Authors: Ramita Navai
Amir squeezes his little nose under the crack of the door, pressing his cheek down hard on the dirty tiled floor. Maryam is next to him, doing the same, their foreheads touching as they wriggle their bodies into place. A rush of ice-cold air tingles Amir’s skin. Bliss. He closes his eyes and sticks out his tongue, trying to reach into the jet stream of air conditioning that shoots along the corridor outside. It is the height of a scorching summer and the overcrowded cell heats up like a kiln. The hot, sticky air in the room fuses Amir’s clothes to his skin and he is covered with big, fat droplets of sweat, making the sensation of cool air on his face all the more delicious. This is his favourite thing to do here. He and Maryam lie in silence, fingers and faces wedged under the door, panting softly, until one of the women spots them.
‘If they open the door, they won’t see you and you’ll get hurt! They’ll tread all over you and you’ll break your necks and never be able to walk again!’ is the usual cry, expressed with the exaggerated alarm employed by Iranian mothers. But Shahla never exaggerates anything. Amir has noticed she is not as strict in here. She is softer, more forgiving. When he and Maryam are told off, he runs into Shahla’s outstretched arms and she smiles. ‘My love, my beautiful boy. Did you feel the cold air? Are you cooler now my angel?’
Amir still dreams of those moments crammed in the gap under the door, stealing slivers of chill from the slipstream of cold air outside. In moments of panic and stress, he shuts his eyes and transports himself back there, marvelling at the irony that a memory from Evin prison is what pacifies him.
Amir had just returned from work when the old man called. It was the day after the meeting.
‘You should be more careful. Inviting a lawyer round who is being followed twenty-four hours a day, with a load of journalists and a known blogger. It isn’t the brightest thing to do. People will start to wonder what you are up to. What with the elections coming up, you know it’s a sensitive time. Not forgetting your parents’ record, it doesn’t look good. And then not even I will be able to help you.’ The voice sounded stronger than before, more authoritative. Amir had no words left for the old man.
‘Are you still there?’
‘Who are you? How do you know these things?’ This was the first time Amir had not shouted.
‘I’m an old man who wants to explain.’
Amir put the phone down. But the old man had finally got the boy’s attention, as he suspected he would.
Ghassem Namazi had the blood of quite a few of his people on his hands and it needed washing off. The onset of guilt had coincided with his decrepitude. There were few signs from Ghassem’s outward appearance that this was a man made of flesh and blood. His skin was tinged grey, his eyes were unflinching. His pursed mouth barely moved when he spoke in his quiet monotone voice, carefully crafted to conceal any show of emotion. This immutability was to be expected of a man of Ghassem’s standing, of a man who spent years working as a judge in the Revolutionary Court of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ghassem and his colleagues were man-made myrmidons of the machine; dispassion was lauded by the regime.
But somewhere along the line there was a shift. Many of the judges changed, as Ghassem had changed. At the beginning they had believed in their work, dispensing God’s justice. They were serving their country and standing up for the dispossessed. But it was no longer about Islamic Revolutionary principles. It was now about money and power.
Ghassem had worked hard to cultivate his urbane exterior, for he was from peasant stock. For generations they had ploughed the land in the fertile plains of Varamin, south of Tehran. The Shah had overlooked these peasants and that was one of his greatest mistakes. The villagers did not complain when plunged into darkness in the winter, nor did they complain when their precious supply of fresh water ran out during the torpid summer months. They had lived more or less the same way for centuries. While the world around them was changing their belief in God was inflexible, and so when an uprising began in the name of God and the poor, they dutifully followed. Generations of monarchs had kept them alive but had not given them much more than a hand-to-mouth existence. They glimpsed new possibilities.
Ghassem was the youngest son, and by the time he was born his mother had already given birth to all the farmhands that her husband would need. Ghassem’s father wanted more for his youngest than a life of subsistence. The decision was made to send him to a religious seminary in Tehran. He studied under the tutelage of a well-known, firebrand cleric who was impressed by this sharp peasant boy who had witnessed the drudgery of village life and had realized God and the Koran were his only chances to step up the ladder. The cleric made sure that by the time the revolution happened, Ghassem was ready.
Soon after the revolution, the regime realized it had an ever-increasing caseload but its judges knew nothing of Islamic law. Most of the judges presiding in courts were remnants of the Shah’s rule; they had simply removed their ties, grown beards and renounced the king, like snakes shedding their skin to reveal new scales. They did brisk business: between the revolution in
1979
and June
1981
, revolutionary courts executed nearly
500
opponents of the regime. In
1983
, clerics were drafted into the judiciary to enforce
mojazat
, punishment under Koranic law. Ghassem was one of them.
His ascent was swift. In
1988
he was assigned to a special court in Evin, set up for the cleansing of
moharebs
,
enemies of God, and
mortads
, apostates. Ayatollah Khomeini had given a secret order to execute all prisoners who remained opposed to the Islamic regime. Trials were brisk, sometimes with only one question used to determine the accused’s innocence, such as ‘Do you pray?’ or ‘Are you a Muslim?’ and ‘Do you believe in Heaven and Hell?’ Some of the questions confused the panicking prisoners, who knew their answers would mean the difference between life and death. When asked: ‘When you were growing up, did your father pray, fast and read the Holy Koran?’ they would lie, and answer in the affirmative, not knowing that if they had responded truthfully, with a ‘no’, they then could not have been held accountable for their un-Islamic views and they would have escaped execution, which happened there and then.
It was easy work. During a few months over the summer of
1988
, over
3
,
000
– and maybe over
5
,
000
, for nobody is really sure – Iranians were either hanged or shot by firing squad. Ghassem was rewarded handsomely for his bloodletting and was given a residence at the top of Vali Asr, in Tajrish.
Ghassem witnessed this new Islamic jurisprudence during his first year as a judge. A few years before he started signing countless death warrants, he joined a crowd of a few hundred people gathered in a courtyard at Evin prison. In the middle of them a man and two women were half buried in the ground. They had been found guilty, by another cleric, of adultery and moral turpitude. They had been given their death rites, their bodies washed and ready for the grave and encased in white shrouds. The living corpses were placed upright in dug-out ditches, the man up to his waist and the women up to their breasts. The law states that if the accused manages to wriggle out of the holes and escape, they must be allowed to walk free (if they have admitted their crime) – an impossible task for women, who have no way of using their arms to prise themselves out. This discrimination is justified in the name of decency, for as the victims are ready for burial they are naked underneath, so if the stones rip open the material, breasts may be revealed and that would be a sin for them
all
.
Ghassem felt nothing when he threw his first stone. He felt nothing when the first burst of blood soaked the white muslin cloth, spreading its red tentacles across it like hundreds of riv-ulets. This was justice. The law also states that spectators guilty of the same crime are forbidden from throwing stones. Everyone wanted to be seen throwing stones. How could he not join in?
Days in prison are identical; Shahla, Manuchehr and Amir are suspended in time. Today is like any other day. Amir is playing with Maryam while the mothers sleep. It is dawn. There is the jangle of keys, which signals the arrival of a guard. It is either a new prisoner, or an inmate being taken away for another interrogation. This is part of the routine. The guard steps into the room.
‘Shahla Azadi. Come with me.’ The guard fixes her stare on the wall as Shahla gives Amir a hug and tells him she will be back in a little while. And because this is not an irregular occurrence, Amir barely notices. He continues to play with Maryam.
Half an hour or several hours later – it is impossible to remember how long – the whole room erupts into crying. ‘Oh God. Oh God!’ Maryam’s mother almost shouts the words. Then a deep, rasping sob. The women cluster around each other. Amir and Maryam are shaken out of their imaginary world by human howling. Maryam runs to her mother and Amir looks for Shahla. But Shahla is not there. Amir feels more alone than he has ever felt in his entire little life. Maryam runs back to him. He jumps up, a tiny creature in the corner of a room.
‘Don’t you know why they’re crying?’
‘No, what’s happened? Where’s mummy?’
‘She’s dead. They just killed her. They hanged her with a rope.’
And that is how Amir learns of his mother’s execution.
He remembers crying. Remembers being held by adults. Nobody knows what to say to a six-year-old boy whose mother has just been executed.
An hour later, he is escorted out of the prison. A guard opens the gates and stands with him, this child with skinny legs poking out of his shorts. Amir does not know that the guard, an eighteen-year-old on his military service, has witnessed the executions and his face is now streaked with tears. The guard cannot bear to look at Amir, the quivering little bird holding onto his hand.
Amir sees his grandfather and uncle running towards him, their faces pale. His grandfather is shaking. ‘Where’s daddy?’ Amir remembers this is all he said when he saw them. Those were the last words Amir spoke for two years. His uncle Fariborz breaks down, sobbing into Amir’s neck. Amir has never seen a grown man cry. With it he understands: his father has been killed as well.
Amir needed to warn his friends of what the old man had told him. He sent a coded text message to Behzad.
I’m watching football, it’s a great game
. Which meant:
Meet me by the bookshop.
The bookshop was on Karim Khan-e Zand Street, one in a line of bookshops that Amir and Bahar spent hours in. Over the last few years some had been shut down or raided, one had its windows smashed. The owner had been holding literary nights and poetry readings in the shop, which had attracted artists, writers and human rights activists. The
edareyeh amaaken
, the security services in charge of public spaces, had issued warnings. When the owner of the bookshop complained, a judiciary representative turned up with a lorry and cleared the shelves of all the books.
In the window was a black and white poster of Woody Allen next to a stack of books about his films. The bestsellers were nearly always the self-help books. This particular bookshop prided itself on its more highbrow collection, and their surprise hit of the year was by Florence Scovel Shinn, an American born in the nineteenth century who wrote about metaphysical spirituality.
The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People – Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
came a close second. As with most bookshops in the city, in the fiction department nobody could outsell Haruki Murakami and Kazuo Ishiguro.
Behzad turned up looking frantic. They started to walk towards Vali Asr. Behzad told Amir that Mana had been arrested. And that
they
had been in touch with him.
They
knew about their meetings.
They
had called Amir a ‘known blogger’. Amir did not ask for too many details, for they were talking the cautious language of dissidents. ‘Clean everything. Get rid of your Facebook. And we’ve both got to get rid of our useless fucking blogs. They can read anything that’s on your hard disc, so get rid of your laptop.’
They walked all the way to the end of the road, turning on to Vali Asr Square, where the great road charges through it in an eruption of noise, fumes, traffic and people. Behzad flagged down one of the shared taxis that drive up and down Vali Asr picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. Amir took a bus south, getting off outside a billiard hall on the junction of Jomhouri Street.
As soon as he entered the flat his phone rang. Amir knew it would be the old man.
‘They’re closing in on your friends. I think you should let me in.’
‘Don’t tell me you’re outside?’
‘Yes.’
The old man was a master manipulator. He was getting his way.
It took a while for the old man to make it up the stairs. Amir responded to his greeting of Salaam and led him to the sofa. It unsettled him that he was treating the old man as if he was just that, an old man, and not the killer who had signed his parents’ death warrant.
The old man sat down and sighed heavily, looking around the tiny apartment. Then he said nothing. Just sat there with his head bowed.
‘I need some explanations. How do you know everything? Am I in danger?’
The old man finally looked up. His eyes were moist. ‘I can find things out. You know I can’t tell you how. I advise you to stop your blog and your meetings because I have no power, there is nothing I can do if you get arrested. And you’re headed in that direction.’
‘I don’t want your help. I just want you out of my life.’
‘I’m begging you to allow me to explain.’
Amir said nothing.
‘We believed what we were doing was the right thing. We believed your parents were enemies of God. We were surviving too, we were under attack. I did as I was told. I lost my way because I was lying to myself, lying to the world, and above all I was lying to God. He will judge me, I know that. I want to make this right, and I need your forgiveness.’
‘You’re just scared of God and of judgement day now you’re old and death’s not so far away, that’s why you want my forgiveness. You have no idea of the suffering you caused. I still feel ashamed, can you believe that? The pain will never leave. You have to live with your pain the way I have to live with mine.’
‘My guilt and my regrets have eaten me alive for years now, believe me. I am suffering.’
‘Let
me
tell
you
about regret – do you know what the biggest regret of my life is? That I didn’t hug my mother for longer the last time I ever saw her. How is
that
for regret?’
The old man fell to his knees. Amir could not stand to look at him, and he could not stand for him to see the tears that were now streaming down his own face.
‘I beg your forgiveness, I beg your forgiveness.’ The old man repeated the words over and over, like a mantra. His suffering did not make Amir feel better. The old man was struggling to stay upright on his knees. Wearily, Amir got up and helped him to his feet.
‘I don’t hate you; it’s past that. But I can never forgive you.’