Birth on Scaffolding: A Note by Hooman Moussavi

Former prisoner at Cell Block 350

Farzan Matini, seated, and Hooman Moussavi

To kill time in prison and to ease the financial burden on our families, we worked for income. The price of the dolls that we made, depending on the size, was five to twenty Magna cigarette packs. Headbands from five to ten packs. We were not allowed cash in the prison, so Magna cigarettes were used as currency in the cell block. At that time, each pack was worth a thousand tomans (less than a dollar).

Our biggest problem was the shortage of yarn. It was very difficult to bring in yarn and most of the time as soon as yarn arrived at the prison shop, a specific group of totalitarian inmates (everybody knows which part of the political spectrum I'm taking about) would buy all the spindles. They spent a lot of money and the shop clerk was always at their beck and call. Then we had to beg them for a few spools so we could weave for ourselves! I want to say these things so that everybody would know what we went through.

Sometimes the warden cooperated and allowed in some spools for the inmates who had no other source of income except making bracelets and dolls. There were three of four people like this, including me and my friend on the death row, Hooshang Rezai, who made very beautiful handicrafts out of coconut shells.

In 2001 the authorities banned lighters, which were necessary to work with yarns, from the block for a time. The warden gave me two lighters and emphasized that they were only for weaving dolls, otherwise I would be fined!

The dolls were made on a scaffolding, exactly like those on which they weave carpets. An imprisoned actor, Ramin Parchami, wrote a beautiful short story called “Birth on the Scaffolding” and dedicated it to me, because both my parents were executed and you could say that I was born on a scaffolding.

Getting the scaffoldings in the prison is almost impossible and we inherited those we had from previous inmates or, to be more exact, they were bequeathed from the master to the pupil. I, too, trained some of the fellows on how to work with yarns and scaffoldings and gave them what I had the night before I was freed.

Prison and its mementos: Whether these tangible dolls, or the mental tortures and injuries that we suffered. Looking at these dolls still fills me with gloom. I close my eyes and travel back behind bars. These nights, the cure for nightmares about solitary confinement in Evin is to make bracelets and dolls in the heart of Norway where I am in exile. Sometimes I wake up at two o’clock in the morning and weave and weave and review my memories until dawn. I become nostalgic for Evin, nostalgic for the prison, for my birthplace.

Shaving blades and combs were part of our toolbox as well. I separated the blades from old Gillette razors and the comb was an inheritance! Now in Norway I use the best tools and the best yarns and weave imprisoned dolls in striped outfits with blindfolds and green handcuffs, the green of rebellion, not the green of lies and money, the green of revolution not the green of moderation.

I don’t sell, I just weave. I give them as gifts to my Norwegian friends in Amnesty International. When I tell them the story behind the dolls, they enjoy it. But there is no joy in it; it is sad, it is lamentable. Evin is sad, under the roof or under the sky, and they don’t know it. They just smile and thank me.

They cannot believe it when I tell them I was in solitary confinement for seven months and made necklaces from olive pits. For many of our young people, however, this is their life and destiny.

A poem by Majid Asadi, student and musician of traditional Iranian music:

Come and do not protest!

Pick up the rock and let your heart beat

And drink the full moon

With a glass of cool water

The aged skull and the broken cane

Tattered shoes and wounded feet

Forget them all

The rock, the full moon, the pool

And the beating heart.

If the night has a cement ceiling

The pool shall fold it into wrinkles

Evin, July 2012