Letters from Tehran Prison

【Preface】

The year 2022 sounds scary to me, but I know it's just a small footnote to the absurd year we've all been through together.

I am a knowledge worker living in mainland China. In the past few years, I have had to deal with the police frequently because of my career and social activities, but before 2022, we managed to maintain a certain balance, and they still left me space to participate in public life, including writing, Speak on social media, be a guest on podcasts or offline events, organize events, etc., but occasionally interview me, follow me, find my unit leader, or send someone to monitor my organized activities and public speeches.

By this year, their logic is no longer reasonable to follow, anything may trigger the highest alarm, no reason is given, and there is no room for any consensus to be reached. At the turn of spring and summer of 2022, after the long lockdown ended, I was imprisoned at home for three days because I met my friends to dance in a public place. One month later, under political pressure, the media I had worked for for six years illegally terminated my labor contract and refused to pay me full compensation in accordance with the Labor Law. In autumn, I left Beijing to participate in the installation of an art exhibition. I prepared my clothes and luggage for less than 10 days. I never thought of this departure and never returned home.

From the long health treasure pop-up window unable to return to Beijing, to being arrested across provinces in Guangzhou by the Beijing State Security, and then hiding in a remote place to avoid the limelight, and then to the "white paper movement" happening, friends disappeared one after another... The response to tyranny Fear shut my mouth during the year, and I realized that being denied the right to tell hurt me more than all this persecution. It wasn't until I found this way, using the Iranian context, that I told our story and successfully published it inside the wall. At the moment this story is written, I still don't know which will come first, tomorrow or the capture. Fortunately, it did not come true, and now I have successfully left the country. Fleeing in such a hurry, I didn't even get home in time to pack, house my cat, or tell my family what happened. Even though I am already overseas, the physical memory of fear is still there. Please forgive me for still not being able to use my real name.

When this story was first published, it coincided with a 180-degree U-turn on the zeroing policy. The tide of infection swept across immediately, and almost everyone had family members who were killed-in fact, it was difficult to control the spread of the epidemic before the zero-clearing policy was over. The unprepared release seems to be a "punishment" for the people who complained during the lockdown period. Although the two policies, whether they are completely cleared or released overnight, are the same kind of lazy policy, which only regards life as a statistical number; however, memory is difficult to preserve, making perception easier to manipulate . In the field of public opinion, opposition to the former policy was portrayed as the sinner of the consequences of the latter policy. People began to voluntarily forget the previous anti-blockade protests, and even abused those protesters. The undercurrent of civil resistance in October and November was muted as never before. Amidst the mourning of the high mortality rate of the new crown, amidst the abuse and forgetting of the anti-blockade struggle, the secret arrests are still going on. Fear prevents us from being able to find each other, not knowing who has been taken away, and not daring to speak up for friends who have disappeared in the field of public opinion.

This article is dedicated to all the arrested partners of the "White Paper Movement". I hope that one day we can stand upright on the land we live in and tell each other's stories in our own language.

【text】

Mother,

This is my second day in the Qarchak detention center (Qarchak detention center). This winter in Tehran is really cold. Fortunately, Evin prison (Evin), where political prisoners are held in the north, is already overcrowded. I was pulled here I chose the one in the south, otherwise I might be even more embarrassed! I was still wearing the clothes I had when I left home to say goodbye to you in early September. At that time, I only took two sets of early autumn clothes to go out. I never expected that it would be so long before I came back, and in this way. Have you watered my plants yet? Ferns need a lot of humidity even in winter, calla lilies need more sun, is my lemon tree producing lemons?

I tried to write this letter to you, although I don't know if it will end up in your hands, I think it is very likely that they will deal with it directly, not because this letter will pose any threat to them , but only out of their habitual cruelty and indifference. Do you remember Farah? The girl I told you about was arrested for doing research in Balochistan -- they charged her with a 15-year sentence for national security crimes, she's been in there for four years, and the book we sent her She never received it, and the novel she wrote in it and sent to Ali was torn to nothing but the catalog when it was sent out. Last month, I met Ali after my first release from interrogation. He told me of a recent call from Farah from prison, the only time he had heard from her all year, and her voice still sounded impenetrable. When saying goodbye, Ali was hesitant to say anything—I think what I, he and all the friends around me know but are careful not to reveal is that I am in a kind of borrowed freedom—"I Believe that no matter what happens in the future, you will also be indestructible..." After he finished speaking, my tears fell down uncontrollably.

I think I might disappoint everyone. In the end, I might just be a weak petty bourgeois intellectual. Although I have been deprived of my favorite career for a year, I have been practicing losing, and I will hug two people every night. The cats bid farewell to them silently, but I realized that I have so many things that I am afraid of losing, even the thousands of books at home, how vulnerable I am. I just bought a batch of second-hand vinyl on the morning when I was arrested. They should have arrived home long ago, right? I don't know when I will have the chance to listen to them. I also added a wall breaker to the shopping cart that day, thinking that I could squeeze pomegranate juice for breakfast, but it was too expensive and hesitated before paying. Can you believe it? During the day and a half inside, the moments that tormented me the most were always nostalgia for these most shameful petty bourgeois lives. Losing my life itself seemed more painful than my accomplishments, the meaning I found in what I loved.

By the way mom, I never even dared to tell you about my unemployment, I went through a period of home confinement at the turn of spring and summer, just because I met my friends to dance in the street - how afraid of freedom is this regime soul! Then the secret police contacted the newspaper I worked for - more than once over the years - and the editor-in-chief and top management were no longer willing to take any risks I posed. You know that I am always willing to understand and sympathize with the cowardice and cowardice in the torrent of the times. However, the newspaper took advantage of this "elephant in the room" and refused to abide by the labor law and pay full compensation, because they were sure that I would not risk offending the public authority again to disclose the reason and process of my resignation. (Yes, they won the bet!) Those haggling over compensation like a vegetable market again and again makes people look down on them! What is this called? Ghost. 【1】

After the first interrogation came out in October, every moment of my life was suspended, and I knew I was just waiting for my freedom to be taken away again. During the day, I spend a lot of time reading the prison notes of friends who have been arrested over the years, doing some psychological construction for myself. When I read that Amin refused to plead guilty in prison, and stammered out "I am willing to use my freedom to defend what I have done" in his final statement at the Tehran Supreme Court, I lay down on the bed and cried One, wondering if I really deserved all that happened to me. At night, I always have nightmares about escape, arrest and imprisonment. Sometimes the lightning and thunder outside the window will enter the same brain frequency as the interrogation and imprisonment in the dream, waking me up. However, the sense of fear and despair in those dreams was so similar that I didn’t remember it after waking up. The only dream that impressed me was the most everyday one—I dreamed that I was cooking and entertaining friends at home in Tehran, That dream was so long, I even remember the process of preparing each dish, and the joy of thinking that my friends would praise me while preparing it. When I wake up, I feel that reality is so desolate.

I did everything I could to avoid another arrest - hiding in a faraway land, deleting social media accounts, wiping files on my computer and phone, swallowing all injustice, withdrawing from public life, and getting caught up in a huge crisis Aphasia. I think every day that if I had been imprisoned immediately at that time, at least it would have aroused a wave of solidarity and rekindled the enthusiasm for resistance, instead of being forgotten like this.

Memory becomes faulty. Those 404s stop you from even remembering what happened the day before, and the day before. All of our conversations are hard and incoherent. Messaging software can only feel a little safe if the function of disappearing after reading is activated, but I often wake up and see the reply sent by the other party, but I can’t remember what I said in the reply. I am reluctant to watch those messages full of temperature disappear after 10s, 30s or 1h, and there is no way to make them stay longer. I dare not take screenshots because all of this could be incriminating.

Forgetting is an atrocity, yes, an accomplice, an accomplice to tyranny! But the more inescapable reality of living in this country is that memory is sinful. It is not just about making your life heavy and painful. It will become evidence held by the secret police at any time and throw you into an abyss beyond your imagination.

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I want to start with the first arrest that took so much trouble with me, I should have talked about it after that release, what a pity I didn't then. The pain has started to fade gradually. I signed a pledge not to disclose the details of the interrogation. Many times, when I wanted to write down those fragmented thoughts and feelings, I realized that it seemed that the records were not safe enough, so I gave up. My cell phone and computer no longer give me any sense of privacy—sure, they were already tools of the regime’s surveillance, but after 30 hours of being seized by the secret police, they are as scary as a virus (and in reality virus has long since ceased to be feared).

On an ordinary day in October, they "trapped" me with the crime-solving method of the serious crime team. They traveled thousands of miles from Tehran to Sanandaj (Sanandaj, the main city in the Kurdish region of Iran ), and dispatched so many people. Many ambushes and camouflages - this later became a story of them showing off their power to me inside. It is said that my intelligence is not worthy of the net they have laid. The funny thing is, I wasn't hiding at all, it was just a normal day with friends and I was in the kitchen cooking a pot of lamb with tomatoes and chickpeas. Under the cover of Kurdish speakers who were local informants from Sanandaj who were our fellow travelers, we let down our vigilance, and they broke into Khdia’s house, “Squat down!”【2】Adler squatted reflexively Then he was knocked down to the ground, and the two young girls, Nur and Hediye, stood motionless beside them, froze in place. I screamed and resisted instinctively in Kurdish until I heard Tehran Persian like a knife - there is no better accent to describe violence, it is violence of theocracy, violence of state apparatus, national chauvinism and patriarchal violence A complex of - "Mahisa, you still can't recognize my accent, aren't you happy to see my fellow countryman all the way? I don't believe I can't deal with you this time!" [3] This sentence is full of provocation and The vicious opening line of repression stuck in my head long after, even though born in Tehran, as a Kurd, I was always a foreigner in my homeland and I grew up trying to keep my Persian from getting a Tehran accent . But at the time, I immediately quieted down, realizing that things were probably more serious than I thought.

No ID was shown, no notice of summons or arrest, just threats with an accent and a handcuff, and my party friends and I were taken away. Our mobile phones and computers were all taken away. Khdia’s parents’ house was taken away. Searched up and down. I was stuffed into one car and the others were stuffed into another, it was so dark I couldn't see anything, just remember they stopped for a while at a nearby police station and the Kurdish area as you know is already in Nearly lost during the protests, many police stations were occupied by protesters, and they could not borrow them for interrogations. However, the 480-kilometre journey to Tehran was too risky for them, with many towns on fire at night. On the way, they kept accusing me, because of me, they had to take such a risk to go on a business trip, and they didn’t know whether they would be able to return to their comfort zone in Tehran. 【4】They still didn't forget to warn me viciously that Khidia, Nur and Adler were taken away because of me, and they would hate me! (Of course I know they won’t.) I didn’t know how long I had been driving, but finally found a police station in the Kurdish area that was still in order. My anxiety made me completely lose my sense of time, and I only remembered that it was already late at night when I arrived.

When they finally took me to the basement, the fear that had been barely suppressed by the belief hit me, and all the righteousness dissipated. I first saw a giant cage in which two unkempt men slept under scorching incandescent lights with no dignity at all. There is another cage in the back that is more hidden. When I went in, no one was there. Later, when I went to the toilet, I saw women being sent in one after another. Surrounding it is the interrogation room. I was taken into one of them.

Most of the time is anxious waiting. They left the room again and again, returning with more "evidence" pulled from my phone and computer. How weak I am, the interrogation has just begun, and almost no ruthless tricks have been used, so I truthfully handed over the passwords of my mobile phone and computer-later I heard that Noor had to carry it for 6 hours before handing it over. The insecurity made me constantly want to go to the bathroom, which was probably the most humiliating experience during an interrogation. The toilet is at the entrance of the stairs, almost at the passage, and there is only a symbolic partition less than one-third of the height, just to ensure that it cannot be seen when squatting down, and I always have to rack my brains to test how to do it. Bending gracefully and lifting his trousers without being spotted by the male police officers walking down the aisle. A female police officer from Tehran was responsible for guarding me when I went to the bathroom, but when she was not there, a male police officer would take over her role—it seemed that at the moment of being found guilty, I didn’t want to be seen by a strange male police officer. Intimate actions are improper demands.

When the interrogators in Tehran are not present, there are always a few vicious local middle-aged male police officers sitting in the center of the basement, watching every interrogation room around, but frequent urination gives me the opportunity to occasionally look at this one outside my interrogation room Movement in the basement space. I overheard a few local jury policemen whispering in Kurdish in the aisle, complaining that they have to accompany these dignified men from Tehran to work overtime and always be angry with them, "It's really from the capital People, they don’t follow the rules at all, they don’t let the suspect pass the timing device when they enter the house, they made up their minds to exceed the interrogation time limit!” I also heard the Tehran police who interrogated me tell the local police at the door of the interrogation room Afterwards, all interrogation records, including monitoring, should be deleted immediately. All these signals make my hands and feet weak, and time seems to become even more endless.

I also try to spy on my friends as I pass by other rooms. Noor's room was filled with constant sobbing. She was too young to experience this, and she probably hadn't learned how to hide her vulnerability in the face of violence. The secret police who interrogated her were around her own age and were full of flirtatious words when confronting her. "I've never been so gentle with my wife," I heard him say to a sobbing Noor glibly. Later, Noor told me that whenever other middle-aged policemen from Tehran entered the interrogation room and threatened Noor severely, he would immediately calm her down, coax her, and make her happy. Nuer has little emotional experience, and the few passages are also deceived by men. So, a young woman of the opposite sex pays close attention to her intensively in a confined space and for a long time, listens to her narration, and cries with her, how can she not expose her fragility? This trick is probably specially used to defeat her! We sat together in the mediation room in the foyer to sign the paperwork when it was close to release. I was surprised to find that the interaction between him and Noor was full of sexual tension, "Is your hair naturally this color? It's so beautiful!" "When will you please Shall I eat?" "Do you know that your confession is full of loopholes, and I spent so much effort to help you get it back!" Every time he finished a sentence, Nuer would always lower his head and show a shy expression. Shameless! These tricky interrogation techniques are like doing experiments on human nature! I recall Sebidia telling us that when she was imprisoned, a female police officer often talked to her, saying that she was easily seduced by the male revolutionary leaders at the same school because of her unattractive looks, low self-esteem, and simplicity. Mayam spat, and I clenched my fists.

By the way, the police who interrogated Noor came to my interrogation room during a break in the interrogation in the middle of the night—most of the interrogators were in a meeting or taking a nap—pretending to chat with me. In the scene of following me a month ago, a rapist was suddenly brought into the basement outside, he was immediately distracted, and said in a frivolous to harsh tone, "We're all in the warehouse area, go to the black market to find chickens, it's useful Rape!" Yes, he used "chicken", the most insulting swear word for women, can you believe it came from a defender of public power in the Islamic Republic?

But Hediye encountered another kind, which must be the most despicable question in this interrogation, "Aren't your parents still retired? Don't you still have a 9-year-old sister?" Threats to family members Let Hedia completely disarm. At the same time, the interrogation had been trying to consume her will. During the nearly 30 hours, the silence between each question was too long, tormenting her already exhausted body. Every time I passed Khediya's interrogation room to go to the bathroom, she would curl up on the cold metal interrogation chair with her legs crossed, motionless, like a sculpture. She later told us that she didn't even go to the bathroom once. During the urine test, we were allowed to see each other for the first time, but we were stared at and forbidden to speak. Nuer and I hooked our fingers secretly and were stopped immediately. When Hediye came out of the toilet, he took a cup of blood-red urine. The male police officer who was doing the urine test was startled, and the female police officer next to him said casually, "Is it menstruation?" It was the first day of her period. , I don’t know how I survived this long torture.

The secret police who dealt with me was the most experienced one among them. He was originally the top leader of Tehran's secret police system. After getting the password from me and turning on my mobile phone, he went back to the interrogation room in a rage and asked me why the recording was always on, "You like talking to the police about your rights, right?! When the police talk to you, you turn on the recording ?! You think you really understand the law, don’t you? You just don’t clean up!” During the interrogation, he sometimes suppressed me with authority, “What I hate the most is that you treat the police as idiots!”. It seemed that every word I said was wrong, and I was putting myself in greater danger; sometimes I threatened me with terrible crimes, "You tell me the question just now! How many years do you want to stay in there? ", so that in the end almost all written confessions were his statements; sometimes he turned into an enlightened person, expressing his understanding of freedom defenders and sympathy for the situation of Iranian women, making me believe that public power is not monolithic... he Enjoying the process of crushing my self-esteem little by little above power, those 24 hours were almost a large-scale "gaslighting effect" (gaslighting), so that at the weakest moment of my will, I almost believed that he was doing it for me. Hello, you are helping me win forgiveness from the system.

When I showed the final transcript to me, I found that the column of the stylized question "I need to entrust myself to contact a lawyer" at the top of the transcript had already automatically selected "No" for me. In addition, "I have read the interrogation specification manual" also automatically selected "Yes", but 20 hours have passed, and I don't even know what the so-called "interrogation specification manual" is. When I questioned him, he boredly replied, "This can be changed," and handed me a document on interrogation regulations. Later, I asked Nur and Hedia, they had no experience in dealing with violent machines, not only did they not notice these places at all, they even signed their notes without carefully reading them.

The most ridiculous thing is the arrogance and ignorance of these policemen, can you believe they can't even tell the difference between Baloch and Kurdish! Apparently just google it to find out. The protest poem written by my friend in Baloch, which I obviously don't understand, was also placed on my head - the Kurdish policeman who helped interrogate my Tehran police and took notes It was so embarrassing that I almost laughed out loud when I defended it! 【5】He also asked me in a gossip tone whether Man’ani, who speaks out for sexual minorities, has AIDS—just because he is gay. His most vicious tricks were used to press me if I was a feminist, and the secret police in other interrogation rooms also induced Noor, Khdia and Adler to accuse me of being a feminist, as if compared with everything else. Come on, the identification with feminism is the biggest crime! I was puzzled, and if he had asked me normally, I would have told him without a second thought that of course I was a feminist. Also, how ridiculous that he is forcing me to admit that all our creations are alluding to the Supreme Leader without even daring to say the name himself!

We all finally relaxed when it came time to go through the release process, including the police. Almost every policeman from Tehran showed me which "case" they had followed and investigated me in the past. I was afraid that I would feel that I was too "important", so I didn't forget to add a sentence at the end, "You can't be successful! A waste of our energy!" A Kurdish policeman who seems to have the highest rank here seems to want to seize the last chance to come to these capitals In front of the police, he showed his loyalty to the regime and educated us in Persian, "Do you know the current situation of Iran in the international situation? The United States and Israel are staring at each other, and the strategic friendship between Russia and Iran is not stable. Saudi Arabia is flirting with each other, Iran is facing enemies from the "front" and "back", I interrupted his impassioned speech in a low voice, and the partners sitting next to me couldn't help laughing, a Tehran policeman Immediately rescued him, "Mahrsa, you are used to confronting the police! "It's not a confrontation, it's just an occupational disease of a writer..." I whispered. The Kurdish policeman ended his carefully prepared statement for the end of this interrogation. The partners laughed louder, as if We finally came back after 24 hours of humiliation.

The most interesting episode was Adler, who was the only boy present at the party. Fortunately, he had the opportunity to quietly empty the contents of the phone before it was taken away, so that he was fearless throughout the interrogation process. But do you know how his mobile phone was taken away? During the wild ambush, the police thought that our mobile phones were confiscated—he was using Noor’s mobile phone to take pictures of their forced entry. After he squatted down, he was thrown down by the police and took away the mobile phone in his hand— — but left out his own, but when he was waiting to enter the interrogation room, he put his hand in his trouser pocket to send a message to a friend telling us that we were arrested, and it was sent to the communication group where I was, and my mobile phone was in the hands of the police! Immediately came the police and took away his mobile phone.

There aren't as many lighthearted stories either. My lumbar keyboard protruded from the interrogation chair and violently broke out. The waiting time was too long and too difficult. When I don’t go to the toilet, I always pace in the interrogation room, most of the time I walk backwards in small steps to relieve the pain in my back, so I always bump into the tables and chairs, attracting the most vicious middle-aged man in the center of the basement. The young male police officer yelled at me—he threatened several times loudly that he would handcuff me to the interrogation chair. At 4 o'clock in the middle of the night, I was too tired to move around. I put the three wooden chairs in the interrogation room together against the wall and lay down on them to rest. The idea never came anyway. I was clutching the sweater jacket I took out from Hediye's house before I was taken away. It was the only comforting temperature I could touch in that cold space. I'm trying to picture in my mind what Farah and the rest of his mates in prison are like; imagining Vida, Sebidiye and some of the other friends even if they come out and just go into a bigger prison, replaced by the authorities A brand new name and identity, tormented by airtight surveillance and a false life. The image of Sebidiye’s resistance has appeared in many reports. After she was released from prison, she often ignored the risks of organizers and inviters in gatherings and public events with strangers. She made high-profile speeches and wanted to be recognized by others. It took me so long to understand that she was just so desperate to get her name back. These imaginary simulations of my future life overwhelmed me almost immediately, and at some point I wondered if I didn't have the courage to live like that, would I have the courage to end my life? Then I immediately dismissed this idea, thinking that Mayam, Reza, and other partners outside must be trying to rescue us. With my confidence in them, I managed to keep my will from completely collapsing.

An Azerbaijani-looking police officer sitting in the middle of the basement who kept silent all the time brought another wooden chair to my interrogation room and gently placed it under my dangling calf—he thought I had fallen asleep caught. During the 30-hour interrogation, the only time I shed tears.

Mom, have you seen that movie about the Stasi in East Germany, "The Overheard Storm"? When I watched it a few years ago, I only thought it was a good movie. After living under increasingly strict monitoring these years, I have more feelings when I watch it again. How touching is the image of the "Sonata dedicated to the good man". During the process of monitoring the home of the East German intellectuals, the secret police were moved by their music, emotions and thoughts, and silently helped them escape the punishment of the system. Today's monitoring is driven by big data algorithms, where even thoughts, emotions, and creations have become mechanical and fragmented "keywords" to trigger alarms, and there is no soil for the final awakening of human nature. I can't help but wonder, if we are also monitored patiently by such specific people, will there be one or two minions of the system who are moved by our creations, emotions and thoughts, and thus stand on our side?

It wasn’t until they were finally able to leave that they brought the summons notice that should have been shown at the time of the arrest and asked us to sign the date of the previous day. We took a look and told us that in view of the unstable situation in the Kurdish region, it is temporarily difficult for the detention center to detain us, so there is no need to take the documents away. 【6】When I walked out of the police station, I saw that Azerbaijani-looking police officer was off duty and walking in front of me with some other guards. I walked past him quickly and said "thank you" in a low voice.

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In the past two years, everyone around me has been discussing whether to leave this country.

I remember that a year ago, Reza and I had an in-depth chat about his experience after being arrested after the Green Revolution in 2009. Faced with so many people going into exile overseas, he still firmly chose to stay. "History is not over yet, we are still living in it, and we have a responsibility!" He said that we must stay and take it back. He said you look at those who left, they faced greater aphasia, they were muzzled in this land, but after going out and singing loudly, how many people outside are interested in their voices ? Those voices belonged only to this land after all. Their struggles will also end up disconnected from the history here. We talked about Mujahiddin, a left-wing Islamic organization that went into exile in the West after 1979. Mom, you must still remember their tragic memories of fighting against the theocratic government after they ousted the king. This memory is almost replaced by their current cult-like conspiracy theory Rewrite, the young resistance forces no longer bother to be with them, and you can only see them in the advertisements of some pornographic websites, isn't it too sad!

The night after I got out of the police station, Adler went home, and Nur and I went back to Khediya’s home in Sanandaj to share our experiences in the interrogation room. Ignorant, each showing off their cleverness in coping with the interrogation for a while, and weeping together because of the humiliation suffered by their companions inside. Let's reminisce about how they got angry because they didn't have enough evidence to formally arrest us-"I don't fucking understand, you don't want money, you don't want names, what are you after? You are fucking brains There is water!" The middle-aged policeman from Tehran who was interrogating Khidia snarled viciously just before we finished the formalities and were about to leave. We smile bitterly, with their imagination, they will never be able to grasp what the other world we are after is like. They can't even understand that people can have dignity and ideals outside their own interests! We set fire to the prints of the protest, and the writing melted into ashes like an epitaph. The time we spent comforting each other that night was so precious, but after all, it is inconvenient for Hedia to take us in. Our whereabouts are under stricter monitoring, and contact with anyone may cause them trouble. Noor and I didn't know where we were going, and the next night we finally made up our minds to break through the police cordon. On the way to escape, the sound of artillery fire from the direction of Iraqi Kurdistan can still be faintly heard. 【7】

During the long wait at the airport for my flight, I received a call from Majid from Canada who had heard about my situation from friends, "You must go now! From the Kurdish area across the border to the Iraqi side, Do not go back to Tehran!" "I am not prepared to leave the country illegally, and I don't want to never come back!" "I know you are not prepared, but you have to be clear, this is exile! Exile will not leave you It's time to get ready!", that 2 hour long call exhausted me, I almost got into an argument with him, he was pushing me to face everything I didn't want to face yet. Majid asked Parwa to call me again. She was imprisoned in the detention center for one year. After the sentence, she wore electronic handcuffs for two years in a state of probation and cut off contact with everyone. Just when she was almost forgotten by the public and the police, she left quietly and is now applying for political asylum in France, "As long as I still have a passport from the Islamic Republic, no matter where I go, I will be killed because the motherland is behind me." I feel trembling, I just have to cut it off," Parva said firmly. She once gave up so much for the struggle, she is about to complete her studies and a good life, but in the snobbish system of the West, she can almost only rely on the experience of "trafficking" victims to find her position again... I don't want to leave, more If you don't want to leave and you can't come back, compared to this result, staying in prison for a while doesn't seem so unbearable. But how do I know it's just "for a while"?

I ended up on Kish, an island in the Persian Gulf that seems out of history. Sunny, warm and humid, no public anger, no police violence. In those places in history, it is getting colder and colder, and the women on the street have rewrapped their headscarves because of the cold weather. One by one our friends from Tehran were taken away and accused without cause. Fear and insecurity among those who have not “disappeared” and, worst of all, the distrust and alienation that has grown among us. The partners suspect each other who is the secret police informant in the communication group "broken into". People who are caught in and out sometimes face not the comfort of friends, but the fear of being implicated. The reasons for unfriending in communication tools are always the same: I am different from you, I am not ready to be a revolutionary, and I don't want to "sacrifice"!

There are so many brave people, they appear on the image and are spread and sung. But there are still so many fears and weaknesses that have not been overcome, so embarrassed that they have to hide in the claustrophobic place of the revolution, with no place to put them.

On New Year's Eve, Mina came to the island from Tehran to find me, and we slept in the same bed that night, and she spoke bitterly of how friends began to falter in the face of the threat of punishment, the governmentality of fear at work. utility, differentiating each other. She is also isolated for being more determined and honest. She said angrily that she was unwilling to use her legal knowledge to help friends who had just "disappeared". I ended the bedtime conversation almost impatiently. Later I thought I was probably afraid that my weakness would be seen through by her. The biggest torture for me in the interrogation was at the moment of betrayal. Under their pressure, I uttered the nicknames of some participants. I comforted myself that if I didn’t tell them their real names, I wouldn’t really expose them, but I knew it was just self-deception. That's all. That kind of betrayal also swallowed me at that moment, part of my spirit and beliefs were disintegrating, and it would make me live in the pain of self-blame forever. When Mina was interrogated before, she never handed over her cell phone and computer passwords, and responded to every question asked by the police with unyielding eyes and silence. We all want to embrace and pass on this image of femininity, but I think she should be more lenient and give our generation time to learn to live with fear. But what I didn't expect was that less than a week after saying goodbye to Mina, she was arrested again. In the past six months, every farewell, I don't know whether we will meet again. How I regretted interrupting her that night.

I thought of Ketayon’s pain before being arrested a few years ago. As the wife of a well-known imprisoned dissident, she had to embrace the image of a “Decembrist’s wife” and had to give up all her activities. Resist all political pressure to stand up for her husband and finish his unfinished business. That image cannot allow her to be a little weak and withdrawn. It was too late when we realized that she couldn't bear it. On the eve of her imprisonment, she suffered from severe depression, hallucinations, and her face became swollen. She always hid herself in the closet at home. By the way, today just happens to be her birthday, how did she spend it in prison?

The smokescreen of mandatory hijab laws and the abolition of the morality police began to spread in the English-speaking world, and the outside world began to cheer the victory of Iran's women's revolution instead of paying close attention to the arrests and imprisonments that were going on inside. The supreme leader insisted on television that the protest was a conspiracy by foreign forces, who were eager to "find out the organization". 【8】

The mood of the protests is fading. As for me, the self-punishment of aphasia did not bring me safety, but only made me dull and indifferent. What should come is still here. This time there was no elaborate net - I was forced to report my whereabouts frequently; and there was no interrogation - they had already collected and fabricated the charges they needed, the usual false accusations of "foreign forces" There is no room for slight objections. I was taken straight back to Kachak Prison in South Tehran to await final trial, and I was not even given time to go home and meet you.

Mother, I think they will seek you out, and threaten you with the dreadful punishment that I shall face, and make you persuade me to confess, as they have always done. I know you will be scared and worried about me, but you will also believe that I did nothing wrong, right? Our generation failed to complete this revolution, and I think the best promise that can be left to the next generation is: "No one expresses remorse from the accused."*

* "No one expresses remorse from the accused" were the last words of 19-year-old protester Yalda Aghafazli, who was captured in November and beaten and Tortured, she went on hunger strike. After her release she chose to end her own life.

Mahesa

2023.1.13

【footnote】

[1] After a month of isolation in Beijing, the author met with friends in the last few weekends of spring to "Bunye Di" in different public spaces in Beijing every Friday night. The Friday of the Dragon Boat Festival coincided with On June 3, they had an appointment to dance in a certain park in Beijing, but the police suspected that they organized an operation on a sensitive day. They imprisoned her at home for 3 days and harassed the news agency "The Paper" she worked for. The news agency immediately dismissed her. Labor relations, and refused to pay full compensation in accordance with the Labor Law.

[2] On November 8th, the author was arrested by the Beijing State Security across provinces at a friend’s house in Guangzhou. The local health codes of the four people who gathered that day were simultaneously given “yellow codes”. Several local epidemic prevention personnel knocked on the door and falsely claimed to have detected Some people came from the sealed-off area and needed antigen tests for them. After the anti-epidemic personnel came to register with their ID cards and got their mobile phones to scan the code, several Beijing plainclothes rushed in and "captured" them. The phone was snatched without preparation.

[3] Persian with a Tehran accent refers to Beijing dialect.

【4】When she was arrested, the author’s Beijing Health Bao had popped up for more than two months. Even the police who arrested across provinces could not bring her back to Beijing for interrogation and detention as usual. In fact, these Beijing national security officers who came across provinces to arrest her also took the risk of health treasure pop-ups to carry out their tasks. Therefore, the interrogation had to be held in Guangzhou, where the epidemic is raging.

【5】In October, a friend of the author, inspired by Iranian protest songs, created and sang a Cantonese version of a classic protest song from the last century. During the process of closely monitoring the author's WeChat, the police saw the a cappella version that she sent to several friends in private messages on the chat history. They thought it was composed by her, but she herself did not understand Cantonese. When the author pointed this out during the interrogation, the police became furious and said, "The lyrics are obviously written in simplified characters. Do you think I have never seen Cantonese? I have lived in Hong Kong, and Cantonese is in traditional characters!" In the interrogation room of a Public Security Bureau in Guangzhou, the policeman next to Beijing State Security who helped him write the transcript was a Cantonese native speaker.

[6] After the 24-hour interrogation (30 hours from being taken to the final release, exceeding the statutory interrogation time), she was punished with 15 days of administrative detention for "picking quarrels and provoking troubles". It was difficult for the detention center to admit her, and her "15 days" was suspended. After copying the data on her mobile phone and computer, she was released together with others.

[7] In the early morning of November 11, Haizhu District in Guangzhou was officially closed. The author crossed the Haizhu Bridge at the last moment and rushed to the airport. Because he was afraid that the Guangzhou health code would turn red again, he did not dare to stay in the hotel and waited ten days in the airport terminal. After a few hours, I finally boarded the plane and left Guangzhou.

[8] On New Year's Eve (December 28), the Ministry of Public Security issued a notice calling for maintaining security and stability during the New Year's Day and Spring Festival, and severely cracking down on hostile forces' infiltration, subversion, sabotage and sabotage activities. Immediately afterwards, some participants of the "White Paper Movement" were quietly arrested again in January after undergoing a 24-hour interrogation in early December. Many people have disappeared to this day.