title: Letters to My Torturer: Love, Revolution, and Imprisonment in Iran
author: Houshand Asadi
description: <span><span><span>In 1983, the journalist, writer, and translator </span><span style="font-weight:bold;">Houshang Asadi</span><span> was locked in a Tehran prison. Under torture, he said he was a spy. Many of his friends also confessed and were later executed. He was released after six years. Today he lives in Paris with his wife, Nooshabeh Amiri. They write for the Iranian news website Rooz Online.</span></span><br /><span><span> </span></span><br /></span>
zlib_text: Letters to My Torturer
  
  
  A journalist, writer, and translator, Houshang Asadi was a member of both the
  Writers’ Association of Iran and the Iranian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the
  co-founder of the Association of Iranian Film Critics and Script Writers.
  Prior to the Islamic Revolution he served for many years as Deputy Editor at
  _Kayhan_ , Iran’s largest daily news-paper, and was for twelve years the
  Editor-in-Chief of the country’s largest circulation film magazine,
  _Gozaresh_. He is the author of several novels, plays, and film scripts, and
  has translated into Persian important works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario
  Vargas Llosa, and T.S. Eliot.
  
  
  In 1974 during the Shah’s regime, Asadi was arrested along with other
  journalists and found himself sharing a tiny prison cell for 9 months with a
  young clergyman by the name of Ali Khamenei, currently Iran’s Supreme
  Spiritual Leader and the appointed successor to Ayatollah Khomeini. The two
  formed a close friendship that continued until ev