My turn came.
Before my interrogation began, I had to spend some days in the room next to the interrogators. I had to hear the howling of the whip that tore into the prisoners flesh and screams that had no likeness to a human voice. I waited for my turn. I tried to convince myself that they would not beat me. I searched for reasons for my “innocence”. I did not know that in the Islamic government any other-thinker is potentially a “sinner”.
The first questions, about my name and details, were interspersed with beatings. They hit me on the head and back with a stick. My eyes were bound but my hand and feet were still free. With every move I made to escape the blows, I hit a wall. I cried to my dead mother for help. I probably said other things. I remember this because the interrogators made fun of me as a mother’s baby. They said these beatings are an introduction so that I will not forget where I am. Were those five days waiting, hearing the wailing, and seeing the bandaged feet from under the blindfold not enough to believe where I was?
Then the real torture began. They first bound my hands in a grip known as “ghapan”. They pushed one hand back form above the other from below. The forced them until the wrists were parallel. They handcuffed them in that position. I sat silent and immobile, answering their questions curtly. Any movement increased the pain. I was wet with sweat. The pain was not confined to my hands. I cannot say what kind of pain I was experiencing. Whatever it was, the fear of death could not compete with it. When I felt the cold of a gun barrel, with which they threatened me with death, I was indifferent. I might even have wished for it.
They then laid me down on my back, hands bound as before. They covered my head with a blanket and started whipping my legs. I was now shouting but it was a totally alien voice. This shout, more like an animal wailing, was my human response. They took even this away from me. They stuffed a rag in my mouth and a man from behind me kept it in pushed in my mouth through the blanket. I felt I was about to suffocate. But now that death was so close, I was scared. I don’t know what time elapsed. I lost consciousness. A kick woke me up. A voice was mouthing obscenities. “cover yourself up you shameless slut!” The blanket had been pulled aside and my chador was also adrift
The night I was subjected to torture, something broke in me. Part of me and my beliefs was plundered. I saw with my eyes and very essence how hateful humans can be. Powerless me shared one thing with the torturer, who was absolute power. We were both human. What energy I needed later to lessen the bitterness of this feeling, a feeling that can take one to the edge of suicide? How much love was necessary in order to trust humans again?
The next day when we were allowed to lift out blindfolds to eat our bread and cheese breakfast, I saw the familiar gaze of a friend. We had got to know each other during those days in waiting. She asked by sign language if I had said anything. I signalled back that I had nothing to say. She gestured her solidarity with her hands and smiled. I smiled back, feeling content. Perhaps it was this moment of contentment that gave me the courage so that I can now stand here to speak and write of those pains. She was executed. Her name was Susan Nikzad.
The torture had only started. In the Islamic government torture was not just for extracting information. The prisoner had to be broken. He or she had to confess to “sins” that they dictated. She had to be brainwashed and take on the mould of the hezbollah. She had to repent. Repentance was the return of the sinful from sin.
Every second of our life in prison was blighted with such lessons. Through television, video, speeches, and compulsory classes it was drummed into us that we were wicked and murderous and our deliverance now was to join the hezbollah. Any resistance was met with brutal torture.
I will allude to one punishment which may to some extent shed light on the horrendous process which leads up to a brain washed human being.
We had to spend days with eyed blindfolded, wrapped in a chador, facing the wall. On either side of us they had erected wooden walls to separate us. We were not allowed to talk. There we squatted, motionless, dawn to dusk, not even allowed the slightest movement to our limbs. Only at night were we permitted to lie down in that narrow space. Eyes bound, wrapped in the chador. By closing every sensual communication with the outside world they had broken down the barrier between life and death. We were living humans in a coffin. The total silence of that place was only broken by the guards and the prison chief cursing and humiliating. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. My life in this coffin lasted barely a month. I was recalled to Evin for more interrogation. But my friends had to stay there for months. Many lost their psychological balance and began to have delusion and hallucinate. They were dragged behind the microphone in this unnatural state to speak to other prisoners of their worthlessness and insignificance and “confess” to murder and treason. These bitter and desperate “confessions” were also relayed through loudspeakers to my friends squatting in their coffins. The words were not new. For years these testimonies were being repeated in the prison. What was new was that these words came from people who were celebrated for their resistance.
This black period lasted ten months. A handful saw it to its end and did not surrender. Yes. Humans have an amazing capacity for endurance and hidden defence mechanisms can come to play in extreme situations. As Bruno Betellheim who studied the psychology of prisoners in concentration camps observed, the study of human response in extreme conditions is totally different from the psychological criteria in normal times.
Now I want to draw attention to the relations between torture and execution. Execution, other than the physical elimination of humans, which to my mind is the greatest of human crimes, has another function. You will all have heard of the dreadful figures for executions in Iran and I do not wish to dwell on any figures today. All I want to say is that we spent every second in prison alongside death. Execution was there beside us all the time. There were those who were forced to watch the putting to death of fellow prisoners. The rattle of execution was a nightly affair for everyone incarcerated in Evin in the years 1981 and 1982. Mass shootings took place behind the wall of our prison block. One such night I was to hear the sound of the execution of my brother. My brother was executed alongside 85 others that night. We counted the single shots, after the machine gun bursts had died down.
In the summer of 1988 thousands of prisoners who were serving their sentence or had in fact completed it, but had not been freed were executed. I too spent days, with my mates in the block, awaiting death. I was threatened with death on many occasions. These threats, considering the horrendous number of executions, meant we continuously faced death. I faced death for nine years. And still do so in my nightmares.
In the land from where I come, torture is not unfamiliar. Not that people know it from museums or history books. It is from someone from their family or a disappeared neighbour. Although it is forbidden to talk of torture, everyone has heard something. In whispers or in underground literature.
I too had heard a lot about torture before I was arrested. But what I had heard or read were totally insufficient to describe what my body and sole experienced in the prisons of the Islamic Republic.
I was not alone in recovering from those days. They silenced the voice of so many of us. Many others who were freed never got the chance or have the energy to be a witness to their pains. torture and executions to disappear and the torturers and those instrumental in the crimes against humanity to be brought to justice are not only our wishes. More than that is the sole way to Prevent the torture.
Den Hag, 2001
The first questions, about my name and details, were interspersed with beatings. They hit me on the head and back with a stick. My eyes were bound but my hand and feet were still free. With every move I made to escape the blows, I hit a wall. I cried to my dead mother for help. I probably said other things. I remember this because the interrogators made fun of me as a mother’s baby. They said these beatings are an introduction so that I will not forget where I am. Were those five days waiting, hearing the wailing, and seeing the bandaged feet from under the blindfold not enough to believe where I was?
Then the real torture began. They first bound my hands in a grip known as “ghapan”. They pushed one hand back form above the other from below. The forced them until the wrists were parallel. They handcuffed them in that position. I sat silent and immobile, answering their questions curtly. Any movement increased the pain. I was wet with sweat. The pain was not confined to my hands. I cannot say what kind of pain I was experiencing. Whatever it was, the fear of death could not compete with it. When I felt the cold of a gun barrel, with which they threatened me with death, I was indifferent. I might even have wished for it.
They then laid me down on my back, hands bound as before. They covered my head with a blanket and started whipping my legs. I was now shouting but it was a totally alien voice. This shout, more like an animal wailing, was my human response. They took even this away from me. They stuffed a rag in my mouth and a man from behind me kept it in pushed in my mouth through the blanket. I felt I was about to suffocate. But now that death was so close, I was scared. I don’t know what time elapsed. I lost consciousness. A kick woke me up. A voice was mouthing obscenities. “cover yourself up you shameless slut!” The blanket had been pulled aside and my chador was also adrift
The night I was subjected to torture, something broke in me. Part of me and my beliefs was plundered. I saw with my eyes and very essence how hateful humans can be. Powerless me shared one thing with the torturer, who was absolute power. We were both human. What energy I needed later to lessen the bitterness of this feeling, a feeling that can take one to the edge of suicide? How much love was necessary in order to trust humans again?
The next day when we were allowed to lift out blindfolds to eat our bread and cheese breakfast, I saw the familiar gaze of a friend. We had got to know each other during those days in waiting. She asked by sign language if I had said anything. I signalled back that I had nothing to say. She gestured her solidarity with her hands and smiled. I smiled back, feeling content. Perhaps it was this moment of contentment that gave me the courage so that I can now stand here to speak and write of those pains. She was executed. Her name was Susan Nikzad.
The torture had only started. In the Islamic government torture was not just for extracting information. The prisoner had to be broken. He or she had to confess to “sins” that they dictated. She had to be brainwashed and take on the mould of the hezbollah. She had to repent. Repentance was the return of the sinful from sin.
Every second of our life in prison was blighted with such lessons. Through television, video, speeches, and compulsory classes it was drummed into us that we were wicked and murderous and our deliverance now was to join the hezbollah. Any resistance was met with brutal torture.
I will allude to one punishment which may to some extent shed light on the horrendous process which leads up to a brain washed human being.
We had to spend days with eyed blindfolded, wrapped in a chador, facing the wall. On either side of us they had erected wooden walls to separate us. We were not allowed to talk. There we squatted, motionless, dawn to dusk, not even allowed the slightest movement to our limbs. Only at night were we permitted to lie down in that narrow space. Eyes bound, wrapped in the chador. By closing every sensual communication with the outside world they had broken down the barrier between life and death. We were living humans in a coffin. The total silence of that place was only broken by the guards and the prison chief cursing and humiliating. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months. My life in this coffin lasted barely a month. I was recalled to Evin for more interrogation. But my friends had to stay there for months. Many lost their psychological balance and began to have delusion and hallucinate. They were dragged behind the microphone in this unnatural state to speak to other prisoners of their worthlessness and insignificance and “confess” to murder and treason. These bitter and desperate “confessions” were also relayed through loudspeakers to my friends squatting in their coffins. The words were not new. For years these testimonies were being repeated in the prison. What was new was that these words came from people who were celebrated for their resistance.
This black period lasted ten months. A handful saw it to its end and did not surrender. Yes. Humans have an amazing capacity for endurance and hidden defence mechanisms can come to play in extreme situations. As Bruno Betellheim who studied the psychology of prisoners in concentration camps observed, the study of human response in extreme conditions is totally different from the psychological criteria in normal times.
Now I want to draw attention to the relations between torture and execution. Execution, other than the physical elimination of humans, which to my mind is the greatest of human crimes, has another function. You will all have heard of the dreadful figures for executions in Iran and I do not wish to dwell on any figures today. All I want to say is that we spent every second in prison alongside death. Execution was there beside us all the time. There were those who were forced to watch the putting to death of fellow prisoners. The rattle of execution was a nightly affair for everyone incarcerated in Evin in the years 1981 and 1982. Mass shootings took place behind the wall of our prison block. One such night I was to hear the sound of the execution of my brother. My brother was executed alongside 85 others that night. We counted the single shots, after the machine gun bursts had died down.
In the summer of 1988 thousands of prisoners who were serving their sentence or had in fact completed it, but had not been freed were executed. I too spent days, with my mates in the block, awaiting death. I was threatened with death on many occasions. These threats, considering the horrendous number of executions, meant we continuously faced death. I faced death for nine years. And still do so in my nightmares.
In the land from where I come, torture is not unfamiliar. Not that people know it from museums or history books. It is from someone from their family or a disappeared neighbour. Although it is forbidden to talk of torture, everyone has heard something. In whispers or in underground literature.
I too had heard a lot about torture before I was arrested. But what I had heard or read were totally insufficient to describe what my body and sole experienced in the prisons of the Islamic Republic.
I was not alone in recovering from those days. They silenced the voice of so many of us. Many others who were freed never got the chance or have the energy to be a witness to their pains. torture and executions to disappear and the torturers and those instrumental in the crimes against humanity to be brought to justice are not only our wishes. More than that is the sole way to Prevent the torture.
Den Hag, 2001
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