Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran Read Free

the blindfold. From the waist down and slightly obscured. I have described you in detail in my novel
The Cat.
7 Get the novel and read it. You see, you have even entered literature with me. That was a novel, but this is the truth.
    You said: “Spying. Coup d’etat. No beating about the bush. Tell us everything you know.”
    I adjust myself on the seat. I follow the Party’s instruction; I have come to believe it myself: “Firstly, we are not spies ... and then ... I am not going to answer these questions. They are against the constitution.”
    And I see stars. No, that’s an old-fashioned way of putting it. Fireworks go off in my head. You say: “That was the first article of the constitution. Now lift up your blindfold slightly.” I do as I’m told. You open your military coat. I see the vague outline of a pistol. “And this is the final article, but before we get to this one there will be lots of other articles along the way ...”
    I understand that
your
constitution is different from the Islamic Republic’s. As you utter these words you position yourself behind me: “Now get up. Think about it ... until tomorrow morning. Remember, we know everything. Spying. Coup d’etat. Just write about those.”
    The sound of shuffling feet moves away. The door opens and then closes. Complete silence.
    A pigeon is cooing outside the window. I take off my blindfold and put on my glasses. The cream-coloured walls and I have been left alone. I don’t know yet that years will pass and the walls and I will be alone. I hear a blowing sound in my head. My cheek is burning. Someone inside me keeps asking questions but is not given any answers.
    “There’s been a coup? But he was wearing the uniform of the Revolutionary Guards Corps? Could they be working for the Americans? Could it be that the Party’s analysis of the situation, its instructions, have been mistaken? Could it be? A coup? Have they staged a coup themselves and are now trying to stick it on us? Me, a spy? This must be the work of the CIA ...”
    My ears, which have been learning to do the job of my eyes, are waiting for a voice to come for me and take me away. My heart is naïve, it is still waiting for me to be released.
    “By the way, where is my wife right now?”
    The silence is complete. That pigeon is cooing again, or maybe it’s a different pigeon, one of the many pigeons I become acquainted with during my three-year stay in Moshtarek prison. 8 These pigeons build their nests in one of the most horrifying torture chambers of the world. When spring arrives, they pay no attention to the cries from the torture chambers, or to the men and women who are taken away at dawn to be hanged. They lay eggs. The eggs hatch.
    The only sound that breaks the silence is the bird’s cooing. For the first time, I stand up cautiously and walk a few steps. I learn to listen out for his voice so that when I hear it approach I can throw myself on to the chair and sit down, facing the wall. As I sit there waiting, in my mind I keep replaying the morning of my arrest.
    Early in the morning, the doorbell rang. Three short rings, one long one. I looked out of the window. It was Fereydoun, the man in charge of my Party cell. I opened the door and went down the steps. He was frightened. Pale. He was trembling while we talked.
    “The arrests have started. Inform everyone you can,” he said, and left. His shoulders were shaking, either out of fright or because he was crying.
    I had seen him a few days earlier. When I had rung his bell the usual three times, two short rings and one long one, I was surprised to find that he didn’t come down as soon as he heard that special ring. Instead one of his daughters opened the door. She went back inside and it took a long time for him to appear. He called me into the courtyard. We talked next to his parked Toyota. His daughters were watching us from the balcony. I was surprised. He gave me a package and said: “Don’t come back here.