Honey Moon in Prison

It was about two or three days after my marriage that the telephone ranged. I pick up the phone. A man said: “Sir, I am calling from Telecommunication Company. I am checking the lines. Please give me your address then I can give your new phone number.” I found out they were controlling my house since the company had all the addresses. So, I prevaricated to answer him. Instantly I called my brother and told him the matter. Haj Mahdi said: “They have arrested Ahmad, son Haj Agha Lahooti[1], and now they in chase of me. Now, just get out and let see what happens.” Without telling anything to my wife, I got out and went toward my brother’s smithy in Shahbaz Avenue. I found the shop closed. I understood that SAVAK had pursued my call to my brother and tracked him to arrest, but he had succeeded to escape. It got night. I went to my father-in-law’s house and slept there and the next day I went to my job at Qa’em Glaze Company. I was badly worried. I could not do my job as usual. An hour passed. I called home. A stranger was there and asked: “Who are you?” I said: “You’re at my home; I have dialed my home. Who are you?” He said: “Introduce yourself.” I said: “I am Ahmad. Now tell me what are you doing there? He said: “We are pursuing Mahdi Ahmad, and you do not have the right to come here. You should tell where he is hiding or we arrest you.” I said: “There is my house. My wife and parents live there.” He said: “We have orders to arrest anyone who comes here.” I put down the phone and went to the late Sadegh Eslami and told him what had happened. He advised me not to go home for some time.

About fifteen days I did not go home. It was near the month of Ramadan. Having no news about my family, it was hard to tolerate for me anymore and I went home on the first night of the Ramadan.

Right after getting inside my home they arrested me. Right there, they began interrogating me about the hidden place of Mahdi. I said I did not know. They transferred me to “Anti-sabotage Common Committee (ACC)”[2]. At the same time my wife and other family members were imprisoned in a room.

I knew ACC. But it was the first time that they were taking me there. When we reached there, they took me to a room and began hitting me with fists and kicks. Using my previous experiences, I began shouting and objecting. I said: “… why are you hitting me? Are you stupid? Aren’t you interrogators?! Don’t you know Coalition Councils do not have a military approach?! They cannot have any relation with me. I have military activities background. They are an Islamic proselytizing group and I know nothing about them.” They said: “We take you as hostage in order to force your brother to introduce himself. I said: “DO you think he is stupid to intro duce himself. It is ten days that you have surrounded our home. What have you obtained? You cannot arrest him.” The thuggish men of committee hit me so hard on the first night. Whatever they asked I equivocated. This interrogation and torture were done under the direct leadership of Manouchehri known as Doctor. He was a savage, fat, ugly figured man and there was a 4-centimeters scar on his right cheek under his sideburns. He was a real thug. The torturers would use torture device of Apollo[3] unskillfully.

When they could not achieve anything from hitting and torturing me they transferred me to a cell with 1.5*2.5 meters dimension. Before me there was a man with injured feet. But his injuries were not so severe. It was Ramadan but he would neither pray nor fast. I had decided to fast and by the God’s help and all that pressure I could manage to do it for all the thirty days of that year’s Ramadan. I would keep my lunch for my sunset breaking fast and my dinner for my dawn in order to impede any problem for my feeding.

On the third day, the cell’s gate was open and then a tall strong young man was thrown in. His face was so worried. It seemed that it was the first time that he was experiencing such a place. After few moments he began talking and said that he was a javelin throwing champion and did not know what the reason was for his arrest. Unfortunately, his interrogator was someone whose name was “Danesh”. He was a bad-tempered wretched man who would harass his prisoners a lot. The next day, they took the champion for interrogation. Danesh used Apollo for torturing him and he did it so savagely. That afternoon when I was resting on the ground of my cell, suddenly I saw two bloody feet through the opening on the bottom of the door of my cell. I stood up. The door penned and they threw the champion in. He could not stand on his feet and fell down so hard by his head and chest. His feet were bloody and infected. I got closer to him and put his head on my lap and turned his face to my face. I saw that he was dying. He would croak when breathing. I found out that blood had closed his windpipe. I opened his throat by a spoon and took out the blood and infections in his mouth. Then he could make big breath and then fainted. I moved him with the help of another person in the cell. Then I cleaned his face and hands of blood and covered him with the blanket. I massaged his feet for some minutes. I felt that he could get a bit of life.[4]

I continued nursing him. During the next days I would pour soup or some liquids into his throat. For three days he was not able to move at all and would urinate right there. Form the fourth day I would take his arms to help him walk and go to toilet. By this kind of nursing, he gradually got better during the next days. During the days of nursing him I was also interrogated several times. Once when I entered the interrogation room, I saw a 16/17-year-old boy lying naked on the ground and they were slashing his testicles by a piece of cable. His heartrending loud shouts would shiver the body of any human being. Watching that scene was so painful and killing and ruined my nerves. They let him be for some seconds but he was still crying painfully.

The interrogator asked me: “Name?” I said: “Ahmad Ahmad”. Right then that boy stopped crying and turned to look at me. When they began beating him again, he would shout: “… I swear to God that I haven’t done anything. I don’t know them… I did something childishly. Neither Haj Mehdi nor my father, Lahouti… were aware of this matter.” Hearing the name of him, I was shocked. That boy was telling me something by his shouts. I found out he was Vahid Lahouti[5] and the matter of pursuing and arresting Haj Mahdi was quite real. I got happy of hearing he had not been arrested till that time.

The interrogator continued his question from me. He wanted to know where my brother had been hiding. But I really did not know where he was. I told them: “My brother is not stupid. He knows that you are seeking him. He would not stay somewhere to be arrested. Despite being a political activist, but my way is different from him.

Sometimes, the interrogations were done in midnights and Manouchehri, the famous thug of committee, using rude words and uncouth behavior would try to break the pride and personality of prisoners in order to make them surrender. They would broadcast horrible recorded harsh sounds and cries of tortured people from the other neighboring rooms again and again at the time of interrogation.

One night, Manouchehri and two other torturers took me to our house near Lashkar Crossroads. It seemed there was nobody at our house except my father and nephew. When my father opened the door, he was shocked of seeing me and the agents. They asked him to tell them my brother’s hiding place in order to free me. My father told them: “This boy is just married. Let him be free for the God’s sake. Take me instead. What the hell you want from him?” The agents insisted a lot on getting any information from my father about my brother’s hiding place, but useless. My father persistently said: “I swear to God that I do not know where he is.” Suddenly, one of the savage wicked agents who had tied his left hand to my right hand, asked Manouchehri: “Doctor! Do you let me? I make him confess right now.” And then Manouchehri said yes by his head. That savage agent put his gun on my temple and said to my father: “Hey, old man! Do you tell where your son is or I kill this one…!” My poor father who did not expect to see such a scene was shocked and out of breath. His mouth and other body parts began shivering. He would shockingly repeat with a shivering voice: “No, No, I won’t say… I do not know where he is… No, No…” For a father it was something intolerable to see his son’s death. My father could not stand any more on his feet. He was falling down that I took him with my left hand. I said: “Dear Dad! Daddy! Who the hell are they to shoot me?! They don’t dare to …” I was really angry of their action and shouted on them: “Ok! Shoot it! Shoot and let me die! What the mischief you do to this old poor man….” When Manouchehri saw my reaction full of anger toward that agent, told him to move away his hand. And he did. It took some minutes for my father to get better. But his hands and mouth still had trembles. He kept this trembling until his death.