The 359th Night of Memory – 2

Compiled by: Leila Rostami
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2024-11-20

Note: The 359th Night of Memory program was held on July 25 of 2024 in the Surah Hall of the Islamic Revolution Art Center with the narration of the freedmen of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army under the title of "Closed Door Period". In this program, Amirs Mahmoud Najafi, Hossein Yasini and Amir Brigadier Ahmed Dadbin shared their memories. Dawood Salehi was in charge of performing this night of memory.

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The second narrator of the Night of Memory, Brigadier General Azadeh Hossein Yasini, was born on July 8, 1955, from Shiroud [city], Ramsar. He is also a football fan. During his captivity, he held 14 matches; everyone involved for 1 to 2 months in each match. He led professional teams in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th divisions in captivity. These events led his friends to consider him the head of the football federation during his captivity era. When he returned to Iran, he voluntarily went to the border areas for 23 years.

The narrator first mentioned Camp 19 and said: The Iraqis suddenly announced that they were ready to go on a pilgrimage to Karbala. He remembered "Garem Babakhanian," the Armenian duty officer who was among us. He had grabbed the lattices of the hexagonal shrine. He was shedding tears and whispering in Armenian. He was the only player whose name was called "Karbalaee"

My friends were kind and put me in charge of sports because of my interest in sports. The only sports that could be followed there were volleyball and football. Football had become so beautiful that it filled the time of loved ones. Many people came to watch and many were also on the teams. The narrator continued: Several football sessions were played. One day, one of the Iraqi commanders insisted on playing a game with us, and we would definitely play as the Iranian national team and they as the Iraqi selected team. I don’t know what his purpose was in this offer! But he doubled the motivation. We accepted, but we said: “We have one condition.” He said: “What condition?” We said: “If possible, the comrades in our group who are somehow injured and unable to move or whose conditions are difficult, either transfer them to the crucified camps[1] or exchange them.” Because by leaving them, we could somehow make Iran realize that there were 400 missing prisoners here. They had been in captivity for so long that they understood our trick right from the start. They said: "No! This is the order of the leader. We can't do anything."

They gave us a week to practice and form a selected team from among the players of our club teams. Our facilities were very poor. Our shoes were the same old sneakers that had been used for several months, torn and patched. Our clothes were the same. We didn't have sports clothes. A night or two before the match, we talked to a person named Dr. Deylami, and he said: "it’s okay, I'll make out the numbers and names with the radiology scans that Dr. Vahidi has." In short, they decorated the shirts a little.

A week passed. The necessary training was done and we prepared for the day of the match. They brought 400 cakes and soda. We had never seen soda or cake in captivity before that. They gave us three spoons of soup for breakfast, four spoons of rice for lunch, and three spoons of rice for dinner. I remember once, when the TV in the sanatorium showed them pouring soda into a glass of ice, one of the kids stood up like a basketball player and stuck his tongue out at the TV screen and said, “How cool it was.”

We said, “Don’t play tricks on us.” We put aside the team quota, said we’d eat at the end of the game. We had the spectators seated around the field. Leaders were designated for the chant. We made the football goal ourselves. We wove the goal net by threading rice sacks. The Iraqis brought the ball. The Iraqi players said, “You’re the referee.” Mehdi Faghani was one of those very charismatic officers who became the center referee, and Rahim became the side referee. We ourselves were afraid when Rahim stood aside, because he would immediately wave his flag and severely deal with the offender.

Reza Khosrojerdi was also a reporter and he acted like an Iraqi reporter. Sometimes he would curse Saddam in a loud, Gilaki accent [native language of Gilan province], which I can’t say now. The Iraqis thought he was praising Saddam in some way. We couldn’t believe it anyway. They entered the field in an orderly and orderly manner, but our shoes were all patched up.

The narrator continued: The game started and they made all-out attacks. Our goalkeeper was a gentleman named Mirframarz Hosseini, who is now a retired amir. He caught many balls. Many balls hit the post. In short, he defended, but in the end, in the first 15 minutes, amidst all this unanimous applause from the audience, we fell behind by two goals. They were saying: “Substitute! Substitute!” I won’t mention the name of that dear one now, but we made the substitution. The kids scored the first goal. The chants started again and Iran! Iran! They said. Would anyone dare to bring up the name of Iran in the camp! For example, if the name of Iran was written on a stone, the Iraqis would break it; or if the name of Iran or the flag of Iran were embroidered on a piece of clothing, they would set the clothing on fire and take the prisoner back to prison. But that day the slogan Iran! Iran! Freed. In any case, that day these slogans became so popular that Camp 5, which was next to us, had come up to the roof and thought, for example, that it had become crowded.

The narrator continued: We scored the second, third and fourth goals. Most of the goals were scored by our camp's top scorer, Issa Mirzaei. In the first half, we beat the Iraqis 4-2. We went into the sanatorium, like the locker room. All the old men and veterans were saying: "Yasini! Please try more, if the result holds, it's over. They'll cut off the water tomorrow, the food will be less." Now, think about it, they'll even cut off four spoons of rice! Some were coming the other way and saying: "Yasini! It's nothing, beat a few more. Take their father out. Take revenge for the beatings they gave you." Some brought their shoes. God bless, there was one person who, if we had called him, God may forgive him, sir! He wouldn't have given me a single sugar cube, but he brought his shoes and said: "Just take these!"

In the second half, an Iraqi player made a violent move that Mr. Rahim raised his flag. The referee immediately blew the whistle and showed a red card. He wasn't going out now. He went out anyway. We scored 4 and they scored 2. Sayyid Jafar Sayadati scored the goal with a beautiful head of Jafar Rajabi, who also shot and ball went through the goalkeeper's legs. They named their goalkeeper "Dasayov." Our announcer said: "The fifth goal in the Iraqi goal was from the legs of Payov," not Dasayov. He called it "Lai Payov,"[meaning it went through the goalkeeper's legs]. The fifth goal was scored, all the kids raised their hands and said: "Khamsa Khamsa"[i.e. five, five] because their count is 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, then they stopped saying 6, 7, 8. They started again from 1 to 5. In short, the spectators said five by five that the sixth goal was scored in the final minutes. We won them by 6. The first thing they did immediately was the ball, then they tore the net. Then they said, "be quick, take statistics!." When taking statistics, it was no longer like coming and saying one, two, three, four, five, one kicked from the front, one from the back. He would say one, the other one would say one. The kids were also under the wings, saying: "Satta Setta" [meaning sixes]. Anyway, we sat down at night and prepared an article from the beginning of the game, the critical moments of the game until the end of the game, and the games that Iran had with Iraq. We also had losses, which were sometimes shown on Iraqi television. Once, in extra time, the Iranian national youth team had conceded four goals to the Iraqis, and the Iraqis were shouting at us and saying, “We scored four goals in Iran.” This became a very good excuse, so we wrote a very good article and stuck it on the wall. After that, football was suspended for a month.

To be continued…