299th session of Memory Night -2

From Hamon camp to Tikrit camp

Maryam Rajabi
Translated By: Fazel Shirzad

2019-2-19

According to Iranian oral history website, 299th session of Memory Night of sacred defense was held in the Sura hall of Art Center on Thursday, January 24, 2019. In this program, Ali Danesh Monfared, Ibrahim Etesam and Hojatoleslam Mohammad Jamshidi spoke about his memories of struggle for the victory of Islamic Revolution and captivity in the prisons of Iraqi Ba'ath regime. In the first part of this report, you read the narration of Ali Danesh Monfared about his memories from the 1st to 22th February in 1979.

The second narrator of this program was Ibrahim Etesam. He said:" I was born in 1960. In the year of the victory of revolution, I was a 19-year-old and I was lived in Sistan and Baluchestan province a city near Afghanistan. In that year, I was at teachers' college in the provincial capital, where students were in demonstrations and sometimes on strike; therefore, classes were not held.

There were a few things that happened to me in those situations and geographic location I was in. The school year 1971-1972 and when I was in fifth grade, Sistan and Baluchestan suffered a drought. That year was lack of water, and most of people of Sistan migrated. We were deprived of education. There was a school in our living place and my dad brought me to mullah[1]and became a schoolmaster. I learned the Qur'an. There was no middle school in our living place, and after the summer was over, I could not go to the city to continue my education. Mullah chose me as his assistant. I became a teacher and assistant to the school at the age 11. Mullah gave me a fee, and at the end of the year he authorized me to open an independent school. Hereafter, I caused me to be interested in teaching, and this was one of the good things in my life.

I went to the city next year and continued my education at school. In the summer of 1976, a young cleric came from Qom[2] to our village and place. His name was Hajj Sheikh Hussein Mehdizadeh. He was very active and set camps and theater and theater. In Sistan, nobody know the meaning of word "vacation". We were scheduled to go to the Lake Hamon[3] with the young cleric on Thursday. There was an island in the middle of this lake and a shrine above it. On Thursday afternoon, we drove us to a trailer connected to a tractor and arrived there at the night. We went up the mountain in the morning. There was mast on the top of the mountain and some words was written on its bottom: "God, king[4], homeland." Hajj Sheikh Hussein sat down and started talking. At first, he spoke about God's descriptions and kindness and then told the king. We were about twenty people, and that day was an important landmark in my life and the life of other comrade were there. He used Quran to introduce the king. Initially, he spoke about Pharaoh and Nimrod, and continued that designation of God is that he ultimately destroys oppressors; eventually, the king would be destroyed. He used the name of Imam Khomeini (RA) in his speech. We were changed morally there, and when we came down the mountain, we were another person. He founded a stream there. A number of comrades who were gathered in the mountain remained on the same way, and next years they fought on holy defense's fronts and were martyred. God helped me and I published the memoirs "Toward Flight", part of which, is the memories of those days, by the effort of Payam Azadegan Institute. Then, considering the interest of teaching at the age of 11, and also the interest of money that Mullah had given me, I was seeking whether I could be a teacher sooner or not. I passed the exam and the time of teachers college. In October 1980, I became a teacher and received a teacher for a village at the border point of Iran and Afghanistan. The first year when I became a teacher and I was 20 years old, one night, Hajj Sheikh Hussein came to see me; one night I went to see him too. He really believed that I was a teacher and got salary; therefore I should get married. I got married at the age of 20, and this is one of divine blessings I am grateful for. The last step I succeeded to be sent to the front as a teacher, I had three children. Our fathers, mothers and wives and those who prepared an opportunity for us to go war are not paid attention as much as freemen, veterans and martyrs.  Before I went to the front for the last time, we went to the martyrs' grave with my wife and prepared him for any happens. What power God give to these wives of freemen and martyrs? I became missing in war considering I had three children that the older one was six, I became captured and missing. During the time I was not there, there were different stories and events took place. When my book was criticized for a session at Payam Azadegan Institute, a professor who criticized this book said a problem to me; he said that your wife was not present in the book. My wife still cannot tolerate to read one page of this book.

Battalion 409 Seyyed al-Shohada (AS) from Sistan-Baluchistan, commanded by Hajjagha Soleimani, was stationed against the attack of enemy in Shalamcheh. There was water on our back and the enemy had come with its equipment. I was responsible for wireless in battalion. When I was captured, the enemy quickly joined us and we were in the middle of enemy. A few battalion forces were able to retreat. A large number of comrades were wounded and injured and some of them were also captured. Only 17 persons returned from a battalion, and they did not dare to return home. All families were waiting for their children. Some went to home and make family happy. When we had guest in my absence, my middle son, Ali, did not like to sit next him.

He listened from behind door to see if the gust had any news about his father. When we were released, after two quarantine days, we went to Kermanshah[5] with a plane and then we arrived in Zahedan[6]. People hang a bunch of flowers around my neck. There was a place for families and they led me to the direction of that place. I looked and saw that my family was not there. Because I did not have any news about them at the time of captivity, so much thought came to me at that moment. They had held funeral for me. From the evening of Thursday to Friday, the comrades were very happy, because families read Qur'an for them and spread votive food. Our position in our battalion was so bad that no one guessed that we would be survived. When I was waiting for my family, someone came to me with a microphone and asked:

What do you feel with your family now? At that moment, the only thing that came to my mind was this verse: " We will most certainly try you with somewhat of fear and hunger and loss of property and lives and fruits; and give good news to the patient[7]". I told myself if something happened that no member of my family came; no brother, no children, no father, no mother. But they were moving and something happened on the route; that is why they were late. The airport were crowded and the route was closed.

In Baghdad Intelligence Security Intelligence, while Iran's captives were kept in prison for 26 to 27 days, I saw that a Ba'athist was hitting captives with cable and boat and anything. He took the captives with his two hands, rolled around and threw them at the wall. Once, one of the combatants escaped from the kicks. Then Iraqi prisoners told them to put off your shirts to find out who was hit by cable and who was not. When they found that he had not been hit; therefore, ten people started to hit him altogether. It was ultimately cruel that one of Ba'athists bit a combatant's arm, and even picked a piece of his body. The Ba'athist’s teeth marks still remain on the hands of that combatant, and we now realize that the Ba'athist’s behavior is the same with the Daesh[8]. We were 4,500 people in the camp of 12 Tikrit[9], on the outskirts of Tikrit. Every month we received collective statistics. I had different names in my office such as "Ibrahim, Ali, Hussein, Etesam". The last day we attended in there, they called 500 people and took to another part of the camp. The captives received one Iraqi military uniform and a pair of shoes. Hassan Rafsanjani, in captivity, suffered a 300-stroke due to his last name. In the first six months of captivity, the comrade were under torture from the morning to night. "

At the end of his memoirs, Etesam said: "SAVAK[10] captured Hajj Hussein Mehdizade at that time (the time of struggle) and imprisoned him for two years. He was released near the victory of revolution. After captivity, I strongly wanted to see him. Two weeks after he was released from captivity, we went to visit the shrine of Imam Khomeini and Qom and then we went to Mashhad. On the way, we stopped for Maghreb prayer in Damghan[11]. Hajj Hussein Mehdizadeh was from Damghani. I sought him from Muslims and they took us his house, but he was not at home. Hajj Hussein went to war zones with a military group. I contacted again and made a connection. When I saw her, she was very broken. He said that he also worked in agriculture in addition to the responsibility of the clergy and revolutionary affairs. He still protects the values of system and revolution with the same revolutionary spirit. "

To be continued…

299th session of Memory Night -1: One Nation, One Leader and a Great Movement