Ahmad Ahmad Memoirs (70)

Edited by Mohsen Kazemi


Ahmad Ahmad Memoirs (70)
Edited by Mohsen Kazemi
Soureh Mehr Publishing Company
(Original Text in Persian, 2000)
Translated by Mohammad Karimi


Ramadan in Hospital

It was about five months that I had been bedridden in Shahrbani Hospital. It was getting closer to Ramadan that SAVAK asked the hospital to afford the arrangements for my transference to prison. The hospital advised that I still needed more treatments and I had to stay there more. They said it was enough if I could stay by a crane. I understood what they wanted. I was sad that their decision was going to happen at the brink of Ramadan. I asked God to do me a favor and keep me there another month. I wanted to fast relaxingly. I knew that outside the hospital I would be tortured and even executed.
The supervisor of that section in the hospital was kind and gentle lady named Ms. Moslehi [1] who would care about my conditions. She would repeatedly remind the doctors and nurses to take care of me. She was also careful about my treatment. Once she told my doctor during the morning visit: “This No. 62 is a champion of pain tolerating. He had tolerated pain but never injected Novalgin. He has got used to pain.”
I decided to share my anxiety with her. One day I was coming back from physiotherapy on wheelchair that I saw her. She came to me and asked about my legs. I said: “Not bad, but I hoped it would never be ok!”
She saw my sadness and worries. She took me to the room and asked: “Why? What’s up?” I said: “They are going to take me out to kill me. I like to stay here one month more to fast in Ramadan. Then after, it’s not important to me. They can do whatever they want to me.” She said: “So you want to stay! Be sure I won’t let them take you.” She got a bit angry either and went out fast. It seemed she had planned to do something. I could not believe it; I was surprised. Since they had thrown my clothes because of my injuries, I did not have something good to wear. The agents wanted to take me out with hospital clothes. Right then, the orthopedist doctor and Ms. Moslehi burst in the room. They began examining me. Then the orthopedist prescribed that I had to have 15 other physiotherapy sessions every other day. One of the agents called his higher ranks and while reporting my condition asked for new orders. It seemed they had accepted what the doctor had prescribed and told him that there was no problem. Thus, I stayed there in the hospital another month.
There was a man named Band-Ali Jaan. I asked him to take me to the bath. He did what I had asked the same day and took me to the bath and washed me. He brought new clean sheets and I thanked him by two cans of compote. [2]
That year month of Ramadan was coincided with September. My body was weak and injured. However, I decided to fast. The personnel who would see my feelings and prayers would show more attention to me; they would bring me water for ablution and hold the basin for me to wash my face and hands.
On the first day of Ramadan Ms. Moslehi came and asked: “How do you fast?” I answered: “I will keep my lunch to break my fast at sunset and my dinner for the dawn.” She called the food section supervisor and told him: “You should give the bed No. 62 a can of compote every other day and give him his dinner warm at sunset and keep his lunch for dawn and give it to him warm then.”
By Ms. Moslehi’s orders I benefited good conditions. Thus, she shared my good deed in fasting. Then after I would always recall her in my mind every Ramadan month and pray for her.[3] That Ramadan month was the same as the one I experienced in Anti-sabotage Committee in 1973; really interesting and instructive. I had a good spiritual feeling.
Once an evening while the room’s door was open a man passed and turned his face right after he saw me. In the first glance he seemed familiar to me. Then I remembered him after few moments of thinking; he was Faramarz, a friend of mine in Abbassi quarters.
Few days later, while I was going to toilet on wheelchair, I noticed somebody was pushing it. He was moving it in a way that I could not see him. When came out of the toilet I saw his face. He said: “Dear Mr. Ahmad! I am not traitor! I am not a hireling! I am an Army man. I have been obliged to come to the Committee; if I had not depths I would have come out of it.” I said: “Do not be sad and neither tell them that you know me.” Although my family was not aware of my conditions for a long time but since I thought that I would be hanged or executed by death squad, I did not ask him to inform my family about me.

Meeting Mehdi Bukharai

The interrogators in the hospital behaved softer when they were assured the picture they had did not belong to me and I had separated from MKO because of inter-group dissensions and opposing the Marxist trend in MKO; my previous interrogations and prisons records were also effective in this regard. They were not so sensitive about my coming and going in the hospital.
It was about three months that I had been bedridden there. One day I told them that I was tired of being alone. They took me to another room to change my conditions. Mehdi Bukharai was bedridden there. Being becoming a member of MKO I knew him via the appointments we had. Mehdi Bukharai had been shot in stomach with several bullets seven months earlier in a street fight. They had done some operations on him and evacuated one of his kidneys, part of his intestine and stomach. His stomach had a hole.
Other than Mehdi, there was a slight Isfahani man who would pretend to faint sometimes. We never found out if he was really fainting or not. Mehdi and I were the only people who would talk to each other and that Isfahani man did not show any interest in talking to us. He would only listen. Of course, he had been badly beaten.
It was so interesting that on the opposite side this room Ashraf Rabi’i [4], wife of the late Ali Akbar Nabavi Nouri was bedridden and Mehdi introduced her to me. I saw Ashraf did not show any sensitivity about the treatments made by men for her several times and was comfortable with them. Her bottom had been wounded and was cured so soon. I met her several time in the corridor but she did not know me. It was so interesting that I knew the late Nabavi Nouri and I really believed in him but I would never think that he might marry a woman like her. Ashraf would walk without veil (Hijab) in front SAVAKIs and the hospital personnel and was quite comfortable. It was surprising to me; considering her relation with Nabavi Nouri. Bukharai told me the she had been in their team and she would keep her veil strictly inside the team-house. I saw Mehdi objected her behavior several times. Once these objections bother her and made her cry. She wore a scarf for few days but put it away gain.
Bukharai narrated the accident for me and it was bothering my mind for several days. He said: “One night the nurses came and installed curtain in the room. Few minutes later brought somebody and put her on the bed. I did not understand who she was. She wheezed all the night and it seemed that she would die each moment. I could not walk and did not have the power to see and help her. It was near the dawn that she stopped wheezing. I understood that she was dead. That night I did not sleep a moment. The next morning when the personnel came they found her dead. They uninstalled the curtain. I was astonished when I saw her and my tears came down. She was Sedigheh Rezaee.[5] I got really sad and sorry. I had asked her to marry me before. The way that SAVAKIs and agents spoke showed they did not know her.” Mehdi continued: “Sedigheh had swallowed cyanide capsule and her mouth was frothy. The agents asked me if I knew her and I said: ‘No’.” However, the point that had bothered Mehdi Bukhari was her wearing; she had worn a short sleeves shirt and a mini skirt before her death. The doctors had said that she had been about five or six months pregnant and the cyanide had killed the baby as well.[6]
Mehdi Bukharai said: “I do not know what has happened and why they have changed.” He was really upset about the appearance of Sedigheh and the make-up on her face. He would also satisfy himself by saying: “She might have chosen that figure to hoax SAVAK…. Maybe she had been officially married and become pregnant.”
I do not know how sincere he was; because he joined MKO later and became in charge of supplies for the organization. After the Islamic Revolution he was arrested, trialed and executed.
Ashraf Rabi’i was released before us and they took her to prison. They took me to my room again after few days. Later I concluded they had possibly moved me to that room to overhear what we say.



1- Ms. Parvin Moslehi was one of the committed personnel of Sharbani Hopsital. He was employed in 1965 and retired in October 1995. She was the supervisor of operation department of Shahrbani Hospital from 1968 to 1979.
2- About Mr. Band Ali Ms. Parvin Moslehi says: “He was a respected man and I really regarded him. He was a simple worker in the hospital but a good honest upright man. He was trustworthy.”
3- Ms. Parvin Salehi said: “We did not care about the believes or ideas of the patients; he/she was only a patient for us and was just follow what we were committed to do … I hope may God accept our deeds. I do not claim to have done anything. What I have done was my responsibility nothing more. The garment of nurse would make me do what I did…”
(Oral History Unit Archive-The Bureau for the Islamic Revolution Literature)
4- Ashraf Rabi’i connected with MKO via Khalil Tabatabai in 1971 when she was a student in Sharif Industrial University. She was arrested after the arrest of Tabatabai in 1972. She was reconnected with MKO via Ali Akbar Nabavi in 1973 and reinforced her secret political activities. In early 1974 Rabi’i and Nabavi were both arrested and badly tortured. After being freed they married each other and continued their activities. After an explosion in a base-house in Qazvin in May 1976 she was badly wounded and then arrested by Anti-Sabotage Common Committee, transferred to hospital and then prison. After the Ideology Change in MKO, they separated from it and created a new revolutionary group. Nabavi Nouri was killed in a fight in March 1977. She was freed in 1978 and married Masoud Rajavi in July 1979. She was finally killed along with Mousa Khiyabani in a fight with Hezbollah troops on March 10th 1982.
5- Sedigheh Rezai was the first female killed Marxist Mujahid and the lesser sister of Rezai brothers. She began secret life in 1973 and cooperated in the escape of Ashraf Dehghani, a member of People’s Fedai Guerrillas. Then after (1974) she lived a completely secret life and before 1975, she changed her ideology to Marxism. After 8 months of escaping and hiding she was revealed and in an appointment with Zari Naderkhani in Bahr Street, they were surrounded by SAVAK and committed suicide by swallowing cyanide capsule.
6- The book of Tarikh-e Siyasi-ye Moase-e Iran [Iranian Contemporary History] quotes from Ayandegan Magazine, dated January 30th 1979: “Father of Rezaees about the death of his fourth child says: “When Sedigheh comes back and sees the quarter around the house is under the control, she returns and goes to the house of a friend of her. We did never see her. After 8 months of secret life, they arrested a friend of Sedigheh named Zahra. Zahra would confess during the interrogations that she had had contacts with Sedigheh Rezaee and usually see or call each other. They connect Zahra phone number to the Committee. Sedigheh calls by accident and puts an appointment in Bahar Street to meet her. Sedigheh comes at the right time but sees Zahra with a group of agents in car and when the agents get closer to her, she swallows the cyanide capsule to commit suicide and not being entrapped…”



 
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