Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran by Houshang Asadi

be free in that republic. Islamic scholars would debate with representatives of other worldviews. Moshtarek prison would be destroyed and its ruins turned into a park.
    The atmosphere in the cell changed with the arrival of a man whowas clearly a mole. We avoided all talk of politics. We divided into two groups to play a game called Full or Empty. I was the leader of the Tehran group and Ahmad, “the likeable rascal”, to quote his own words, was the leader of the Isfahan group. We would change the team members for each round of the game and no one would go for Karroubi. We had figured out after a few rounds that he was incapable of learning the rules of the game. Together or separately, Ahmad and I had explained them to him many times: “You are not supposed to open the hand that the stone is hidden in until the leader of the rival team touches that hand and says, ‘give me the stone’.”
    Karroubi would nod that he understood. But when he had the stone, if a member of the rival team asked, “Mr Karroubi, do you have the stone?” he would say, “Yes, I do have it,” and would immediately open his hand to reveal it. If he didn’t have it he would say: “No, they haven’t given me the stone.”
    Initially, this situation made us laugh so loudly that the guards had to register their objection by banging on the door. But soon the situation created a problem, because it kept interrupting the game. Ahmad and I decided not to give Mr Karroubi another chance; we made him
persona non grata
in the game and wouldn’t give him the stone. But this created a new problem for now Mr Karroubi would open his hand for the other team and say: “They haven’t given me the stone.”
    And so we were obliged to give him the stone yet again. Each time we spent ages explaining the rules. And he would wave his hand to signal he understood and the game would start. But again, as soon as a member of the rival team asked Mr Karroubi whether he was holding the stone, he would either open his hand or tell the truth, and the game would come to an abrupt end.
    On bathing days, they would divide us between two showers. We would do a quick solitary confinement-style wash and return. Sheikh Karroubi did not share Khamenei’s sensitivities. He felt comfortable with us.
    One time, on returning from the shower, I felt my body itching. I took off my shirt. My armpits were full of tiny creatures. I showed them to Mr Karroubi. He picked one up, squeezed it with his fingers and said: “Lice.”
    The rest of the men searched through their clothes and it became clear that the clean clothes that had just been handed out were infested with lice. We reported this to the guards in charge of bringing the food; they laughed. They laughed and left.
    So it became our business to kill the lice, while sitting in the sunlight that came through the cell window and listening to Iranian pop music. The police station’s administrative unit was located just outside our cell and the staff used to listen to the radio; thus the prison inmates, considered a threat to national security, enjoyed music at their leisure, courtesy of the police.
    When I was released, I saw Sheikh Mehdi Karroubi and the spiritual fathers of Iran’s own fundamentalist Taliban on television. It turned out that the Sheikh had become a master of political games. The Sheikh and the representatives of the Islamic Coalition Party 26 had used their struggle against Marxism as the reason to be granted an amnesty by the Shah, and had consequently been released. The rest of us, who had done so well playing Full or Empty, had less luck in the real political game, and remained in custody. We were collectively released only when the revolution began. Later on, the cell’s leftists met up once again in one of the prisoner’s homes on Bahar Street, but political intrigues eventually destroyed the friendships that had been forged in the cells, and we scattered in different directions.
    One day they came for