Midnight. We were climbing the endless stairs. “Brother interrogator” was leading.  I crawled behind him. I stopped at a point as I could not continue walking with my bloody feet. I felt “brother interrogator” stopped as well. I could not see him but had learned, through my interrogation sessions that had begun a month earlier, from the sounds of his slippers when he came, left, or stopped. I could even sense if he was angry and so would take me “downstairs”, or when he was happy and would lead me “upstairs”.

 

“Downstairs” is the pseudo name for torture chambers, “upstairs” stands for the interrogation room where “confessions are made voluntarily”, as they said.

 

He repeated his words:

-         I don’t want to return downstairs. Do you understand?

 

I nodded in agreement. I understood well what he wanted. I had been “understanding” for a month.

 

-         Move on, hero.

 

These are the words he usually mocked me with. We began to go up the stairs again. But this time felt different. “Brother interrogator” held my sleeve and helped me sit on a chair. Guards gave us sticks to hold onto to follow them, while interrogators held our sleeves as a way to avoid touching us and thus preventing themselves from being “dirtied” by us. I could hear a soft murmur from somewhere and raised my head a bit. Pushed my blindfold with my eyebrow as high as I could. We were in a large hall. I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so could not see well. With my blindfolds on, it was even worse. “Brother interrogator” came, held my sleeve and pulled me away. We went up a couple more stairs. I saw a few black chairs and he made me sit on one.

 

-         Take off your blindfold.

 

I took them off.

 

-         Put on your glasses and don’t turn around.

 

I put them on and the room lit up. I was on a platform, about three steps high. A wooden table was in front of me. There were TV cameras facing me and a few people wearing Passdaran Revolutionary guard pants with covered faces behind the cameras. They looked so much like Ku Klux Clan members. I heard the voice of “brother interrogator” from behind me.

 

-         Start when I raise my hand. Exactly as you finally confessed.

 

Then he brought his head near me and whispered:

-         Otherwise we will go downstairs.

 

A hand went up; lights came on and the cameras began to roll. I could see myself in the monitor near me. I was seeing myself for the first in thirty plus days, since my arrest. I had a thick beard with strands of brown. Still a long way before it would turn white. I rubbed my beard to make myself presentable. Later, I learned that in these test confession runs, they did not care how a “confessor” looked. The brother again raised his hand. I began:

 

-         In the name of God. Voluntarily … confess …. spy … treason …. .

 

Then suddenly I began to cry intensely and broke down. Lights turned off. A couple of people rushed towards me and pulled me “downstairs”.

 

These events took place in the winter of 1982. Those were the initial days of what became known as the “decade of the big terror”. The order of the day was to crackdown on parties and groups. Getting “confessions” had begun with ayatollah Shariatmadari. He was a senior ayatollah in the Shiite world who had “confessed” to participating in a coup d’état through which the “enemy” planned to destroy the Islamic republic. The enemy was the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Israel</st1:country-region> and the <st1:place w:st="on">Soviet Union</st1:place>. At that time, it was our turn to “confess”. And it wasn’t only me. Others too had been forced to confess under torture. Some 75 years old; others young kids who had just joined party cells.

 

Fast forward 27 years. Summer of 2009. I wake up with the harsh cries of my wife next to me. She was reliving the frightening days when they took me away. Now we had heard that Issa Saharkhiz had been detained. Before him, Hajjarian had been arrested, then Jhila Bani-Yaghoob, Maziyar Bahari, etc, etc. Now the prison cells were full of the “greens”. Torture had returned a while ago. In those days, hardly any news could leak out of the prisons; nowadays, news spread fast.

 

It is clear that the same methods of the 80s, the brutal Shiite Taliban and Russian methods have returned. In those days the interrogators were the Passdaran members while today it is a bunch of hooligans who are doing the job. But then this is the story of every revolution. All revolutions. Hooligans with no roots start getting rid of the children of the revolution.

 

A different day, place, but the same methods. A prisoner was expected to “confess”. Which he did. Torture has been modernized now. Modern equipment has arrived from <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region>. After the “confessions” comes the TV and then the trial.

 

My wife is still crying. She says:

 

-         I saw you hanging in the cell. You all walked by, one by one, and turned your head as you approached me. Your eye balls were empty and your bloody mouths remained open from the screams … .

 

As I listened, all I could see was the prisoners of today. My known and unknown writer colleagues. Keyhan newspaper curses them. And murderers probably define Islam to them and flog them in the name of God so that they will sit across the cameras and “confess” the “wishes” of the interrogators.

 

After a quarter of a century, I again heard the voice of my “brother interrogator”. He would first take the religious hand and foot wash. This is what he said to me, and then would return with a religious court order for torture, conveniently called Taazir. This is when they would tie me face down on a rope bed, with my hands behind my back. From his yells I could tell when the whip was coming down on me:

 

-         O Fatimah al Zahra

 

The mid-spring night of tears and sadness is tied to the dawn this way. The sole of my feet still sting and my heart still beats fast. I am confessing again. But now I am Ghoochani, Saharkhiz and Bani Yaghoob.

 

But the moment “brother interrogator” leaves to herald the breaking of yet another human being to his boss, we stand on our bloody feet and declare by shouting:

 

- Interrogators, you can’t stop the coming of the spring.