Free A State of Fear by Dr Reza Ghaffari Page A

and, to the left of the door, an iron sink. In the corner beyond it was acovering and behind that were a series of pipes and cables – the perfect hiding place for listening devices. I had to be wary of every word. There were three threadbare, woollen, military-issue blankets and, in one corner, a battered red plastic tea cup. When I lay down and stretched out to sleep, the top of my head touched one wall and the soles of my feet the other. I stared up at the lightbulb. It had a wire cover to prevent prisoners from removing the bulb and electrocuting themselves. I’d heard that some prisoners had attempted to do this by standing on the sink late at night when there were fewer guards around. If that didn’t work, they had instead broken off jagged bits of the wire guard and slashed their throats or wrists and bled to death.
    The walls in my new cell were grey concrete, so hard that you could not even scratch your name on them. In lieu of any graffiti were passages from the Koran and a portrait of Khomeini painted directly onto the concrete. Calls to repent and denunciations of America and Iraq faced you on every wall of the prison.
    The door had a barred, oblong hole through which the guards could watch and I was never warned before this would be opened. Meagre meals were pushed through a hatch on the bottom of the door. Whenever it was opened, I had to put my blindfold back on and face the wall. There was also a very small window in the cell – barred, of course. It was positioned too high to look through, but it was appreciated nonetheless. Time passed painfully slowly in solitary and I used to follow the passage of the sunbeams as they made their journey from one corner of the cell to the other.
    I tried to exercise and rebuild the strength I had lost over months of torture. Late at night and early in the morning I would stretch my muscles and run on the spot as slowly and as quietly as I could, so I could not be heard outside the cell. Any form of exercise was banned.
    Just a few days had passed when the cell door was opened at around 10 o’clock one morning and a tall, bearded man wearing a blindfold was led in. The door was locked, the man removed his blindfold and he sat in the opposite corner of the cell to me. He looked to be between 35-40, his hair was light and brownish, his skin light and he had blue eyes and a bright face.
    ‘What are you accused of?’ I asked.
    ‘I was a leader of a guerrilla organisation in Sanandaj, Kurdistan.’ The city was the capital of the Kurdish province of Iran. ‘I studied in America and graduated in engineering. You?’
    At first I found it refreshing to have someone to talk with, but I soon got the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. He kept asking me about the details of my case and my attitude toward the regime. ‘They got me by mistake,’ I insisted. ‘They will soon let me out of here when they find out I am innocent.’
    ‘This is the second time I have been captured,’ he told me. ‘The first time the Islamic regime exchanged me for a number of their guards held by our organisation. But now I have come to understand that the Islamic regime has the support of the masses and those who are fighting against the regime in Kurdistan are acting in America’s interest. I have repented and become a Tavab [one who accepts Islam and becomes a collaborator with the prison officials], and I pray five times a day. I am working in prison to enhance the Islamic revolution’s fight against subversives. What are you going to do? If you don’t repent, you know they’ll put you in front of the firing squad.’ We called collaborators ‘kapos’. Fortunately, I had been very careful what I told him.
    ‘Who, me?’ I said, trying to sound as indignant as I could. ‘I have nothing to repent. If it wasn’t for the likes of you, who took things into their own hands, rampaging through the streets, I wouldn’t be here. As for praying, I’m an innocent man. If I start to