Excerpt from the Memoirs of Nayreh al-Sadat Ehtesham Razavi

Compiled by: Faezeh Sassanikhah
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2021-9-21

When Mr. Hazhir was killed, Mr. Navvab[i] was again severely persecuted. I was in Qom at the time, and when the Qom police chief found that I was at Mr. Vahedi's house, where he was surrounded; Mr. Vahedi was living in Qom at that time. When Mr. Vahedi's house was surrounded, two people knocked on the door and entered the house, and sat with Mr. Vahedi in the guest house. Mr. Vahedi came and said: "lady! They are detectives and come to arrest me"; he immediately left and put his turban and robe next to the two men. Mr. Vahedi treated them very normally and left the room under the pretext of providing food from another room. The house had interior and exterior rooms, and Mr. Davani, who had just gotten married, was living in one of the rooms. Mr. Vahedi came to the inner courtyard and told his mother that he was going to escape from Mr. Davani's yard; he escaped in different clothes, even though the house was surrounded. The two guests, who were at home, asked, "Where is Mr. Vahedi?" He said: "He went to get kebabs for you." They replied that they did not want kebabs.

Meanwhile, the Qom police chief arrived with his officers. When he realized that these detectives had not been able to arrest Mr. Vahedi, he started to insult them, "What did you receive from Mr. Vahedi that made him run away?" The two officers were unable. Later, Mr. Vahedi wrote a letter to the police chief, in which he addressed him, saying that he was neither a guard nor a police chief. After this incident, the agents were constantly monitoring the house. Sometimes they would enter the house and start searching. Mr. Vahedi and my mother and an old woman, who was almost one hundred years old, lived in that house. I can say that I was a prisoner in that house and the agents came and asked me questions. They bothered me so much that one day I recite metaphorically a poem to the police chief:

"Although a sin committed in a land by a blacksmith,

They cut, in another land, the neck of a coppersmith

What do you have to do with me if you want to arrest Navvab? If you are able to do, go and arrest this fighting man." You always bother me. The police chief angrily said, "Then I will arrest you tomorrow and take you to the police station. I will imprison you to prove whether I can arrest Navvab or not." This ultimatum was very disturbing to me, and I thought that if they arrested me, Mr. Navvab, could no longer hide because of his wife, and wherever he was, they would reveal himself. As a result, I become a means of arresting Mr. Navvab. This thought tormented me a lot. That night, I prayed until morning and appealed to Hazrat Zahra (PBUH) and Hazrat Abolfazl (AS) and asked God to change their plan so that they would not arrest me. The next morning, the police chief, who was a very violent man, came to a single house; He was drunk enough, his eyes were like a bowl of blood, and his face seemed very angry; He said that a unit sent him a letter in which he had threatened to kill him if he would enter the house. So I do not dare to enter the house; he left there. I think that the appeals I made to the Imams caused this effect and result.[ii]