A State of Fear

by Dr Reza Ghaffari

  Although the night’s celebrations had been abruptly terminated, the whole week was spent in a continuous circuit of visits of prisoners from one cell to another. These visits turned into mini-parties, with songs and food offered round those present. If I enjoyed any time in prison, this was it.

  All this was a prelude to the phased withdrawal of the Golden Fortress from the political prison network. During the next five months, all politicos were moved to other jails, and the Golden Fortress was given over entirely to criminals. The politicals were divided into three groups. Those from the provinces were returned to jails from where they came, so that their families could visit them easily. The other division was made in the interests of prison security, we thought. On what seemed like arbitrary criteria, one group was sent to Evin, the other to the prison of Gohardasht.

  CHAPTER 17

  GOHARDASHT

  Gohardasht was a prison built in the dying days of the Shah’s regime. He never got to play with his new toy, as he was overthrown before it was completed. Then the press was given a tour of this new Bastille of the Iranian revolution (Evin prison had always been considered the first Bastille). It was a warren of thousands of solitary cells and interrogation units. The new regime declared initially that it would be turned into a university, but no lecture theatres were ever built. All that changed was the name: Gohardasht Learning Centre.

  Within three years, the regime had filled the jail with thousands of prisoners, whom it hoped would never emerge. Many spent four years and more in total solitary confinement. There was a name for those sent to Gohardasht: the forgotten ones. Swallowed up by the sprawling jail, never to be heard from again. Haji Davoud would send those prisoners he could not control in the Golden Fortress to this place.

  Many lost control of their limbs, which would jerk spasmodically as they walked, talked, sat or lay. Others became mentally disorientated – mad. I shared cells in Gohardasht with some of these forgotten men.

  The governor was Haji Mortazavi, a cleric and an Islamic judge in southern Iran, responsible for sending thousands to the gallows. He had also served as an officer in Hamadan prison between 1982 and 1983, at a time of large-scale massacres. Now he became part of the prison reform process.

  When the prison regime was ‘liberalised’, just before I was moved to Gohardasht, many of the walls of the solitary cells were knocked together. Small coffins for the living dead were made into larger ones where the forgotten could mingle. Blocks of 32 former solitary cells were knocked into five communal cells and now housed between ten and 30 men rather than one or two. Six solitary cells were retained. The prison also kept a number of the solitary cells in the other blocks.

  The Tavabs had never gained the upper hand here. The revised prison population was made up of old inmates at Gohardasht, and prisoners from Evin and the Golden Fortress. None were prepared to see the Tavabs take control. Resistance was often physical, especially by those from solitary.

  Our block held about 200 inmates, most of whom were left-wing prisoners. Of these, about 40 were Mojahedin supporters. Each cell elected its own representative. He communicated the wishes of his cellmates to other cell representatives and argued and voted in line with his cell mandate in block decisions. He was the cell ‘MP’ – or, rather, delegate to the block soviet. All cell and block representatives were democratically elected and recallable by inmates. By this arrangement, each of the different political groupings would be assured of representation at decision-making meetings of the block.

  This did not come about overnight. It took weeks, sometimes months, of debate and experiment. For instance, when it came to organising a block library, a small minority of leftists in some blocks refused to co-operate with the Tudeh and Fedayeen Majority, at a time when they had abandoned support for the regime and were taking a full part in prison organisation and resistance. Yet their critics argued that these people could still expose our security. At the end of the day, the library was organised without the co-operation of the opposition.

  Block 1, my own, was divided along political lines. The Mojahedin, Tudeh, Rahe Kargar and so on would all organise their funds separately. Some individuals, haunted by memories of Haji Davoud’s persecution, chose to organise their affairs in complete isolation. Occasionally two of these hermits would get together. Likewise, they abstained from any attempt at prison resistance.

  The Mojahedin had a ‘welcome one and all’ policy, incorporating everyone within the communal structures, even former Tavabs, some of whom had switched allegiance once more and taken on responsibilities in the communes. Tudeh and the Majority also adopted the same line but the left was wary of this apparent ‘forgive and forget’ approach, and much less ready to reincorporate its former Tavabs.

  Our block was well organised, but in other blocks communal co-operation was even higher. Block 4 not only made every attempt to produce a representative and democratic structure, but organised a block commune that cut across political divides. A block fund was set up. All the money that came through family visits would go into this and be distributed according to need. Clothes would be handed out in the same manner. It even became possible to reverse the cashflow and send money from the jail to families who were in dire need.

  This commune was administered by an elected committee of three. Cleaning rosters, food allocation, activities and so on were also handled by elected representatives. Embryonic open resistance was taking shape because of this emerging form of organisation. Where there is unity there is strength. The unified approach to things as straightforward as organising the library, sport or negotiating with the authorities, involved more than 90 per cent of all inmates and gave us the strength and confidence to compete for control.

  Block 18, which held persecuted Bah’ais, was organised along similar lines. Religious traditions were adapted to prison needs. The commune was more paternalistic, where the elected officials were the religious elders. I spent about two months here. They organised classes in English, Mathematics and the like, constantly trying to uplift one another. One or two were still snooping on the rest. One of these Bah’ai prisoners was the nephew of Hojabrah Yazdahni, a prominent businessman who had made himself millions of dollars under the Shah’s protection. The nephew was universally despised for acting as a stooge inside block 18.

  In this new environment, where distrust between fellow inmates was waning, discussion intensified as members of different political groupings dissected and analysed. From the contacts I made with some Mojahedin leaders in the different blocks, I found they had asked their members and supporters not to engage in political discussion with the left. The excuse for this was to maintain security but the reality was different.

  Many Mojahedin prisoners were young, with little political experience, and were therefore seen as vulnerable to serious political challenge. Their leaders were strongly protective of the rank and file and would do their utmost to prevent any discussion between them and the left. I did not try to shove Marxism down their throats, but to answer questions they might have. As almost all of them were from working class backgrounds, they were in theory our natural constituency, but there was little to be gained in prising them away from the Mojahedin. This would often weaken their resistance to the regime’s propaganda, playing, as it did, on a shared Islamic outlook.

  The most hotly debated subject was the Iran-Iraq war. There were three perspectives. One was that the Islamic regime was bound to continue the war until one government or the other was destroyed. This was how the Mojahedin and some left groups saw things. The second argued that if Khomeini accepted the UN Security Council’s peace resolution, No. 595, the result would be the abandonment of expansionist aims in the Gulf, Afghanistan and the like. This was the route to accommodation with the West: live and let live with the ‘Great Satan’. This was a view I shared. Lastly, some believed that the regime could accept the peace resolution without any noticeable change or policy shift. This was the perspective of Tudeh and the Fedayeen Majority.


  We held structured debates with written contributions on such matters as the prospects for revolution, its international character and our allies and enemies. Another written contribution that circulated was on the importance of the working class in the revolution, and the task of organisation under present conditions. Inmates also took part in the debate over the nature and structure of the Islamic regime; to what degree it was revolutionary or counter-revolutionary.

  We were able to organise links with other blocks through which we were able to circulate discussion papers. ‘Discussion paper’ is perhaps a rather grandiose term for what did the rounds. We were not suddenly provided with writing and printing materials. The papers that circulated were small, narrow strips, filled with tiny, tightly cramped writing, and could easily be concealed and smuggled from cell to cell, block to block. They were folded into pellets and wrapped in plastic. Couriers would swallow them and wait. In one end out the other. Debate flowed with the rhythm of bodily functions. Responses to the original papers were encouraged, and there was a healthy exchange of little paper pellets, concluding in an overview of the entire debate.

  I used to act as postman, passing the document pellets from our block to a comrade in another. The paper was folded up to the size of the last thumb joint, and usually wrapped in my blindfold, which was in turn stuffed in my trouser pocket. We always kept our blindfolds close to hand even when we were not compelled to wear them, as a visit from a guard or official would mean we had to wear them again.

  Deliveries took place on Wednesdays when it had darkened sufficiently to make it hard for the guards to see what we were up to. Sometimes packages would be exchanged both ways. The guy I had to get the paper to didn’t use the same exercise yard as our block, although his block overlooked our yard. So, instead of simply switching the paper from palm to palm as we met, we had to fashion some way of getting it from the ground to the second-floor window of the block’s toilet. The toilet was used so that, in case we were seen, no particular cell could be identified for punishment.

  The paper was not heavy enough to throw that distance. The wind could take it straight to a guard’s feet. Even if I could have thrown it with any accuracy, the bars on the cell windows were too close together for the recipient to put his finger through. Instead, he would dangle a thread out of the window to the ground. I would sidle along to it and tie the small package to the end, while a number of comrades kept watch around me. Up in the second-floor toilets, lookouts from that block were posted to give warning should the delivery be seen by the guards. Then the paper would be hauled up, I would walk off nonchalantly and my lookouts would disperse. The simple exchange of such a small piece of paper would take at least six men from each block.

  One particular day, I walked over to the wall and indicated that I had a message to pass up. This was done by making loud conversation to a lookout walking with me, which allowed whoever waited above to hear certain coded phrases. A voice from the toilet window similarly indicated that we should circuit the yard a couple of times while he prepared to lower the thread. Even though we couldn’t see each other, we recognised each other’s voices. We had known one another for over ten years.

  So off I sauntered, making light conversation with the lookout at my shoulder. All the while, our eyes scanned the yard and overlooking buildings, searching for any sign of guards. On our return, the lookout stood in front of me, obscuring sight of my hands, as I fumbled with package and thread, to tie it up as soon as possible. The message then began its speedy ascent and we walked off without looking back.

  The next circuit, two of us in the yard held our loud conversation below the toilet window, trying to discern if the other block had received the message OK. I looked up. Two guards were looking daggers at us from the roof of the block opposite. They knew something wasn’t right. Within seconds they were in the yard, and I was hauled off to an interrogation room on the second floor. I was kicked and punched, as I knew I would be as soon as I had seen them. Between blows, they demanded to know what I was doing.

  ‘Nothing, just talking to the guy with me.’

  To say anything else would have meant much more trouble for all of us. It was much wiser just to take the beating now, and have done with it, however bad it might prove to be. The guards threw me in solitary for a couple of days. Then I was back on the block as usual. But you can believe I was a lot more careful in my role of postman after that.

  The Islamic regime attempted to cleanse the prisons of ‘subversive’ literature, some of which had been circulating in the jails for more than 20 years. Often books would be copied out by hand, in the fashion of a medieval monk. It was this sort of material with which the regime wanted to fuel its bonfires.

  Khomeini followed Torquemada in his paranoid censorship. Anything that was considered ‘un-Islamic’ was confiscated – even language textbooks were seized. Prison culture adapted to defend its stores of knowledge. We transcribed books onto small sheets of paper, and hid them in unimaginable places, from burying them in the prison yard to rolling them up and stuffing them inside the iron bed frames. If a prisoner was being moved, he would tell a trusted comrade where his illicit treasures were stashed – handing on the title of keeper of the scrolls.

  When the period of liberalisation opened up, buried treasures were dug up and bed frames emptied as these secret libraries came into the light of day. Teams of 20 inmates would copy and recopy key texts: books on Iranian history, literary critique and so on. The works of Marx and Lenin became available in the cramped hand that was the trademark of the prison scribe.

  Once produced, these new editions would find their way around the prison in the same way as our discussion papers. An itemised central store would be kept in a particular cell on each block: our central library. This was on open display, which meant that anyone could share it. ‘Open display’ literature was usually educational, or the sort of political stuff the regime could handle. Sensitive material remained carefully hidden. There was an ever-present danger of a raid and confiscation of all the material we had spent so much time and effort assembling.

  Family visits were now permitted every fortnight instead of each month. Brothers and sisters under 30 were now allowed to visit. If we had small children, they would be allowed on our side of the security screen for a five-minute period, so that we had some physical contact.

  My eight-year-old son – who, like all the other prisoners’ children, was terrified by the visit ordeal – was allowed around the screen. While I held him in my arms, I put a cotton cap on his head, woven for me by an Iraqi comrade in the jail. Any exchange was forbidden but fortunately the guards missed the gift, assuming he’d come in with it as he left. The hat itself was symbolic: on the top was a big red star, blending in with the rest of the colourful pattern. So at the end of the visit, off went my young son with a badge of prison resistance emblazoned on his cap, mocking the guards whose weapons he walked under. Now in his thirties, he still has the cap.

  On another occasion, I hastily wrote the frequency and time of clandestine radio broadcasts from our organisation, Rahe Kargar, which were taking place on the border with Iraq and Iran, on the inside of his arm. He was already street-wise, and made sure that it could not be seen. When he was searched by the guards at the end of the visit, he jumped around, waving his arms and singing, playing the hyperactive little boy. The guards couldn’t get a grip on him to frisk him properly. I watched through the screen in silent trepidation as they tried to search him. If they found the numbers on his forearm, I was in serious trouble. In the end, they despaired of keeping him still, and one guard propelled him on his way with a frustrated slap on the back. Of course, this was risky stuff. But in prison, if you don’t take risks, you’re dead anyway.

  For the first time we were permitted to write to our families on a special form with a maximum of five bland lines. Anything more than this would go straight in the censor’s bin. We could pen these notes once a month. At New Year, Noruz, our
five-line cards wishing our families ‘better times in the coming year’ were censored, as the authorities were suspicious that the correspondent was encouraging his family to resist. Many prisoners were questioned about the ‘subversive’ nature of their new year’s greeting.

  Yet the prison thaw encouraged a real community. We had our own library, sports club (of sorts) and social welfare network. Groups engaged in debate more freely. We built up a solid reservoir of strength to deal with issues about the mental and physical wellbeing of prisoners. The possibility of resistance became real.

  One of the first tests of this new-found strength was when the left wing prisoners asked to be given meals regularly and punctually during the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. At this time, we would get only two meals a day: one between 2am and 3am, and the other of bread, cheese and tea at about 6pm. There was nothing to eat between, other than what we had saved from these scant meals.

  While I was in prison, Ramadan fell during the height of summer, so it was not hygienic to store food in hot, sweaty cells. In its new ‘liberal’ guise the regime did not enforce fasting, but neither did it give us regular food so that we would not have to comply! We could have food sent in, but the prison cooks were definitely working to rule during Ramadan. If food was sent in, it would not keep, and many prisoners contracted diarrhoea and food poisoning through rash attempts to supplement their diet.

  Low rations and rotting meat provided the spark for a revolt. As discontent spread from block to block, only the Mojahedin stepped back from confrontation. As good Muslims, they did not want to demand additional servings during Ramadan, but felt bound to fast – or at least to maintain the pretence. The hard-line Islamists within their ranks were adamant about this and fasted with religious zeal. The liberals flouted the regulations but the majority in the centre upheld the principle of Ramadan, while ignoring it in practice. Still, they refused to combine with the left wing in demanding the full regular portion of food.