"Every evening for almost two weeks, I sat on my bed trying to devise a plan for when the missiles hit the prison. Do I run toward the nearest exit? What if the guards shoot indiscriminately at escaping prisoners? Do I crawl under my bed to save myself from the debris? Do I just lie calmly on my bed and accept the inevitable?"
"If they do, we all go together, that's the only thing we have in common," he said mockingly. Usually, he was not very chatty. He was in charge of tending to a deep wound on my neck and seldom uttered a word as he changed its bandage every other day."
"He told me about his tours at the warfront in the south and how he never got used to seeing torn-apart bodies of those who fought to fend off the Iraqi aggression. He held back the flow of sorrow with a rattled smile as he named among those, "my younger brother, who's now in the heavens.""
In February 1984, a terminally ill death row prisoner at Evin Prison in Tehran faced dual threats: execution and Saddam Hussein's systematic missile bombardment of Iranian cities. Confined to an infirmary cell with advanced lymphoma, the prisoner spent nearly two weeks contemplating survival strategies during nightly attacks. A prison guard assigned to treat a neck wound, initially indifferent and resentful about caring for a condemned man, gradually revealed his own trauma from witnessing casualties at the front lines, including his younger brother's death. The shared danger of potential missile strikes created an unexpected moment of human solidarity between captor and captive, transcending their institutional roles and exposing the absurdity of their circumstances.
Read at The Walrus
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