Macabre World of Words and Ritual

Azudi is just like Genghis Khan when he walks he walks on a pile of fresh corpses

the Khan did not clean his teeth either the Khan also belched the Khan did not take off his boots either Azudi has shattered the mouths of twenty poets today *

In these savage lines Iranian Poet-Critic Reza Baraheni describes one of the men who tortured him in Iran's notorious Committee Prison, where Baraheni was held without charge for 102 days in 1973. Baraheni, who now lives in exile in New York City, recognized in torturers like Azudi the "typical thick-necked Iranian jahel [ignoramus], fat and tall and dirty and, at the same time, shrewd, irrevocable, irresistibly virile and strong." Azudi insisted that prisoners address him with the honorific title "doctor," as do equally brutal thugs who run torture centers in Brazil and did so formerly in Greece. The title, apparently, confers on the torturer a kind of legitimacy vis-a-vis his victim.

The interrogator's need to be respected by his victims is one notable feature of a vague, inchoate subculture that exists in every country where torture is an established practice. This shadowy netherworld is marked most obviously by a mocking language of euphemisms and code words. Some former prisoners report, for example, that at the notorious Sao Paulo torture center of the Brazilian political police, a torture session has been called a "spiritual seance," as if it involved a cleansing of impurities. Victims in Chile say that DINA interrogators refer to Santiago's infamous Villa Grimaldi as the Palacio de la Risa--the Palace of Laughter. In Iran, Otagh-e Tamshiyat, or "the room in which you make people walk," is a name for the blood-stained chamber where prisoners are forced to walk after torture to help their blood circulate.

Torturers generally refer to themselves by nicknames, in part because they do not want their victims to know their real identities. Often the nicknames derive from a physical feature, such as "the Tall One," or "the Mustachioed One." In South America, such aliases as El Aleman (the German), Cara de Culebra (Snake Face) and El Carnicero (the Butcher) are common. One particularly brutal torturer at Chile's Tejas Verdes camp near San Antonio used to tell prisoners his name was Pata en la Raja, meaning Kick in the Ass.

The torturer's lexicon also includes mordant, mocking names for their techniques and instruments. The Wet Submarine, for example, means near-suffocation of a prisoner by immersing him in water, or, frequently, urine; the Dry Submarine is the same thing, except that a plastic bag is tied over the victim's head to deprive him of oxygen. In the Grill, the victim is stretched out face up on a metal frame while a "massage" of shocks is delivered to various parts of the body. A Brazilian invention called the Parrot's Perch is used in many countries; it consists of a horizontal stick from which the prisoner is hung by the knees, with hands and ankles tied together. Another common technique, called the Telephone, consists of delivering sharp blows to both ears simultaneously, which often causes excruciatingly painful rupture of the ear drums. In the Hook, the victim is hoisted off the ground by his hands, which are tied behind his back in such a way that the stretching of the nerves often causes paralysis of the arms. Says one Uruguayan torture victim: "People on the Hook cannot take a deep breath or hardly any breath. They just moan; it's a dreadful, almost inhuman noise."

The torture subculture has its own rules and rituals, which sometimes parody the daily routine of infinitely less brutal professions. "It was just sort of a job to them," says former Methodist Missionary Fred Morris, who was tortured for 17 days in Recife, Brazil, in 1974. "These people had 9-to-5 jobs, except that their business was to torture for a living." There are often specific times of the night or day when victims are picked up by their torturer-interrogators. The prisoner is usually hooded or blindfolded. Sessions often begin quietly; physical torture starts only after the interrogator has built himself up to a feigned or genuine anger, which Andrew Blane of Amnesty International calls "an emotional state of furious self-righteousness." Some Chilean prisoners have reported torturers calling a prisoner to an interrogation session with the phrase "It's time to go to work." In Iran, where, as in many other countries, women are routinely raped during torture sessions, Reza Baraheni once watched a 13-year-old female prisoner calmly introduce her interrogator to her visiting family as "my rapist."

The prevalence of rape (of both men and women) as a torture technique indicates that the ranks of torturers contain many sexual psychotics as well as sadists. At the same time, some victims testify that their torturers were visibly strained by the routine and took pills to soothe their nerves; Fred Morris says that one of his torturers, a certain Major Maia, used to explain that he was a fellow Christian who went to Mass every day on his way to work.

Why do people willingly torture their fellow human beings? Oxford University Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry Anthony Storr argues that often the torturer is motivated not by malice or by sadism but by an overpowering will to obey. "Torturers," says Storr, "are hierarchical people in that they accept and seek authority structures. They are people who obey orders without question." Whether leftist or rightist, many torturers link a fervent patriotism with a fanatical self-righteousness. Their victims often describe these torturers as intelligent but unbalanced, full of moral certitude but viciously vindictive toward people who hold beliefs contrary to their own.

Sadly enough, there seems to be no shortage of torturers; dictatorial regimes always manage to find enough people who --convinced of the righteousness of their cause--will maim or murder under orders from an absolute authority. The torture subculture provides these people with a kind of identity. It is also a dramatic and telling proof of what Historian and Social Critic Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil." The most inhumane cruelty of man to man can become routine if it is surrounded and buffered by an apparatus of normality.

* From God's Shadow Prison Poems, (c) 1976 by Indiana University Press, reprinted by permission of the publisher.

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