By Massoumeh Raouf
Sometimes in life you meet someone you can never forget. I don't think there are many friends you can count on in the most difficult situations. A friend whose miles of geographical distance and years don't detract from her love and friendly purity, and every time you see her, you feel the same warmth and honesty of the early days. Pouran Najafi was such a friend for me. A friendship with the clear water of the springs in our northern region. Pouran Najafi died on February 9, 2013, in a rocket attack ordered by the Iranian regime on Camp Liberty, Iraq.
I had already seen Pouran Najafi at many PMOI meetings and ceremonies in Rasht, Iran. It was in one of the cells in Rasht prison that I got to know her for real and made her one of my best friends forever. Pouran was studying at the Rasht School of Technology, one of the few co-educational high schools at the time. She knew my brother Ahmad very well and they shared most of the activities at the School of Technology. She told me some nice memories of Ahmad that I didn't know. She told me with a smile that she had told Ahmad in public that she was his sister. She then explained to me the events of that day in April 1980 when the Basij militia kidnapped 13 students from the School of Technology, including Ahmad, to torture them at the Bagherabad mosque. A few days later, Ahmad and other students gathered in the office of the director of the School of Technology to denounce the torture and the complicit silence of the director.
One of the teachers had asked Ahmad to show him the traces of torture. Pouran said that all were men except her and added: "I felt that Ahmad was embarrassed to be shirtless in front of me. I told him in a loud voice: Ahmad, I am like your sister. Show the marks of torture…"
Ahmad lifted up his shirt. All over his body there were wound marks and cuts caused by a knife blade. Tears burst into everyone's eyes when they saw this scene that touched them deeply and all this brutality against this young PMOI supporter.
Pouran was simple, sincere and honest. She was straightforward and yet humble. In front of the Revolutionary Guards, Pouran was courageous and fearless. Very clever and precise, she always found solutions in difficult times.
That's why, in our escape plan from the Officers' Club (Afsaran) prison in Rasht, Pouran was in charge of distracting the female guards. She played a key role in my escape, and if I am free today, it is thanks to her sacrifice. She paid a heavy price in interrogations, torture and deportation to various prisons. Pouran recounted a small part of this suffering in the mullahs' prisons in her book Heroes and Heroines.
She wrote about the escape operation: "Our circumstances were worsening, but we were beginning to gain control of the situation and were determined to resist. For a long time, we had wanted to strike a blow by escaping and send a message to the regime through the innovation and bravery of our plan: you are wrong if you think you can break our morale or force a PMOI supporter to surrender. We firmly believed in what Massoud Rajavi said: ‘The sun remains the sun, even in captivity.’”
Pouran spent five years in Khomeini's prisons. After her release, she joined the resistance. In her memoirs of her time in prison, one recurring theme is resistance at all costs. She paid a great price step by step in her personal life and her struggle. Both in prison and after her release and entry into the ranks of the PMOI. In addition to Persian, the memoirs of the prison of Pouran Najafi have been published in English, French and Italian. The Canadian publisher of Pouran's book in French and English wrote on the back cover:
"There are books that, every time you read them again, you learn something new. Among them are books of remembrance of the mullahs' regime's jails, such as that of Pouran Najafi's Heroes and Heroines.
“Pouran Najafi, who joined the fight for Iran's freedom in 1979, spent five years in Khomeini's prisons. She summarized these five years in 120 pages, which obviously do not tell all her suffering. But what she wrote reflects the unleashed savagery of which the women of the PMOI were the victims, the ferocity of the executioners of Khomeini and Khamenei and of all the criminals in power in Iran.”
The book of my dear friend Pouran Najafi who was assassinated by the Iranian criminal regime was published by a Canadian publisher; Editions Dedicaces in English and French. Pouran Najafi's book, Heroes and Heroines, is available in French and English and can be ordered from booksellers or on the internet. Let us cherish his memory by supporting his book.
