A. Ahang Journey Beyond Purgatory

Annotation

Early in the year 1980, a year after Khomeini took power, a group of armyand air force officers participated in a coup to overthrow the newly establishedIslamic Republic of Iran. The plot was discovered a day before its execution, and ina frenzy, the government captured thousands of suspects from all over the countryand flooded the prisons with army and air force personnel as well as many civilians. A few days after interrogating the captured, they continued to arrest thousandsof suspects; many of them were innocents, who had nothing to do with the coup. Hundreds of those officers were executed, and the rest were kept in prison for along period of time. This is the story of one of the innocent men whose crime was his close friendshipwith two of the army officers and was accused of being a part in the plot against thegovernment. One early morning, a dozen of revolutionary guards invaded his houseand took him away. During his six-month captivity, he was kept in solitude, wasabused and tortured physically and mentally, and was moved from town to town todifferent prisons. His family and friends were kept unaware of his whereabouts, andmembers of his family were given the opportunity to pay him a visit only in the lastmonth of his captivity. Among all those men, he was one of the lucky ones who were released andreturned to the society, but he never had a normal life afterward. This is hishorrifying experience in the prison of a fundamentalist religious regime