Blindfolded, I sat down slowly. Then the interrogation began': Iranian Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi on the torture of solitary confinement

"The most delusional element of solitary confinement is time itself. The hands of the clock are gone; day and night pass without measure. Time becomes nothing but a narrow beam of light slipping through the small holes in a metal sheet. I didn't dare take an afternoon nap, because I would lose my grip on time entirely. In the outside world, such a nap might last only minutes but inside the cell, within the confines of my shackled mind, it felt as though years had passed."

"When I woke up, I didn't know if it was still today, if I had slipped back into yesterday, or if I had already arrived at tomorrow. A cell is also heavy. I don't think anything in this world compares to the density of a cell, and inside that density, time feels compressed and wrinkled. When you stare at the tiny holes in the metal sheet, hoping to catch the slightest change to remind you that time is passing, nothing shifts."

"There is no sign of movement. It's as if time itself is standing still, staring back at you. You sit, stand, walk, sit, stand, walk again and again but time doesn't move at all. I couldn't breathe. Not even curiosity pushed me to move my hands or feet or turn my neck. On that interrogation chair, in front of those men, I sat frozen like a block of ice"

"When night falls, it feels as if you've lived a whole year as if this stretch of time you've endured cannot possibly belong to a single day; it must surely be the sum of many. In a cell, time itself can drive a person to madness. Occasionally, the ringing of a bell shattered the cell's abrasive silence and broke through the long, echoing loneliness of the solitary confinement corridor."

The cell has no ventilation and a small high window covered with perforated metal that lets in thin strands of sunlight. Day and night pass without reliable measurement, so time becomes only a narrow beam of light slipping through the holes. Naps feel like years, and waking brings uncertainty about whether it is today, yesterday, or tomorrow. The cell feels extremely dense, making time feel compressed and wrinkled. Staring at the holes shows no shift, while repeated actions occur without any real passage of time. Breathing and movement become difficult, and the person sits frozen during interrogation. Night can feel like a whole year, and occasional bells break the silence of loneliness.

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