The first night in that dark and damp dungeon was painful for her – an unforgettable and unbearable nightmare; her trembling body needed taryak. It began with a cold sweat, then shivering, then the twitching of her entire body, shaking and jerking, completely out of control, with excruciating aches and pains in her bones, joints, muscles and flesh. All she could do was to moan at first, and when the pain didn't subside, she gave way to loud uncontrollable screams. A guard responded and gave her an extra blanket, thinking she was just cold. Her moaning and screaming did not stop. A guard felt sorry for her finally and brought a male nurse to her cell. He injected her with a heavy dose of morphine and gave her some pills to take the following days. The morphine’s merciful effect took her to the edge of an abyss and gently dropped her. She felt like she was on the feathered wing of an angel, sinking in slow motion, falling further and further from the present and also from the painful recollection of her past.
Her body’s pain was less the next day, though her mental agony persisted and deepened. She took the pills and they seemed to reduce her bodily pain, along with making the images in her mind shadow-like and blurry, slowly fading and fusing – the only remedy for her mental anguish. She could only stare at the four walls that separated her from the rest of the world. She could only hear the jail guards opening and slamming barred doors, or her fellow inmates in the other cells weeping and crying out to the God’s deaf ears.
The third night, well past midnight, a young unattractive, foul-smelling guard, whose face hadn’t seen a razor blade for a long time, nor his head seen the sight of a barber for ages, entered her cell and found her sitting on the floor in the middle of the cell. With a deliberate move, he locked the door and walked slowly around her with sparks in his eyes. He sat next to her on the blanket-covered floor, caressing her hear then fondling her leg.
“You’re looking good again, Zee-Zee,” he said.
“You need eyeglasses or you gotta be blind, young man,” she responded fearlessly and coldly, while pushing his hand away, thinking nothing more horrible than what had already happened to her could be done to her.
Looking at her like he was sizing up merchandise, he rose and commanded her, “Take off your clothes!”
Not believing what she had heard, she just looked at him. Disgust registered on her face; she uttered no word and turned her back to him.
Agitated by her response, he ordered her in a more serious and louder tone of voice, “Go ahead. Take them off, and be quick. I just wanna see you naked!”
“Believe me, it’s no different from your mother’s or your sister’s, kid,” she responded icily, thinking her sharp-edged remark might prevent the smart-aleck boy from pursuing his outrageous demand further.
“My mother died a long time ago; I don’t have a sister. Now, take off your clothes! Let me take a good look at you!”
“No! I’m not gonna do such a foolish thing! Leave me alone!” infuriated, she refused his outlandish demand adamantly, hoping the obnoxious little bastard would go away.
“Oh, come on. You look just fine. Things can get easier for you here if you let me have some fun. You know what I mean?” Though he softened his voice, his approach was very crude and his method of seduction even more repugnant.
“Please go away! Leave me alone!” she resorted to begging.
“I won’t leave until I have some fun with you,” he said, his voice laced with anger, ignoring her pleading and leaving no doubt in her mind that he meant business.
“I will scream!” she threatened.
Enraged by her threat, he grabbed her throat, his hands like the claws of a wild animal seizing its prey, using enough pressure to make her breathing difficult. Her stomach turned. When she offered resistance by grabbing his wrists, he released her throat and slapped her twice, hard across her face. He then drew a revolver from under his belt, released the safety, cocked it and held its cold barrel to her temple.
“Try to understand me, you fuckin’ trash! I’m gonna’ kill you, you bitch, and fuck your dead body! Which will it be, fucking you dead or alive? Come on! Let’s have it, bitch!”
Feeling the coldness of the gun on her temple, unnerved by his brutal and atrocious words, deadly jagged fear ran through her mind and paralyzed her entire body. It instantly made her realize the seriousness of his threat and the inevitability of his actions.
“Do whatever you want with me, but ... please don’t kill me!” she said, her voice quivering. Those were the only words with which she pleaded her case, before involuntarily turning her face to the wall, staring – an expression of docile resignation, relinquishing her shivering body to him.
He didn’t even trouble himself to take off or dropping his pants. Instead, with a grin on his face, he hurriedly peeled off her skirt and panties and began fondling her shaking legs and thighs. He then unzipped his pants, took out his erect penis and without paying any attention to her trembling body, he pulled her up on her knees and elbows and penetrated her from behind. She felt a piercing pain. It surged throughout her body. It nauseated her. To prevent vomiting, she placed her palm over her mouth. She had to swallow her saliva repeatedly to stop from throwing up. Hurting, shivering, moaning, crying, the thought of death crossed her mind. She wished that she could have had the guts to encourage the bastard to shoot her.
The fast few miserable minutes that it took for him to receive his life-long dreamed reward for his participation in the revolution felt painfully, agonizingly long to her. He then withdrew himself, smiling victoriously, happy and content that he had done his duty by humiliating and inflicting pain on the enemy, as any devoted soldier of the mullah’s version of Islam should do. He felt proud that he had had sex with a famous dame – a celebrity from the last regime. And, above all, he had proven his manhood to himself. He was absolutely oblivious of the fact that he had robbed her of her last ounce of dignity.
He left her on the floor crying. Separated by a hair from going completely mad, she went on crying, as if the flood of tears could wash away her misery. Before she had time to pull herself together, two more young guards entered the cell and used her partially numbed and battered body to enjoy themselves. When they finally finished with her, joking and laughing, they left her motionless on the cold floor. They were unaware that they had shattered the last likelihood that she would ever again find a soft spot in her heart for any man.
All the agonies that the name Zee-Zee had brought her were too much of a heavy load on her frail shoulders. She began to dislike the sound of her name. She decided to call herself Fatemeh again. By changing her name, she wanted to go back and be the little five-year-old girl, who only wanted to dance on her little feet and sing happy songs with her velvety-soft, high-pitched voice. But she was thirty-six years old now, broken down, terrified, and betrayed. The glow of laughter and youth had long since left her face. She had been reduced to trash, a champion of degradation in the eyes of the Islamic government.
When she could no longer see the splendor of living, and saw only an evil world in her solitude, the thought of committing suicide crossed her mind repeatedly; but each time, the thought of death terrified her and left her no other choice, no other option, except to keep on living.
Only the resonance of Omar Khayyam’s poems hummed with her soft voice and accompanied by a flood of tears could temporarily wash her pain away and put her to sleep each night.
Chapter Six
After hundreds of hours of sleepless nights and countless gruesome interrogations, after they had received a detailed list of her fortune and were absolutely