Seeing the images of Rasam Tabianian and Barman Ehsani, two infant children whose mothers are in prison and hearing the news of Rasam’s illness who has been hospitalized, took me to the events of 1976, when I was sent to the Komite Moshtarak prison in Tehran with my one-year old son. Since these mothers and others with similar conditions cannot describe the pain they and their children are going through while in prison, I thought it useful to share my experience under similar conditions so that perhaps this would stir the conscience to help stop such atrocities.
It was late August, and the heat of summer had still not subsided. My infant son spent the night with a fever. My efforts to bring his temperature to normal had no effect. At about 8 am in the morning, we got ready to go to a doctor. I put on his clothes and left home, arriving about 2 hours later. I explained the situation and what I had done to drop his fever, and the doctor prescribed antibiotics because his throat was infected. We stopped at a drugstore and I picked up the prescribed medicine, then had his penicillin injected into my son’s body. He cried as he felt the pain of the needle, and continued to cry on the way home.
When I turned the keys to my door house and pushed open the door, I saw a main inside who asked, “What are you doing here?” “I live here,” I told him, and then noticed more bearded men wearing dark jackets inside the house. As I was trying to understand the situation, one of the men told me to pack some things for my child as you must come with us. “Where to?” I asked. He threw an angry look at me. “You know where.” I asked them about Reza and one of them said, “He has already gone.”
I quickly put whatever came to my mind into a bag and was directed towards a car parked in front of the house.
The interrogations began as I seated myself in the car and shut the door. Why do you live in Tehran? What is your profession? What is your group affiliation rank? Who is the man who comes to your house once a week? What do you two talk about?
No matter what I said to convince the men that I had no organizational rank and that the man who occasionally visited us was an old-time friend who was essentially Reza’s friend and I only greeted him and sometimes took tea for them, they just ignored and continued with their questions. As we got close to Baharestan square in Tehran, one of the men in the car gave me a blindfold and asked me to put it over my eyes. I did that and shortly after that he asked me to duck my head. I did that too, as I held my sick child against my body. I put my face against my son’s face to perhaps cool his heat.
The car stopped. One of the men ordered me to step out. Holding my child in one arm and the bag of belongings with the other, I left the car. We entered a building and then passed through some corridors. From under my blindfold I could see the ground. Then the feet of another man who was holding a leather whip. He sporadically struck it against his other hand and said, “If you lie to me, I will make you suffer.” I told him I had not done anything wrong to lie about. “Shut up,” he yelled. He yelled at me with some questions and did not accept any of my answers. Eventually, he asked me to walk up the stairs.
I went up as I breathed rapidly. At the top of the landing place, a woman who seemed to be wearing a chador opened a door. I went through and entered another corridor. The woman then physically frisked me and inspected my bag. When she finished, I told her that my child had fever and needed to have another penicillin injection the next day. I heard her respond with a sarcastic, “What else? This is not a hotel.” I repeated my story and described the scene at my house when I returned from the doctor earlier that day. This time she responded harshly: “Go to your cell.”
The rooms at Komite Moshtarak prison were large, at least those in the women’s ward. There was a carpet at one end. I put down my bag and then my son on the carpet. His body was still hot and without much energy. God, what should I do, I thought to myself. I must give him fluids but didn’t have any with me. I knocked on the door and a woman guard showed up and opened the door. “Dirt, didn’t I tell you have no right to knock on the door. Whenever you have a question, slip this cardboard through the door opening at the bottom,” she angrily yelled at me before I could even open my mouth. I quickly responded: “My child is sick and I need to give him fluids. I do not have any fruit with me. Please give me some water and some fruit for him.” She responded coldly, “You will be cooled tomorrow and we have no fruit here for your child.” She then warned that this should be the last time I knocked on the door, and shut the door from outside. I went to my child and began to blow some air on him, hoping to cool down his fever. But he lay motionless on the carpet. A little later I heard the guards take out the prisoners one by one to the restroom so they could wash-up for the evening prayers. When my turn came, I filled up my child’s milk bottle with cool water in the restroom and soaked one of his shirts so I could place it on his face and body to cool him. I did this until we fell asleep around midnight.
I was woken by a loudspeaker recital of the azaan (the morning call to prayers). It was before sunrise and I put my hands on the ears of my child who was forcefully jolted into reality. I heard other children wake up in the rooms across ours.
The next morning a bell rang in the ward and I was told by a guard to be ready to go down for the interrogation chamber, adding that I should take my child with myself. So I put on the blinds, picked up my child and went towards the stairs and then down. At the bottom, I heard wailing voices and screams. I stopped in shock and listened. Yes, it was the voice of a man who screamed and I could even hear the sound of lashes striking against his body.
As I walked ahead, the screams became louder and louder as they echoed in the corridor. The guard who accompanied and directed us gestured us to sit in a room next to the one from where the screams were coming. My son Irshad was shocked but remained quiet, as if he had lost the ability to speak. I held him close to myself to comfort him and felt his rapid heartbeat. “Don’t be scare, don’t be scare,” I tried to console him.
The person who was subjected to the strikes of the cable continued to scream and curse on top of his lungs. Then the screams stopped, as did the sound of strikes against his body. About thirty minutes later the door to that room opened and a man with very swollen, red feet emerged. I heard the guard calling him Mansour Rahi.
The next day, the bell rang again and prisoners were taken to the different corners of the prison for interrogation one by one. One of the bells for me and when I got ready to leave my room the guard told me there was no need to bring my child along. “We ourselves will take care of him,” she said. I was caught by surprise and did not know what to say. Then I told her that my child was hungry and had not taken his milk. She in turn began to mock me and said, “Don’t worry, if he is hungry we ourselves will provide him with milk.”
I was returned to my ward at 6pm that evening and as I made my last turn into the corridor of my room, I could hear Irshad’s loud cries and sniffling, filling the air. I was directed to my room but Irshad was not there even as I could hear him crying incessantly. I didn’t know what to do so I pushed the cardboard under the door and waited. Nothing happened and I could hear Irshad’s cries.
I knocked on the door and I heard a couple of women guards approaching. The door opened and one of them jumped in and slapped me in the face without any warning. “Didn’t I tell you have no right to knock on the door,” she yelled. “That is my child crying, please return him to me. Can you hear him? He has run out of breath crying, I said. But the guards continued their verbal insults and finally left the room.
During the next long hour I could hear Irshad crying, then stop for a short while, and then begin crying again. Then the door opened and they gave me my child. His whole body was wet from his tears and he was shacking. His voice was coarse and I had nothing to give him to console or calm him. Not even a drop of water. I tried calling him and saying his name, but he would not calm down.
I walked around the room and recited the poems that he had enjoyed in the past. But he was not himself. It took a long time until he eventually fell asleep in my arms. His body was still warm. During these few days all I had given him was some milk from milk powder and some yogurt that was given to me on some days. Nothing else.
My interrogations ended eventually, after some days. One day, Irshad and I were put on a car and transferred to another prison, Evin in northern Tehran. Mansur Rahi was also a passenger with us. As soon as he saw Irshad, he took him as if he had been missing a child, and put him on his swollen feet and began kissing him.
This was the first time I saw the streets of Tehran after weeks. I noticed people running around in a hurry. My child too gazed at the scenes through the car window. I wondered what he was thinking about.
I was lost in my world and came to myself when I realized that my child and I had been directed to a new prison cell in women’s ward 209 of Evin prison. When the women guards opened the cell door to give us food, I told them that I needed boiled water to make milk for my child. She responded with “Use the warm water in the cell.” And when I told her that my child was sick, and would get worse if I used that water, they said, “let him,” and shut the door.
None of my efforts, language, words or pleas would make my interrogator or prison guards, women or men, understand that there was a difference between a prisoner and a child who was accompanying one in prison. Nobody in those could even ask which law said that a child had to be punished the way they punished a prisoner. What are the criteria for treating children who are brought to prison because of their parents? What is the role of children who are brought into this game that adults engage in?
