Prison memoirs of Azam Haj-Heydari from the book The Price of Being Human – Part Three
In the third installment of Azam Haj-Heydari’s prison memoirs, published in the book The Price of Being Human, the author recounts her temporary release on June 20, 1981, her escape from her father, and her eventual capture by her own brother, who worked at the regime’s prosecutor’s office.
At the time, Azam was a young teacher of 22–23 who had stepped onto the path of political struggle. She would go on to spend five years in prison, including time in the Temporary Judiciary Detention Center, Evin, Qezel Hesar, and Gohardasht prisons, where she was tortured by Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guards.
Escape from My Father
After two days in that committee detention center, when the interrogations and beatings produced no result, they finally let me out at around 11:30 in the morning on June 20. They dropped me off from their vehicle on Abbas-Abad Street in northern Tehran and drove away.
If they had known that only a few hours later the Mojahedin would stage their historic June 20 demonstration in Tehran, with nearly half a million people taking part, they certainly would not have released me.
When I was freed, the bruises and swelling were still clearly visible on my face. As I walked through the streets, patrol guards stared at me suspiciously. Twice they stopped me and demanded to know which clash I had been involved in. They were ready to arrest me again, but I told them that two days earlier I had been in a car accident and was just returning from the doctor. That story saved me from being detained again, and I headed back toward my neighborhood and our house.
Our area was considered one of the strongholds of the IRGC and Basij forces. They had been watching me for a long time, and they kept stopping me to question where I had been and why my face was bruised and bleeding. Each time I repeated the same story I had invented.
The absurdity of the situation almost made me laugh. These regime agents could savagely beat you without any reason or evidence, smashing your face and body. Yet not only was there no authority you could turn to for justice or complaint, but those same wounds became “evidence” against you—an excuse to arrest and torture you again. In the end, it was you who had to prove that your injuries were not the result of torture.
Eventually I reached our house. When I walked in, I was confronted with the grim face of my father, who seemed furious about my disappearance over the previous days. But when he saw my condition, he said nothing.
Still, something in his silence—and in the look in his eyes—made me uneasy. I sensed that he had already made a terrible decision.
The moment he put down the Quran and stood up, I ran upstairs to the roof. From there I moved quickly across the rooftops of neighboring houses until I reached the last house in our alley. I climbed down into that house and briefly explained the situation to the owner, a middle-aged woman.
She was outraged by my father’s behavior and his cruelty toward me. She embraced me, took me into her room, and offered me hot tea. Seeing my swollen and bruised face, she refused to let me leave alone. She said she knew that the ruthless Guards, who had just violently suppressed the day’s demonstrations, would certainly arrest me if they saw me in that condition, and no one could predict what might happen to me afterward.
So, she kept me there for a while and then personally helped me leave the neighborhood safely. She accompanied me to the place I wanted to go and then returned home.
From that day on, I never returned to my family’s house. To avoid arrest by the IRGC, I spent each night in the home of a friend or relative. But one by one those places eventually became unsafe or unusable.
Betrayed by My Brother
Finally, on July 14, 1981, I found myself with nowhere left to go. The home of the friend where I had been staying had just been raided by the IRGC. With no safe place left, I spent the day wandering aimlessly through the streets, simply trying to pass the time.
Several times that day the Guards chased me.
The person who seemed most determined to capture me, and who was guiding the Guards in their search, was my own brother, who worked at the regime’s prosecutor’s office.
Several times I managed to escape him. But since I no longer had anywhere to stay, after hours of wandering through the streets, and half an hour past midnight, I finally took refuge in my aunt’s house.
Less than an hour later, my brother walked into that house.
It was obvious he had come looking for me. As soon as he confirmed that I was there, he quickly left.
Barely half an hour after he left, while I was still unsure what to do, the house was surrounded by Guards.
They attacked so violently, pounding on the door with rifle butts, that my elderly aunt, terrified by the sudden assault in the middle of the night, suffered a heart attack and collapsed.
Eventually we opened the door. The Guards stormed inside, handcuffed and blindfolded me, and took me away to the Judiciary Prison.
The day before, the Guards had also raided our own home. They arrested my sister Mahin, a 45-year-old woman with two children, claiming they only wanted to ask her a few questions and obtain information about my whereabouts and about my other sister, Najmeh. In reality, they had taken her hostage.
They handcuffed her and transferred her to prison. Even later, after they arrested both me and Najmeh, they still did not release Mahin. She remained imprisoned for two years in Judiciary Prison and later in Evin under extremely harsh conditions, left in legal limbo while her children were left without their mother.
To be continued…
