Singing Was Life Itself for Us (Part One)

Harasswatch⸻ Evin’s entry door slid open. The sky was emerging out of the darkness at the crack of dawn. “Cover your eyes with your scarf, and keep your head on the driver’s seat,” commanded the man. Some names such as Morteza, Asghar, and the cars’ features were exchanged like passwords, and we entered. It was uphill, and the clapped-out car didn’t run well. Haj Khanoum[1] got out of the car, and then it was my turn. The man commanded again to keep my eyes covered with my scarf. He opened the car’s door, and I disembarked. Another Haj Khanum oversaw my delivery. She put a blindfold over my eyes, and we got moving. She was familiar with the journey and its surroundings, constantly pointing out stairs, chairs, and walls on our way. She stopped and told me to face the wall. A few minutes later, a woman came and accompanied me the rest of the way. I do not remember well, but my hunch tells me that we were at an infirmary. Back at home, one of the men had promised me that he would hand over my phone later. I sat on an armchair and filled out a form about my health. “And this right here is your phone,” said the same man while putting the phone on the chair. I put my phone on airplane mode. Then I stopped, and a camera took a picture of me. I went on the scale, and my blood pressure was measured. The doctor asked whether I was on any specific medication or needed a pill. “A sedative or painkiller,” I replied. He proceeded to inquire about my request, to which I obliged and told him that I had trouble sleeping for days and had a headache. He was a young doctor with an unkempt black beard and wore a scruffy crimson shirt over his pants buttoned up to his neck. Donning a sinister smile, he said, “while you were rioting in the streets, you couldn’t sleep, right?” I looked at him and didn’t respond. I took the pill and, with blindfolded eyes, followed the woman.

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We entered a corridor and then a room. We later called the woman Lavender. Her lavender perfume filled the corridor, and we, who were deprived of cleanliness and any kind of perfume, smelled the whim of this woman greedily. She had a thin and penetrating voice. Eyes alone visible, she wore an Arabic chador and covered most of her face with a mask. I took off my clothes. She ordered me to sit and stand twice in the nude with my back facing her. She had to ensure that I hid nothing between my legs. I handed over my phone, ID, and bank cards and signed the receipt. She said there were no more Maqnāe[2], so I had to keep my scarf with me. She gave me light gray and dark-blue sets in addition to a floral chador. I put on that gray dress with dark-blue slippers and followed her to another corridor while I was handling my chador with my eyes blindfolded. The woman held three black and brown blankets. She opened the room’s door and left once she handed over the blankets. Four women were sleeping in a six-meter room. One of them, however, sat upright and, with a vexed expression, prepared to comfort me. Two other women also woke up. We got to know each other and talked a bit about our situation on the inside and our lives on the outside. This friendship was the most beautiful achievement of this period…

The Cell

The room was a strange heptagon with cement walls painted white. The wall facing the door had two perforated metal hatches in the right and left corners close to the ground. Through these hatches, one could hear muffled voices from other corridors. There was a toilet in the right corner of the room. My first impression was that we were supposed to be exposed to each other while relieving ourselves. However, first impressions are usually wrong. Next to the toilet was a small, suspended basin with triangular faucets. The room had two doors, but only one of them was the passage. The doors were all walls from the inside. After all, a door without a handle, and when no one can open and close it, is not a door at all. It was rather a metal rectangle with a narrow hatch for air passage at its bottom. For us, however, it was mostly a way of eavesdropping on outside traffic and sounds. The upper part of the door had a perforated access door. The holes were stuffed with some plastic spoons. My cellmates said that they use these spoons for hanging their underwear and towels to dry. There was also a peephole under the hatch. Installed on the wall was a metal rectangle with lights on it next to the entry door. A two-way communication tool, maybe! We had to press the button on this device to go to the bathroom. Once it was pressed, a black hole-like sound echoed throughout the room, and then we heard someone’s disembodied and authoritative voice saying, “Hello!” or sometimes “Yes!” The responses were sometimes angry and other times tired or moaning. In the first few days, we politely told them that we wanted to go to the bathroom. We found no reason for showing this courtesy later. We would call them without care and in a manner so pithy, tell them, “Washroom!” The further we went, and the more crowded the rooms became, the less we could bear to avoid going to the washroom. We became so frank in telling them that we needed to go tinkle. Sometimes, we would drum the door, singing about our overflowing bladders.