Let me now return to our architectural design for a moment. You probably did this as a child too. You know when you hold a seashell to your ear and hear the see in it? Wasn’t that a magical moment? I remember we had one seashell in our house that was quite big. I learned during our research that the type is called a conch shell, and whenever I felt nervous or anxious, I would pick it up from the shelf and hold it to my ear for a while, and I would imagine myself sitting by a beautiful sea or ocean at sunset. Quite peaceful. I never knew why exactly the sound was there, just imagined the seashell had naturally recorded the sounds of the waves in its chambers. That’s why I suggested, from day one, that our architectural team look into the form of a seashell for our sound center and museum, asking them first to research the cause of the seashell phenomenon. Apparently, there are different hypotheses. One that has been disproven is that we are hearing the sound of the waves in it. Another is that it helps us hear the blood circulating in our own ears, which would have been perfect symbolism for us, but unfortunately that, too, has been disproven. The real reason is that the seashell acts like a wind instrument whose physical shape causes the air to vibrate more strongly inside and thus amplifies the ambient sounds around it, an explanation that still aligns pretty nicely with our intentions here, as the museum’s seashell structure further echoes and amplifies the audio of the torture along with any other sounds produced in the space. Isn’t that amazing? The team also suggested we bring in elements of Persian and Islamic architecture, especially considering that several of our mosques, most prominently the Imam Mosque of Isfahan, a UNESCO World Heritage site, have unique acoustic qualities because of their architectural designs. Without the need for a microphone, they amplify the voices in certain spots of the space or create holy echoes of the calls to prayer. Eventually, our architects collaborated with our museologists and came up with a heavenly and yet practical design that combines the concept of a seashell, though more subtly and abstractly, with elements of our ancient architecture, using old-style bricks, clay, and turquoise tiles and thereby presenting a complex sense of historicity as well modern freedom and flow, allowing for the most imaginative, effective, and user-friendly exhibition format. You probably already noticed our breathtaking design when you entered the establishment, but you’ll see it in greater detail once we’re inside the main wing. Some of our architects, interior designers, and museologists are here today, too, to answer any further questions you might have, so please don’t be shy, just jot them down so you don’t forget them. Now that I’ve mentioned my memories of the seashell, some of you might be curious about what my childhood and youth were like, the years before I joined the police force and ultimately the interrogation unit to serve my country. Well, I had a pretty regular childhood, but there were two particular events that made me realize what power I could have when I grew up, if I joined the police force. Of course, in the beginning, I didn’t have a clear vision of what role or position I could serve in, but I was so fascinated by the power the police held over the public: I mean, not just the police, but the various forms of it, such as the para military, the militia, the Basij, the Komiteh, which existed during my childhood but doesn’t anymore, the special forces, the morality police—any of them, really. The first event which I vividly remember to this day is from my elementary school years, so perhaps I was eight or nine years old. Some of the details aren’t so clear any more, but the feeling of that day is so alive, it’s as if I experienced it just a moment ago. One morning I was headed to school in someone’s car—I don’t remember whether it was a taxi, or a friend’s parent’s car, or what, and I don’t remember who I was with—and when we arrived at the square near our school, there was a huge crowd, and all the roads were blocked by police forces, which was unusual that early in the morning. So there we were, stuck in traffic, behind a mass of people, with no way to go backward or forward, and I think the adult we were with said something about not looking, which actually had the reverse impact and made us, the kids, more curious, so I looked up and ahead and saw, in the middle of the square, a few cranes mounted on trucks. It took me a moment to notice that there were things dangling from them. I didn’t realize then what they were, but I was awestruck by the whole thing; it was as if they had put a movie on pause: everyone gathering there was silent; there was a sense of shock in the air. Anyway, we waited until everything cleared out and the dangling things were brought down. I didn’t see what happened to them after; the cranes drove away, and the people dispersed. When we arrived at school, I remember there was such chaos. Our headmistress and our teachers were all at the entrance or in the hallways, running around or standing still in shock, and the kids were crying, and the staff started calling parents to come in, and I don’t know how much time passed like that, but I remember my mother standing by my side at the door at some point, or maybe she was in the car from the very beginning, maybe she was taking me to school, but I remember the hassle and the crying and the confusion and the help lessness in the eyes of the adults, and I’m not sure when I overheard that the things hanging in midair were actually human bodies with their heads covered in black cloth, their hands tied behind their backs. Executed. The adults were whispering that the men were drug traffickers. I’m not sure how many they were, maybe two or three. Anyhow, those scenes never really left me, and I still can’t fully describe how I felt while we all waited there and I watched the powerlessness of the adults, paralyzed in the face of what was happening. Growing up, I kept thinking about the magical power of that spectacle, all those people brought to a silent standstill. And mind you, I believe it was not just fear in the air but also fascination and some kind of excitement. While we’re on the subject, I want to add here that during my career I’ve witnessed several other scenes of public hanging in which the audience was not standing still in silence but rather moved around quite a bit, even cheered and clapped for the executioners. So either I misremember ­that childhood event, or people react differently depending on the occasion, or over the years their behavior has changed. Either way, the point is, it’s quite amazing how one event can have such an in-depth, long-term impact on a child. More recently, I saw a video on someone’s Twitter of a little girl named Sharmin playing with her dolls, using different objects to create a structure resembling a prison cell. She was first putting the dolls in the cell and then setting them free from it, calling out to her mother to come celebrate this freedom with her. It seemed that her father was a political activist who had been taken to prison. Psychology books discuss how malleable kids’ psyches are, but it was quite thrilling to actually see a real-life case revealing our influence on the younger generation. We also saw, during the most recent upheavals as well as several previous ones, how comprehensively our younger generation can be manipulated into serving as mouthpieces for our enemies, even lose their lives for values that have no place in our ideal society. That’s why one of our procedures after arrests of minors has been to send them to special psychiatric and juvenile detention centers, where we can, under highly controlled conditions, away from the impure effects of the internet, their friends, and their parents, evaluate and reeducate them, bring them to their senses, and ensure that they’re on the right path to serve our larger sociopolitical structures rather than following their own frivolous, selfish interests or those of our international enemies. That’s also why our museum is offering special tours and discounts for students and those in younger age groups, and we hope to begin them at the start of the new school year. You know, the human psyche never ceases to amaze me, so reshaping the young psyches so they better align with our own desires has been one of our key priorities. Let me tell you about a dream I had in the early phases of our project. I was in a room, and one of my male colleagues, a higher-ranking officer, was standing by an alcove or closet in which several long, black raincoats were hanging. He kept sliding them one by one to the far-right side of the alcove, and it was as if the alcove and raincoats were endless. I was watching all this from the left corner of the room. There were a few other colleagues in the room as well, all in uniform. The officer suddenly turned around to face us while the raincoats continued moving on their own, and I noticed that he had a gun in his right hand. At first, I thought he was aiming at the guys in the middle of the room, but he unexpectedly turned and targeted me. I froze, in shock, for what seemed like eternity. He kept staring at me, and when I heard a shot, at first I thought I was hit, but then I noticed he had aimed at a male colleague to my right. When I looked at the col league, he was touching his forehead, where the bullet had entered his skull. He kept blinking but seemed very relaxed. The bullet hole gradually became a congealed red dot, as if made of wax, and all of a sudden, all the men started screaming and ran out of the room. That’s when I heard some voices in my bedroom—I mean my real bedroom, not in the world of the dream—and I woke up, startled. I then noticed these weird creatures in my room, part human and part animal, dancing around my bed, but when they saw that I had woken up, they started running toward the door, the same way the men in my dream had. Before leaving the room, one of them paused and placed a large bag on the floor by the door. Everything felt so real that I half got up from my bed and leaned in that direction to see what they’d left behind for me. I was very surprised when I didn’t find anything there and kept waiting for the creatures to come back, hoping they would, not sure what I thought they would reveal to me, and I couldn’t sleep for many hours after that. I was terrified of what the officer in my dream had done, because I knew that he and the guy he shot were buddies in real life, and I also felt saddened by the creatures leaving me all alone in my bedroom. In the morning, the first thing I did was call my spiritual advisor to recount to her the events of the night. She said she would bless an amulet and write out a special prayer for me, both of which I could pick up later that day. She instructed me to read the prayer every night for forty consecutive nights, and after that, to read it every Thursday night before going to bed. She explained that the creatures were djinns who were celebrating my life being spared in the dream, and the bag they had left me was full of the resources I needed for the completion of the museum, and even though I hadn’t literally picked it up, it had been successfully and symbolically delivered to me because I had seen it clearly and acknowledged it. She also advised me to be wary of the higher-ranking officers, who would probably become envious of the development of my project and might attempt different strategies to hinder its completion. Wait . . . Why was I sharing my dream with you? Oh, I was speaking about our psyches, their strange, still unknowable relationships to our past, present, and future reality. Anyway . . . Going back to our plans for the museum, one thing I want to highlight again is the significance of what we’ve recorded in our archive and education center for posterity. We want to make sure we have everything documented correctly so it’s all ready to be presented according to our wishes if ever our government isn’t here anymore. I know this might sound surprising coming from me, and it’s probably something I shouldn’t be saying out loud, to you of all people, and God forbid it happens any time soon, but if we have rightly learned history’s lesson, we know that sooner or later our time will be up, particularly in this region of the so-called Middle East, a very problematic directional designation with Western orientation, but I won’t get into that now. I’m going to say something now that you can’t, I mean, you won’t be allowed to, repeat outside this space . . . I personally am going to make sure about that beyond our agreements with your editors. To be honest, I’ve been a bit concerned about the signs of decline in the supremacy of our leadership the past few years, with the widespread protests, for example, which we did clamp down on, but still, there are the internal conflicts that keep popping up in various sectors of our government and some recent international blowbacks that have diminished our power on the global geopolitical scene. So I’m very glad I started this project when I did, to make sure we complete at least the preliminary phases. Even if I’m wrong about these signs, and I truly hope I am, even if we continue our mighty reign for years to come, death will eventually and unfortunately befall us, each and every one of its servants, and the younger generation won’t have direct access to our insights, nor will they necessarily profess the exact same ideals as ours. That’s why I believe in the urgency of my task at this moment in time. We need to have our narrative orchestrated and ready for use the way we desire it to be used. This will give us some control over how our story is going to be told, and how we’ll be remembered. Pretty smart, right? Along these lines, our work at the center is also important as it relates to the possibility of our deeds one day being brought to the so-called courts of justice and international tribunals, or to people’s tribunals which are more of judicial gestures organized by society members and have no real legal ramifications. Do you know about them? There was a recent international people’s tribunal held in London that evaluated some of the security measures we had to take in Iran in 2019, and after much fuss, they came up with verdicts saying we were responsible for this and that, but as I said, these don’t translate into any legal actions against us, so there you go. Anyway, after that one, I became curious about these so-called people’s tribunals and started to do some research on them. Apparently the first one, called the Russell Tribunal, was organized by Bertrand Russell and hosted by Jean-Paul Sartre, along with several other philosophers and writers, including Simone de Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex has been illuminating for me, despite my finding some of it quite problematic. That first tribunal, held in 1966, was aimed at investigating the US foreign policy and military presence in Vietnam, but the nice thing about it was it didn’t change anything about the actions the US was taking around the world, and I don’t believe the rulings were even acknowledged by the US government. So yes, there have been snags with legal courts as well as these symbolic ones, but most of them, as I know and you know, too, in your hearts, even if you don’t want to admit it, are just decorative and don’t really have any practical impact. Even if they make one or two parties pay for what they did, they don’t stir up meaningful fear or act as deterrents for future generations coming to power. Let me tell you, when one looks at historical accounts of these courts, or even broadcasts of the contemporary ones, one can also not help but question the accuracy of the testimonies against various systems of power, and that’s true not just with regard to these courts but throughout history in general—we’ll never know how much fiction is mixed up with the truth, and this mixing might not even be intentional or malicious but just a function of human memory. Arendt, in her book on Eichmann, touches on this issue and questions the accuracy of some of the testimonies against him, wondering how much was truly in accordance with what was experienced personally by witnesses and how much stemmed from indirect memories, what people had read or heard, their having made others’ memories their own, or even imagined memories from scratch. And if I remember correctly, she even goes on to call one of the testimonies “propaganda” and also points to some people’s righteous concerns about whether the Zionist regime, though of course she doesn’t use the term “Zionist,” was even “suitable”—and that’s her exact word—to be in charge of the proceedings for Eichmann, since they couldn’t really be impartial throughout the process. You see, when, if, it comes to being judged, either by official courts or the courts of public opinion, things quickly become very complicated, so we have many good reasons to document things, provide our own evidence, and curate witness narratives properly, as we see fit. Anyway, let’s move on to some of the advanced uses of technology in our museum, and I promise we’ll soon start the tour.