Filming the crime of Shah's agents in morgue

Translated by: M.B. Khoshnevisan

2024-11-25

On that day [9^th of Dey 1357 in Mashhad – December 30, 1978], the whole city was in chaos; the hospitals, the shops, and in addition to these, the movie theatre was burning in fire.  Even, I heard that some people had gone and set fire some centers such as "Iran-America Society" or the ones connected to the foreigners. The clashes continued till almost sunset. The weather was getting dark little by little and the people were scattered. I started to go home too. Whenever I reached home, I usually said the events of that to my mother and the children. My mother got upset sometimes but since she knew that I was not a man to listen to her and not go out, she just told me to take care of myself! That night, the Mashhad hospitals announced that they needed blood for the wounded. Usually, when this news was broadcast, many people would go to donate blood. Around ten o’clock at night, I picked up my camera and walked to the hospital to both donate blood and film the bodies of the martyrs of that day. Before leaving, I made an appointment with Nae'emabadi by phone in front of Shahnaz Hospital. Some two or three hours had left until martial law began. When I arrived at the hospital, I asked the guard what the situation was. He said, "They have brought a few bodies, but most of them have been taken to Shah Reza Hospital"” We went straight to the morgue with Nae'emabadi. There, we pulled out a few of the corpse drawers and filmed a few of the martyrs, and quickly left the morgue to reach Shah Reza Hospital before martial law. We didn’t have time to donate blood. As we hurriedly left the hall, I saw several people sitting by the hall to donate blood. I happened to see Mrs. Shariatmadar, one of my classmates from the free cinema classes, among them. When I looked closely, I saw that she had rolled up her sleeves and had just donated blood. I greeted her and said, “What are you doing here at this time of night?” She said, “I saw that they needed blood, so I came and donated blood.” Mrs. Shariatmadar was a student and wore a chador. She was very veiled, even at a time when most women were not veiled. When she saw the camera on my shoulder, she asked, “What are you doing?” I said, “We filmed the martyrs in the morgue. We are going to the morgue of Shah Reza Hospital now.” When I said this, she said, “I am coming with you too.” I said, “No! You have just donated blood. It is possible that you will get sick. On the other hand, the martial law is near. The hospital morgue is also down in the garden. It is dangerous at this time of night.” No matter what I said, she insisted that I would come too. Finally, the three of us got into Nae'emabadi’s Toyota and left. The guard at Shah Reza Hospital knew me from my time as a guard at the hospital sit-in, and I had been there before to film the morgue. We easily drove inside and parked in the middle of the trees of the hospital, which looked like a garden. The morgue was under one of the old, large buildings, and we walked there through the same trees. The garden was eerily silent. It was almost eleven o’clock at night when the morgue guard opened the door for us and told us to film quickly and leave. Since I already knew that the electrical engine room was at the end of the morgue hall, I had taken a long extension cord with me. I gave the end of the cord, which did not even have receptacle plug, to Nae'emabadi. He didn't have a camera with him that night. I said, "You go downstairs, plug this wire into the electrical outlet and keep it there." I also told Mrs. Shariatmadar to hold the projector for me from outside the morgue. The bodies of the martyrs were inside one of the rooms in the morgue. When I opened the door to the room, I saw the bodies lying on top of each other on the floor, each with a bullet wound to a part of their body. None of them had a shroud and they were left in the same bloody clothes. The floors were also full of bodies that I assumed were ordinary dead bodies. I rolled up my pants and went into the bloody bodies.

Mrs. Shariatmadar also took the light from outside the room. Because I wanted to show the depth of the disaster, I walked through the corpses to film the brains and dismembered bodies of people we had all been together with until yesterday. I also saw one or two army corpses amid this. As I was filming, I suddenly heard a voice from the garden saying, "Come out quickly! The soldiers are coming." I was very shocked. Mrs. Shariatmadar was also pale. I said that maybe they were going to come and take the bodies of these soldiers. I came out of the morgue. I shouted, “Asghar Agha! Asghar Agha! Pull the wire. They came.” Nae'emabadi was at the end of the hall and the noise of the engine room was preventing him from hearing anything. I shouted several times until he finally heard. We quickly gathered our belongings, closed the morgue door, and came out into the garden. There was no particular news there, and only the sound of heavy rain could be heard from the direction of Lashkar Crossroads. This sound was so close that the guard thought the soldiers were coming into the hospital. It was a few minutes before martial law was to begin when we quickly separated from each other in front of the hospital door and I walked from there to the house. Nae'emabadi also went in his car to pick up Mrs. Shariatmadar.

Source: Revolution of Colors, Oral Memoirs of Alireza Khaleqi, compiled by Hassan Soltani, Qom, Representativeness of the Supreme Leader in Universities Cultural Front of the Islamic Revolution, 1394 (2015), pp. 131-134.