back in again.

  When the time came for school, I went to Mofeed primary school, which was in a long and dusty road. I still miss the neighbour’s pomegranate trees whose branches, heavy with fruit, hung over the wall around the school playground. The headmaster would mercilessly beat us with the torn off branches of those trees, but we loved eating the stolen pomegranates.

  In those years, reading became my main passion, and I developed a love of writing. I was never good at maths but excelled at essay writing. I would discuss all essay topics with my mother and she would inject into my mind her pure, rural take on the subject mixed with poetry and famous sayings, and inspired I would rush off to write up my essays. One of these topics was “The value of water”. I wrote the essay in the usual way with a rural flavour. This was my fifth year at the primary school and our teacher was Mr Ismaili. He was short with a red face and I have always wished that I could see him again. I don’t know why, but he called my name first to go up to the front of the class by the blackboard to read out my essay. When I finished reading it, I expected his usual encouraging words. Instead a big slap on the face threw me off my feet. He shouted:

  “Sit down. I’m giving you a zero for this.”

  In tears I asked why.

  He said: “So that next time, you don’t get your parents to write your essays for you.”

  I sat down and, still crying, kept repeating that I had written it all myself. Mr Ismaili came and stood right over my head and said “If you’re telling the truth, write it again.” And so I did, there and then, very quickly, but I wrote about water in a slightly different way. Mr Ismaili read the essay and gave me another big smack on the face saying, “You’ve memorized this one too.”

  I started crying again and said: “I wrote it myself.”

  He said: “If you’re not lying, then write it again ... ”

  This time I wrote the essay in the classical style of Sa’di’s Gulestan. Although at that stage I didn’t really know much about the different prose styles, I had an instinctive feel for them. Mr Ismaili read it. His eyes filled with tears and he asked me to stay behind after school. I did and he came with me to our house. My mother, seeing the red finger marks on my face, became an angry tiger. Mr Ismaili started by apologizing and finished by saying: “Your son will be a great writer.”

  And that’s all I wanted to be. I wanted to become a writer, nothing else. I also wrote poems in those days, in the traditional classical style my mother was so fond of. I had several notebooks filled with these poems, which were thrown into a sack and taken away when my house was ransacked in 2003 by the public prosecutor on the grounds that I was a master spy.

  Chapter 3

  Kissing the Hand of Khomeini

  One day they came to collect Khomeini from the house of a wealthy businessman in the north of Tehran to send him into exile. I, who ended up becoming a prisoner of his regime and was subjected to the worst kinds of torture at the hands of his supporters, set off to his house and kissed his hand, without knowing who he was.

  And I am in the process of writing my third letter to you.

  Tehran, winter 1983

  The sound of shuffling slippers approaches. It’s you, Brother Hamid. It has taken me very little time to learn to identify which one of the shuffling sounds is yours. I’ve put on my blindfold. I see your hand picking up the papers.

  “Go for lunch while I read these. You better not have written dirty cunt limericks.”

  You have a peculiar way of saying “dirty cunt limericks”; it’s a new addition to your vocabulary. So far, I have picked up two phrases from you: “useless wimp” and “dirty cunt limericks”.

  You leave. Immediately after you leave, someone else comes in and takes me away. Stairs. Door. Courtyard. Two stairs. Watch out. Eight. The block. The blanket. No, this time the guard is making me enter one of the lower section blocks that have been separated from the main corridor by a wall. Each part of the lower section consists of three or four cells. He opens the door to a cell and throws me in. Cell number fifteen, block number two. I turn around. It’s a familiar Moshtarek prison cell, around 2.5 metres long and 1.5 metres wide. The ceiling is very high, with a bare light bulb hanging from it. Triple glazed window, barbed wired, and divided in the middle to make two panels. I put on my glasses and look around. I see the light and the snow that has settled behind the window and the loudspeaker on the cell wall opposite. High up. Out of reach.

  The door suddenly opens.

  “Put on your blindfold. Come on.”

  I put on the blindfold. We set off. No, he has grabbed my sleeve and is dragging me behind him. When we emerge from the Eight into the courtyard, you are already there, standing in the open space and suddenly hitting me around my head with something heavy. It’s the thick pile of paper. You are saying: “Useless wimp. What are these dirty limericks? You have one more chance before I crack open your mouth. Spy!”

  There’s silence. The sound of shuffling fades. The guard takes me back. I tell him I need the bathroom. We walk between the blankets. We go to the toilet. I wash my face. I put on my glasses. A newspaper has been left abandoned in a corner of the room. I pick it up. My eyes fall on a section of the arrest report:

  Our reporter has discovered that the spies who have been arrested by the Revolutionary Guards Corps had links with the KGB espionage network. According to this report, a well-known figure by the name of Nurrudin Kianuri, who was the First Secretary of the Tudeh Party, is among the individuals who have been spying on behalf of foreigners.

  The newspaper is dated 6 February 1983.

  I don’t know whether the newspaper has been left there on purpose or by accident. I re-read the report. The guard is knocking on the door. I throw the paper down. The guard takes me back to the blanket. A bowl of dried-up food and a piece of stale bread is awaiting me.

  I swallow the food with difficulty. My thoughts are scattered in every direction. I keep wondering where my wife is.

  Words are entering my mind, as if hitting me. “Useless wimp. Dirty limericks. Spy. I’ll crack open your mouth.” I still can’t work out if there has been an American coup or we have been imprisoned by our own “allies”. I sense that someone is watching me. I lift my head. The round opening on the iron door is open and a pair of eyes is staring at me. As soon as I return the gaze, the cardboard opening shuts again. A thud. The door opens. A large scruffy head appears. A weathered, wrinkled face, thick hair. A voice with a strong Turkish accent asks:

  “You are eating, right?”

  “Yes, Haj Aqa.”17

  “Have you performed your prayers yet?”

  I don’t respond. I realized that he was going to become my prayer instructor. He was going to teach me how to prostrate myself before God’s throne. He was going to tell me about Islamic justice. He was going to explain to me why peeing while standing up is a serious sin. Thud. The door closes again. I am still busy, wolfing down the food with peculiar enthusiasm, when the door opens again. I’m reminded of an earlier imprisonment during the Shah’s time when I shared a cell with Ayatollah Khamenei, now Iran’s supreme leader and onetime president, and we used to give nicknames to the prison guards. I now give nicknames to the prison guards of his government. This one is going to be “God’s father” because he obviously doubts the Muslim credentials of God himself. He asks: “Which one is Houshang?”

  “I am.”

  “Are you Houshang?”

  For a moment, I doubt myself. Maybe there
is someone else in the cell. I automatically look around me. Then I say: “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Put on your blindfold and follow me.”

  I put on the blindfold and put my glasses in my shirt pocket.

  “Take this.”

  An object hits my hand. I grab it. It’s a stick; the guard is holding the other end. This is to prevent him from touching me and so “polluting” himself. He sets off, taking me along the usual route. He asks me out of the blue: “Why did you call yourself Houshang?”

  “I didn’t call myself Houshang. My parents named me, Haj Aqa.”

  “Why didn’t you call yourself Muhammad18 or Ali19?”

  “I am not the one who’s responsible for my name.”

  “Have you got any qualifications?”

  “Yes, Haj Aqa. Journalism.”

  “Why haven’t you studied the Qur’an? Or The Way of Eloquence?”20

  I answer: “I have read it, Haj Aqa. But my professional training is in journalism.”

  “Did you study in a newspaper office?”

  “No Haj Aqa. I went to university.”

  “Why didn’t you go to a mosque?”

  My feet have completely frozen during the short walk through the courtyard. Door. Stair. Right turn. Door. That same room.

  “Sit down until your interrogator arrives.”