End of 2022. A French writer is waiting for his plane to take off. You haven’t disconnected the phone yet when you get a call. It’s the crisis center of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They know he’s about to go to Iran. They’re asking him to resign. “The risk of arbitrary arrest and detention is very high. If they do, they’ll open a completely fabricated file on you and convict you of anything. They’ll find a reason. They’ll make you a pawn, a bargaining chip. We won’t be able to do anything,” they try to dissuade him. The warning comes too late. The crew asks him to turn off his cell phone. He does so without saying goodbye. A few hours later, he lands in Tehran.
This is how François-Henri Désérable began the 40 days he managed to stay in the Middle Eastern country before being arrested and given 48 hours to leave; and what was captured in the book The deterioration of a world (Cabaret Voltaire). The author of Show my head to people (2013) and Evariste (2015) will be in Segovia this Friday, where he will participate in a conversation about his publication at the Hay Festival.
It was another writer, Nicolas Bouvier, who inspired the Frenchman to undertake his expedition. In 1953, when he was 24, the Swiss author travelled through Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece, Iran and Pakistan; and I recorded what happened in the copy The ways of the world. François-Henri Désérable was very shocked when he read it; so much so that he has a photo of its creator on the shelf next to the table from which he works and takes care of this newspaper from the other side of the video call. He decided that one day he would follow in their footsteps, and he did.
She had intended to leave in 2020, but the pandemic interrupted her plans and ended up delaying the adventure until 2022. She arrived a month and a half after Mahsa Amini, 22, was beaten to death by the moral police for wearing her veil incorrectly. Her death sparked a wave of protests in the country that was met with a violent police response. “The cry of ‘woman, life, freedom’ from the cemetery went through Iran,” recalls Désérable, who was a professional hockey player before starting his writing career.
The protests continued when the French author arrived in Iran, even though, as he explains, his modus operandi It is very different from the mobilizations that we are used to seeing in Europe or the United States.
“It’s not like in Paris or Madrid, where they gather people at two in the afternoon, for example, and they know which square they’re going to go to. There, they start from a small group that heads towards a street, they start shouting: ‘Death to the dictator!’ And they wait to see what happens. Sometimes nothing, other times there are more people who join and end up forming a crowd, which leaves after 10 minutes because when the police arrive, they run away because no one wants to be arrested,” he describes, “it’s difficult to see them, but at the same time, it can be ‘maybe you find them walking around’. Of course, they are always organized near a place that allows them to escape to avoid the dreaded arrests.
“They are not afraid of dying, they are afraid of going to prison. And despite the risk they run, they continue to demonstrate. It is an act of bravery, I was very impressed by the courage of Iranian youth,” acknowledges Désérable. The writer details in The deterioration of the world the torture to which prisoners are subjected. There are beatings, prolonged hangings by the feet, broken fingers, toenails torn off, deprivation of water, food and care, electroshocks and mock executions.
Isolation is also practiced in tiny cells with blinding fluorescent tubes on the ceiling, lit day and night, just above the eyes. This is called “white torture.” And rape. “They tell of cases of young people who beg to be given the pill because, on top of that, they don’t want to get pregnant by their tormentors. There are victims who, upon leaving prison, commit suicide or don’t dare go out into the street,” he says.
The romantic novel as a lifeline
During his trip, no one was to know his intentions. I would say he was a writer, since the Islamic Republic does not grant visas to journalists. He had to hide his notes and any other evidence that might raise suspicions about his mission. At the time, he thought he would just collect several articles about his experiences, but upon his return, he felt he needed to elaborate further and decided to capture his experiences in a book, partly to counteract the often “mistaken” image that exists about the Iranian population in the world.
“The majority are neither anti-American nor anti-Semitic. In the United States, they have a very bad opinion of Iranians. They are not what we think. They are thought to be terrorists. And of course they are not,” he argues, “the main reason I wrote this volume was to report on the courage of the Iranian people.” “I was so moved by their courage that I felt the need to report what was happening there, especially since most of the information that reaches us from Iran comes from journalists who are not in Iran. It is not their fault, since the problem is that they do not have visas to leave,” he says. By calling himself a writer and a hockey coach, he managed to have the alibi to open the doors for him.
Most Iranians are neither anti-American nor anti-Semitic. Many people think they are terrorists and of course they are not. The main reason I wrote this book was to record his courage
François-Henri Désérable
— Writer
Désérable had wanted to be in the country for at least two months, but he was arrested earlier by the Revolutionary Guards in a restaurant. He knew he was in danger when he realized they were taking him to a garage, and he did everything he could to delete conversations that could compromise him and other files he had on his cell phone. He managed to escape torture and get permission to leave, claiming that he was a writer of romantic novels. That this was the genre of his latest publication, My owner and my lordserved to corroborate it. “I thought that this way they wouldn’t consider me dangerous. It was a good idea, otherwise I wouldn’t be here to talk to you,” he continues to rejoice today. Returning is not in his plans for the moment: “You never know what can happen to you.”
The French writer recounts having recently met Iranian chess player Mitra Hejazipour, who was expelled from the national team in 2019 for wanting to participate without a veil in a world championship in Moscow. “He told me that you could post something against the regime on Facebook and nothing would happen to you, but at the same time, they could fine you and even arrest you. You never know. And this is something they do to keep the population in a state of perpetual fear where there is always the fear of what could happen to them,” he says. A context that applies to himself. “If I go back to Iran, nothing will happen to me, but I could also be arrested and that is a risk that I do not want to take now,” he says.
Désérable is optimistic about the future that awaits Iran. “Ninety percent of the population wants change and that is a lot. I don’t know when it will happen, but I am sure it will happen. “People are too against it for the Republic not to end up falling,” he predicts.
