Prison Memoirs of Azam Haj-Heydari from the book The Price of Being Human — Part Nineteen
In this nineteenth installment of Azam Haj-Heydari’s prison memoirs, published in The Price of Being Human, she continues recounting her bitter experiences during the seven and a half months she spent in the Cage Ward, where she was subjected to relentless psychological and mental abuse and torture by the regime’s executioners.
At the time, Azam was a young teacher of 22 or 23 who had embarked on the path of struggle. She spent five years in the Judiciary’s Temporary Detention Center, Evin, Gohardasht, and Ghesl-Hesar prisons, where she was subjected to brutal torture by Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guards.
The Rule of Absolute Silence
In the Cage Ward, a rule of absolute silence prevailed. We were strictly forbidden to speak. Whenever we needed something or wanted to ask for anything, we had to raise our hands and keep them raised until a guard or an informer noticed and came over to us.
He would come over, bring his filthy mouth close to the prisoner’s ear, and say, “Speak quietly!” If our voice rose even slightly, they would attack us with fists and kicks and report that “this hypocrite is trying to use this as a way of telling the person next to her that she is here.” Then Haji and his henchman Ahmad would show up, and the prisoner would be subjected to horrific blows from fists, kicks, and cables.
Worst of all was smashing the prisoner’s head and face against the wall. As they put it, they would “set you straight,” so you would never again get the idea of asking for anything!
Before distributing food, they would strike us once on the head. That meant: Food! Eat! But most of the time they would not give me any food. They would simply walk past me, and I could only tell from the movement and the clatter of dishes that food was being distributed. After the distribution was over, they would say, “Who didn’t get food? Raise your hand.” Since I would not raise my hand, they would deny me food on many days.
They would say, “You hypocrite, one day you’re going to need us!” They wanted to bring me to my knees through food, and I refused to let them do it. During the nine months I spent there—seven and a half months in the cages and roughly two months in quarantine—they used this method against me in an attempt to break me.
As a result of being deprived of food and suffering from hunger, I became so weak toward the end that when they came to take me to prayer and pulled on my chador to make me stand up, I could not get up. My arms and legs had become stiff and powerless from sitting for so long and from lack of food. I could not stand on my own. They would force me to my feet, and as soon as I stood, I would fall face-first onto the floor. Then the informers and guards would burst into laughter and say, “The heroine is breaking!”
Haji Davoud, the executioner, would also say, “I’ll keep you here until you die! You’ll never leave this place as a Mojahed who has endured torture. I won’t let you become a heroine.” He would laugh and say, “I’m the hero! I’m the one who brings you hypocrites to your knees!”
I remembered the day when Khamenei’s brother came to visit our ward, Ward 8, with a delegation. Mother Effat Shabestari, who looked to be around 65, was among us. All her joints were affected by arthritis and she could barely walk, so she had remained in her cell at the far end of the ward and had not come out.
One of the men accompanying Khamenei’s brother, who apparently was related to Mother Effat, taunted her, saying, “You think you’re such a lion? Come over here and talk!” He forced her to leave her cell and make her way to the cell at the entrance of the ward.
Because of her arthritis—and because she had received no medication or treatment whatsoever—Mother Effat could barely walk. She even fell as she was making her way there. Once again, the mercenaries who had supposedly come with the pretense of addressing prisoners’ complaints laughed and began mocking and taunting her: “You thought you were such a lion. How come you can’t even walk now?”
Despite her extremely poor physical condition, Mother Effat truly was a lion in spirit. There, in my heart, I answered them on her behalf: Go ahead and laugh, you idiots! Yes, I fall. I’ll fall ten more times if I have to, but I will not surrender! In the end, I will be the winner and you will be the losers. You are doomed to defeat.
When I fell there and the executioners laughed, I remembered that whole scene and what I had told myself that day. I repeated it in my heart: Yes, I fall, but I will not surrender! Let’s see who ends up defeated and who emerges victorious!
This went on around the clock for more than seven months. During all that time, we had no control over anything and were not permitted to do anything—not go to the toilet, not eat, not pray, nothing. Every moment of the day and night, we had to sit motionless and silently, blindfolded, squatting in our cages. We were not even allowed to lean against the cage wall. If we did, the wall would fall onto the head of the prisoner beside us, and we would be beaten and struck with cables.
During the day, we were not allowed to sleep or even doze off. The slightest sign of sleep or drowsiness, just like the slightest sound—even an involuntary sneeze or cough—was interpreted as a signal to the others and would bring down heavy blows from Haji, the guards, and their treacherous collaborators, or lashes from their whips.
At midnight they would tell us to sleep. The cages were so short that, at 157 centimeters tall, I could not fit properly inside mine. Whenever I tried to put my head down, it would rest against the metal bars at the edge of the two beds that had been welded together, and the sharp edge of the metal would dig into my head.
When they did allow us to sleep, we had to sleep in our clothes, with our chadors and blindfolds still on. But that was precisely when the cable beatings began. After midnight, Haji Davoud and his henchman Ahmad would come into the cage wards carrying cables, to give us our daily quota of beatings!
Starting at midnight, they would turn on the radio and raise the volume as high as possible so that we could not sleep. They did this every night. At first, it drove me crazy. I couldn’t cope with it because after the exhaustion of the day and all the psychological pressure, I desperately wanted to be left alone for at least a few hours at night so I could sleep.
But I had to turn every weapon the enemy used to break me into something positive for myself. I realized that this gave me a very good opportunity to collect and store information that I could think about during the day.
For example, by listening to the Friday sermons that were broadcast each day from different cities, I could keep up with the news. Fridays were especially useful because they broadcast the Tehran Friday prayers, and I could gather a great deal of information from them. I was so happy about this new opportunity that sleep would disappear completely. My mind became sharp, trying to figure out how I could make use of every program that was broadcast.
From verses of the Qur’an or passages from the Nahj al-Balagha that they occasionally broadcast, to the poems recited on the Rah-e Shab program, to the Friday sermons of the prayer leaders, to the Work and Worker program, which gave glimpses into the misery of ordinary people. There were also programs about addiction and narcotics and other subjects.
Some of the programs were genuinely ridiculous, and sometimes I would lie there laughing out loud. At other times, the six o’clock morning broadcast of Work and Worker would contain news and accounts of the painful conditions faced by workers and other hard-working people. These became valuable material for me to think about during the day and a source of motivation to resist.
I learned how, during the day and at suitable moments, to sleep while remaining seated, without letting the guards or informers notice, and in this way make up for the lack of sleep during the night.
Food was not served at any fixed time either. They gave us food whenever they felt like it, and they took us to prayer or to the toilet whenever they chose. Normally, they took us to the toilet three times a day, but sometimes even that did not happen. And when they did take us, they would not give us even a minute. The moment we entered, they would open the door deliberately to harass us and say, “Hypocrite, your time is up!”
I had become ill from the extreme pressure and stress, and even during that one minute I was sometimes unable to do anything. As a result, I began suffering from severe spasms. The pain in different parts of my body, caused by hours of sitting continuously in a squatting position, was so intense that I could not even sit properly on my feet. My legs in particular had become wounded from sitting for so long.
Sometimes I would tuck both legs underneath me like the legs of a chair, trying to raise myself slightly so that the wounds would hurt less, but I could not maintain that position for more than a few minutes. If I moved even a little more to change position, those mercenaries would hit me on the head and say:
“Hypocrite! What the hell is wrong with you, squirming around like that? Do you need beating?”
Then they would report me, and that night the cables, whips, fists, and kicks would rain down on me again, adding yet another layer of pain to everything I was already suffering.
To be continued…
