Prison Memoirs of Azam Haj-Heydari from the book The Price of Being Human – Part Fifteen
In this installment of The Price of Being Human, which chronicles her years in prison, Azam Haj-Heydari begins the fourth chapter of the book, titled ” The Battle for the Human Spirit.” She explains the theory of notorious prison chief Asadollah Lajevardi regarding PMOI prisoners, and recounts the degrading abuse she endured after being transferred to Gohardasht Prison.
At the time, Azam was a 22–23-year-old schoolteacher who had chosen the path of resistance. She spent five years imprisoned in the Temporary Judiciary Detention Center, Evin, Qezel Hesar, and Gohardasht prisons, where she was subjected to brutal torture by Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guards.
The Strategy of Isolation
It was 1982. As time went on, the authorities intensified the pressure on the prisoners who remained, determined to break them and, as they imagined, bring the PMOI to an end.
Lajevardi’s theory was simple:
“As long as the PMOI prisoners remain together, they will continue to resist. Separate them and place them in solitary confinement, and within a year there won’t be any prisoners left.”
Lajevardi lamented that the regime did not have enough solitary cells for all the prisoners. Their solution was to make prison conditions so harsh and restrictive that even the communal wards would effectively become solitary confinement.
Any form of human contact between prisoners—even exchanging greetings—was treated as a crime. Helping one another was strictly forbidden, and any violation of these rules was met with the harshest punishments and torture.
It was based on this theory that the infamous “Qiyamat Ward” (“Judgment Day Ward”) was established in Qezel Hesar Prison, along with the notorious “cages” and “coffins”—forms of prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation designed to break prisoners psychologically.
In short, Lajevardi’s objective was to strip PMOI prisoners of their humanity.
The horrific, systematic torture methods—such as the cages, the coffins, and the Maskouni Ward (The Residential Unit)[1]—were all created with this goal in mind. The regime wanted prisoners to conclude that every form of collective life, mutual support, and human connection was the source of their suffering. If they wished simply to survive their prison sentence, they had to remain completely alone. Like sheep, they were expected to watch their friends slaughtered before their eyes without caring.
But in practice, it became clear that Lajevardi had never truly understood the PMOI.
Even instinctively, we had grasped one fundamental truth: in those hellish conditions, our very physical survival depended upon our collective life.
If we managed to endure despite all that pressure, it was because we refused to abandon our shared humanity.
We knew that through torture exceeding the limits of human endurance, the executioners might succeed in breaking one individual—but they could never break everyone.
The torturer constantly tries to convince the prisoner:
“You are alone. No one is thinking about you. Everyone has forgotten you. No one hears your voice. Your friends have blamed you to save themselves. Resistance is pointless. It will only destroy you.”
But the moment a prisoner realizes they are not alone—that hearts inside and outside the prison are still beating alongside theirs—they find the strength to resist.
That is why everything we had belonged to everyone.
There were days when we had only a single apple, yet we divided that one apple among ten or fifteen people.
Each day we were given just one sugar cube for our tea. Many of the women would save theirs, collecting them together so that when someone returned from torture, too physically weak to function, we could dissolve the sugar into water and give it to her.
More than the apple or the sugar water helping someone’s body, it strengthened both the prisoner’s spirit and the collective spirit of everyone around her.
Simply knowing that, despite the torture, illness, or years without family visits, she was neither abandoned nor alone—that others would care for her wounds, defend her against the enemy’s blows, and stand beside her—gave a prisoner the strength to remain standing.
Conversely, those who broke under torture often did so not only because of unbearable physical pain, but because they succumbed to the interrogators’ psychological warfare and came to believe they had been isolated from everyone else.
That is why the executioners reacted with almost hysterical fury whenever one prisoner showed even the smallest act of kindness toward another. Such humanity directly contradicted their entire worldview. They could see with their own eyes that what hours of torture and whipping had seemingly destroyed inside one prisoner could begin to grow again through the compassion and solidarity of her fellow prisoners.
A New Prison, A New Terror
Several other women and I had been transferred from Evin to Qezel Hesar as punishment. Every day we were summoned to the prison’s administrative office for interrogation.
One night, around 10:30 p.m., Haji Davoud‘s deputy—a notorious executioner named Ahmad—came to the door of our ward and instructed one of the collaborators, whom we called “the Gestapo,” to tell me to prepare immediately for transfer.
When I reached for my belongings, Ahmad snapped:
“Don’t take anything! You don’t need possessions when you’re going to hell.”
So I was taken out into the cold with nothing at all.
They kept me in the administrative office until well after midnight, mocking me the entire time.
“Don’t be afraid. You’re only going to hell. What’s there to fear?”
“You should make your will.”
“So tell us, hypocrite, what’s in your will?”
“I bet you’ll leave your sugar cube to one hypocrite, your lunch to another one who got tortured, and your dinner to someone else!”
They burst into their disgusting laughter, hoping to provoke me.
As I listened, I found myself thinking how deeply threatened they were by the simple human relationships that existed among us. Instead of discouraging me, their mockery filled me with pride.
Sometime between three and five o’clock in the morning, Ahmad came for me. Alone, he put me into a Paykan sedan, got behind the wheel himself, and drove.
Throughout the drive he repeated:
“Make your will.”
“Sing whatever songs you want.”
“Pray for all the other hypocrites.”
“There won’t be a tomorrow.”
“You’ve only got two hours left.”
“Do whatever you want.”
For several hours they drove around the streets near Qezel Hesar. Although several vehicles were involved, they pretended I was being taken away alone.
Then they began beating me.
“Tell us what you’ve done. You were only recently transferred from Evin—why do they already want you back there? Give us the names of your hypocrite accomplices and save yourself.”
At dawn we arrived at a prison I did not recognize.
Everything looked newly built.
Blindfolded, I felt my way up the stairs with my hands against the walls. I could tell the building wasn’t even finished. The floors were still rough, littered with dirt, stones, and construction debris.
Later I learned this was Gohardasht Prison, newly completed after construction that had begun under the Shah and was finished under Khomeini.
Its roughly one thousand cells had all been filled with prisoners.
When they threw me into my cell, I noticed something terrifying:
At no hour of the day did I hear a single sound from anywhere.
What frightened me most about Gohardasht was the overwhelming feeling that I was completely alone.
Every guard in that ward was a huge, intimidating man whose face radiated hatred, cruelty, and violence. I never felt safe—not even for a moment—to sleep or even sit down.
During the entire two months I spent in that prison as punishment, I remained constantly on alert. I either paced the cell exactly as I had when I first entered or sat silently in a corner, ready for whatever might come.
Sometimes I sensed someone pacing outside my cell door.
The guards all wore sneakers so they could walk silently, hoping to catch prisoners off guard and commit whatever abuse they wished.
But I learned to recognize the sound of their footsteps.
Whenever I heard them approaching, I fixed my eyes on the inspection hatch. When the guard looked through it, he would see that I was awake and fully alert. If he had any vile intentions, I hoped he might think twice.
Even so, on two or three occasions, a depraved guard approached my cell with ill intent. Each time, I drove him away by screaming at the top of my lungs.
[1] Maskouni Ward (literally, “Residential Ward”) was a special punishment unit in Qezel Hesar Prison established under prison chief Haj Davoud Rahmani. Despite its innocuous name, it was designed to isolate, humiliate, and psychologically break political prisoners. Former prisoners have described systematic abuse, prolonged isolation, and, in many cases, sexual violence committed against women held there.
