Dear Brother Hamid

***  WARNING --- GRAPHIC TRUE TORTURE ACCOUNT --- WARNING ***

“Dear Brother Hamid,
Greetings again, this time after an absence of twenty-five years. At this moment, as I begin to write, exactly a quarter of a century has passed since the night your first slap made me see stars. I don’t know what you are up to these days at eleven o’clock at night now that you have become an ambassador. I don’t know whether you remember the slap or not. But I go to bed at exactly eleven o’clock and most nights I can still hear the sound of that slap in my ears. Every night, yes, every night, my day ends at eleven o’clock, my life reaches its limit and I enter a dark tunnel. I find myself in pitch blackness and I never know whether I’ll manage to get out of the tunnel or not…”

Moshtarek Prison, Tehran, Sunday 6 February 1983

It’s exactly eleven o’clock in the evening. I’m lying in the corridor, facing the wall… My life has been reduced to the width and length of the blanket. I’ve learned a number of rules; the most important ones are about the blindfold. When I’m facing the wall, I’m allowed to pull up the blindfold. The damn thing is very coarse, pulling out my eyeballs… I adjust the blindfold.

A voice shouts my name into my ear. It makes me jump again. The voice says: “Come on.” I stand up. I put on my slippers, which I had placed by the side of the blanket. My spirits lift: “They’re going to release me. They’re going to release me ...” We walk along the corridor and I stumble on something. Someone has come to collect and release me. That someone pulls at my shirtsleeve and announces yet another rule: “Pull up your blindfold just enough so you can see what’s underneath your feet.” I do as I’m told. I see everything in a slightly darker shade. I see the ground. I see a pair of military boots and trousers. “It’s the Revolutionary Guards Corps. Yes, it’s them.” My hope grows. The Corps was basically set up to defend the revolution. I myself have written a number of complimentary articles about them…

We hadn’t yet reached the other side of the courtyard when my mind finds the question that I must ask the guard: “Excuse me. Is my wife coming?” My wife was also arrested that morning. I am trying to figure out her situation as well as my own...

“Pick up the iron rods and follow me.” I pick up the iron rods. It’s cold. We walk up the stairs to the first floor. “Turn around.” I turn around. “Remove your blindfold and sit down, facing the wall.” I do as I’m told. A chair is placed in the middle of the room. I sit on it. It’s wooden, a pale brown school chair. I look around me. The room is large. The windows, framed on both sides by iron bars, have been painted over. I position myself on the chair and wait. There is silence...

Then I hear the sound of shuffling feet. The sound is coming from a long way off and is moving in my direction. The door opens. The shuffling sound has entered the room. The door closes and you, Brother Hamid, enter my life for good. You who didn’t believe a single word I said. You must at least acknowledge after twenty-five years… A sharp pain went through my back. The soles of my feet started burning. Surely you remember me? I used to say: “Hello.” You used to respond: “F**k you.” You used to make me lie on the bed. Face down. You used to ask me whether I had performed my ablution. You used to say “Remember, not performing it is a punishable offence.” You used to say that your name was Hamid, but we all called you “The Torturer”.

And then you would start: “In the name of the Heavenly Fatimeh ...” And you whipped me. First strike. Second strike. The harder you beat my feet, the louder your voice became. After you had tired yourself out, you would switch on the tape machine: “Karbala, Karbala ... We are on our way ...”

A new message popped up on my screen. “Do you know him?” “Yes.” “Who is he?” “Brother Hamid, my interrogator.” “Are you sure it’s him?” Yes, I’m sure…

By chance, the opening in my cell door had been broken and covered with cardboard. Someone had used a needle to make a little hole and I could see out through that hole. I saw you through that hole. You had positioned the prisoner against the wall. He was blindfolded. He was talking and you were listening. You used to be slim back then. A guard’s uniform and slippers. Those damn slippers. And the second and the third time?

Do not rush me, Brother Hamid. We are still at the beginning of the story. A story that turned into a horror film. A film that you directed. I was obliged to write the script for the role that you made me play, and then to act it out. I am sitting on that brown school chair, facing the wall. The guard orders me to put my blindfold back on. I hear the sound of shuffling feet. The sound stops behind me. A hand is placed on my shoulder. Your voice is authoritarian but young. Much younger than mine. “We know everything.” Then you step in front of me. I see your military uniform from under the blindfold. From the waist down and slightly obscured…

You said: “Spying. Coup d’etat. No beating about the bush. Tell us everything you know.” I adjust myself on the seat. I follow the Party’s instruction; I have come to believe it myself: “Firstly, we are not spies ... and then ... I am not going to answer these questions. They are against the constitution.” And I see stars. No, that’s an old-fashioned way of putting it. Fireworks go off in my head. You say: “That was the first article of the constitution. Now lift up your blindfold slightly.” I do as I’m told. You open your military coat. I see the vague outline of a pistol. “And this is the final article, but before we get to this one there will be lots of other articles along the way ...” I understand that your constitution is different from the Islamic Republic’s. As you utter these words you position yourself behind me: “Now get up. Think about it ... until tomorrow morning. Remember, we know everything. Spying. Coup d’etat. Just write about those.” The sound of shuffling feet moves away. The door opens and then closes. Complete silence.

A pigeon is cooing outside the window. I take off my blindfold and put on my glasses. The cream-coloured walls and I have been left alone. I don’t know yet that years will pass and the walls and I will be alone. I hear a blowing sound in my head. My cheek is burning. Someone inside me keeps asking questions but is not given any answers. “There’s been a coup? But he was wearing the uniform of the Revolutionary Guards Corps? Could they be working for the Americans? Could it be that the Party’s analysis of the situation, its instructions, have been mistaken? Could it be? A coup? Have they staged a coup themselves and are now trying to stick it on us? Me, a spy? This must be the work of the CIA ...”

My ears, which have been learning to do the job of my eyes, are waiting for a voice to come for me and take me away. My heart is naïve, it is still waiting for me to be released. “By the way, where is my wife right now?” The silence is complete. That pigeon is cooing again, or maybe it’s a different pigeon, one of the many pigeons I become acquainted with during my three-year stay in Moshtarek prison. These pigeons build their nests in one of the most horrifying torture chambers of the world. When spring arrives, they pay no attention to the cries from the torture chambers, or to the men and women who are taken away at dawn to be hanged. They lay eggs. The eggs hatch. The only sound that breaks the silence is the bird’s cooing. For the first time, I stand up cautiously and walk a few steps. I learn to listen out for his voice so that when I hear it approach I can throw myself on to the chair and sit down, facing the wall. As I sit there waiting, in my mind I keep replaying the morning of my arrest…

The same chubby man puts his hand into a large basket and selects another blindfold and hands it to me. It’s brown and very coarse. The blindfold completely covers my eyes. I tie it up and the man tightens it. I am blind. The Islamic Republic’s greatest invention, its most dangerous weapon, is the blindfold, Brother Hamid.

I don’t know whether you copied the blindfold from some foreign security service, or whether it’s an achievement of the “Glorious Islamic Revolution”. Either way, it’s the most horrifying instrument of torture. Deprived of vision the prisoner is disarmed. Your other senses strive to replace your lost sight. Your hearing is the first to rush to your rescue. Your interrogator watches every tiny movement you make. Anything you think shows in a movement somewhere in your body. Even the rhythm of your feet translates into something meaningful. When you’re blindfolded, you’re unable to see the impact of your lies in the eyes of your interrogator, to catch in his movements something that might be useful or to your advantage.

On this battlefield, where the struggle between life and death is being played out, the blindfold removes all advantage from the prisoner. The interrogator has all the weapons at his disposal. He can see you and he can beat you. The prisoner doesn’t even know from which direction the next blow will come. Watching an approaching blow, the body automatically prepares for defence. Blinded, you are defenceless. The blindfolded prisoner is deprived of the ability to sense the moment that is vital in all interrogations, and so takes part in a ghastly, one-sided chess game in which the interrogator controls all the pieces. He scrutinizes the prisoner’s slightest movements. He watches the impact of his words and whips, and is well placed to move a fresh piece to break the prisoner. His opponent, of course, blindfolded, doesn’t even know which piece he has moved…”

~ Houshang Asadi, Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran

"In 1974 during the Shah’s regime, Asadi Houshand was arrested along with other journalists and found himself sharing a tiny prison cell for 9 months with a young clergyman by the name of Ali Khamenei, currently Iran’s Supreme Spiritual Leader and the appointed successor to Ayatollah Khomeini. The two formed a close friendship that continued until events took a dramatic turn. Shortly after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and following the new government’s crackdown on all opposition parties, Asadi was arrested once again.

Asadi suffered inhuman degradations and brutal, mindless torture at the hands of a man who introduced himself as ‘Brother Hamid’. A man without whose permission he couldn’t eat, sleep, receive medical care, or go to the toilet; a man who knew no limits when it came to extracting ‘confessions’. His sentence was death by hanging. Asadi narrowly escaped execution as the government unleashed a bloody pogrom against political prisoners that left thousands dead. In the end his sentence was reduced to 15 years imprisonment. After 6 years he was freed and eventually escaped Iran in 2003. He now lives in exile in Paris with his wife.

Here at last he confronts his torturer one last time, speaking for those whose voices will never be heard, and provides a chilling glimpse into the heart of Iran and the practice of state-sponsored justice."