Prison Memoirs of Azam Haj-Heydari from The Price of Being Human — Part Twenty-Eight
In this installment of her prison memoir, Azam Haj-Heydari recounts another transfer to the general ward. After months of intimidation, threats, and repression, a heavy, deathly silence had settled over the prisoners. Azam Haj-Heydari spent a total of five years in the prisons of Khomeini’s regime, enduring severe torture and pressure. Here, she describes how she and other newly arrived prisoners tried to break that silence in the general ward and restore communication and a sense of solidarity among the women.
Her account shows how the prisoners resisted the clerical regime’s efforts to impose fear and passivity. Their resistance took the form of laughter, conversation, and even a simple childhood game. The game of ye ghol do ghol became a way for the women to reclaim joy and life in a place where the regime’s agents sought to reduce them to silence.
This is the story of how that silence was broken: of women who, even behind bars and under constant threat, refused to let prison strip life of all its meaning.
Transferred Back to the General Ward
Toward the end of 1984, about three months after our transfer to Evin and the hellish conditions they had imposed on us, it seemed that their methods had begun to exhaust their own henchmen. They also appeared to have concluded that gathering all the prisoners in one place had been a mistake. Both Fakour[1] and Halvaei[2] had voiced this conclusion amid their usual shouting and bluster.
In any case, they decided to disperse us again. One day, they came and read out our names in groups of ten or fifteen, distributing us among different wards on the upper and lower floors. I was among a group of ten transferred to Ward 2 Upper.
Before they took us away, one of Halvaei’s thugs came to the ward entrance and started threatening us. “When you get to your new ward, you’d better follow the rules! Anyone who doesn’t is going to regret it!” He went on threatening us in the same vein.
When we entered the ward, we were talking and laughing together. But then we encountered the silence of the ward—the silence of the prisoners who had already been there—and for a moment, we wondered whether we were doing something unusual. We looked at their silent faces, unable to make sense of their stillness. Nobody walked around the ward. Nobody spoke to anyone or laughed. The oppressive silence was so pervasive that it silenced us, too.
They assigned a few of us to each room. After putting down our bags and the few belongings we had, we walked around the ward. I went over to look at the television which was on. Qarā’ati,[3] a cleric known for his televised religious lectures, was speaking. His nonsense made me feel sick, so I turned and walked away.
On my way back, I saw “M,” whom I already knew. She quietly came over and whispered in my ear, “Azam, do you know the rule here? When Qarā’ati speaks, everyone has to sit quietly and listen.”
I burst out laughing. Several of the newly arrived women standing near me started laughing, too. “M,” who clearly hadn’t expected us to react that way, panicked when she saw that the situation had got out of hand and everyone’s attention had turned toward us. She hurried back to her place and sat down.
When it was time to eat, we saw that everyone collected their food, sat in their assigned places and ate alone. I ignored this custom, sat down in front of one of the women, and began eating with her. One of the traitors, who was supposedly in charge of the room, came over and said, “Go sit in your own place!”
“Does everyone have their name written on a seat?” I asked.
“No. I decide where everyone sits!”
I ignored her and continued eating my lunch. The others who had arrived with me did the same. In practice, we had already overturned the rules the executioners had imposed on the ward.
I asked someone why things were like this. Why did everyone sit motionless, silent, and stiff as statues? She explained how the traitors had made life unbearable for the other prisoners. Every day, they would find an excuse to bring in the assault squad, which would beat the women to a pulp. The traitors would also pick fights and wage psychological warfare every day, supposedly in the name of enforcing the rules. And so on. This was what all their efforts had produced.
But these explanations were no justification for us, the new arrivals. We had managed to break the regime’s strategy in other wards, too. We discussed it among ourselves and agreed that we had a responsibility to disrupt the graveyard-like atmosphere here. But how?
First, we had to break the silence. We simply didn’t know how to speak in hushed tones or whisper. We didn’t know how to laugh quietly. We were ill-mannered! Wasn’t that just great?
Gradually, we saw the ice beginning to melt. The other women started warming to us, talking with us, and joining in. Here and there, they also began chatting and laughing among themselves. But that still wasn’t enough.
One day, Narges returned from interrogation carrying a handful of small stones. She poured them into the middle of the room and said, “Azam, come on, let’s play ye ghol do ghol!”[4]
At first, I was a little surprised. Ye ghol do ghol? In a political prison?!
Leila Arfaei, who had burst into loud laughter, chimed in. Leila was a young PMOI supporter who was executed by firing squad in October 1982, at seventeen years old. “She’s right! Let’s go back to our childhood. Then, when we grow up, just imagine what great PMOI members we’ll become!”
I agreed, and we sat down to play. There were five of us at first: Leila, Mehri Hajinejad, Mahboubeh, Narges, and me. After we had played for a while, five more women joined us. We formed two teams of five and competed against each other.
The room erupted. Laughter, delighted shrieks, and cheers filled the entire ward. At the other end of the room, two of the traitors sat there looking as sour as poison, glaring at us and muttering curses under their breath. But they didn’t dare come over and break up the game.
Eventually, they realized it was either them or us, and they got to their feet. One of them turned to me and, using the same crude, debased language of the clerics that she had picked up from the interrogators, threatened me:
“You hypocrite, you’re the one who started this! Watch yourself!”
The other woman hurled an insult at Narges. But Narges was so absorbed in the game and caught up in the moment that she didn’t even notice. The two of them left the room.
I paid them no attention. I remembered what Hengameh had said and thought to myself: You can go to hell! What else can you do to us that you haven’t already done? Do whatever the hell you want!
To be continued…
[1] Fakour: The memoir names this prison official only by the surname Fakour.
[2] Halvaei: The reference is likely to Mojtaba Halvaei Asgar, an Evin Prison official. Human-rights documentation identifies him as head of security at Evin by 1988 and records accounts of his involvement in interrogations and beatings. The available evidence does not establish his precise position at the time of this 1984 incident.
[3] Mohsen Qarā’ati: An Iranian Shiite cleric known for televised religious instruction, particularly his Quran commentary program Lessons from the Quran. His television appearances became a familiar part of state religious broadcasting.
[4] Ye ghol do ghol: A traditional Persian children’s game, usually played with five small stones. Players toss one stone into the air while picking up others from the ground, then catch the tossed stone before it falls. The game progresses through increasingly difficult rounds. The name refers to stages involving collecting one stone, then two at a time.
