Let us water the flowers **

Jaafar yaghoobi, a former political prisoner in Iran, has published his prison diary that testifies the story of millions of Iranians imprisoned by a vicious, self centered, and brutal regime. The publication of this memoir coincides with the western countries’ strongest push to attack Iran, initiated by Israel. Although Yaghoobi discloses in graphic detail various ways of persecution, torture, and murder ordered by top officials in the government and conducted by their subjects, he concludes that freedom in the country can be achieved only by Iranian people and without any outside interferences:”Iran often is portrayed in the West, particularly in the United States, in a way that mainly serves the purpose of those bent on military action against Iran, whether for the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities or for regime change engineered by the West…The millions of Iranians who flooded the streets in June 2009 to oppose the regime are perhaps the most graphic illustration of why this picture and ‘solution’ are so terribly flawed…Regime change is needed in Iran but must be done by Iranians in their own interest, in their own time, and in their own way, rather than imposed by foreign powers [page 372].



This point is extremely important in present political climate, and it is helpful to know more about Iranian politics and especially the government’s treatment of Iranian people, through pages of this book. The book is a detail accounts of the author’s prison term in a chronological order. It is an important read for those who have any doubt about the inhumane nature of the Islamic Republic. It also discloses the struggle Iranians have had to the date to rid themselves of dictatorship. One word of advice reading this interesting book: there are many Persian terms and references in the book that makes it hard for a non-Persian reader to follow, and it would have been less confusing if these terms where limited where they were not necessary. However, it is important for anyone cherishing humanity as the outmost important factor in any society, specially anyone who is interested in Iranian government to read this book.

The book starts with a brief political history of Iran, which is necessary for those who are not familiar with troubled political condition of the country throughout ages, to learn what led to the popular (non-Islamic) revolution of 1979. The author does not explain why and how the revolution was stolen by Khomeini and his Islamic group, and the aid of Western governments to strengthen this theocracy (for further readings on the subject please see; Trita Parsi’s book “Treacherous Alliance”). Neither does he explain his political activities prior to the arrest. He goes directly into his arrest and events following his imprisonment. However, it seems to be the right path Yaghoobi is taking since his book is concerned about the Islamic Republic’s prison system and not their political activities. Political Islam started a couple of hundred years before. Activities of Khomeini and his supporters which resulted from political Islam, the history of which is recorded in many books and in more detail in Robert Dreyfuss’s "Devil's Game", is long and with the support of the West. Although Iranians were culturally religious prior to the revolution of 1979, Islam was never a reason for a mass uprising. Governments prior to the Islamic Republic were religious enough themselves, or at the minimum, tolerated all religious activities. In fact, Iranians have always been more secular than their neighboring countries and most of the recent uprisings have been (and they still are) for achieving democracy. However, after the first year of the revolution, it was obvious that Khomeini had established his stronghold as a despot and a dictator, hanging on Islam as an ideology to crush any opposition into submission. Most of these religious newcomers, having experienced incarceration in the former regime themselves, knew exactly what torture to use and how to handle prisoners to the best of their advantage. In order to control the population to submit to the way of life they prescribed, Khomeini and his cronies used prison system not to separate bad apples from good apples and detain them for punishment, but to make sure that the prisoner would betray all his beliefs (when they are against the regime’s) and impose that on other people. Once one was put in prison, he would be watched for the rest of his life even after release: “Under Islamic regime, a political prisoner was never really free, even after serving a full prison term- or sometimes more than the full term- and being released. The regime wanted to control former prisoners as if they were still in custody. The guards always joked with us in prison, saying that if ever we got out, we would just walk into a larger prison [page 155]. Thousands of prisoners who were executed in 1988 were those who would never submit to the regime, and the regime decided to get rid of them for good.

As it was mentioned earlier, the book is a detail diary of prison times of the narrator. In addition to the prison memoire, the book brings about many factors that are unknown to those who have never experienced a political incarceration. Those who were in opposing political parties and they could not tolerate each other outside of the prison, having a common enemy, started bonding with each other. Another important point that one can enjoy from this narration is the degree of human perseverance and adaptation. For the one who cherishes life and is determined to live and not to give up to adverse conditions, this book is a great lesson: “There were now five of us from our organization in the room. Next bathroom round, we all got together, joked, and laughed. Jamshid contacted Room 62 and 63 to inform them of the new arrivals, and in turn he received information about a few from our group arriving in other rooms as well. Ali, who constantly told funny stories and jokes in his charming accent, told us a story about Mullah Nasreddin, the satirical Sufi mystical figure. We laughed so loud and hard that the guard opened the bathroom door to see what was going on. At night Ali and Bigdeli slept by the door. We laughed for an hour in our beds before falling asleep. Times had really changed for us newcomers, from the miserable loneliness of solitary to the pleasure of being with our comrades. Even in the horrible Islamic Republic prison system, where brutality reigned, life could still be celebrated” [page 132].

There was a narrow dirt section in the yard where prisoners were allowed to plant some flowers. When the jail was locked-down and prisoners could not enter the yard, not having any knowledge of the reason for the lock-down, they started complaining that if they did not water the flowers they would die. They did not know that life and death of the flowers had the same priority as the life and death of the prisoners, as the lock-down was for mass killing of the majority of the prisoners! In 1988, all Iran prisons were filled with political prisoners. Although the regime treated prisoners as cattle of animals, and in addition to constructing new prisons, it became apparent that there was not enough space to keep more prisoners. Then, Khomeini’s famous religious edict was issued to cope with this problem. He ordered prison officials to separate those who (in their judgment) had submitted to the regime from those who would not be transformed. He demanded the first group to be released and the second group to be terminated in group hangings. Prison authorities locked down all wards and secretly screened prisoners. However, prisoners who had created some intelligent communications among themselves disclosed this early on and came up with responses to choose life or martyrdom. Each had to decide on his or her own how to deal with this dilemma: “We were so edgy that we would jump each time the ward door opened. None of us assumed for a minute that we were safe. If you were called or taken out for any reason, other prisoners assumed you were going to be hanged. Some believed that the executioners were going to come for us bit by bit until none of us was alive, particularly now that we knew what had happened in prison. There was no order or organization in the ward, and no one really cared. We tried to rest on the cell floor, with nothing under or over us, but no one could really close his eyes. You wanted to be awake when and if the authorities came for you, even if it was in the middle of the night” [page 302]. Of course the narrator decides to live and escapes the hanging.

Yaghoobi sums up his views on his experience and the legitimacy of the Islamic government as a whole in the last chapter of the book as an epilogue: “Internationally, the double standard on human rights issues practiced by the West, particularly by the United States, which maintains one standard for friendly countries and another for all others less sympathetic to their interests, together with America’s own record of human rights crimes at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, has scarred the hearts and minds of millions around the globe. It has also provided brutal regimes and dictators around the world, including in Iran, with an extra excuse to justify the torture and murder of their opponents [page 374]. It does not escape the narrator to end the book on behalf of those colleagues, patrons, and cellmates who lost their lives during the 1988 massacre, to foresee fruit of their struggles in upcoming Iranian movements for democracy: “The mass killings of political prisoner during the summer of 1988, most of whom were serving sentences handed down by the regime’s own Islamic tribunals, must be considered one of the most outrageous crimes committed by the Islamic Republic… As a survivor of these mass executions, I am hoping to play a small role in educating people around the globe about the regime in Iran, the status of human rights, and particularly the mass killings of political prisoners in the summer of 1988… I am very hopeful that the growing democratic social movement in Iran will one day be able to bring to justice those in the Islamic Republic who have been responsible for the torture and killing of Iranians [page 375].

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** Let us water the flowers; By Jaafar Yaghoobi; Published 2011 by Prometheus Books