A Journalist’s Solitude

In front is a pit, and behind is a judge; a man who should uphold justice. In front are small rocks that will target the body, but behind there is no rock, but there is a judge who should be the keeper of justice, but is targeting the soul here, aiming to stone the soul.

He steps into the pit, but there is a cry: “Wait, wait! The mister said to give her another week, maybe she will speak and stoning won’t be necessary….”

The journalist returns from the theater of stoning, which resembles the theaters of execution. He returns for his soul, not his body, to be stoned.

There is no adultery, no sodomy, nor anything else allowing the judge to sentence him to stoning. But his soul, his spirit, has committed an unforgivable crime: He is a thinker, a writer; his weapon is his pen and paper, his crime is his intellect and his profession.

The journalist returns and, once again, it is he and the judge. He must sit in front of the camera, once again, to take part in the sham theater of life, carrying the weight of confessions handwritten by the judge.

With every word that utters, a piece of his soul is torn away from him, the body stoning the soul. Only a few nights have passed since the Second of Khordad [day on which Mohammad Khatami was elected president in Iran in 1997], when he travelled through Tehran crying with happiness, happiness that his homeland has once again rise….

And now, more than 14 years have passed since the Second of Khordad. Once again, in front is a six-story pit, and behind is a judge, a judge who stoned the soul of the newspaper for ten full years, tearing up a piece each time. All along, the journalist remained alive in the hopes of seeing his children, one day perhaps.

But now, the journalist went on his journey. Tired of captivity, this time he ran to the pit and gave his body to it, so that he could escape the gradual stoning of his soul….

The story of Siamak Pourzand is the story of the Iranian journalists’ solitude; journalists who express the pain of their people, yet have no one to express their pain. He left and released his soul, but with his leaving, in addition to exposing a cruel government, was a bitter cry for me and us. I and we are busy telling stories about his greatness and achievements now that he is not among us; but when he was captive, we forgot about the old man and the cries of his wife and daughters.

And this is the story of the sad story of all Iranian journalists: the story of Zhila Baniyaghoub’s thirty-year ban; Ahmad Zeidabadi’s lifetime ban; the imprisonment of Bahman Ahmadi-Amoiee, Isa Saharkhiz, Masoud Bastani, again Ahmad Zeidabadi, and all other journalists whose only crime is that they think and write and their only weapon is their pen.

But the story of that judge is a different story. Siamak Pourzand was his biggest victim but not his only one. Judge Jafar Saberi Zafarghandi presided over my case and the cases of many other journalists and bloggers.

The judge has only one weapon, but knows how that weapon, the threat of stoning, intimidates and frightens the human body and soul. With my wedding gown in the corner of the room, the judge shouted that he would sentence me to stoning.

I went on hunger strike. Maybe with a hunger strike they would allow me to telephone my mother, even for a few second. They say the judge is coming. In my naïve world, I am happy that I can finally tell him how my rights are being violated. His shouting comes down like debris on my head: “Hunger strike? So you’re a professional! We’ll show you what we do with professionals…. I’ll bring four witnesses here and sign your stoning sentence myself….”

And he is Jafar Saberi Zafarghandi, and in front of him is a journalist, again.

While preparing for my wedding, I was summoned to this judge’s office and was arrested there. I spend my wedding day in prison, at the same secret detention center at Ketabi street, where Siamak Pourzand spent a few days before me. The same interrogators who were fired from the ministry of intelligence by the reformist government after the chain murders scandal were not interrogating journalists and intellectuals and political prisoners under the supervision of Judge Saberi Zafarghandi and Tehran’s then-prosecutor general, Judge Mortazavi. The secret intelligence organization operates in parallel to the ministry of intelligence. Why shouldn’t the police have their own parallel intelligence organization, when the Revolutionary Guards and the supreme leader’s office have their own?

And what stories are buried at that detention center, from me and Saberi Zafarghandi, from me and us and others who left pieces of their bodies and souls there….