My Hero

By Ne’mat Firuzi

The time was December 1981, and the place was the city of Arak, located in central Iran. Iran’s revolution had only seen 3 springs and I was barely 18 years of age. However, after spending 20 days in solitary confinement controlled by the Revolutionary Guards, they took me while blindfolded into a dungeon they called temporary detention center. It was a dark place, in the basement of a building, lacking any kind of hygiene facilities.

In 12-square meter room there were 30 of us literally piled up on each other. We were all political prisoners opposing Khomeini’s regime and the ruling theocracy that had risen to power following the Shah’s overthrow… The first hours after entering the cell was spent getting to know some of my old friends again, all with news of others being arrested or even executed before a firing squad. In our discussions I realized two series of prisoners had been taken for execution from that very room, to a shooting range before the firing squad. The first series consisted of 4 individuals and the second were 11 individuals executed two weeks before. In the first hours there I could hear loud screams, and I knew a prisoner was under torture. This was all set to create a climate of fear for the other prisoners, to force them to succumb to the regime’s demands.

A few nights later the guards came and told 18 of us: “Pack up, put on the blindfolds and get ready to be transferred.” In the first instances there was a deafening silence in the air. Then we all began hugging each other and wishing farewell with all our emotions. Many of the guys were seen giving each other memoirs. We all thought we were the third series of executions and that we will never see each other again. Moments later they boarded us on a mini-bus and we took off. We stopped at one location, where a few people got off, and once again we took off and the rest of us got off at the last location. At this location there was a very old prison by the name of “Se Pele” (Three Steps). Moments later we found ourselves amongst 100 prisoners, some of them being our old friends and others we didn’t know. A few days later they took 7 of these 100 prisoners, and along with 8 others they had them all mass executed before the firing squad.

At the very moment that we entered this new facility, there was a huge guy with very strong biceps who came towards us and said, “Guys, come on, let me show your places.” When I heard his name, I was utterly surprised and at the same time I was praising him in my mind. His name was familiar, Ghasem Bastaki, champion of Greco-Roman wrestling in Tehran Province and third in all of Iran. I had heard all about him outside of prison, but I did not know him up close. His deeply humane and very humble behavior grabbed our hearts, and a short while later we had become very good friends. After that, time and again I was the guest of his happy and sad memoirs in life and sports.

It was in these memoirs that he said he has an old mother and father, along with a poor family. He explained how he loved and literally cherished his mother, because when he was being born she had lost both of her eyes due to an illness! Yes, his mother had given her eyes to her son! He would kid around and say, “We are two people looking at you right now. My eyes are my mothers’ eyes, and I wish I could at least giver her one of them!”

Everyone had the utmost respect for him because of his heroism and sportsmanship character. One day I asked him why didn’t he go to college to continue his education, and why did he instead continue his wrestling?

“Due to the fact that my family was very poor I couldn’t continue my education. My old mother and father had no one else. I became an athlete because I wanted to be the people’s champion, and bring home championships for them,” he said.

One day the guards took him away, and we had no news of him for two weeks. When he returned all that muscular body had literally melted away! He had lost around 20 kilograms of his weight. When I asked him what had they done to him? He said it was nothing, the interrogators were looking for information about his friends and he had nothing to give them. In response they began lashing his entire body! The interrogators had told him, “This is not the gym here where you would be able to exhaust us and deliver a technical blow to us like your opponents! You either surrender, or we will literally pin you down!”

He had said in response, “No one in the world has ever pinned me down.”

I was released from prison in 1986. When I was saying farewell he told me something that 30 years later it is still ringing in my ears: “I learned the meaning of manhood and being a people’s hero from the Mojahedin (PMOI). Through my resistance I will exhaust the mullahs and pin them down!” Two years later, in 1988 he and his other friends were massacred in an unparalleled crime, along with 30,000 other prisoners across Iran who were all sent to the gallows. Finally, as he said he chose to be the people’s hero and through his resistance he exhausted the mullahs and pinned them down. Just like another Iranian national hero by the name of Habab Khabiri, the renowned captain of Iran’s national football team, they sacrificed their all for the freedom of their people.

Ne’mat Firuzi

Former political prisoner