A State of Fear

by Dr Reza Ghaffari

  By the time I joined him in the block, this was his state of mind. Most prisoners had wrongly lost faith in him. They were on my back to watch what I said with him, but I took every opportunity I could to get him to open up, and often tried to draw him into political conversation. He seemed to respond and wanted to be fed information on developments after his imprisonment, especially on what was happening in Rahe Kargar. In prison he had heard that it had been disbanded – untrue – and was keen to find out was happening.

  Grief wasn’t an adequate response to the tragedy of Firooz’s death. It demanded an answer from us as to why it had happened, and what responsibility we bore for it. Each shade of prison opinion interpreted it differently to start with, as heated debate spread from block to block. The leftist prisoners argued that Firooz’s suicide was the result of him simply breaking down under pressure; his way out. But this was not a convincing argument. If Firooz really had given up, he would have revealed the names of hundreds of people both in prison and still free. Firooz didn’t give enough information for even one arrest – ever.

  Firooz paid for his role within the prison. He had become a flag of resistance. Haji Davoud wanted to destroy the morale of those around him, those who looked up to him, by breaking him. He was targeted in the same way that an army would focus its attack on the standard bearer of its enemy on the battlefield. The tragedy was that his own side opened up their ranks around him to let the assault take place. When he needed the moral support of those he had given support to, he found their backs turned.

  Firooz weighed all this up with a stunned calm. His work on the painting of the tulips and the rope were no deranged retreat into an internal life of his own. Maybe at the beginning such diversions had been to keep Haji Davoud and the Tavabs off his back. But the symbolism of the tulips and the brutal functionalism of the rope became so clear and so strong after Firooz’s death that it was clear to even those prisoners blinded by more than the prison hoods that he had set his feet on the road to this end at least three months before. He even had the date chosen at the beginning.

  We managed to obtain a Persian dictionary. This explained the symbolism of Firooz’s three weeping tulips. Weeping tulips live through the spring and die at about this time. In fact, you could predict their death almost to the day: the day Firooz died.

  Firooz was telling us this was the night of his Last Supper – if we had been able to understand. He was saying his goodbyes and showing us that he was going out fighting. He had given in to no one, and would die before he did.

  All this was analysed intensely within the block. We eventually reached the conclusion that each and every one of us in prison could only defend ourselves by defending our common security. We could not afford to let anyone be isolated, as this endangered not only that individual, but created a fissure in our ranks, endangering us all.

  It took Firooz’s death to make us appreciate exactly what Haji Davoud was trying to do. We had to make sure that the lesson was not forgotten. Our self-criticism was passed to the other blocks and through visiting relatives to the wider movement.

  CHAPTER 14

  HOLY GANGSTERS

  Haji Yusef was my father’s closest friend. Although my father was a carpenter by trade, he drifted and started drinking and taking opium. That was how he fell in league with gangsters like Haji who could supply him with what he wanted. Haji was also a cut-throat who had once attacked and killed an innocent man with his dagger. As a result, he had been jailed for several years under the Shah. He bought his way out and emerged a strong supporter of his regime. He participated in the CIA and MI6 organised coup d’état in 1953 against prime minister Mossadegh, who had dared to nationalise the oil industry in Iran against the interests of BP. Haji Yusef had been a leader of a gang that had organised the prostitutes and hoodlums to attack Mossadegh’s house, ransacking everything in it; slashing up the Persian carpets too big to steal in one piece, and even taking out the window frames to sell. The main gang leader, to whom Haji Yusef owed his allegiance, was ‘Brainless Shaban’. As a result of the Shah’s return Shaban christened himself Shaban Taj Bakhsh – the Kingmaker. ‘Brainless’ stuck, though.

  Such ransacking raids continue to play a large role in fundamentalist ‘politics’. The irony was that such ‘confiscations’ were not just conducted against such ‘unbelievers’ as Mossadegh, or people like myself after the 1979 revolution. Ayatollah Montazeri, Khomeini’s heir apparent who fell foul of his mentor, suffered the same indignities at the hands of these carrion. After one such raid on his home in October 1994, Montazeri penned an open letter to his students turned persecutors. ‘Firstly, if those who attacked my house had official authorisation, they did not need to organise such armed force so as to cordon off the whole neighbourhood, cut telephone lines or use electric drills to gain entry. Secondly, the official court generally would not be interested in my personal belongings, including vacuum cleaners, tape recorders, wall-clocks, car spares, electric shavers, precious gold coins and so forth. Thirdly, the officials of the court should only confiscate belongings in the presence of the accused, who should be given an agreed list of all items removed. These people have even confiscated some of the housekeepers’ belongings and they broke into every room and every cupboard in the house. While ransacking the place, they even fought amongst each other over some of these items.’

  Considering that Montazeri, who remains one of the most outstanding theoreticians of the Velayate Faghih (theocracy) and who claims among millions of followers some 120 deputies in the Majles, is today subjected to this treatment, imagine the kind of savagery directed at an unbeliever such as me in 1982 or Mossadegh a quarter of a century earlier. It’s how Haji Yusef and his ilk made their money, stripping the homes of sanctioned victims like locusts. Their handlers also took their cut. Haji Lajiverdi, in particular, has amassed vast wealth through the violent seizure of property. These confiscations created a whole layer of people who enriched themselves in this manner, unsurprisingly becoming the most protective of the regime which sanctioned their theft.

  At the time of the ransacking of Mossadegh’s house in 1953, Haji Yusef was at his physical peak: built like a wrestler, at least six-and-a-half feet and weighing 300lbs. I used to see him around, especially in the public baths, from when I was about eight. His appearance both frightened and fascinated me. Not only was he gargantuan, but heavily tattooed from the neck down. On his expansive chest was a big picture of the Shah. Two crowns were tattooed on his shoulders. Queen Fouzi, the Shah’s first wife and the sister of King Faroukh of Egypt, was tattooed on his back.

  When the Shah divorced Fouzi and married Soraya, Haji Yusef had Soraya tattooed on his right shoulder. When Soraya was in turn divorced and the Shah married Farah, she went on the left shoulder.

  After the 1953 coup Haji Yusef was used by the Shah’s regime as a stick against the left, the student movement and workers. In return, the regime turned a blind eye to his drug trafficking. In our neighbourhood he had enough power to run a centre for selling opium and other hard drugs. Each day, a hundred addicts would queue at his headquarters to get their fix. Most addicts were hoodlums, thieves and lumpen elements of the area who supported their habit by working for Haji Yusef.

  On the side, Haji Yusef was also the head of an Islamic association in the area. Each Monday night, 50 to 150 workers, destitutes and street kids would gather for various Islamic rituals; to sing hymns and to beat themselves to the point of fainting and to recite the Koran in Arabic – even though almost all of them could not even read and write in their native Persian. At the head of this association stood a handful of rich bazaaris, or merchants, and landlords and some emerging capitalists. These organisations, known as ‘Basiges’, were everywhere and they all had a Haji Yusef-type gang leader as a frontman.

  For a long time after the 1953 coup only the police, Savak, army and gang leaders like Haji Yusef and ‘Brainless’ supported the Shah’s regime. But during the revolutionary upheaval that led to
his overthrow, these gang leaders abandoned the Shah and flocked to Khomeini. Haji Yusef became the head of a large Islamic committee as a reward. It was responsible for the arrest, torture and execution of hundreds of people. Most of the other members of this committee were his criminal sidekicks.

  Five days after Khomeini seized power, Haji Yusef approached me to join his new committee, on the strength of my record of work against the Shah. I could see where such committees would lead and refused diplomatically – ‘Too many other responsibilities. Sorry!’

  Declassed destitutes, uprooted from the land in their millions and unable to integrate into the urban workforce, provided the support for these Islamic committees and other arms of the regime. They were at the sharp end of the class divide, making shacks out of cannibalised oil barrels, the contents of which had kept the Shah and his friends in their marble palaces.

  This strata became a catalyst for both the revolution against the Shah and at the same time the Islamic counter-revolution. They took part in the revolution against the Shah’s despotism, and were as active in helping Khomeini establish his theocracy. They were Khomeini’s storm troopers in his attacks on the short-lived democratic institutions that flourished in the spring of freedom after the February 1979 revolution. Their Islamic committees provided our guards and interrogators in the prisons. The lower ranks of repressive state organs were staffed by these destitutes, the higher echelons by a rag-bag of clergy, gang leaders, bazaaris and hoodlums.

  How does a passionate monarchist end up as a cog in the machine of the Islamic Republic? After the Shah’s so-called White Revolution – a programme of land reform imposed on the Shah by the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s – it became clear that any effective land reform would open up a conflict between the monarchist state and the religious hierarchy. This was because the hierarchy owned about 15 per cent of arable land in Iran before the reform. It was the second biggest landowner after the Pahlavi dynasty itself. The reform meant that the hierarchy was in danger of losing the land on which it relied for income. Any encroachment on their source of rents would not go unopposed. Khomeini’s opposition to land reform put him at the head of a mass opposition movement, even though he was an unknown, relatively young cleric.

  This movement broadened its base through appeals to anti-Western and anti-imperialist sentiment. Attacks on the Pepsi-Cola plant were instigated and plants owned by Bah’ais were wrecked. This was where Haji Yusef came in again. He mobilised an attack on Pepsi in 1963, smashing, ransacking and torching it, as he had done to Dr Mossadegh’s house 10 years before. He had a talent for this kind of work.

  In the play-off between the Shah and the religious hierarchy, he threw in his hand with the latter. Any attack on the old feudal structure threatened the parasitic existence which Haji Yusef eked out in its cracks. So he switched his allegiance, breaking from those mullahs who still gave their support to the Shah and going along with Khomeini.

  The regime, on the other hand, hoped that the likes of Haji Yusef would return to the fold. It was unwilling to crack down on the Islamic societies for fear of alienating them further and giving them greater confidence to express their own interests, hostile to those of the regime. Furthermore, the Shah was aware that he might have to rely on them as a bulwark against an independent working class movement.

  After Khomeini seized power, Haji Yusef became active in organising Islamic committees, growing his beard longer to fit the part. On the face of it, he was more respectable than in his youth. Former members of Savak, royalist army officers and others from the old regime who had come to grief under Khomeini would come to kiss Haji Yusef’s hand in the hope that he would ‘see them right’. His 13-year-old son was also killed at the front while acting as one of Khomeini’s human minesweepers. He had moved up from street rat to venerable old man.

  But Haji had a problem. In the weekly Islamic obsequies, he could not remove his shirt to beat his breast, as required of an Islamic organiser. After all, he carried the entire Iranian royal family around on his torso! This cursed insignia would not let him rest, even after death. He tried to atone for the graven images on his body by praying hard, forehead pressed into a prayer stone from Mecca, in the hope that the marks of his devotions could be seen from afar.

  To avoid posthumous embarrassment, Haji Yusef demanded in his will that his wife would not take his body to the mortuary to be washed publicly seven times, as Islamic ritual decreed. No one but his wife should wash his sacred body. But because he was so big, his wife couldn’t even lift his leg when he died in 1981, let alone wash him from head to toe seven times. So he had to be taken to the mortuary, followed by a crowd of thousands, including many respected mullahs and Islamic officials.

  He was laid out on a slab, and in went his wife along with a confidant to assist in the ritual scrub down. I wanted to see those fascinating tattoos on the giant that I recalled from childhood. My family being close to his, I tried to get in. But his wife was adamant, ‘It is against Haji’s will to be seen by anyone while being washed and wrapped.’ And so he went to meet his maker, with his embarrassment hidden by the shroud brought back from his pilgrimage to Mecca.

  Haji Karim was of the same ilk: a man with a considerable criminal record for theft as a youngster. He had been a member of a gang that robbed people on the roads. I was only around ten years old then and very scared of him. For many years he peddled opium and other hard drugs to the youth in our area.

  After the revolution he became a member of the Islamic committee in our neighbourhood and a trustee of the local mosque, which became the centre for the distribution of necessities using ration coupons. This committee, run by thieves, came to control all distribution in the neighbourhood from bank credits to sugar to televisions. They organised the population in the war effort, in particular recruiting young people to the front.

  Shortly before my arrest I went to my father’s shop in the neighbourhood. There was a crowd of people sitting around the shop, some obviously Revolutionary Guard members, with khaki uniforms and Kalashnikovs. I knew many of the faces; among them Haji Yusef and Haji Karim. I said ‘Hello’, and sat close to the door. The nature of the company – and the Revolutionary Guards’ guns in particular – made me think that when I left, it would be a good idea to leave quickly.

  As I sat down, my father turned to me and said, ‘Three days ago, Haji Yusef lost his dearest 13-year-old son at the front against Saddam and the Great Satan.’ I was shocked at the news, and extended my condolences to Haji Yusef. But he refused to accept any sympathy. ‘You should congratulate me for having brought up a son who could become a martyr for Islam and Khomeini at 13!’

  I did not know how to react. My father said that the Martyrs’ Foundation had sent a check for 200,000 Touman (about $28,500 at the official exchange rate of the time) to Haji Yusef. He also said that Haji Karim’s 14-year-old had just met a similar end and that they would be organising a funeral ceremony later in the week.

  I asked whether the Martyrs’ Foundation had also sent money to Haji Karim, who turned to me and said, ‘Thanks be to God, the Islamic revolution is merciful, and I have received the same amount of money. The Foundation will also pay most of the expenses for the funeral and wake.’

  ‘Congratulations on your achievements,’ I said, trying to sound not too sarcastic.

  My father asked, ‘How about you? Aren’t you going to go to the front?’

  ‘No thank you!’ I snapped, ‘I guess I’m just not “holy” enough for martyrdom. Looks like you won’t be lucky enough to get a cheque out of my corpse!’

  Before I could move, my father leapt up to slap me round the face. Others intervened to restrain him. For a moment we stood glaring at one another in silence. Then I turned on my heel and left. I never went back.

  It was five years before I saw my father again, through a soundproofed prison screen.

  CHAPTER 15

  THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TAVABS

  From the early days of th
e Islamic regime, the prison authorities used the Tavabs – ‘Repentants’ – in a systematic way. The fact that the Tavabs played such a role demands examination.

  It is possible to draw a comparison between the Tavabs and those prisoners called ‘capos’ in Nazi prison camps. They were all inmates who acted as stooges and thugs for the prison guards. Indeed, that was our name for them. The difference was that the Tavabs where much more ideological, being compelled to become devout Muslims to prove their loyalty to the prison authorities. According to prison officials, Tavabs were those who had acted against the will of authority and committed a capital offence. If the person sentenced was to repent, and this repentance was accepted and verified by the religious authorities, the interrogators and torturers of the Islamic courts, then their life might be spared.

  Firstly, it needs to be borne in mind that almost all of those in jail were not active members of an organisation, had not tried to use force to overthrow the government, but were often picked up for reading a taboo newspaper or having a left-wing leaflet on them. Most of them were between 15 and 20 years of age. These ordinary, young and generally naive people were put through the Islamic torture mill. It was often this, rather than the pamphlet they might have been reading, that politicised them.

  Politicisation, though, did take place under conditions of the defeat of the 1979 revolution, the rise of the Islamic regime, and the consequent dispersion, confusion and crisis of the left. Consequently there was a vacuum on the left. The coup attempt by the Mojahedin leadership in 1981, which led to the ejection of Bani-Sadr from the presidency and the massacres of opposition forces, all contributed to the collapse of resistance among wide swathes of previously active young people. Within the jails, the wave of executions plunged many into cynicism and despair.