“Good old days… it was 2016. After I was stripped naked and beaten eighty times with a whip (apparently made of steel balls covered with cloth), I made goose noises out of pain, I sat my destroyed back in the backseat of a taxi, and we headed to the prosecutor's office to do the administrative paperwork! :)))) This meant that the executioner would write up the "proceedings" and confirm that this dude has taken his whipping in good health and thou shalt now leave his bald head alone.

This "administrative paperwork" part of whipping and other forms of corporal punishment is their most grotesque aspect. Just half an hour ago, they hit you so freaking hard that you pulled a sweet Jesus (imagine [your atheist ass] yelling out sweeeeeet Jesus with every strike), and now they make you sign and add your fingerprint on a piece of paper saying, "I hereby received my whipping. Please let me go now. Thank you, custodians of the divine sanctum."

The pre-whipping administrative procedures were fantastic. I had to sign a paper stating that the whipping is not harmful to my body! :))))

Suggestion by some friends: "You dumbass! You shouldn’t have signed that." Answer: "Bravo! That had never occurred to anyone before you!"

“Harm” means the whipping won’t put you in a coma or cause your death. If I had said whipping was bad for my health, I’d first be taken to detention, then to a forensic clinic, and then, when the investigations clarified that whipping is in fact good for my health according to research by an anonymous Japanese doctor, the dude who now realized I wasted his time would hit me so hard that blood would clot on my back and what would be left of me would be barely a mouthful.

And when I say “dude,” you probably think that the executioner, the whipper, the wicked tormentor, looked like a thug. Nope. He was an old man who was completely "outwardly good." About sixty years old, with almost fully white facial hair, the most normal and righteous face you might come across in society, on the street, at the grocery store, and especially in government offices and mosques. Because it suits him to be "trusted in the neighborhood," driving a scrapped Peugeot RD, for example. Even more strange and terrifying than that: except while whipping, and even while whipping, as he was ruthlessly hitting me, he looked "compassionate." He would treat you like his “son.” I really don't have Stockholm syndrome. I am just describing how he carried himself. His behavior, and of course, his honorable job: he earned his bread by being an executioner. Well done, Hajj Agha. That’s some halal bread right there.

We then went to a mullah's office for the final stamp on the verdict. With utmost boredom, he signed and said, "Go hit him." He didn't even look at me. It was important to me that they treat me like a human being at least! For someone who was supposed to get whipped and has been whipped before, why would it be important that a mullah pays some attention to him? I don’t know.

But the executioner, he treated me like a human being. A little too much, of course.

I didn't know he was the whipper. He didn’t look like one. I expected the whipper to be some bulky giant like the Iron Sheik. My executioner wore a khaki-colored Ahmadinejad sweatshirt and simple black pants. He didn’t have a heavy beard or turbah marks on his forehead. He had a trimmed beard and glasses... he looked so normal that he seemed like he didn't exist.

Before that, while waiting for Hajj Agha's signature to whip me, I witnessed a strange scene. A teenage boy who looked very very disheveled and poor was also in line to get his signature to get whipped. I asked, "Did you also drink alcohol?" He said, "No, they caught me with drugs. They ‘wrote me’ thirty." Is it a prescription?!

"Is it a Tazir verdict?" I asked. He didn’t understand. I asked, "Couldn’t you buy it off?" He said, "I could, but it’s just thirty whips, I’ll take it. I don’t have money for this."

So they were going to whip a teenager because he didn’t have money? Just like what they did to me? Even one lash was too many to tolerate. I was wondering how I was surviving and not dying from that level of pain…

A human body can endure so much pain! After one Hajj Agha signed my papers, together with the other Hajj Agha, we walked to the police station (on the coastal street of Qom, in a detention center) where the Islamic Sharia law was supposed to be executed on me. It was there that I came to the terrifying realization that the executioner was the same dude. Be it far from my late father who lived a clean life, he looked like he could be my dad. How “normal” he was! People like this looking normal is absolutely horrifying! 

He was beyond normal; he was compassionate and fatherly. He asked with regret, “What is your education, young man?” I said that I am studying for a master's degree.

He sighed and shook his head. He said that he hadn’t whipped anyone above a high school diploma in his years of “service.”

Wow. So he would ask about their level of education, and if they were uneducated, then to hell with them.

Then he said, “Isn’t it a pity that you did this to yourself?” (What exactly?! Drinking a few shots of alcohol and throwing up in the street? That was my pity? Maybe. But more pity than what you are going to do to my body? More pity than my soul that you are going to crush forever? More pity than the terrible humiliation of the next half hour?)

We walked together, me and my executioner. And again, the golden sentence: "Where should I hit you, that you won’t die, young man? My whip is thicker than you." Whip away, old man, what’s with the body shaming? :)))

With a completely carefree and calm tone, he would say things like, “Oh, you poor thing.” Funny and sarcastic. That was the executioner in this little story.

So, after signing the certificate of no harm from whipping, we went to the detention center. An officer, an executioner, a soldier. They said: go on.

“With what?” I asked. They said, “Well, get naked.”

I am not one of those people who is comfortable with being naked in front of others. Who is? Few men are comfortable appearing in front of several strangers in v-neck shorts. I am even less comfortable. There was no choice. If I didn’t do it, they’d do it for me. They said, “Run!” I said, “Pardon?”

(Where would I run in a 6x9 ft detention room?)

The soldier said, "If your body is cold, it will hurt more. Run along this cell a little bit." So I ran, wearing only shorts. They laughed at me running in that tiny cell. It was an awkward minute of humiliation.

It's strange how calmly I deal with the memories of it now. What is this human being? The scars remain on my soul (no longer on my body), but they are aged. It doesn't burn that much anymore. It does not ignite. The whip itself is not important. It is about the humiliation of a human life, without a sin worthy of this punishment. Whipping in the 21st century, in the age of technology, the global village, and all this buuuullshit.

I was a hostage at the hands of this system and its "rules," that even speaking of updating which is considered blasphemy. Immediately, the soldier said, "Enough running, get over here." Unlikely as it is, and far be it from me to compare myself to their suffering, I felt like the Jews at Auschwitz, I was strangely obedient. What else would I do? If their obedience is surprising, it is because their fate was death. What about me? I was hoping they’d hit me a little less violently.

If I resisted, I would be dragged to the whipping spot and might smack my head twice too. Plus, I’m not even a very resistant kind of person by nature. But hey, y’all should resist the oppression.

There was no “whipping spot.” It was just the wall of the detention center. There was a metal bench that they propped up by the wall longitudinally, and they cuffed each one of my hands to one leg. I started to cry and beg, "Pleaaaase do it gently, for Imam Hussain, please. For Hazrat Zainab’s sake! Be gentle! For the sake of the broken ribs of Hazrat Fatimah, be gentle!"

I didn't know how else to beg. I can't even describe my fear.

The officer had a towel with him. He came and pulled the hair behind my head and punched me in the face to make me open my mouth.

It's strange that I didn't feel a bit humiliated by his punch. I didn't care at all. Why? I do not know. Maybe the fear was so great that there was no room left for any other feeling.

I just moaned from the bottom of my throat: "Enough, sir! Look, I'm naked, my hands are tied, haven't you humiliated me enough? Enough, sir!"

I saw "compassion(!)" in his face for a moment there. He was not expecting that a person sentenced to whipping would speak more eloquently than his own late great-grandfather. The soldier felt bad for me and pulled him back; the officer didn't put the towel in my mouth.

Tears were flowing from my eyes and my nose was running. He had not even begun whipping yet. The biggest wish of my life was for him to be gentle.

He was not gentle.

I will air the rest soon; that’s of course, if anyone has enough patience to read so much description of pain.

I’m sorry. I basically just wrote this for myself. To empty myself. Every once in a while, I journal about this to feel lighter. Sorry if it upset you, or if it was redundant. I thought the whip would be made of leather.

It was a horrifying moment of realization when my back recognized the heaviness of the metal with the first blow. My legs went limp from the pain. But I could not fall. My hands were tied. It was as if all the pain I've suffered in my life had landed like a lightning bolt on the spot of the whip. I could have sworn that I would pass out with the next blow. The next blow landed without a chance to breathe. Without a second of interruption.

You know how when you stub your little toe against the sofa, you start hopping so the pain stops throbbing? Because pain makes people move, even run. Why else do people who are on fire start to run?

The point was this: I could have run two or three hundred meters in one breath due to the intensity of the pain from each blow. But where? I was turning and twisting in the little space that the handcuffs would allow me to. And I was yelling. I mean, I was shouting! For three days after, my voice sounded like a rooster.

Another strange thing: the dude would count and comfort me! He would say, "One, two, three..." for example up to ten, and then he would say, "Did you see how soon it was finished? Have some patience!”

When he reached forty, he said, "Half of it is over, young man, bear it!"

What is this, a vaccine? If you hit more gently, would that officer and soldier who were watching kill you?

And no, he didn’t have any "Quran under the armpit." He was only carrying a bag. A simple handbag. If you saw it on the street, you would think that it was full of documents and paperwork. There was only one thing in his bag. I personally looked: the whip. Just the whip. It was one heavy whip.

He painted all over my body with eighty strokes. It didn't touch my hips and lower back, because apparently that is "harmful" to the body. And it was over. Heh! How easily I wrote it, it was over. But what else do I do? Describe every single stroke?

I went out. My friend was waiting for me with the bitterest smile. Believe it or not, the pain in my body didn’t matter anymore. My first words to him were: "They humiliated me, Mohsen. They humiliated me." And we both cried. He hugged me, and my back caught on fire. We went to the prosecutor's office for the "administrative work."

Together with the executioner, we sat in the back of the car. The guy looked sad and regretful and behaved "nobly." It was a very strange situation. Very. The cab driver have no clue that he was driving an executioner and his victim. I wanted to yell at him and say, "Haji, you come to the 'office' every day, you serve the nation like this, just to take home two or three tomans at the end of the month, and you live with that?! Does the bread, meat, and onions that you buy from the money you earned from this job go down your throat?"

Of course it does. It slides right down.

And the strangest thing: my friend wanted to pay his fare! :))))) He had seen the executioner's behavior as so full of regret and shame, and felt thankful that I was still alive. So he had come to the conclusion that he had respected me. His close acquaintance was whipped and was in the hospital for two weeks. He said it could have been much worse, and it was hard for me to believe.

The dude didn’t let him pay.

Could Stockholm syndrome be more severe than this?! I dragged my destroyed body home, took a series of photos of my waist, and put them on Facebook (it should still be there, I think; I had put them up on my previous account). My mom cried for a couple of hours, but I didn't show her my waist and lied to her that it didn't hurt. The next day, when I was sleeping, she came and lifted my shirt and saw it. I woke up. She cried a lot. And of course, I continued to make fun of the matter. When I returned to the dormitory, I was doing this bit by striking my own chest [like mourning of Muharram rituals] and singing: "I’m the whipped Husayn…" Ah well, the ridiculousness.

So this was the description of my whipping, which happened nine years ago, but its scar on my psyche has not healed. I'm sorry if I hurt you.”