You’ll get used to this job like everything else. You think you can’t? You think you’re different than me? You think I’m a natural-born killer and don’t feel bad seeing these people die? Are you here to interview me about how I can go home to my wife and children and eat after carrying out several death sentences in one day or one week or after whipping people every day?

But I don’t tell her any of these. I just look at her and give brief, obligatory answers to her questions. My superior said the girl knows one of the high-ups and is doing research for her doctoral thesis. But what does she know about the things life can force you to do? What does she know about the time I wept, just like them, for the boy who put his head on my shoulder and cried?

Yes; I wept under the very black, neck-long hat that everyone thinks makes me devoid of humanity. And now it just pains my heart to see that she’s written “Human being ‎ or death machine?” on a corner of a page in her small notebook.

In my early days on the job, I too used to think that everyone else is so heartless; but I don’t anymore. The first time I whipped a convict, it messed me up like hell. For days I couldn’t drink or eat. For days his cries, sounding like screams induced by scraping a deep part of his soul, rang in my ears. It was like when you unintentionally step on a goose. The cry of a goose who feels a sudden pain somehow penetrates your soul. And at the end when you’re done carrying out the sentence, the convict sounds like a frightened dog who is huddled up in a corner and moaning from down its throat with its mouth closed. One sound is like a nail and the other a needle; each inflicts a specific kind of pain when it penetrates your earhole.

Traditionally, one whips and another counts the lashes—a “counting man,” that is. Counting men are not usually selected from rookies, who tend to be faint-hearted. A counting man is the supervising representative of the “sentence execution judge.” I had read the flogging instructions over and over before whipping him. I had also watched several whippings and extensively practiced the hand motion and intensity with which you are to strike that winding, one-meter-long leather strip whose thickness measures one and a half phalanges. But it’s like saying you’ve seen people getting killed or shot and scenes of war on TV so many times; you can never understand the experience of someone who’s actually been in the middle of a war, no matter how many times you’ve watched such scenes. With my very first blow of the whip, the convict’s scream and moans rent my heart to shreds. Has anyone ever paid any attention to the phrase “heart-rending” by the way? Has anyone noticed what volumes these 12 letters speak?

Men convicted of a hadd crime are whipped standing; whether clothed or undressed depends on the type of the hadd offense: if it’s qawadi—“facilitation of prostitution”—or qazf—“making baseless accusations of extramarital or homosexual intercourse”—the convict will be clothed, and for the rest of the hadd crimes, only wearing underwear. If it’s a tazir crime, the convict will be whipped lying face down in normal clothes, often with his hands and feet secured to prevent his pain-caused movements from making the whip hit places outside the specified area.

You have to distribute the blows along the length from the shoulders down to the ankles; this way it’s better for him too. Nowadays, instead of doing the guy a favor and striking lightly, which would result in the counting man not counting the lash, I do my best to distribute the blows across his body so as not to give him any deep wounds.

In my first whipping, I thought I was doing the poor convict a favor by whipping him lightly. I had gradually lightened my strikes, trying to hit him in a way that he screams less. All I was focused on was the cries that were becoming less loud and turning into moans. I was happy with my little act of compassion until I realized that 20 lashes in, the counting man was still counting:

“Eleven.”

I landed another blow. I thought maybe I was mistaken, that maybe I had miscounted. I thought he should count 12 this time, but he kept saying:

“Eleven… Eleven.”

I struck a little more harshly; he still counted:

“Eleven.”

This time, after a pause, I landed a full-force blow across the offender’s back and legs. His cries, shrieks, and wails mixed back together, and the counting man marked:

“Twelve!”

The instructions say that the sentence execution officer cannot have any history of friendship or enmity with the convict, but I sometimes see that some of my colleagues release all their lifelong repressed anger on the poor convict, despite having no history of hostility against him. The counting man occasionally warns them: “Control the intensity of the blows; adjust it to the severity of the crime.” For some offenses, the blows should be heavier. I’ve always tried to follow the instructions: to strike evenly and in a way that isn’t life-threatening and doesn’t maim or leave deep wounds on the back. I

n cases where I find out the convict has rubbed an anesthetic or something on his back, I whisper in his ear, “Shout as loud as you can,” because if it’s revealed that he has used, before or during the execution of the sentence, a medical or psychedelic drug or basically anything that induces insensitivity to pain, the punishment will be halted and postponed to another day. I’ve tried my best not to forget compassion in my work.

After all, maybe that’s the reason why the boy who has now made all the media and this girl emotional enough to focus on the lives of prisoners for a couple of days put his head on my shoulder before his execution and that journalist captured the moment in that photo.

She asks me whether I remember the boy as if the whole thing is yesterday’s lunch that you could just forget. He was a 17/18-year-old kid who went mugging with a machete but it blew up in his face; he could only snatch 70,000 tomans from some poor bastard and was arrested for it. The judge found him guilty of moharebeh—“waging war against God.” Later when I read that he did it to pay for his mother’s kidney surgery, I just wanted to cry blood.

Why do people think no doctor sheds a tear when his patient dies, no teacher suffers when his student fails a grade, and no professor feels suffocated when his student is put in prison? People try to learn to live with the pains of life. They may not cry every day but there are days when anyone would burst into tears at the pain of this constant, tedious struggle. Everyone has moments when they just want to shout, “I can’t take this anymore!” What difference does it make what you do for a living? You’ll never turn into a machine.

I remember perfectly how he wetted himself coming up the stairs to the gallows. His knees weakened, and he knelt amid the yellow liquid gathered around his feet and hit the ground face-first. Two conscripts came and picked him up. Someone fetched him a glass of sugar water. His pale, bruised lips were trembling and, just like skin clinging to fleshless bones, concealing his interlocked teeth. The sentence execution judge ordered one of the conscripts to press under the convict’s jaw.

The soldier threw his claws around the convict’s jaw and pressed. His mouth opened halfway like that of a sheep’s severed head on the butcher’s tray, exposing his upper row of teeth. The other conscript forced the sugar water down his throat. The convict whispered something. The soldier brought his head near his mouth, and he whispered it again. “The convict is asking if you could execute him when he’s passed out,” the soldier told the judge in a loud voice. We all knew the answer would be “no.” Even if the convict passes out during whipping, you have to wait until he comes round so he can feel the pain. When he regained his strength, he still couldn’t stand on his feet by himself. The two conscripts held him by the arms and walked him to the noose. When I put the rope around his neck, he laid his head on my shoulder and cried—and it felt as though he was crying on his mother’s or lover’s shoulder.