April 26, 2010
Iranian journalist Asadi offers a searing and unforgettable account of the six years he spent in prison after being arrested in 1981 in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution. Twenty years later, now living in Paris, Asadi records his recollections of torture and imprisonment in the form of 27 letters to his interrogator, whom he calls Brother Hamid. Required at all times to wear a blindfold in Brother Hamid’s presence, Asadi developed a relationship with and a perverse dependence upon his torturer, which he describes in graphic detail, along with the endless parade of humiliations he was required to endure while being falsely accused of being both a British and a Soviet spy. Asadi is a gifted storyteller; even if the text, which jumps about chronologically, can be momentarily confusing, his ability to convey the toll of torture and imprisonment is undiminished. And the choice of the epistolary narrative device is a felicitous one: it’s as if the reader has found these letters in a shoebox or a locked drawer, making for harrowing and unique reading.
April 15, 2010
A harrowing memoir of imprisonment and torture under the Islamic Republic of Iran.
As a little boy, Asadi kissed the hand of the Ayatollah Khomeini, just prior to the cleric's exile from Iran. Khomeini returned in 1979, as leader of a revolution Asadi vigorously supported. By then this thoroughly secular intellectual had already been imprisoned three times for political agitation against the Shah. During one stretch, Asadi, a navy veteran and trained journalist, formed a jailhouse friendship with the deeply religious Ali Khamenei, who would later become the country's Supreme Leader. Asadi taught his cellmate how to interpret newspaper content and how to read"between the lines." Seeking to consolidate their power, the religious fundamentalists who ran the regime incarcerated thousands, accusing them of plotting against the revolution. In 27 chapters, each styled as an epistle to his torturer, Brother Hamid, who later became an ambassador for Iran, Asadi recounts his life, his political disillusionment and especially the unspeakable mental, spiritual and physical scarring he suffered in Tehran's Moshtarak and Evin prisons. Living among rats and cockroaches, forced to wear a blindfold in his captors' presence, Asadi was ordered to walk on all fours, to bark like a dog and to eat his own excrement. Suffering from broken teeth, chronic headaches, shoulder pain (from being strung up) and regular bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, and beaten regularly on the soles of his feet, he attempted suicide at least twice. After supplying under brutal duress the"confession" to spying his tormentors required, he barely avoided execution and was finally released in 1989. With moving stories about fellow prisoners, biting commentary on the religious dictates imposed by his jailers and meditations on the soul-destroying effect of false confessions and the special cruelty of his ideological, authoritarian interrogators, Asadi's simple prose attracts even as the facts he reports repel. A trip to Moscow in 1980 had already soured him on communism. Six years in prison turned him against the fanatics his wife once described as"the sandals of despotism." Now in exile in Paris, he has rejected politics entirely, declaring,"I…freed myself from myself."
A horrifying glimpse of the decades-long nightmare still afflicting the people of Iran.
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May 15, 2010
Iranian journalist Houshang Asadi was arrested in 1981 and spent the following six years in prison. While in prison, a man Asadi calls Brother Hamid brutally and extensively tortured him until he would admit to anything. Through frequent exposure to extreme pain and humiliation, Asadi confessed to spying both for the Soviets and for the British. Finally, because of a chance encounter with the Ayatollah Khameni, Asadi regained his freedom. Each chapter here begins with a short section addressed directly to Brother Hamid and is followed by passages recounting the memories and thoughts that the letter brings to mind. The passages are beautifully crafted, lyrical, and sad. When he speaks about his torture in detail, his story is also deeply disturbing. For the lay reader unfamiliar with the details of Iran's complex political history, however, Asadi's story is ultimately confusing and inaccessible. Although there are occasional explanatory endnotes, a special foreword addressed to foreign readers would make this book less opaque to a general audience. VERDICT An important firsthand account of Iranian prison conditions during the 1980s that scholars of Iranian history will want to read.April Younglove, Rochester Regional Lib. Council, NY
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