On November 3, 1996, Sarkuhi was arrested by the Irania security police. He was released on December 20 and wrote the following letter while he was free. Sarkuhi was arrested again on January 27; on February 21, he called his wife from prison and told her that he might be released if she agreed to say that the letter was inauthentic. He remains in prison.
Translated from the Farsi by the PEN American Center and excerpted in "The Globe and Mail", the Toronto daily on February 22.
Today is January 3, 1997. I, Faraj Sarkuhi, am writing this note in great haste in the hope that one day someone will read it, and then the Iranian and international public (and especially my loved ones) will learn of the terrifying experiences I have had. This note may never reach anyone. But I am hopeful that someone will read it and after my arrest or death will publish it so that there will be a testament to my pain and suffering.
I was arrested at Mehrabad Airport on November 3, 1996, and held in one of the Ministry of Informations' secret prisons until December 20. I don't know how long I have. I expect to be arrested again at any second or to be murdered in such a way that it looks like suicide. Torture, prison, and death are what await me. I've fallen victim to a plan that the Ministry of Information has devised and is still in the process of carrying out. I don't know what will happen next.
In early November, Mr. Hashemi, an agent for the Ministry of Information, called me and told me that I would finally be able to obtain an exit visa and leave the country. I did not doubt Mr. Hashemi's words -- I missed my wife and children, who are in Germany, and I was very anxious to see them. I thought that maybe the regime had concluded that there was no advantage to their barring me from travel. I should explain here the mind-set that allowed me and others like me to become the Ministry's pawns. First, we thought that there were two factions in this regime and that the Ministry of Information was controlled by the faction that did not support the policy of pressuring intellectuals. Second, I had not participated in any covert political activities; my work was concerned with literary and cultural matters and was done in the open. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, so I naively assumed they wouldn't do anything to me.
I bought a ticket for Germany. On November 3, I went to the airport with my friend Parvin Ardalan. Mr. Hashemi had called me the day before and told me to meet him at the exchange booth prior to my flight. Another official showed up there and took me to a room in the airport. Mr. Hashemi was there, and he gave me exit forms to fill out, which I did. Then he took my passport and the money for my exit tax. Fifteen minutes later, he arrested me. I was blindfolded and taken by car to one of the Ministry of Information's secret prisons. The main phase of their plan was under way.
During their interrogations I learned that they had tampered with my passport and put someone else's face in place of mine. That person was given my foreign currency allowance, shopped at the airport, then went to Hamburg using my passport, which now had a German entry stamp. Later, I found out they had told Parvin that my flight had been delayed, that I was now flying on Lufthansa, and that she should call Germany and tell my family and friends not to meet me at the airport as planned. On the first or second day they told me, "It has been officially announced that you have left Iran, and your entry into Germany has been documented at the Hamburg airport. You will remain in solitary confinement for a while. After the interrogations, interviews, and other inquiries are completed, we will kill you and bury you secretly -- or we will dump your body in Germany." On the third or fourth day they played me a recorded telephone conversation between my brother Esmail and my wife, Farideh, in which he told her that Mehrabad Airport had officially documented my departure from Iran.
The pressure began to intensify. I had been condemned to death and felt there was no hope. I wasn't an official prisoner. I had "disappeared" without a trace. My situation was different from that of the other prisoners, even those who were also condemned to death. A prisoner, even on death row, can hope for amnesty, can write a letter or draft a will. But the decision to eliminate me was final and irrevocable. My departure from the country had been announced. I felt as though I had been buried alive.
Their interrogations and torture began on the first day and continued until the last. Part of the interrogations concerned cultural matters, about which I could write my opinion. Other questions concerned my life and the history of the groups I'd been involved with. These questions were not difficult to answer, since the work of these groups had not been secret or covert. I subsequently discovered that their main objective was not to gain information through interrogations but to stage what they called "interviews". For these, they first tormented me until I broke down, then they exerted intense pressure on me to memorize texts they had prepared and recite them before a video camera.
The interviews were mainly about espionage. They forced me to say that I had spied for Manville, the first secretary of the French embassy, and for Gust, the cultural attache from the German embassy, and that I was being paid by both of them, and that Manville and Gust dictated the ideological content of my magazine. They repeatedly beat me until I performed credibly. They filmed the interviews several times until they were satisfied, and each time they made me plead for clemency and forgiveness. They forced me to talk about other writers and to say that I had had sexual relations with several women, some of whom I had never met in my life.
Some may wonder why I gave in to such humiliation, why I did whatever they asked. Prisoners who take part in forced interviews sometimes harbor hopes of diminished sentences if they cooperate, but that wasn't the case for me. My "interviews" were part of a plan that would ultimately result in my murder, and I wanted them to finish what they were doing quickly, and then kill me so that I would be freed from the torture and madness. Many times I wrote letters to them on the interrogation sheets, begging them to kill me or give me something with which I could take my own life.
I was in prison, buried alive, facing death. I had spent eight years in the Shah's prisons; I had been arrested several times during his reign. But all of those eight years do not compare in pain and distress with a mere five minutes from these forty-seven days.
Having completed the interviews, I was told that they would release me for a while on the condition that I do exactly as they said. I accepted. Anything -- even death or re-arrest (which will undoubtedly come within the next few days) -- seemed preferable to the situation I was in. They told me that they planned to let me reappear at Mehrabad Airport and be interviewed by journalists, and I agreed. They told me what to say and how to respond to questions. I did the interview and it was published. I was also interviewed by the BBC and French Radio, and I told them what I had been ordered to say. [That he had been travelling in Germany and Turkmenistan.]
On December 20, after the airport interview, I was ostensibly released, but I am under constant surveillance. I have repeated to everyone, even my brother, what I said at the airport. I have not told anyone the truth. There is absolutely nothing I can do. I know that they will eventually recaputre and imprison me or kill me.
With everything at their disposal -- their infiltrators among political activists and intellectuals, their fabricated interviews, and the German passport stamp -- the truth of what they've done to me will be destroyed. I don't know what else to write. The end is near.
Should this letter come into anyone's possession, please make sure that it reaches my wife within three days after my arrest or one day after my death, so that she can get it published. If no one finds this, I will be dead anyway. In reality, I died on November 3. I love my wife and children with all my heart.
Return to words, words and more words.