Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran by Houshang Asadi Read Free Book Online Page A

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 theblanket. 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 Muhammad 18 or Ali 19 ?”
    “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.”
    I sit down, facing the wall. I remove the blindfold and put on my glasses. I’m used to flossing my teeth after lunch, a long-established habit. My teeth are in desperate need of flossing. My ears are listening out for you. Sounds are coming from a distance. A telephone is ringing somewhere. There’s no sound of the pigeon. The sound of shuffling approaches and moments later, I am blindfolded and facing the wall and you, Brother Hamid, are standing behind me. You hit my head with the pile of interrogation papers.
    “Gobbled up your food? Lift the blindfold, useless wimp!”
    I lift the blindfold. You place the papers in front of me. You have drawn thick red lines under large sections of my report. Or maybe it’sthe others who drew the lines, your colleagues, who