Journey of a Thousand Storms

by Kooshyar Karimi

  ‘I have seven million toman from selling the car, so close to four thousand dollars in total.’

  ‘If only we could sell our house,’ I sigh, thinking about all we have left behind. Azita glares at me and I can read her mind: This is all your fault. I try to comfort her by saying, ‘Even if they take the house, at least the children still have a father.’

  We eat a piece of bread and drink some water before going back to the bus. When Azita changes Niloofar’s nappy the other passengers complain, whispering ‘Evsiz.’ I don’t know a single Turkish word, but the meaning of this one is clear enough.

  At five in the morning we arrive in Istanbul, a crowded, raucous city of almost nine million. I ask around to find out where the cheap part of town is and a taxi driver takes us to Aksaray. He wouldn’t take his European customers to such a noisy, polluted area. The language barrier is a concern but we assume we’ll spend just a few days in Turkey, until we get a visa to another country.

  I’m impressed by the number of women with uncovered hair in the streets, walking or driving European cars. After all, Turkey is a Muslim state too. Just fifteen hundred kilometres to the east, many Iranians are living in conditions akin to the Dark Ages. We see a few people who look like Iranian tourists. Night-life does not exist in Iran except inside the soundproof houses of super-rich hajis in uptown Tehran, where the police can be bribed.

  Checking into the hotel is difficult without speaking Turkish, but we manage to get a small room and settle in. There is no air conditioning and it is the middle of a hot and humid summer. My shirt sticks to my skin. I turn on the tap in the bathroom, pour water on my head and drink several glassfuls. Newsha passes out in front of the TV and Niloofar eventually falls asleep on Azita’s lap. I’m astonished to learn that Turkish TV has more than thirty-five channels. In Iran we have only three: two for giving bad news and one for praising the Supreme Leader.

  While Azita and I count our remaining money, I try not to dwell too much on our situation. I’m only thirty but until recently was established as a doctor, with my own practice. I was also a well-known author and an award-winning translator. I’d completed my two years’ compulsory military service. I had a nice Peugeot and no debts.

  That life collapsed when I was kidnapped by MOIS. They had three reasons: I was a Jew pretending to be a Muslim, I was writing a book about the history of Jews in Iran, and as a doctor I’d helped women who had been raped, or who’d fallen in love out­side marriage, by terminating their pregnancies or restoring their virginities, thus preventing them from being murdered by male family members or being stoned to death by the government’s Revolutionary Guards. Any one of these offences was enough to have me executed. I know how lucky I am to have escaped.

  Our luggage holds some of my books, a shirt, a picture of my favourite desert in Iran, and four thousand American dollars. This hotel room costs forty dollars a day, and already I have some idea that other living expenses for the four of us in Istanbul will be at least fifty dollars a day. This means that, including the price of a visa and plane tickets, we don’t have much time to get to a safe country. I try not to feel anxious. After facing torture and imminent death at the hands of MOIS, just being alive and outside Iran feels like paradise.

  In the middle of the night I wake with abdominal cramps, and so does Azita. Newsha follows, screaming in pain, and Niloofar too begins moaning. Food poisoning, I think. But we haven’t eaten out; we couldn’t afford it. I go downstairs to get some help and the receptionist says, ‘Silly Iranians. You can’t drink tap water in Istanbul.’

  ‘So how do we get water?’

  ‘You have to buy it,’ he says, laughing.

  I pay two dollars for two bottles of water and go back to our room to find Azita vomiting. Even the most rural communities in Iran have drinkable water. I begin to doubt the prosperity of the Turkish people.

  After a restless night we set off for the Israeli embassy; I’m confident they will support us because I’m a Jew. Azita is reluctant to move to Israel but nevertheless we take a taxi to the other side of town. Although the trip is very expensive – twenty-two dollars – I’m excited. We are going to Israel, my spiritual home.

  Security around the embassy is incredible. Even though Turkey is a secular Muslim state, there are many fundamentalist Muslims here who are anti-Semitic. After going through a few checkpoints I’m told I have to make an appointment. I try to explain in English to an Israeli officer that I am a political asylum seeker who has crucial information about the thirteen Jews arrested in Iran, but he doesn’t seem interested. ‘Your appointment is for next Thursday,’ he says.

  Disappointed, we decide to save money by taking the bus back to the hotel. After standing for hours at a crowded stop in Taksim and saying ‘Aksaray’ to a few old Turkish women, we finally work out which is the right bus.

  When we get off, Azita suggests wandering through the nearby bazaar before returning to the hotel, and as we walk I become aware of two Iranian-looking men behind us.

  ‘Those two guys seem familiar,’ I say to Azita.

  She doesn’t believe me until an hour later when, after changing direction many times, the two middle-aged men are still trailing us, pretending to shop. By now I’m certain they’re from the intelligence service. I can sense those bastards.

  ‘Yes, I remember them,’ Azita says suddenly. ‘They were on our bus when we left Iran. One of them walked past me in the restaurant before Tabriz and ordered lunch. You’re right, they could be following us.’

  I tell Azita and the girls to go to a different shop while I head in another direction and exit the bazaar through a plaza. An hour later I join them in the hotel lobby. We wait for forty minutes but there’s no trace of the men. I feel a little easier, though I can’t imagine we’ve lost them permanently, and I know from bitter experience what these people are capable of.

  That night I lie in the darkness trying to push away the memories. They burst forth from malevolent times like fresh blood from an old wound.

  It was a freezing afternoon in the winter of 1997. Over the last few months more than eighty writers and journalists who had criticised the Islamic regime had disappeared, their bodies later found in bags on roadsides. They had been kidnapped and slaughtered by MOIS officers.

  I was walking home from work through a backstreet in Mashhad. Nobody else was around and the only sound was of a crow cawing on a leafless oak tree. Suddenly a car turned into the narrow street. I kept walking, hoping it would drive past me, even though not a lot of traffic came this way. I heard the car slow down behind me. I compelled myself to keep going but my knees felt like melting wax.

  The car came to a halt and I heard two doors open. I saw in my peripheral vision two men stepping out and I could hear their footsteps heading towards me. I continued on, slowly. Soon they had caught up and were flanking me, one on each side.

  ‘Mr Karimi? Kooshyar Karimi?’ I stopped immediately. I knew what this meant. For at least five years, since I first saved the life of a desperate girl by repairing her hymen, I had been expecting the black car to appear.

  ‘Yes?’ I turned my head to the right and saw a bearded man in his thirties wearing a dark grey suit.

  ‘Come with us,’ he said. He and his colleague squeezed my arms firmly.

  ‘What is this about?’ I asked.

  ‘Just a few questions,’ said the man on my left, pulling my arm. Though resistance was useless, I struggled to free myself.

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ I said. What a stupid statement. Big Brother knew very well what I had done. Now he would crush me, like an elephant tramping on a fly.

  ‘Get in the car,’ demanded a third man, who had just joined the other two. All wore grey suits and plain white shirts, had well-trimmed black beards and very short hair. I was certain they had guns. I’d managed to stay hidden for such a long time, but that was now over. On this icy afternoon, in this silent narrow lane, I knew my life was about to end.

  The heavily
built men dragged me to the car, where there was another man waiting for us. I was quickly blindfolded and pushed under the back seat, with one man on each side of me. The man on my left was virtually resting his feet on my back. My face was close to the floor, my lips brushing against the carpet. I found it extremely hard to breathe.

  The car travelled fast, stopping briefly only three times. We made several turns but it was impossible to guess which direction we were heading in. I imagined the car sweeping through the busy streets of Mashhad and thought the driver must be exceptionally skilled. During the long, agonising journey the men seldom spoke. The blindfold pressed hard against my eyes.

  Another five minutes or so passed. The man in the front passenger seat said something to the driver but I couldn’t make out his words.

  ‘Ahmad, make sure you take it with you,’ said the man on my left. Ahmad. His name is Ahmad. That was what I would tell a jury if I survived and managed to escape to a democratic country. I would tell them that four men from MOIS kidnapped and tortured me and finally, once they had extracted all I had to tell them, they stood me against a wall and shot me dead.

  Eventually, the car began slowing down. When it stopped for a few seconds, I heard a gate opening outside and a guard saying something. We momentarily moved forward once more, until the engine was abruptly turned off. All the men got out. It was such a relief when the weight of the legs was lifted off me, but one of the men grabbed my arm again. ‘Get out!’ After struggling to emerge with my eyes covered, I managed to place a foot on the ground. I felt sunshine on my face and fresh air on my skin.

  ‘Walk!’ The man pulled me along, my arm in his powerful grip. I had no doubt he was leading me to a secret house, and what was likely to follow. I thought, I’m so sorry, Newsha. I’ve tried hard to protect you and provide you with everything, but I’ve failed. Please forgive me, my little princess. What would happen to her if I were jailed or executed?

  I was thrown onto a small metal chair, my eyes still covered and my hands now tied behind me. Hours dragged by. I was not allowed to leave the chair. Every now and then I gently shifted my legs and arms, wiggling my toes and fingers, to make sure I was still alive.

  Another three or four hours passed. I was sure it was now long past midnight. My family must have been contacting hospitals, the police, hotels and everybody they knew to find me. The intelligence service never gave information to prisoners’ families, even several days following an arrest. If you were taken by MOIS, you simply disappeared.

  Though I’d experienced violence at the hands of my father and school bullies, I knew that MOIS officers were masters at inflicting a fundamentally different form of pain. MOIS was a university of human suffering, its graduates expert torturers who did not think or feel and who were programmed to slaughter their victims.

  After another hour or so, I couldn’t hold my bladder anymore. It was like an overinflated ball about to explode.

  ‘Help! Please!’ I yelled. ‘I need to go to the toilet!’ No response. After another five minutes of twisting and turning, my limbs like frozen dough, I fell off the chair, which toppled over next to me. When I hit the ground I felt a warm liquid spread across my thighs and legs. I was extremely embarrassed; even as a child I’d hardly wet the bed. I tried to get up and grab the chair. I had to sit back on it before anyone noticed. But it was too late – I heard the door being flung open and footsteps coming rapidly towards me.

  ‘Sorry, I was —’ I began, but was stopped by a massive blow to my head. Lights flashed behind my eyes but before I registered any pain, another strike sent me back to the floor.

  ‘You filthy motherfucking Jew. I told you to stay on that chair.’ Punches and kicks rained all over my body. In a futile attempt to protect myself, I curled into a ball but was kicked hard in the face. Blood streamed down my cheeks and chin. The ache in my stomach was so severe I couldn’t breathe for several seconds. This assault was worse than anything I’d ever experienced. All I could do was mumble, ‘Please . . . stop . . . please . . .’ And then I passed out.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw a blurry fluorescent light behind metal bars in the ceiling. I realised I was alone in a cell, and my hands were no longer tied. My wrists were swollen, I had an excruciating headache, and the slightest eye movement was agony. I wondered how long I had been there. Every breath was like a scalpel digging into my ribs.

  I felt a rush of salty fluid in my throat. I tried to swallow it but, gagging at the taste, spat it out instead. It was blood. Although I was light-headed, my medical knowledge surfaced: I was sure I had a fracture at the base of my skull. Before long the concrete floor was strewn with bright red saliva. I hoped I didn’t have bleeding in my brain.

  I eventually stood up. My right thigh was severely bruised, and when I stretched I felt a sharp pain in my stomach and back. I nearly passed out again, but managed to hold on to the wall. Before I could take a step I threw up. I can’t give in, I told myself. I need to stay alive for Newsha.

  But after several hours of intense pain and boredom, I felt pushed towards complying with whatever these bastards wanted. In the windowless, airless cell, the only sensory stimuli were the stench of puke and the fluorescent light behind its own metal bars. Alone and defenceless, I had no idea how long I would be kept there or if they were going to hang me.

  Days passed. The heavy metal door was only opened for meals and prayers. In Islamic Iran everyone must pray at least three times a day, and I had to keep pretending I was a Muslim. They fed me bread, dates, rice and feta, and butter and jam, always served by the same tall, slim guard. I was given a long loose shirt and pants to wear but no shoes or belt, to prevent me from hanging myself. My wounds gradually began to heal, and I spent most of my time pacing up and down the cell. I struggled to sleep; when I eventually dozed off, I had dreadful nightmares.

  On around the eighth day after my arrest I was sitting on the floor, thinking about Newsha, when the door opened and the same officer as usual entered. But this time I knew he had not come to give me my meal.

  ‘Get up and turn around,’ he ordered, and then blindfolded me tightly.

  He grabbed my arm and led me down the corridor. I sensed other cells around us and heard a man screaming and begging. Horror engulfed my body and I could barely walk. The officer pulled me along, like a haji dragging his sacrificial lamb behind him before cutting its throat. At the end of the corridor we entered a room.

  ‘Put him here,’ said another male voice. Two heavy arms pushed me facedown onto something that felt like a metal bed. My wrists and ankles were tied to its corners.

  ‘Please, I have a daughter . . . She is only three years old . . .’ I pleaded, but before I could utter another word a thick cloth was crammed into my mouth.

  ‘Shut up!’ The cloth was pushed in further, stinking of old blood and vomit. I gagged and struggled to breathe. My shirt was ripped open, and my whole body tensed.

  ‘One!’ A snake’s tooth dug into the naked flesh on my back.

  ‘Two!’ I was screaming through the cloth.

  ‘Three!’ As the lash cut deeper into my skin, I bit so hard into the cloth that its fibres began ripping in my mouth.

  ‘Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen . . .’

  I no longer felt the blows. Under such torment, my body’s natural coping mechanism had come to my rescue, and I began floating in a weightless trance.

  ‘Promise me you’ll become a doctor and help the people in the slums.’ My mother’s voice echoed in my ears. I was eight years old and in hospital, critically ill with typhoid. ‘I’ve asked Adonai to save you, and in return you’ll study medicine,’ she said firmly. I knew how powerful my mother was, and Adonai too. Two years earlier, I’d been cowering in our basement during a storm when my mother told me I was one of the Children of Israel, whom Adonai had protected for thousands of years – and that he would protect me too. I no longer felt afraid, and instantly became a Jew in every crevice of my body and soul.

  �
�Fifty-three, fifty-four . . .’ my torturer continued, panting between each forceful stroke. I concentrated on my Adonai, and took comfort from the idea that I was sacrificing myself in the struggle for freedom.

  The people who put me through this suffering were not inherently evil, but rather the products of the system in which they worked. I could forgive them – not because I was extraordinarily benevolent, or because I believed God would punish them, but because their brutality was an inevitable result of the country’s religious autocracy. In Islamic Iran, intelligence agents believe absolutely in the sacredness of the regime and their role as punishers of infidels.

  But these men were only experts in physical torture. My psych­ological torturer, Haji Samadi, was a high-ranking officer in MOIS. He did have a natural talent for stripping people of their values and identity and transforming them into silent machines that obeyed only him, doing whatever he decreed to avoid his wrath. He knew that torture is necessary to subordinate the intelligent, and fear is the best tool to create self-censorship. After a session with Samadi, his victim would do anything to avoid another one, even commit suicide. Samadi scarred my soul, forever.

  THREE

  The next morning I go to reception to call my family in Israel. Though it’s expensive, we need their help. After five rings a child answers in Hebrew. ‘Is your maman home?’ I ask. ‘I would like to speak to her.’

  After a pause I hear a woman’s voice. ‘Ilana, is that you?’ I ask.

  Ilana is my mother’s cousin and has been living in Israel since the revolution, when more than seventy-five percent of Iranian Jews fled the country.

  When I tell her who I am, she starts crying. ‘Kooshyar! Uncle Abraham’s nephew! Where are you?’ I explain my situation briefly.

  ‘Listen to me, Kooshyar. Don’t worry. Go to your appointment at the Israeli embassy and tell them what you’ve told me. They’ll help you get here and as soon as you arrive I’ll pick you up from Ben Gurion Airport. We will help you settle in Israel. You’ll be safe, I promise.’