Prison Memoirs of Azam Haj-Heydari from The Price of Being Human — Part Twenty-Four
After more than seven months of captivity in the Cage Ward came to an end, the suffering and torture continued for Azam Haj-Heydari and other female prisoners in another form. Rather than being returned to the general wards, they were transferred to the quarantine ward of Qezel Hesar Prison, where the effects of months spent in the cages still weighed heavily on their bodies and minds.
In this section of her memoir, Azam Haj-Heydari recounts the days she spent in quarantine, the physical and psychological condition of the women returning from the Residential Unit, the prison authorities’ attempts to provoke conflicts among the prisoners, and her eventual transfer back to Ward 4.
Azam Haj-Heydari, a female PMOI activist and political prisoner who was a teacher at the time, recorded more than five and a half years of her imprisonment in her memoir The Price of Being Human. Her memoir documents part of the experience of repression and resistance endured by imprisoned female PMOI political prisoners during the 1980s.
In this installment, she describes the aftermath of seven months in the cages and the prison authorities’ efforts to continue putting pressure on the prisoners after that period had ended.
From the Cage to Quarantine: Two Months of Torture and Exhaustion
After the executioners dismantled the cages, they realized that they could not immediately transfer the women who had come out of them to the general wards.
After seven months of sitting continuously while blindfolded and enduring those hellish conditions, none of the girls was physically normal. Each of us was living evidence of the regime’s crimes, brutality, and savagery.
If they put us back into the wards, even if they denied us visits, the other girls would tell their families about our condition during their visits, and the news would spread among the families.
So, they decided it was in their interest to keep all of us in the same place—or, as they called it, in quarantine—for a while. This lasted two months, until our condition had somewhat stabilized, after which they would transfer us to the wards.
For example, simply because our eyes had been covered for seven months and we had been looking out from underneath our blindfolds, all of us had developed crossed eyes to some degree. Most of us could barely stand or walk.
But news of the Cage had more or less spread among the families. Families who had heard nothing from their children for months had been going to various regime institutions and officials, demanding to see them.
As a result, after one month the regime was forced to allow some of the girls to receive visits because their families were putting pressure on the authorities from outside.
After eight months, whenever families were finally allowed to see their daughters, they were shocked by their physical condition and desperately wanted to know what had happened to them, and how they had been reduced to such a state.
Throughout my more than five and a half years in prison, I was almost completely deprived of visits.
When my older sister, Mahin, was released after two years in captivity, she continued going to prison for years, trying to obtain permission to visit me and my younger sister, Najmeh.
She would spend long hours waiting outside the gates of Evin and Qezel-Hesar prisons, hoping that she might be allowed to see me and my sister—even though Najmeh had given birth to one of her two children while in prison.
But throughout all those years, they not only refused to allow her a single visit; they would not even give her a proper answer as to whether we were in Evin or Qezel-Hesar, or whether we were alive or dead. They simply left her in limbo.
For years, Mahin would travel back and forth in the heat and cold, carrying one of Najmeh’s two children, who was paralyzed, in her arms, trying to obtain a visit with us.
Instead of receiving any answer, she was repeatedly subjected to threats and intimidation by the Guards.
Finally, after the Cage period ended, and because news of it had begun spreading among the public, they allowed her to visit me and Najmeh once or twice.
But they soon stopped the visits again.
For most of this period, the food in the quarantine ward was abgoosht—a traditional meat-and-potato stew. But this so-called abgoosht consisted of one piece of bone, one piece of potato, and a ladleful of water.
It wasn’t even enough to call it food barely sufficient to keep someone alive, because in reality it wasn’t enough to keep us alive at all.
The Women Who Returned from the Residential Unit
Several of the prisoners who had been sent to the Residential Unit were brought back and transferred to the quarantine ward.
Many of them had lost their psychological balance because of the physical and mental pressure they had endured.
One of them, a young woman named Shiva who had been studying mechanical engineering, had developed a severe mental disorder. She had been exceptionally intelligent, with a creative mind and tremendous talent, but during her time at the Residential Unit she had become profoundly mentally disturbed.
She was extremely afraid of being around other people and kept away from all the other girls.
Shiva had a cardboard box in which she kept a tray, a spoon, a glass, a Qur’an, a prayer book, and a prayer mat.
She would arrange these things in front of herself and put a blanket and pillow behind her. In this way, she created a space about 70 centimeters wide for herself and said that nobody was allowed to come into that space.
Once, in the bathroom, a little of the water from my hands splashed onto her. She immediately began hitting herself on the head with both hands for ten or fifteen minutes—so violently that she fainted and collapsed.
She lay unconscious on the bathroom floor for half an hour, and nobody dared to go and lift her because if she realized that someone had touched her, she would become severely distraught again.
Another example was Farzaneh.
She always wore a long red shirt and wandered around the ward talking to herself, laughing, crying, or sitting for hours beside her suitcase, simply staring at it.
Sometimes she would sleep; other times she would stand over the other girls and stare at them.
It was so disturbing that you might think she was about to strangle someone. At other times, she would sit in the bathroom or toilet and behave in ways that were horrifying and painful to witness, beyond description.
In this way, the Residential Unit, which was even more terrifying than the Cage Ward, had caused some of the prisoners to lose their psychological balance irreversibly.
Turning Punishment Ward 8 into a “Freedom Ward”
After we had spent two months in quarantine and our outward physical condition had become somewhat normal, they transferred us back to Ward 8, where we remained for another month.
In Ward 8, they set the traitors on us.
Their assignment was to provoke us through arguments, push things toward confrontation, and create an excuse and pretext for putting further pressure on us.
But their efforts did not go very far.
Because the story of the Cage had spread widely among the families, and the matter had also become known more broadly among the public, they renamed Ward 8—the ward that had been known for years as a punishment ward—the “Freedom Ward.”
They transferred a group of prisoners from other wards whose sentences had ended, as well as some whom they claimed had been granted amnesty, into Ward 8.
The prisoners who had been transferred there from the Cage were then moved to Wards 3 and 4.
I was transferred to Ward 4.
Their aim was to transform Ward 8, as they saw it, from a concentrated punishment ward into something resembling a normal ward.
But despite these measures, they kept the ward under constant control. They brought in a number of new collaborators and Guards to monitor the situation.
Of course, they did this under the guise and pretense of creating a freer atmosphere.
For example, they would say that everyone could talk to whomever they wanted and read whatever they wanted.
But then, under various pretexts, they would harass and intimidate the prisoners.
Once, because I was extremely physically weak, I could neither walk much nor sit for long, so I spent most of my time lying down.
Several of the collaborators would walk around the ward together, making mocking looks, pointing at me, and saying:
“They’re doing all this to create an atmosphere and make people think we were under pressure.”
All the cells in Qezel-Hesar had three-tier bunk beds.
Once, when I tried to climb up to the top bunk, I lifted my leg and my muscles suddenly cramped. My leg became completely immobile, and I could no longer move.
The girls helped me down and put me on one of the lower bunks.
Because my bed was next to the cell bars, the collaborators would come into the corridor and sit behind the bars, deliberately talking among themselves to provoke and harass me.
They would mock me, make snide remarks, and laugh.
But I knew that all of this was intended to create the conditions for a confrontation and disrupt the atmosphere in the ward, so I pretended not to hear the nonsense they were saying.
Eventually, the girls moved me to another place, and the collaborators failed in carrying out the plan they had devised.
To be continued…
