For the first time I met the new Director of the Bureau of Prisons in person, a tall and cheerful man although his companions had solemn faces. The second team included the Secretary of the High Council for Human Rights, a slender man with a serious face who had no companions! His advisor had given him a ride to there without any formalities and even a bodyguard, and I, the only female journalist who had been able to impose myself on the team by begging them and pulling some strings.
It was natural that the prison doors would open without any hesitation to the senior Deputies to the Head of the Judiciary, and in a blink of an eye, I, who had never even stepped into a police station, was in front of the entrance of Qarchak Women's Prison, a penitentiary where women are said to be there for the commission of public crimes, but not a day goes by without the media reporting on their miserable conditions.
We entered the prison hall, a hall with a high ceiling, good lighting, beautiful paintings of waterfalls and forests and views that may make a prisoner regret.
Female guards greeted the officials with a bit of embarrassment. The Director of the Bureau of Prisons asked them some questions, and they answered right away. At the request of the Secretary of the HCHR, we went to the so-called "security" prison hall. The guard said it was early in the morning and some of the inmates might be asleep and unveiled. The officials shamefully said: "Go and see if they willing to accept us, and we will enter." I begged the advisor, who is willing to remain anonymous, to let me in. “It is a women's prison and I am a woman”.
After he accepted, I ran after the female guard to go inside the ward. They said you should take off your shoes because the whole hall was covered by carpets. Before going to the prison, I had thought to myself to wear sport shoes so that I could walk for several hours on the concrete floor of the cold cells of the prison! I imagined it would be something similar to what I had seen in Hollywood movies, and now I had reached a hall that was covered with carpets like the carpets we have in our houses.
I curiously looked around the hall and I confess I was shocked! It was like a dormitory. There was a bed on one side and a relatively wide corridor that was connected to both the courtyard and the bathrooms. The metal beds were covered with white and lemon yellow cloths. I greeted one or two inmates loudly on purpose. I wanted to make a little noise so that the rest of them would wake up and I could witness the treatment of the officials and the prisoners up close and with my own eyes. Inmates thought I was one of the officials and took me very seriously.
I was looking for some familiar faces among the security prisoners whose plight I hear about every day but I could not find them. While the guards were telling the ladies that some senior officials had come and would like to enter the hall if the ladies were comfortable, I walked around in the hall and saw a TV screwed to the wall, a DVD player, a library full of numbered books, a wall that was half-white and clean, with refrigerators with branches of petunias in a glass, packs of cigarettes, and dolls that inmates had sewn inside the prison workshop.
Now my fear of prison was gone, I looked everywhere with greedy eyes, the note on the wall that said the daily TV programs, the pomegranate baskets by the refrigerator and the new water drinking device that had not yet been launched. I knew I was one of the few journalists who had come to prison on my own, and I could report everything I saw (at least some of them).
The atmosphere was ready and the gentlemen walked in and began talking to each of the women. The women politely spoke about their situation and the problems of their cases, and the officials listened patiently to their requests and took notes to be followed up. After a while, more well-known inmates showed up, but unfortunately they did not allow me to hear their words.
I took the chance and went into the yard, sports equipment similar to what I saw in city parks, a bush that stood out in the middle of the yard and under the sun, and a bunch of sparrows that roamed freely. Some of the women were the yard, sunbathing in the yard. A few others had found a cozy corner for themselves and set up a puppet making workshop. It was an interesting scene.
One of the female guards accompanied me. The advisor allowed me to speak to the prisoners. I asked them if they knew there was going to be a visit. The question I asked later in the other wards and they all confirmed they were unaware of the visit and it was totally unexpected. I asked them if they are provided with the necessary hygiene items and they said that they receive a monthly share of toothpaste, shampoo, etc. per month, and that if they did not like the brand, they would buy their favorite ones from the prison store.
Of course, almost all of them complained about the water of the area which is the salt water they use for washing ruins their clothes. (I later asked the prison official if they had any plans to solve the problem. He said they had a $ 1 billion water project and are consulting with donors to solve the prison's water problem.)
The strangest hall I saw was the Mothers' Hall. Mothers who have been convicted are sometimes allowed to bring their children under the age of two to prison. They are mostly sentenced to retribution or large sums of fraud, and the Bureau of Prisons has made every effort to provide them with adequate facilities such as baby diapers, slides for children to play with, toys, children's toilets and much more. Of course, it is painful to see a child in prison for his/her mother's crime, but it is definitely more painful for children to be separated from their mother. It should be noted that the children were playing together and they did not even notice that some senior officials had come to visit.
An official from the Bureau of Prisons had bought gifts including toys and clothes for the children and played with them. I stared at the slide in the middle of the hall, wondering such a big difference there was between what I heard and what I saw with my own eyes. Of course, there were problems that I later told the advisor about and he promised to follow them up, and as of this moment, I am aware that some of the issues have been resolved.