The prison is very crowded on Thursdays and Fridays. I don’t know how people think of visiting the prison with their picnic baskets and hookah pipes and come to Qasr Park. They peek from one cell to the other while holding their toddlers’ hands. The youths take photos; they sometimes play roles for each other. They joke around and the sound of their laughter trembles the prison’s body. They quickly get bored.
When we get to the corridor, some begin to panic, especially if Abdi takes the trouble to turn on the loudspeakers. An empty and quiet prison is one thing, and a prison where you can hear the uproar of its prisoners like wandering memories is something else. They turn back and leave; even once, a woman got short of breath in the courtyard. She kept saying, “I can’t breathe. There’s no oxygen here.”
She wasn’t saying much nonsense. The walls of the courtyard are eight meters high. High up there, a bit of the sky can be seen; but when you breathe, it’s like you’re looking for fresh air from the bottom of an empty can.
It’s Saturday. There’s me, Mr. Abdi, and my two good boys: two soldiers who are in charge of the tickets. There’s nothing going on yet. We haven’t even had ten visitors altogether since the morning. Instead, it was very crowded last night. I had to keep sitting in front of a cell or on the metal staircase till the ladies, men, and playful children gathered for me to say a few words and go on with the prison tour.
What would kids have to do with a political prisoner? They better go to the other side and visit the old palace, take pictures with the wax statues and take a look at the attractive parts of history through the door of “Asghar the murderer’s” cell. Good thing the weekdays are quiet and fewer people come; sometimes, a college student or an old man or woman who happens to be passing by the park comes to remember the past. Two people have come and are watching the photos on the walls; a young lady and her husband, I assume. We have placed pictures in several rows behind the entry bars. There are two rows of photos of the female prisoners, above all of them Marzieh Dabbaq and her daughter. The left wall above the entrance is covered with photos of male prisoners. Now that they have broken down the ladies’ ward, it would be all right if they didn’t place their pictures either. On the other side, there are pictures of the prison attack and the freedom of the prisoners in 1979.
As soon as there are three people here, I will start off to show them the prison. It’s past eight o’clock. It’s over once I guide this group. I’m dying of leg pain. My knees sound when I walk. Once, Abdi said, “You should do office work. Hasn’t the dampness of the prison already damaged our knees enough back in those days that you keep going in the cells every now and then?”
An old man comes in, shows his ticket stub for the old prison to the entrance guard and looks all around. He goes toward the photos; his neck is stretched out and he’s slouching. I get up. Whoever comes in goes straight toward the photos. I turn on the loudspeaker. I probably won’t need to use the loudspeaker for three people. The old man gets himself to my side before the others. The young couple is taking pictures. Abdi calls out again, “The prison closes at nine o’clock. Please hurry!”
The old man is standing in front of me. His lips open up into a smile. Old people have more things in common with the Qasr Prison than the youths. He says, “I had never heard of a prison closing.”
He says that as a joke. The young lady’s heels click-clack. The entrance corridor has a low ceiling. We haven’t changed the walls. We have pulled a layer of paint on top of the scribbles and the torn plaster on the concrete walls. The damp and musty smell of the dim walkways hits me in the face. We first go to the meeting hallway. Even if I show the visitors these narrow passages and rusty bars a thousand times, I’ll remember my aunt again with the jasmines and news she brought me in every visit; she would throw them to this side of the bars, in the ladies’ prison ward which used to look like this and was demolished.
“The political prison ward of the Qasr Prison was built after the 1953 Iranian coup d’état (28 Mordad coup d’état); this was Razmara’s innovation to gather all the political prisoners from across the country here. The building is made of reinforced concrete and is composed of four wards and three courtyards. The entrance we passed through was the prison office and the entrance to the north and westward; this is the meeting hall where families came to see their dear ones.”
It was in this same hall where my aunt said, “Jaleh dear! Nader sent you many greetings. The rascals gave a meeting time the day before yesterday. He looked a little better. You two brothers and sisters have made me old. Your mother was smart; God bless her. She left early so she doesn’t see her kids like this…”
The old man nags, “They should have taken care of this place a little. Why is it like this here?”
I look behind me. He pounds his hand against the peeling wall of the eastern ward’s entryway; like a skilled mason who wants to test the firmness of a building. He has locked his hands behind his back and moves ahead with wide steps and a stretched neck. I move quickly. The lady pulls her husband’s shirt. She whispers, “I bet the old man used to be here once. It’s as if he owns this place.”
The man says something under his breath and laughs. The loud, screechy sound of the opening of one of the cells’ metal doors puts an end to their laughter. The sound echoes in the empty hallway. My eyes are closed. My heart sinks. It’s as if someone says, “Face the wall.”
The old man is peeking into the cell and nagging, “It’s like they have shrunk. They have gotten smaller.”
My legs feel weak. The cells are standing in front of me: opposite to each other, empty and damp, with short, metal doors. I have to sit for a little. The old man is back and is looking at me. My eyesight has become weak. My glasses are hanging from my neck. He clears his throat. I wear my glasses. The man and lady look inside each one of the identical, empty cells with excitement. The sound of the pulling back of the lock and the metal screech of the door on its rusty hinges is repeated a hundred times and breaks the silence.
The first few days, Ozra kept comforting me and saying, “This is a hotel! A hotel!” She was right. Whoever had stayed in the Anti-Sabotage Joint Committee’s prison for two nights knew this.
The old man takes a few steps back. I feel frightened. The man and lady have turned into the next corridor to go out to the courtyard. He holds his hand out, “Do you want help, Ms. Jaleh? Don’t worry, neither I am the same old person, nor you.”
It’s Samandari. The girls used to call him Samandar. He was the head guard. They gave him the night shifts. When they turned out the lights, it wasn’t dark. It was called “lights-out”, but the dim lights in the corridors were on twenty-four seven. They did a head-count before turning the lights out. There were six, nine, or four inmates in each cell. He would call out loud, “Lights out!”
Then, the doors were shut. The big, metal doors were closed with a bang against the doorframes; the locks were slid into place like the closing of breechblocks on old rifles. Four walls are left. Thick, cold, walls and a damp floor with a tiny window that cast a narrow ray of lifeless sunlight onto the carpet and everyone used to fight over sitting under it. I remember that in the first few days, I would run out of breath. I used to have a dream that I had broken the window. I jammed my mouth against the broken glass and breathed the fresh, outdoor air; air that was colder than inside the cell. Then, my lips tore and started to bleed. When I woke up, Ozra would say that blood nullifies the dream.
Samandari looks at me gently. He asks, “How did you end up in this place again? I would never come back to this place no matter what.”
I’ve heard this question a hundred times from a hundred people during these three years that I’m the tour guide in Qasr Prison. My legs haven’t locked into a fold yet; I get up. He’s holding his hand out. I hold on to the cold doorframe.
“Then why are you here now?”
He hooks his hands behind him. He carelessly says, “Just to see what’s going on.”
I move forward. I wish I would walk straight. I hope my stooped shoulder won’t show. I hope he doesn’t see me limp. I hope he doesn’t notice that even after three years, the damp smell of the prison makes my teeth chatter and I feel suffocated. He stomps his feet behind me. It’s like I’m imprisoned again and I’m going to solitary.
There was solitary before 1977. After that, Ozra would write that things have gotten better. I had already been released. They had come from a human rights organization and had seen the prison’s condition. Ozra would write, “Come see me, you coward! I miss you.” She had a life sentence. I couldn’t. I had come three times. When I passed by the buttonwood trees in the square and my eyes fell upon the main entryway, my legs couldn’t drag me up the slope anymore. I would turn back. I was twenty-two. My mother had passed away. My father was in prison. My brother was in prison. On the cold winter nights of 1978, I slept with the windows open. Every night, I dreamt that I couldn’t breathe and I’m suffocating.
I turn into the yard. They have built a few metal statues standing and sitting, as the prisoners are taking a break in the yard. There are a couple of benches on the pavement too. The young couple has gone ahead – probably to see the northward[GS2] . Samandari circles around me. Not around me, actually; around me and the three men, they have built out of metal sheets, with one of them looking at the sky. He stands by the one whose head is up and looks at the sky. A piece of grey cloud can be seen in the dark of the night through the square that’s the share of Qasr Prison’s yard.
“Well, what news from life outside the prison? What are you up to, madam? Have you gotten married?”
I immediately return the question to his face, “What about you, Mr. Samandari?”
He looks straight at me. My legs are hurting. I have to sit. He rubs his hands together. His hands sound like the hands of construction workers; like you’re rubbing a piece of wood against a clay wall. He mutters, “I have three girls.”
He had brought his mother to our house on the suiting day. She was a prim woman, wearing see-through socks and a crepe scarf that barely stayed on her head. Her socks were the ones that you could only find in Kourosh stores. She was sitting on one of the two chairs beside the window and was petting the leaves of the Desert Privet. Auntie took the tray of tea into the room and offered everyone tea. His mother took a cup of tea. She looked around to see where she can put the teacup and saucer. She didn’t find any place. When the revolution was victorious, Nader had taken these two chairs as booty from the office of the Anti-Sabotage Joint Committee’s chief; but there was no table. She put the tea back into the tray. Samandari kept his tea. He sat on the ground next to my father. Auntie had only said that a suitor is coming; the boy’s father was in the army. He used to be in the military himself too before the revolution but now he has a clothes shop. My father said to tell them to come and we’ll see.
The man and lady come into the yard from the north entryway. The lady is distressed and the man is holding her arm. There is a long silence between me and Samandari. The lady gulps back her tears and says, “I wish you wouldn’t play these sounds in the prison. When you’re alone for a second, you feel like you’ve really been imprisoned with these recorded noises.” The man nods his head. There is fear in the lady’s voice. “The cells that have a window are better. Those that don’t have a window are really bad…”
The lady’s teeth are chattering. The temperature inside the Qasr Prison is usually five or six degrees lower than elsewhere in Tehran. That’s exactly why they sent people here to be punished. When you woke up in the morning, especially on winter mornings, your legs would be locked together because of the cold and moisture. Sometimes I would cry. Ozra would massage my legs every time. She would keep massaging until the blood started to flow back and the pain calmed. When I was released, I gave my aunt two pairs of handmade wool stockings to take for Ozra.
The lady gets up and holds my arm kindly. I softly pull myself out of her hand. I show them the way. “You can go north and exit this way. Any questions?”
Samandari starts; he slowly leaves. The lady gulps back her tears and asks, “How many years were you here for?”
I want to leave. I have answered this repetitive question a thousand times, “Four and a half years, almost.”
The lady sits on the bench. She’s not feeling good. The man says, “Don’t bother yourself. It’s over now.”
I want to laugh. How easy it is for someone who hasn’t seen those days to say it’s over now. I want to go find Samandari. He might be gone. If I had seen him again twenty or thirty years ago, things would be different. It’s not that important now; he’s an old man who has come to see the prison he used to work in; to see the girl he probably used to admire and had went suiting for. I squint my eyes in the darkness of the west ward’s corridor. I turn my head back to see the entrance; he’s not here either. The recorded voices of the visitors echo in the hallway and make you feel awful; when they yelled and you still couldn’t understand what they were saying in the commotion. We were few. One prisoner would sit in front of each cabin. There were many on the other side, behind the bars. The mothers would bring their young children along to visit their aunt or mother. Old men and women would come with brothers, sisters, and children who got bigger each time.
My aunt insisted that I don’t stay unmarried like herself. On the day of the suiting, she became very fond of Samandari. She kept coming into the kitchen and calling me. One time when she came, she stumbled over the corner of my mother’s red rug that was covering the kitchen floor. She was about to fall down with the tray.
“He doesn’t look bad. Why don’t you come in and sit for a minute instead of peeking out from here?”
When I entered the prison, each group wanted to pull me toward itself. The left-wing group, the religious group, the Fadaiyan-e Khalq group… Ozra knew Nader from outside the prison. She had been arrested a few days before Nader in the Takht-e Jamshid meeting place; right in front of the Asr-e Jadid Cinema. She had seen me with Nader a few times from a distance. I couldn’t recall her face; I had every reason to. Spending two months in the Joint Committee had changed Ozra’s face, but the fact that she knew Nader was enough for me. On the second day of my arrest, I was still on the committee. I saw Nader who was being dragged away beside me. He wasn’t walking on his own legs. They were holding him under the arm. He was reciting some things under his breath and was moaning. No, I didn’t see him. I was blindfolded. I recognized his voice.
Ozra was firm. She looked out for me. In the beginning, when the prison shock had paralyzed me, she would hold my hand by force and take me to the yard. We would sit together under the weak sunlight. She was careful no one would bother me. She was a few years older than me. She collected the inside of the bread, dried it, crushed it, and made me pudding with the weekly share of milk and forced it down my throat. Those years, before 1977, families couldn’t bring us food yet. The only food was prison food: bland, watery, mushy, and full of rice weevils.
On one of the first days of winter, we had wrapped ourselves in military blankets and were sticking together. Ozra was reading me poetry; she knew a lot of poems by heart. She was studying literature at the University of Tehran. We wanted to turn our attention away from the cold. Winter in Qasr Prison was excruciating; it was as if the cell walls leaked water. Some of the cell floors were wet and the walls were so damp as if someone had splashed them with water. I remember that first, we heard the sound of feet: stomp, stomp, stomp. The boots of a soldier pounded against the cement. We waited to see whether it passed by us or not. But it stopped. The door lock was pulled back and the metal door was opened. “Turn to the wall.”
It was Samandar with two soldiers. My heart sank. Someone must have reported something that they had come for an inspection. I was sure of myself and Ozra, but Maliheh and Chahar Dangeh always kept to themselves and didn’t mix in with us.
“Out.”
We went out the door one by one and stood in a row. There was silence in the entire ward or there was the sound of “shhh!” coming. Everyone was waiting to see what will happen in order to decide what reaction to show. We didn’t have many things for them to disarrange; they shook out the blankets and ripped the seam on Maliheh’s pillowcase. They threw a few bowls and other dishes in the middle of the cell. Samandar was standing above the soldiers with his legs wide open; he had put one of his feet on the carpet. I remember that I was worried about the mud under his boots. The younger soldier found the rosary beads. They were looking for something more important, but the rosary was good enough too. Ozra and I had made the rosary out of bread crumb balls. The beads weren’t complete yet. Samandari wrapped the half-finished rosary around his fingers and came out.
“Alright, whose is this?”
Ozra stepped up and said, “It’s handmade.”
Samadari started off tranquilly. The rosary was in his hand. One of the soldiers wanted to get hold of Ozra’s arm. I stumbled as I said, “It’s handmade.”
Samandari turned his head back and threw me a sharp look. Ozra pulled her arm out of the soldier’s hand and raised her voice. She was sure to be sent to solitary.
“Making a handicraft isn’t a crime, is it?”
Someone in the next-door cell pound the door with a bowl; with a continuous and musical beat. Samandari made haste. “Bring her. Immediately. Immediately.”
The soldiers pushed Ozra. I was holding her hand. Her hand slipped out of mine. Ozra yelled, “I didn’t do anything. You gave us the bread yourself…”
Four other cells simultaneously pound the doors with bowls; with a continuous and musical beat. Then the ward suddenly went into turmoil. They shut the door on us. As soon as the door closed, Maliheh picked up a bowl and started to pound on the door. The sound of Ozra’s cries mixed in with the singing of the bowls and the religious girls’ shouts of “Allahu Akbar.” They didn’t allow us to go out in the yard for three days. On the fourth day when no news came of Ozra, the girls stirred up with fury. The news had reached the men’s wards too. They were talking about a food strike. On the fourth day, Chahar Dangeh had heard that the rosary was only an excuse; Ozra had really pulled the wool over their eyes. She had given them inaccurate information. She had revealed worthless things. I went on a food strike.
I stand in front of the sixth ward. The sixth ward was home to great men; the messages and decisions reached all of Qasr Prison from this place. We still don’t have the photo of many of them on the prison entryway’s wall. I call out, “Mr. Samandari?”
I hear Samandari’s voice from inside one of the cells, “I’m here.”
I move closer. It’s almost nine o’clock. I can finish all of this a few minutes sooner; I can pick up my purse and wait in Qasr Square for the green Pride to show up. It might have even come sooner. Samandari’s voice gets closer. “The late Taleqani used to be here. What a great man…”
I am standing in front of the cell door and he is inside; forty years after the time when he stood by the door and I was trapped inside the four damp walls. He turns. He looks at me with a faded smile. Reviewing these memories has appealed to him. When he sees me in the doorframe, he gathers himself together as if he has noticed the situation. He is looking for something in his trouser pockets. I want him to put himself in my place for once; a thin, weak and feeble seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl who has gone on a food strike. She has fallen in a corner of the cell. The mild and faint sunlight is spread on the yellow, bulging veins of her legs. She has wrapped the blanket around her back and her eyes are watching the ceiling; as if there’s not much left to die. He takes a plastic bag out of his pocket. The anger that was swallowed for years and was looking for a way to break out of my body suddenly gushes out of my entire being. I move the heavy door with much effort. I quickly shut the door close and slide the lock in place. Now, he’s standing in the complete darkness of the cell, as if he’s been sent to solitary for a week.
“What are you doing Ms. Jaleh? Ms. Jaleh?”
I open the small slot in the door. His terrified eyes are racing behind the slot. I move back. Samandari’s voice is shaky. “What is this ridiculous game, madam? Open the door. Even if I had a crime- that I didn’t- I have paid back for it. It’s all over now. We only carried out our duty.”
My legs feel weak.
“I said open the door, Ms. Jaleh. Hey! Is anyone there? Open the door, madam! Oh shucks!”
The man and lady are peeking from the end of the hallway. I return and pull back the lock. He quickly pushes the door open and comes out. He is panting. “I have heart problems. I have had heart valve surgery. What ridiculous joke is this?”
I want to laugh at his weak self. “You weren’t in there for even one minute. I tolerated the solitary for weeks. Without food.”
The lady comes forward clip-clopping and asks, “Is there something wrong?”
Samandari quickly repeats, “No, madam. There’s nothing wrong.”
I say, “He wanted to see how it feels like to be imprisoned.”
The lady moves closer. She takes a loud, deep breath. She quietly and shyly says, “We’re leaving. Good luck.”
She pauses. “Is it ok if I kiss your face?”
I wipe my hand over my face, take my glasses off, and embrace the lady. The man is standing in the entryway and waves at me from there.
There was no news of Ozra. They had taken me to solitary. I hadn’t made trouble. I was being punished for going on a food strike. He opened the door and stood in the doorframe. I couldn’t see his face. It was dark, but the tone of his voice was different.
“The person you’re going on a food strike for was the one who caused you a sentence, little missy. How do you think her sentence to the fire grenade was changed to life imprisonment? Your brother’s old pal sold you guys. That poor brother of yours is still being whipped in the Joint Committee; why did they take her to court a month sooner and give her a sentence? Have you ever thought about these things? What was your crime, except a few books and a few pieces of paper? The one who is been emptied is sent to court. Why haven’t they sent your brother to court yet?”
He had a kind tone. He came inside. He frowned at the stench of the cell. The stench of stale urine, unbathed body, and dampness had mixed together. He put a metal food container in front of me. He hunkered down in front of me. I pulled my legs back by force.
“Eat it; it’s homemade. Eat, don’t ruin yourself for someone who sells others away.”
He held the blanket with his two fingers and pulled it over my legs. He got up. He went out and closed the door. It took a few minutes till I heard his leaving and the calm breaths he let out of his lungs.
The man and lady started. I have to get going too. It’s almost past nine o’clock. Samandari holds the plastic bag out to me. His voice is shaky; he hasn’t recovered yet.
“I heard from the guys that you work here. I came to give this back to you. I thought…well, I don’t know. It’s a memory from the old days. It’s yours’.”
The grey, stringed beads are visible through the clear bag. How come they haven’t shattered after all these years? I don’t take the plastic bag.
“Throw it away. We made a hundred more of these in those five years.”
Ozra came back to Qasr two months later. In another cell. On one of those days, Auntie came to visit; She opened up the knot in the corner of her scarf and took out a bunch of withered jasmines and passed them through the bars. She said, “They have brought Nader here, in the men’s ward. Those bastards…poor kid is only a skeleton now. He walks slanted. I think they’ve done something to his legs.”
I heard her words through the cries and screams of a stout man who had come along with a few old ladies to visit one of the Fadaiyan-e Khalq women. The scent of life came from the other side of the wall. The smell of qormeh sabzi, lady’s perfume, Nivea Cream, and the mild sweat of old women. I hadn’t talked to anyone about Samandar’s words. I could tell he’s looking out for me and this was his biggest mistake.
The day she came, all the kids, left-wing and religious, went to welcome her. She had been transferred from the military hospital. The guard was holding her under the arm and she wasn’t resisting. She raised her right leg with much effort and passed through the entryway’s high doorframe. One of the girls ran up and held her arm. A few started to say salawat and a number of others began to chant a song. The guard drew his bat over the bars heavily and shouted, “Quiet!”
Ozra was halved. A rumour had spread in the prison that she had given away some names in order to help a few of the big shots get away. She had kept the important contacts and had given away the simpler ones to keep SAVAK busy. They had taken her to retaliate. She didn’t know that I knew I was one of the less important contacts. When she smiled at my face, all of the wrinkles in her face opened up. I couldn’t stay. I turned and went back to my cell. They had given her spot to someone else. The next day, I was crouching by the wall in the yard when she came to me. Her shadow blocked out the sunlight.
“What’s up?”
I was holding my spoon; I had brought it to wash it. I scraped the pavement with the spoon handle. It would be so great if the yard’s ground was soil. “Nothing. What’s going on with you?”
One of her kidneys had stopped working. She massaged her side with her hand and said, “Can’t you see? Hasn’t anyone told you anything?”
My head was still down. I had drawn a line on the pavement with my spoon handle; as if there was a boundary between me and Ozra. She stretched her hand out and said, “Let’s go take a walk. Your knees will dry out the way you’re sitting.”
I looked up. She was a silhouette. I held her hand. I passed over the line and we went for a walk. Samandari has put his hand on his heart and is taking deep breaths. The rosary’s plastic bag is left hanging in his hand. He has three girls. He has had so much time for a normal life. I limp and go to pick up my purse; he runs after me saying, “Ms. Jaleh!”
He pauses. He swallows his words and repeats them again.
“Only…now all of us are old. I was really interested in you, madam. I did many things for you. For your comfort in the ward, I gave good reports about you. For your sentence…”
I’m about to lose control of myself. I don’t stop. As I go, I drop the words behind me and try to articulate them firmly. “But I wasn’t interested in you at all.”
My aunt paired his shoes together. Inside the living room, Nader had put a serving plate in front of himself and was eating cucumbers nonstop. Dad took his socks off. He stretched his words as he said, “Well?”
It was February, I think, and a cool breeze was blowing. It danced the curtains around. We heard the repeated ignition of a car. Nader jumped to look through the window. I went and peeked from behind his shoulders. Dad softly said, “Daddy, what are you going to do? You know that it’s all up to yourself.”
The car started. I said, “Wait a second.”
I ran into the narrow staircase, onto the cream-coloured carpet. I stood in front of the hallway window and watched the distancing of the Cadillac in the alley. Then I took the folded newspaper clipping from my Quran. I handed it to my dad. Nader and Dad read it with surprise and nodded their heads. It was a picture of Samandari in military uniform; along with a brief confession that he wasn’t a member of the SAVAK and worked in Qasr Prison only due to his job.
My purse feels heavy on my shoulder. As I step out of the main entrance, the smell of freshly watered grass makes me feel better. How great that this park had so many trees. It has gotten very dark. A few people here and there are walking around between the lighted booths that have been set up in the park for a celebration. I have to go out from the main entrance; I can smell the scent of barbecued liver and heart and porridge. I feel hungry. The green Pride, the taxi, is parked opposite the park. Ozra’s is bending in the trunk and is looking for something. I sit in the front seat. The car heater is on. It’s my turn to make dinner tonight. I have to tell her Samandari’s tale. This itself will be a new story she can entertain her jocular passengers with.
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