We organised the distribution of press releases about our activities and in support of the strikes and demonstrations. These were relayed to the outside world by a network of student suppliers – a sort of pony express, but with motorbikes, though it was hard to find gas for the engines. Tehran was experiencing its coldest winter for years, and there was no fuel. The sight of a moving car became a rarity as petrol was nearly impossible to come by. With the streets almost devoid of traffic, sometimes the only sound you could hear throughout the sprawling city was the familiar crack of gunfire.
In total about 80 of us participated in the occupation. We took turns keeping guard, watching for signs of another attack by the riot squad. As our actions had become a focal point for the demonstrations which were now taking place all around the city, there were now rumours that the authorities wanted one of us shot dead to disperse the demonstrators.
Looking out of windows of the administration block over the main fifth floor balcony and across the square, we could see police barricades stretching 150 metres in all directions. At night, it was as quiet as a cemetery. We were all on edge, fearing a stealth attack by the Shah’s crack troops. Sunrise could not come soon enough, when we would be greeted by the faces of family members, smiling and waving from the far side of the barricades. Later in the day demonstrators would arrive to show their support.
As the days became weeks, the crowd of demonstrators grew larger. Before long we found ourselves watching in amazement at the seemingly endless sea of people that would flood the barricades, waving banners and even trying to break through and join us. And, all too often, we would watch in horror as their efforts were met with gunfire. It was nothing short of murder.
On the 25th and final day of the occupation, after the regime conceded the demand to reopen the university, we marched at the head of a mass demonstration to celebrate our victory. We had issued a call for everyone to come with us to reopen the university. Shops and workplaces closed as around half a million people converged on the campus. A platform was erected in the university square and reporters from all political trends that had supported the occupation were invited to speak. Those of us that had been involved in the occupation were distinguished by armbands.
Because I could speak English I was the spokesperson for the world’s press. One reporter from an American television network asked, ‘What happens next?’, and I remember telling him, ‘When Khomeini arrives from Paris the masses will take over. The people will run the country in a democratic and just manner.’ Unfortunately, like so many others, I misjudged Khomeini’s intent, taking at face value his statement that he wanted no more to do with politics, but only to return to the holy city of Qum to take up his religious duties.
The journalist pressed me further: ‘How will the people exercise this power?’
‘Possibly through the shoras,’ I said. I don’t believe that, at the time, any of us had any more than a vague idea of the possibilities we were presented with… or of the dangers that we were walking towards.
With the reopening of the university and the fall of the Shah, we experienced a real sense of optimism as the snows in Tehran thawed and the winter passed. It was a period that was widely known as ‘the spring of freedom’. The university came alive with a sort of joyous chaos. Its corridors teemed with all manner of people, eager to learn and teach. Everyone seemed to carry a book in their hand, if not a pile cradled in their arms and held in place by their chins. These books – untitled, plain, white – were budget editions of previously banned titles by authors including Marx, Engels and Lenin. They sold in huge numbers now they were freely available.
Every inch of available space at the university was used. You could find a corridor blocked by a crowd of oil refinery workers clustered round a young Fedaii, explaining the workings of the AK47 rifle he held in his hands. In another corner of the building, a group of Islamic students would be praying. Outside on the grass forecourt, there would be a lecture and discussion of what agricultural policy we should now adopt. It was an extraordinary and exciting time.
Revolutionary poet and dramatist Said Sultanpour led an ad hoc poetry circle which was highly political. He had just been released from prison and organised an agitprop street theatre group on the lawn. Dotted all around were speakers from different parties, each with a crowd of people around them, listening, murmuring their approval or heckling.
The arts faculty became a gallery of liberated arts. Artists commandeered corridors, lecture rooms, even broom cupboards. Walls were covered with paintings that had been previously banned. It was as if the university had been turned into an art gallery. All Iranian cultural life was here. And people flocked to it. Workers and peasants who had been denied access to this kind of creative expression in the past came to look, feel and understand art.
Every shade of opinion that had overthrown the Shah, from Islamists to communists, was represented in the university and on the shoras that ran it. This paralleled developments within Iran, as workers seized the factories and peasants the land, running the country democratically through their respective shoras.
Parts of the university were occupied by main political parties. The engineering faculty became the Fedayeen headquarters. The place thrummed with energy, young people came and went, armed with Kalashnikovs or carrying bundles of newspapers. It was to the Iranian revolution what the Smolny Institute in Saint Petersburg had been to the Soviets. These headquarters were still used as lecture theatres, however. Passing through one day, I happened upon a lecture by Houma Nategh, a professor at the department of Persian literature and a noted activist herself. More than 500 people sat in rapt attention while she spoke about the contribution of women to the armed struggle.
In fact, the engineering faculty became something of a revolutionary tourist attraction, with workers and peasants coming to gawp at ‘the kids with machine guns who have taken over the country’.
Our brand of open, libertarian education spread throughout the country. Once a week I would make the 100km drive to Ghazvin to lecture at the university. These lectures were open to anyone. They dealt with problems from the industrial shoras to the nature of the land reform. Hundreds of young people would turn up, most associated with the Fedayeen.
Khomeini himself returned in early 1979, two weeks after the Shah left for exile. On 1 April that year, the country voted to become an Islamic Republic. By the end of 1979, Khomeini had been declared supreme ruler. But it was soon felt that the revolution wasn’t making progress and I began to focus my own criticism on the reluctance of the new Islamic regime to make any progressive concessions to the workers and peasants. Our revolution was being taken from us. The regime began to take action against the workers’ and peasants’ shoras. Khomeini declared a jihad – a holy war – against the Kurds and sided with the feudal and capitalist forces against the workers.
This assault was not confined to Kurdistan and the workplaces of Iran. It showed its ugly face in the attacks by Hezbollah thugs against the universities and other places of learning. Calling itself the Islamic Cultural Revolution, it spilled the blood of the students and professors who had fought so courageously against the Shah. This counter-revolution brought with it sexual apartheid and shackled all freedom of expression.
CHAPTER 5
THE HOUSE OF REPENTANCE
The autumn after my arrest, guards came to the cell and told me to pack up what things I had and put my blindfold on. It came completely out of the blue and gave me no time to bid my farewells to my Komiteh Moshterak cellmates, most of whom I never saw again. It is a tragic certainty that the majority of them will have ended up in front of a firing squad or on the gallows.
I was escorted out of the cell and through the prison corridors. We descended the steps to the ground floor reception I had passed through over five months before. No words were exchanged during this walk. In silence, a guard passed me a plastic bag. It contained the pyjamas I had been arrested in. I was on the move – but where to, Go
d only knew.
A guard led me through the yard and, for the first time in months, I briefly felt the sun on my face. We walked across the yard to a black Mercedes and I was pushed into the back seat. To one side sat a guard, cradling a Kalashnikov in his lap and on the other was someone I could not quite see. The passenger seat in the front next to our heavily bearded driver was not in my limited line of vision either.
A guard outside shouted, ‘Do you have your guns and all your prisoners?’ The guard beside me grunted confirmation. ‘God be with you!’ came the reply. ‘Open the door and let them out’. Iron screeched on iron as the gate swung open. Once we were moving and swinging round the bends in the road, I took the opportunity to look at the person beside me. To my surprise I saw that it was Farhad, the man who I had sat next to the morning of my arrest, and who had been my reluctant accuser in my initial interrogation. He was wearing the same shirt, with a distinctive green stripe, that he had on when we used to meet. Then I caught sight of a woman in an Islamic black veil sitting in the front passenger seat. At one point she turned around enough for me to see that she wore a blindfold under her veil, so I assumed that it was Mariam, Farhad’s wife. I was relieved to see them both alive.
I began to believe that we had left the brutal interrogations behind us. It was my understanding – or at least my hope – that they were taking us to the Islamic court. My mind was racing, but I kept thinking that whatever the outcome of the court proceedings, at least I would not have face torture again.
The side and rear windows of the vehicle we were in had been blacked out, so it was only possible to see what was directly in our path through the windscreen. I drank in the familiar sights of Tehran rushing by. Women, hidden under black veils and with children hanging from their necks, asked for money from passers-by in the street. Some even tried to run after the cars during the journey. At busy junctions, when cars were forced to stop, women, old men and small children begging would swarm around them.
Our driver drove like he owned the road, like everyone else should be subservient to him. I swear he tried to overtake every single car. It came as no real surprise when we had an accident, colliding with the back of a truck. Immediately, two escort vehicles accompanying us screeched to a halt. Our driver got out, approached the elderly driver of the truck and landed a swift punch on his nose. The old man staggered back, ran to the cab of his truck and pulled out an iron bar. A fight began and the guard inside our car leapt out and joined in.
I could hardly believe it: here was the opportunity I’d been waiting for and I turned to speak to Farhad. I was so frail and had lost so much weight through torture and my stroke that I only just had time enough to explain who I was before the guards returned. The poor old truck driver had worked out who his attackers were and had got away.
After another hour of driving through thick traffic in the streets of central Tehran, we reached the north of the city. We went through a large iron door and all three of us were hauled out of the car and handed over to a new set of guards. They were armed. Whatever this place was, it did not have the feel of a court. I could hear the voice of the muezzin from a loudspeaker in the building followed by the echo of evening prayers. Farhad and I were marched to the top of a staircase and they took his wife to the next landing.
‘Don’t move your head!’ a guard shouted. ‘Don’t touch your blindfold, and keep quiet.’
They put me on one side of the landing and Farhad on the other, both facing the wall. After waiting around 15 minutes I guessed we might be able to talk quietly. ‘Why did you give them information about my identity and whereabouts?’ I asked. ‘Don’t tell them that I have been a member of the organisation, I’ve denied it.’
He said nothing. To be honest, I didn’t really expect an answer. Just because we couldn’t see or hear anyone, it didn’t mean no one was listening. After about two hours, a guard returned, signed for us and took us to a new building. We were led to a large hall where many other prisoners sat facing the walls. I heard a familiar, frightful sound that confirmed my worst fears: the shrieks of a young man being tortured nearby. His voice sounded like it hadn’t fully broken yet and I guessed he could not have been more than 14 or 15 years old. He repeatedly called out for his mother and father.
‘You are in Evin,’ a voice bellowed. ‘Evin is the house of repentance. Talk! Tell us everything you know. This is your last chance to save yourself.’
‘Brother,’ he screamed, ‘they just captured me in the street! I was on my way to play football with my cousins. I don’t know what you want. This is a mistake. I am innocent, believe me. I swear to God, I am innocent. Let me go! My parents are waiting for me.’
‘Speak or you will be sent to hell.’
The noise of the lashes and the screams of the boy echoed around the hall. It was sickening… but at least I now knew where I was.
Evin was synonymous with torture. It had a bloody 30-year history, from its construction with the help of Israeli experts as a maximum security prison to hold those who had escaped torture and interrogation during their stay in Komiteh Moshtarak. Evin was the Bastille for Iranian revolutionaries. They stormed it, the place that claimed many freedom fighters under the Shah’s regime. Among the executed were seven leaders of the Fedayeen group led by the socialist Bihjan Jazani and two Mojahedin. In 1972 they were ‘shot while attempting to escape’ – i.e., taken to the top of a hill and machine-gunned. Between 1981 and 1982, more than 10,000 Iranian revolutionaries died either under torture or in front of the firing squad.
The guard in charge of this hall appeared to be in his 50s. He was called Sayed and was very diligent, making sure that prisoners did not talk to each another or touch their blindfolds. He even asked each of us what we were charged with, in order to ensure that no two members of the same organisation or group were sitting near each other. I was made to sit in a different place from Farhad, who I had been hoping to communicate with. As the night drew on, I tried to think of a pretext to allow me to move closer as I thought that we would be moved to court the next day. I was desperate to tell him to deny any link between me and the organisation. When a hand went up from the other side of the hall requesting permission to go to the lavatory, I squinted under my blindfold and saw that it was Farhad. I got up and followed him, making out that it was an emergency, running doubled up across the hall with my hands over my groin.
I arrived at the toilet door at exactly the same time as Farhad did. Inside, we pushed up our blindfolds a little higher so that we could see. There were three or four cubicles and a sink. ‘We need to talk,’ I said. ‘When we return to the hall I’ll try and sit next to you.’
Back in the hall I followed him to his place. We stayed facing the wall in silence until lights out, when it was less dangerous to talk. Now Farad told me his whole story. One of the members of the organisation had ‘repented’ and gave information to Savama, the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security. This person had taken the security forces to where Farhad’s parents lived and, after staking out the house for a week, the secret police told his elderly mother that her son and his comrades would be shot and she would be arrested and sent to Evin. The old woman was painfully aware that this was not an empty threat and made the leader of the security forces swear on the Koran that if she gave them the address he would spare Farhad’s life. Very early the next morning she took dozens of Hezbollah gunmen to the safe house. They seized various documents, including a list of activists in the underground cells within the factories.
Farhad explained that, to save the leadership, he had to give up other comrades. He lamented a failure to destroy valuable information lying around the safe house which he said had greatly increased the pressure. Mariam, his wife, was harshly treated, not least because she was pregnant at the time and therefore identified as a soft target. She withheld essential information that, had it come to light, would have resulted in my death. Despite the shock and disorientation of their arrest, both Farhad and Mariam kept much
from their interrogators. I was not only grateful but also impressed, even though my arrest had followed the raid on their safe house. Farhad went on to warn that the secret police were also being fed information by collaborators within the prison itself.
Our clandestine discussion in that dark and silent hall continued until almost 4am. I will never forget that night, it felt historic: the first meeting with a comrade since my arrest, the first chance to exchange information. The time passed so quickly and, before I knew it, it was 5am and the guards were filing in again. The day started with the muezzin calling us to the compulsory prayer session over the prison sound system. The guards then collected up the dirty blankets we had slept in, exchanging them for dirty red plastic cups filled with the traditional yellow, foul-smelling tea (with bromide that made the stench worse), sweetened with two cubes of sugar. This, with a piece of under-baked doughy bread and a small slice of stale cheese, was breakfast.
After eating we lined up in single file. Still blindfolded, each prisoner put their right hand on the shoulder of the one in front. At the front of the line a huge, bearded guard held a piece of cable attached to the first prisoner, thus avoiding physical contact with the ‘untouchables’. Another guard, brandishing a stick, ran up and down the length of the queue. Every now and then he would start beating a prisoner on the head, shoulders and back and scream, ‘Why were you speaking?’ Bringing up the rear was a third guard. I clasped Farhad’s shoulder and hoped that we would be put in a cell together and therefore able to continue our discussion.
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