Prison in Art and Literature
In the Autumn of 1981, in an Evin Prison cell with a relatively homogenous group of prisoners, we would sit around and tried to forget a while the frightening reality around us with song, poetry, memories, or jokes. In one of these nights two of the girls suddenly put on a short play. It was scenes from an interrogation, and was being acted out totally spontaneously and without preparation. The interrogator was whipping the prisoner to get her to confess. The prisoner, rolling in pain and moaning, was cunningly avoiding saying anything incriminating.
The show, instead of having a tragic effect, made us laugh. The ingenuity of the prisoner who was clutching at any lie or subterfuge to say nothing was, on the one hand, a mocking illustration of our appalling condition, and on the other the triumph of the prisoner over the interrogator.
Later, as prison regulations became more suffocating, and the tavvabs (repentant fellow prisoners) gained greater power over us, the realm of the forbidden spread. Handicraft, which signified the art of the prisoner, and any pastime or expression of joy or even laughter were forbidden. Theatre and plays became a crime and treason. And even singing, which was the occasional spice of our nights, was given the stamp of evil. These are all signs of sin, they announced, and to cleanse ourselves of sin and be led to righteousness we must pray and cry.
But the prisoner, so as not to submit to their imposed world, as a mark of respect for life and humanity and to defend his or her identity needed a substitute world. A world where there is the joy of life and the music of nature. A world where sadness did not hinder resistance. To safeguard this substitute world is not easy. The prisoner may have to go under a blanket, away from the gaze of the Pasdars (guard) and tavvabs, in order to sew a flower or a view of nature on a cloth. He or she is forced to crawl behind clothes-line in the courtyard in order to carve an image on a tiny stone or draw a picture on paper. It is thus that in prison art goes underground.
Art is punished with lashes, solitary confinement and undertakings not to do it again. The handicrafts are pillaged when cells are inspected. Nothing is permanent there. Not only their creations, but even the prisoners’ life is for ever in danger of plunder.
The prisoner who for days and weeks, patiently rubs a stone or a date pip on the washbasin mosaic knows that his or her creation has a brief life. But there are things that are worth sweat and risk. The important thing is to create. And to fill the moments. Creativity is the proof and the expression of the self. Where the prison authorities try to destroy the identity and individuality through torture, repression and brain washing, the prisoner will seek something to prove themselves and create his or her own substitution. This substitute world takes on different forms of resistance. To turn to art and create a work was one form of resistance, a challenge with a predominantly individual flavour.
In the prison art form, nature has a lively presence. The sharp and far-flying imagination of the prisoner, discovers the beauty hidden in nature and recreates it on a piece of bone, stone or cloth. Perhaps the recourse to nature, or more accurately to the memory of nature, is their way of escaping the realities of prison, and even from the human beings who had invented these dark holes. Nature is soothing as it is blameless in creating these blacknesses.
The handiworks of prisoners are an image of their days. They echo silent voices, and the imprint of tales that must not be forgotten. Birds and poppy are symbols of those executed. And a poem knitted onto cloth carries their message and the pains of being separated from them.
Those prison plays and arts were a momentary escape from time, an effort to push the present out of your mind. But Art and Literature outside of prison is a defiance of forgetfulness. What we write now, will take us to visit and think about prison and some tales from there, and to encourage us not to forget the past. That play in Evin mocked reality in order to overcome it and its message, without being consciously looking for a message, was the victory of the prisoner over the torturer. And now the recreating the past, show up the historic defeat of the torturer.
Paradox
Prison, torture and execution are there to suppress and eliminate opponents and to instil fear in society. At one level everyone must know that prisons and torture exist, yet to talk or write about them is taboo. Everyone must feel the intimidating shadow of prison, but it must not be said or written that prisons exist, and political prisoners. Prisons must have tall impervious walls, so that whatever happens inside will remain hidden from all – yet all have to feel the presence of these walls.
Memory, however, is a denial of this elimination and distortion. Memory is the enemy of dictators. Writing, which inside was but a dream, after release immortalises memories. By jotting down our memories we have transformed them into a memory pool for all. Reminiscences, initially an individual process, once in print can become collective memories.
Today the issue of prison forms a large part of Iranian literature in exile. These memories, anecdotes, stories, drawing, and researched on prison life have opened a new literary chapter. The prisoner has become the hero of stories. This is a “hero” that carries the face of its epoch. He or she is the prisoner of ta’zir and hadd (sharia’ punishments such as lashes) – both a hero of resistance and a prisoner of repentance.
Here I want to pause on the prison memoir. This aspect of prison literature, because of its importance as a document, as well as the warm reception it often receives from readers, has received particular attention.
The writings of the survivors of the Islamic Republic have differ with their predecessors. The writers are not theoreticians or outstanding personalities of their era. They were mostly unknown, one of the hundreds of thousands who tasted the prison and lash of the Islamic rulers. Most were writing for the first time, writing mostly as “amateurs”. I too was an amateur, as I began to write. And unlike before, the writings of women played a sizeable part.
One could make a further observation on the writings of this generation, we notice a transformation of the way these writers saw their past, and themselves. For the first time the individuality of the narrator has a more active presence. In the memories from the generation of 40’s individuality had no place, and instead of individual responsibility, mistakes were ascribed to others. And in the few memoirs we have of the next generation of militants –in the Shah’s prisons in the 70’s - the individuality of the narrator is also totally eliminated. These were not strictly memoirs, but works written purely to provoke a response and expose the Shah’s regime.
The terrible social and political experience of the years after the revolution, the questioning of much of earlier ideals, and the defeat of ideological thinking has caused major changes in today’s generation of militants. The bitter outcome is loneliness, and doubts. The individual is bewildered and tries to substitute their individuality, the “I”, to replace the “we”. In today’s memoir writing we see efforts that reveal an individual prepared to take responsibility for their acts and behaviour.
Picture of history
Writing of memoirs is a form of literature. But from another angle it cannot be compared to the novel. Its materials are not imagination or free flow of thought, but realities. If the effort of a novelist is to create a story by giving imagination a free range, the writer of memoirs is desperate to record things as close to reality as possible. Some of these events belong to the distant past and take new life under the pen of the narrator. So memoir writing is the recounting of a picture of history, that part which official historians try to eliminate.
The real core of the memoir is “I”. The writer tries to show the “I” in the context of events, tries to observe the “I” from the outside, distancing himself or herself from it and then paint it for the judgement of the reader. For the reader, events will become palpable when they learn how the narrator has lived them. It is then that the reader can place themselves in place of the narrator and compare themselves with him or her, and ponder.
Vindicate the “I”
Here the issue that comes up is why do we write? One of the decisive motivation in writing about prison is political exposure and a feeling of responsibility to those who has been murdered without having a chance to defend themselves. We, Yesterdays’ prisoner, had witnessed all those crimes and feel a heavy duty and weight on our shoulders. A duty to project their silenced voice and their fate to the ears of others.
But if we pose the question differently and ask what gives yesterdays’ prisoner the guts to write, then political exposure and a sense of responsibility towards those executed is not a convincing answer. There has to be other motivation so that yesterday’s prisoner will dare not just to make a political report, but to recount events from their own angle. Perhaps a reflection on the issue of individuality and the feeling of distinctness in prison will take us closer to the answer.
Torture and prison has a dual effect on the individuality of a person. The purpose of the tyrants is to defeat the person and obliterate their identity and individuality. But torture and prison have anther consequence which is contrary to the aims of imprisonment. That is the feeling of distinction and pride.
Alongside the deprivations and pain, the prisoner feels pride in standing up single handed to the huge apparatus of power. They are being tortured because the torturer and their apparatus fear them. The “I”, who perhaps carries thousands of wounds and humiliation from the past, weak and with hands tied has sent shivers down the spine of the enemy. This brings a sense of worth and self-confidence.
This feeling is apparently stronger in women whose individuality in the family and within society is more threatened and repressed than men. These conflicting emotions – the repressed individuality at one end and the feeling of pride on the other- are, in my view, one of our incentives, or in other words, our need to portray our prison existence. We may or may not be aware of these emotions which may unconsciously drive us. Perhaps the writing of prison memoirs is a battle with the wounds that are left from subjugation and humiliation of the “I”. By writing, we are trying to prove ourselves. Just as in prison by rubbing that stone or bone against the mosaic, or needling that cloth we tried to prove ourselves.
The other inducement for writing the story of prison is the feeling that narrator has had a special and unique journey. The object is the life of prison full of secrets and codes. He or she has experienced things that others could only with difficulty imagine. But while this feeling of distinction and singularity can encourage him or her to record prison life, it is by no means a pleasurable feeling. Pain is mixed with loneliness. To live among a group or in a society that does not know one’s bitter experience, and may not even be interested to hear them, can isolate the writer.
So writing of the forbidden world of prison is also a form of sympathy seeking or a defiance of loneliness and isolation. John Amery, a writer and survivor of
So perhaps writing for us is also a way of fighting this feeling. We write so as not to admit we don’t have a place in this world?
Monireh Baradaran, March 2009,
p r i s o n
literature and cultural politics in the middle east
March 5-7, 2009
A literary conference hosted in New York City
by the
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