A Journey Beyond Purgatory

By A. Ahang

Early in the year 1980, a year after Khomeini took power, a group of army
and air force officers participated in a coup to overthrow the newly established
Islamic Republic of Iran. The plot was discovered a day before its execution, and in
a frenzy, the government captured thousands of suspects from all over the country
and flooded the prisons with army and air force personnel as well as many civilians.
A few days after interrogating the captured, they continued to arrest thousands
of suspects; many of them were innocents, who had nothing to do with the coup.
Hundreds of those officers were executed, and the rest were kept in prison for a
long period of time.
This is the story of one of the innocent men whose crime was his close friendship
with two of the army officers and was accused of being a part in the plot against the
government. One early morning, a dozen of revolutionary guards invaded his house
and took him away. During his six-month captivity, he was kept in solitude, was
abused and tortured physically and mentally, and was moved from town to town to
different prisons. His family and friends were kept unaware of his whereabouts, and
members of his family were given the opportunity to pay him a visit only in the last
month of his captivity.
Among all those men, he was one of the lucky ones who were released and
returned to the society, but he never had a normal life afterward. This is his
horrifying experience in the prison of a fundamentalist religious regime

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483605234

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Copyright © 2013 by A. Ahang.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 05/28/2013

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CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Chapter One: The Coup

Chapter Two: The Blinds

Chapter Three: The Journey

Chapter Four: The Torture Chamber

Chapter Five: The Long Day

Chapter Six: The Box

Chapter Seven: The New Guests

Chapter Eight: The War

Chapter Nine: The City Half of the World

Chapter Ten: A New Cell

Chapter Eleven: My Companions

Chapter Twelve: My First Visitor

Chapter Thirteen: Farewell to Isfahan

Chapter Fourteen: The New Residence

Chapter Fifteen: Mistaken Identity

Chapter Sixteen: Family Reunion

Chapter Seventeen: Freedom

Chapter Eighteen: My Hometown

To my wife,

my children,

and

all the men and women

who have

dedicated their lives for the freedom

of their people

AUTHOR’S NOTE

E arly in the year 1980, a year after Khomeini took power, a group of army and air force officers participated in a coup to overthrow the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran. The plot was discovered a day before its execution, and in a frenzy, the government captured thousands of suspects from all over the country and flooded the prisons with army and air force personnel as well as many civilians. A few days after interrogating the captured, they continued to arrest thousands of suspects; many of them were innocents, who had nothing to do with the coup. Hundreds of those officers were executed, and the rest were kept in prison for a long period of time.

This is the story of one of the innocent men whose crime was his close friendship with two of the army officers and was accused of being a part in the plot against the government. One early morning, a dozen of revolutionary guards invaded his house and took him away. During his six months captivity he was kept in solitude, was abused and tortured physically and mentally, and was moved from town to town to different prisons. His family and friends were kept unaware of his whereabouts, and members of his family were given the opportunity to pay him a visit only in the last month of his captivity.

Among all those men, he was one of the lucky ones who were released and returned to the society, but he never had a normal life afterward. This is his horrifying experience in the prison of a fundamentalist religious regime.

CHAPTER ONE

The Coup

I cleaned the swimming pool in the backyard, the swimming pool that I inherited from my Canadian tenant when he hurriedly left the country during the turmoil. Although he had managed to get most of his belongings out of the country before the fall of the shah, he was not able to take the huge portable swimming pool that he had patiently erected in the front yard, ruining my beautiful lawn and flower beds with it.

That day, the weather was unbelievably hot at around 130° in the shade, and it was only the beginning of the summer. It would stay this way for the rest of the season, which would be unbearable like every other summer for the past twenty years that I have lived in the area.

Once, my friend Bernard asked me, How is the weather down there?

I said, We have two seasons—summer and summer. He laughed then, but for us who had to live in that kind of weather for almost all of our lives, it was not funny at all. But it was a kind of life that we had to put up with.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, although the weather was still hot, I decided to pick up my clothes from the cleaner. I drove the truck that was allocated to me by the company I worked for. This car once had a very efficient air conditioner that could cool the hot air in a matter of a few minutes, until some genius revolutionaries decided to take gas compressors out and throw them in the junkyard. Their reason had justified the equality for all because it was not fair that only a few people could have air-conditioning in their car while others could not. It was much easier and cheaper this way rather than going through all the trouble and expenses to provide air conditioner for all.

At around seven o’clock, I returned home with an assortment of newspapers. It seemed kind of funny to buy all those papers not knowing what their content was. I just bought them because everyone else were buying papers in those days. After a long period of censorship on books and publications by the previous regime, people were extremely anxious to read books and newspapers. Political parties were growing like mushrooms, and every party published its own paper. The new regime was not being democratic in any way to allow these parties to publish their papers. Some believed that the strategy was to let people free for a while so that the opponents would surface in a short time and could be recognized. Another reason was that perhaps they were too busy struggling for power and wealth among themselves by killing the leaders of the old regime and confiscating their properties. Later events proved this strategy worked very well indeed. I sat on the couch, leafed through the papers, and could not find anything interesting. Finally, I poured myself a drink and listened to music.

Early afternoon, I got a call from our friend Kaveh, saying that he intended to visit us later in the evening. He was a close friend whom I used to see a lot. We went to school together, and when we finished high school, we went in different directions. Later, after almost two decades, we met again. He had selected the army, which was very popular in those days especially because the army officers were treated exceptionally well. He was married and had two kids. I chose the technical profession and worked in a place where the jobs were more secured and paid very well.

At about nine thirty, the doorbell rang. I opened the door and was surprised to see Colonel Sohrab, a mutual friends with Kaveh. He was alone and had sent his family away for a vacation. He handed me two handbags that he was carrying and asked me to put them in a safe place. I offered him to come in and join me for a drink. Meanwhile, I put the bags in a small storage room where we used to keep our luggage. While having our drinks, I talked about the current affair in our country. I was doing most of the talking, while he lit his pipe and didn’t seem too interested. Generally, he was not a talkative person at all, but that night, he was even quieter. For a few moments, I thought he might be missing his family, but with over twenty years in the army, he was accustomed to being away from them. While having our drinks and listening to music, my wife came in and said, Why don’t you two join us in the other room? The president is on television, and he is going to make a very important announcement shortly.

As the colonel heard my wife, he jumped up and rushed to the other room. When we entered, President Bani Sadr was already talking about a coup attempt that with the help of Allah the Almighty had been crushed, and most of its leaders had been captured. I was astonished when I saw the disappointment in the colonel’s eyes. He became pale, took a deep breath, and was silent for a few seconds. I asked him what was the matter or if anything had gone wrong. He replied, Everything.

While still surprised with this news, I heard the doorbell. I rushed to the door and saw Nader, the colonel’s relative. He asked if the colonel was with me. I offered him to come in, but he only wanted to talk to the colonel. When the colonel heard our conversation, he came to the door. They talked for few seconds in private, and then Nader left. Though I could not hear any of their conversation, I gathered it had something to do with the coup and our friend, Major Kaveh. He was supposed to visit us that evening but did not show up due to some unexpected visitors.

Colonel Sohrab was about to leave when a gray sedan stopped at the gate, and a friend of his who was a high-ranking officer in the army stepped out of the car. I did not know this man very well and had only seen him once with Kaveh in the golf club. He looked worried and as he saw Colonel Sohrab, he rushed to him and they engaged in a private conversation for a minute or two. I figured they were talking about what had happened to their friends and were probably seeking advice. Although he was a high-ranking officer, it appeared to me that he was taking orders from Colonel Sohrab. Later, I found out that it was true. My friend Sohrab was his superior in their organization, which was supposed to take over after the success of the coup. The colonel and his friend left in separate cars. Before leaving, the colonel’s friend asked me to do him a favor, to call his wife, who was living in another city, and tell her that her husband is all right and will be contacting her later. I got her telephone number and wrote it on a note and put it in my wallet.

Having heard the news about the coup, the two unexpected visitors and the behavior of the two officers that night made my wife worried, and I was extremely concerned. The first thing she asked me was, What was in those handbags?

I said, I don’t know, and I did not ask what was in them.

She urged me to open them to see what was there. Upon her persistence, I got the bags and opened them in front of her. To my surprise, they were bottles of different alcoholic drinks. Apparently, he knew his house might be searched and did not want others to find out that he had alcohol in his house because it was considered unlawful and anti-Islamic. For a few seconds, I remained silent and started thinking about the events that night. The unexpected visitors, the coup, the leader who had been arrested, the colonel’s family leaving the city for a vacation, no show of Kaveh, and the disappointment of the colonel and his friend and their immediate departure—they all fit into a jigsaw puzzle. Something fishy was going on, and those were enough reasons for us to get worried. The first thing my wife did, which I was very thankful to her later on, was to dump all the drinks down the drain, including a few bottles that I had stashed away for special occasions. We had heard the news a number of times that the revolutionary guards had searched houses unexpectedly and had arrested people just because they had a few bottles of alcohol drinks or photos of the leaders of the old regime. We started to clear the photo albums from all the pictures we had with the colonel, the major, and their families, along with other photos we had from the past years, which we took while on our trips abroad. She started a fire and burned whatever seemed to be of any significance. I wonder, if I had not stopped her, she would have probably burned the whole house.

Women are much smarter than men when it comes to sensing danger. They can smell it from miles away. I tried very hard to comfort her. For the sake of our kids, it was better not to show any sign of fear. It would scare them, and if by any chance, they were to be questioned by the authorities, which was very possible in those days, they would reveal our behavior to them. She calmed down a little, but I still could see the worry in her eyes.

Three hours had passed since the colonel and his friend left our house, and we were about to go to bed when the doorbell rang. I looked out through the window of the bedroom but did not see anyone. Cautiously, I went to the door and, without taking the latch off, asked who it was.

Someone called me by my name, and I said, What do you want?

He replied, I am the colonel’s houseboy. Then he said something that I could not clearly understand.

Whether he asked if I know the colonel or if the colonel was with me I do not remember, but I immediately replied no. I did not open the door all the way to see if he was alone or if someone else was accompanying him. He thanked me and said good-bye. Moments later, my wife started crying and said that we were in deep trouble. She was right; only I did not know how deep.

The next morning, when her brother asked me what the guards were doing around the house last night, it was then that I realized that the guy had not been alone, and a dozen guards were accompanying him just in case they encountered the colonel or any of his friends. The guards had also questioned him about how the colonel happened to drop by during that time to see us and say good-bye because he was leaving the town for a long trip.

Before going to work that day, I urged my wife to go and pay a visit to the major’s wife, who was expecting a baby any time. When I came back from work, she told me all about her visit. It was not good news at all. They had arrested Kaveh the night before and were looking for Colonel Sohrab and his friend. According to the government broadcasting news, Major Kaveh had captured the airport with the help of a dozen of tanks the night before his arrest. The coup leaders had planned to land at the airport, set their headquarters somewhere in the town, and conduct the operations from there. The colonel had been appointed head of all operations in that province, and his forces were to capture all the top agents of the regime right away. Her side of the story exactly coincided with what I had heard from my colleagues at work that day. The governor had arrested quite a number of armed forces personnel and some civilians. All day long, I heard rumors about the coup. No one had a clear idea of what was going on. The Islamic fundamentalists were very happy that the coup had failed. I was pretty cautious that day not to reveal anything about what had happened that night in my house and that some of the army officers who were suspected to be in the coup attempt had any relations with me. I knew there were a lot of spies among the people. Even those who were not spies would not keep their mouth shut.

From the early days of the strikes and later when the people got the courage to speak out, various groups emerged from underground. From the communist extremists to the Islamic fundamentalists and the Mojahedins, or as the shah called them, Islamic Marxists, who were struggling against the regime. On the other hand, the government in power only depended on the military and the secret police, SAVAK. The majority of the people were actually bystanders and did not want to side with any group because they were afraid of the revenge by the other side. Some opportunist groups were also closely watching the events to see which direction the wind was blowing so that they could decide to join the winning side at the proper time. The only objective that brought together all these groups with diverse ideologies was that they had one common goal—the demise of the monarchy. Most of them, without any plan for the future, followed the exiled religious leader Ayattolah Khomeini, who was very popular among the people because of his antigovernment activities abroad. Very few anticipated what the outcome of the future religious regime would be.

At the worst possible moment in the history of the nation, the shah decided (some believe that he was advised) to leave the country and his loyal followers and deserted his very dedicated generals, who needed his support at this time of trouble. Although he was the commander in chief of the army, he seemed to have no control over the course of events that were taking place. As revealed later, he was sick and could not decide what to do in those days. His loyal followers believed that he should have stayed and fought for his people as he always claimed he would. Many called him a deserter and a coward. Later events proved that if he had stayed and supported his followers, the events might have taken a different course. With his exile, he put himself and his family in misery and lived like a fugitive until the end of his life.

Before his departure, he dismissed the prime minister and appointed one of the leaders of the National Front Organization, Shahpour Bakhtiar, who was considered to be a moderate person as the prime minister. One of the conditions that the appointed prime minister imposed upon the leader was that he should leave the country temporarily. The shah had already decided to do so anyway. The new prime minister appointed a cabinet that only lasted about a month, and during this period, anarchy was ruling. He had no authority over the army. The generals had lost their commander in chief and did not have a plan to put the country in order. Some of them sided with the revolutionaries, and the rest remained undecided. On the other hand, no one obeyed the curfew that was supposed to be Implemented, and no one really cared about it. Most of the soldiers also sided with the people, and the army was practically collapsing.

After the air force students, the homafars joined the protesters; the protesters were encouraged, and in two days, the young revolutionary militia captured all police stations and army bases in the country and massacred almost all of the elite guards who were still loyal to the king. The prime minister fled the country, and the provisional regime took over.

After a few days, the real conductors of the show seemed to emerge from nowhere. They occupied the key positions in the government and started to use the extremists in every group to get rid of all their opponents and to pave the way for their future takeover of the country. They did this very successfully, and the tragic part was that the middle and the working class were the targets. Although there was some opposition from different groups, they knew that if they could control the middle and the working class by force, they would be very well in a position to extend their authority over the entire population. After all, the poor people were so puzzled and frightened that they did not know what to do but to follow the religious leaders, who, up to that time, were trusted. Gradually, the fanatics eliminated the somehow-organized groups, like the radical communists and the Mojahedins, who had helped them to come to power. The new regime wisely left the Tudeh Party, the pro-Russian communist party, untouched because they were very cooperative and were actually paving the way for the extremist Muslims. The Tudeh Party’s strategy was to take over from the ruling fanatics by penetrating the different organizations of the government and performing a sort of crawling coup, as they called it. The only strong opposition came from the Mojahedin, the radical communists, and the nationalists in the army. Surprisingly, the authorities knew about the activities of the communist party and used this to their own advantage. They preferred to fight the opposition one at a time, and the best way was to exploit them and let them destroy each other. They could crush the last survivor in due time when they were not needed anymore, and this did not take very long.

The only well organized and disciplined force that existed up to that time was the army that was under the control of the regime. Although the regime did not trust the army, it had no choice other than to rely on this only organized group to control the borders. It was the army that kept the country from falling apart and being disintegrated. Although, many of the top generals had been executed, and as well as low, most of the high-ranking officers had been either discharged or retired, the regime was still somehow suspicious of the army. They believed that since this army was recruited and trained by the previous regime, some, if not all of them, were against the new republic. It was quite natural because the army personnel were not pleased with their current status. They had been degraded and had lost the power and reputation they once used to enjoy. Clergies were assigned as advisors to every branch of the armed forces, and this made the army personnel very unhappy and frustrated because the actual decision making was with the clergies and not the commanders. The generals and the army officers were reporting to a bunch of clergies who knew nothing about the military. Some even believed that the fundamentalist regime had set up this coup to get rid of the army in order to replace them with their newly recruited revolutionary guards. The guards were volunteers, and majority of them had no military experience except a few of their leaders who have been trained in Palestinian camps in Lebanon and Palestine. They had been organized in a rush after the revolution, but most of them were religiously dedicated to the regime.

We were all worried for our friends. Major Kaveh had been arrested, and the colonel had disappeared and believed to have fled the country. Two days later, at about two in the morning, I heard the doorbell ring. I opened the door and was confronted by an army sergeant. He had a relatively short beard, which showed that he had been growing it for only a week. Politely, he asked me if Colonel Sohrab was with me in the house. I told him no. He asked if