The Memoir of Seyyed Nasser Hosseini from His Years in Captivity

Selected by Faezeh Sasanikhah
Translated by Kianoush Borzouei

2025-9-22

Thursday, September 22, 1988 – Tikrit – Mulhaq Camp

It had been a few days since I had grown acquainted with Jafar Dowlati-Moghadam. Today marked both the commencement of the Sacred Defense Week and the anniversary of the Baathist regime’s invasion of our homeland.

For several days, whenever I went outside for a breath of fresh air, I spent most of my time with Jafar Dowlati-Moghadam and Meysam Seirfar. Hamed, one of the Iraqi guards, had a particularly hostile relationship with Jafar.

Hamed hailed from Iraq’s Anbar province and was a close relative of Staff Brigadier General Salah Qazi. He was a short-statured, wheat-skinned, arrogant, and suspicious man. According to Sami—an Iraqi guard of integrity—it seemed that Salah Qazi was Hamed’s uncle. Salah Qazi had commanded the 16th Infantry Division in Iraq’s Third Corps. During Operation Beit al-Moqaddas, when Iran recaptured Khorramshahr, it was Salah Qazi who ordered the withdrawal of his forces from the city. Following the fall of Khorramshahr, Brigadier Qazi was executed on Saddam’s orders for issuing the retreat.

Hamed was deeply devoted to his uncle. He would often say: “At the outset of the war, Maher Abd al-Rashid, Hisham Sabah al-Fakhri, and Hussein Kamel all held lower ranks than my uncle. My uncle was already a brigadier general.”
He frequently added, “My uncle was the head of our tribe.”

Until the moment he fell out of Saddam’s favor, his family commanded considerable influence in Iraq. As Hamed put it, the only figure who continued to show them affection was Iraq’s Defense Minister, Adnan Khairallah. Adnan had spared no effort to prevent Salah Qazi’s execution, but his attempts were in vain.

Days earlier, when Jafar recounted memories of the Khorramshahr operation to the prisoners, Hamed had overheard. Ever since, he bore an extraordinary hostility toward anyone who had participated in Operation Beit al-Moqaddas. For Hamed, the liberation of Khorramshahr was a painful reminder of his uncle’s death. In Mulhaq Camp, he constantly looked for excuses to torment Jafar. He never considered Saddam as the one responsible for his uncle’s death—or perhaps he dared not say so out of fear.

One day, Hamed summoned me and took me to the guard officer’s quarters. Upon entering, I found Captain Qahtan, the camp’s deputy commander, present. Qahtan, a native of Diyala province, was a talkative, dark-skinned, greedy, and stubborn man, with a coarse and ungainly appearance.

Long afterward, when Iraqi newspapers announced the impending release of prisoners, I once asked him: “Sayyidi, when do you think we shall be freed?”
Lieutenant Qahtan mockingly replied: “whenever a man become pregnant—that is when you will be released!”

Later, when Iranian POWs were indeed repatriated, I told Dr.Moayyed, who maintained a warm relationship with Qahtan: “Tell Captain Qahtan that you see—we were released without a man ever becoming pregnant!”

Qahtan was sipping tea that day. he and Hamed had failed to extract any information from Jafar regarding his military position. Qahtan turned to me and asked:
“You are friends with Jafar Dowlati-Moghadam, are you not? They say you two are inseparable. Has he told you what his role was at the front?”

—“I have never asked him, nor has he ever told me. But the men from Kerman say he worked in the logistics unit of the division.”

Qahtan frowned: “How is it that whenever we inquire about any of you Iranians, the answer is always: ‘He worked in logistics’?”

I knew precisely where this line of questioning was headed. Hamed, still embittered by his uncle’s execution, bore no hatred toward Saddam but instead resented men like Jafar who had fought in Operation Beit al-Moqaddas. He had told Captain Qahtan that Jafar was a commander—which, indeed, he was. In Shalamcheh, Jafar had commanded an operational axis. Until then, no one had betrayed him—though later, in time, he was exposed.

I told Qahtan: “In captivity, I have always held fast to a friend’s advice: the less we know about each other’s military backgrounds, the better.”

At once, Qahtan’s voice rose into a furious shout:
“Are you saying you do not share your own wartime records with one another?!”

—“Yes. There is no need for it.”

Qahtan snapped and ordered Walid: “Take him outside. Thirty lashes with the cable—for this so-called intelligence man!”

I staggered out amid Qahtan’s curses. Walid, almost gleefully, lashed my hands thirty times with an electric cable. No matter how much Hakim Khalafiyan—a fellow Arab-speaking prisoner from Khuzestan—pleaded with him to stop, Walid paid no attention. Whenever he set out to beat me, he most often struck my hands with the cable.

That day, the pain in my hands was unbearable. I begged Walid: “Do not strike my hands—they are my legs. Beat me on the back instead!”
My hands blistered so severely that I could not walk with my cane. Hakim Khalafiyan pleaded with Walid: “Sayyidi, strike me in his place. Leave Seyyed alone—he is disabled, he does not deserve this!”

Though Hakim’s intent was to help, his words pained me. Whenever fellow prisoners used phrases like “Sir, he is disabled,” or “He is young,” or when Iraqis tried to show pity, I felt my dignity trampled. Neither the prisoners’ kind words nor the Iraqis’ faked compassion sat well with me.

When I struggled back toward the detention block, the pain in my hands forced me to drag myself on one leg with great difficulty. The blisters lingered for days, leaving me unable to use my hands. Without my cane, I hopped on one leg or moved about seated, shifting myself with effort.

When the Iraqis confiscated my cane—arguing that my hands were still intact—I would slip two slippers onto my hands and crawl in a sitting position.

After that brutal beating from Walid, I went to see Jafar and told him of Hamed’s scheming and Captain Qahtan’s interrogations. Jafar was discreet by nature—he never revealed anything. I joked with him:
“Jafar, do you see what Walid did to me just because I refused to tell them your role?”

With his beloved Zaboli accent, Jafar replied playfully:
“Seyyed! The closer one is to the chalice, the more bitter its draught.”

I laughed and said: “So Jafar, if we wish to refuse that chalice, should we run into Qahtan, or Hamed—or perhaps you?”

During my time in Mulhaq Camp, the Iraqis summoned Jafar several times for interrogation. And on every occasion, he introduced himself simply as an ordinary Basiji volunteer.^[1]