The interrogators in the hospital behaved softer when they were assured the picture they had did not belong to me and I had separated from MKO because of inter-group dissensions and opposing the Marxist trend in MKO; my previous interrogations and prisons records were also effective in this regard. They were not so sensitive about my coming and going in the hospital.
It was about three months that I had been bedridden there. One day I told them that I was tired of being alone. They took me to another room to change my conditions. Mehdi Bukharai was bedridden there. Being becoming a member of MKO I knew him via the appointments we had. Mehdi Bukharai had been shot in stomach with several bullets seven months earlier in a street fight. They had done some operations on him and evacuated one of his kidneys, part of his intestine and stomach. His stomach had a hole.
Other than Mehdi, there was a slight Isfahani man who would pretend to faint sometimes. We never found out if he was really fainting or not. Mehdi and I were the only people who would talk to each other and that Isfahani man did not show any interest in talking to us. He would only listen. Of course, he had been badly beaten.
It was so interesting that on the opposite side this room Ashraf Rabi’i[1] , wife of the late Ali Akbar Nabavi Nouri was bedridden and Mehdi introduced her to me. I saw Ashraf did not show any sensitivity about the treatments made by men for her several times and was comfortable with them. Her bottom had been wounded and was cured so soon. I met her several time in the corridor but she did not know me. It was so interesting that I knew the late Nabavi Nouri and I really believed in him but I would never think that he might marry a woman like her. Ashraf would walk without veil (Hijab) in front SAVAKIs and the hospital personnel and was quite comfortable. It was surprising to me; considering her relation with Nabavi Nouri. Bukharai told me the she had been in their team and she would keep her veil strictly inside the team-house. I saw Mehdi objected her behavior several times. Once these objections bother her and made her cry. She wore a scarf for few days but put it away gain.
Bukharai narrated the accident for me and it was bothering my mind for several days. He said: “One night the nurses came and installed curtain in the room. Few minutes later brought somebody and put her on the bed. I did not understand who she was. She wheezed all the night and it seemed that she would die each moment. I could not walk and did not have the power to see and help her. It was near the dawn that she stopped wheezing. I understood that she was dead. That night I did not sleep a moment. The next morning when the personnel came they found her dead. They uninstalled the curtain. I was astonished when I saw her and my tears came down. She was Sedigheh Rezaee.[2] I got really sad and sorry. I had asked her to marry me before. The way that SAVAKIs and agents spoke showed they did not know her.” Mehdi continued: “Sedigheh had swallowed cyanide capsule and her mouth was frothy. The agents asked me if I knew her and I said: ‘No’.” However, the point that had bothered Mehdi Bukhari was her wearing; she had worn a short sleeves shirt and a mini skirt before her death. The doctors had said that she had been about five or six months pregnant and the cyanide had killed the baby as well.[3]
Mehdi Bukharai said: “I do not know what has happened and why they have changed.” He was really upset about the appearance of Sedigheh and the make-up on her face. He would also satisfy himself by saying: “She might have chosen that figure to hoax SAVAK…. Maybe she had been officially married and become pregnant.”
I do not know how sincere he was; because he joined MKO later and became in charge of supplies for the organization. After the Islamic Revolution he was arrested, trialed and executed.
Ashraf Rabi’i was released before us and they took her to prison. They took me to my room again after few days. Later I concluded they had possibly moved me to that room to overhear what we say.
[1] Ashraf Rabi’i connected with MKO via Khalil Tabatabai in 1971 when she was a student in Sharif Industrial University. She was arrested after the arrest of Tabatabai in 1972. She was reconnected with MKO via Ali Akbar Nabavi in 1973 and reinforced her secret political activities. In early 1974 Rabi’i and Nabavi were both arrested and badly tortured. After being freed they married each other and continued their activities. After an explosion in a base-house in Qazvin in May 1976 she was badly wounded and then arrested by Anti-Sabotage Common Committee, transferred to hospital and then prison. After the Ideology Change in MKO, they separated from it and created a new revolutionary group. Nabavi Nouri was killed in a fight in March 1977. She was freed in 1978 and married Masoud Rajavi in July 1979. She was finally killed along with Mousa Khiyabani in a fight with Hezbollah troops on March 10th 1982.
[2] Sedigheh Rezai was the first female killed Marxist Mujahid and the lesser sister of Rezai brothers. She began secret life in 1973 and cooperated in the escape of Ashraf Dehghani, a member of People’s Fedai Guerrillas. Then after (1974) she lived a completely secret life and before 1975, she changed her ideology to Marxism. After 8 months of escaping and hiding she was revealed and in an appointment with Zari Naderkhani in Bahr Street, they were surrounded by SAVAK and committed suicide by swallowing cyanide capsule.
[3] The book of Tarikh-e Siyasi-ye Moase-e Iran [Iranian Contemporary History] quotes from Ayandegan Magazine, dated January 30th 1979: “Father of Rezaees about the death of his fourth child says: “When Sedigheh comes back and sees the quarter around the house is under the control, she returns and goes to the house of a friend of her. We did never see her. After 8 months of secret life, they arrested a friend of Sedigheh named Zahra. Zahra would confess during the interrogations that she had had contacts with Sedigheh Rezaee and usually see or call each other. They connect Zahra phone number to the Committee. Sedigheh calls by accident and puts an appointment in Bahar Street to meet her. Sedigheh comes at the right time but sees Zahra with a group of agents in car and when the agents get closer to her, she swallows the cyanide capsule to commit suicide and not being entrapped…”
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