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45 Hosseinzadeh, the Head Executioner Reza Baraheni Azudi lights his cigarette —say Doctor Azudi! and Doctor Hosseinzadeh!— he’s short, with a bald head, and eyes uneasy as the asshole of a nervous rooster he is a man of great renown: he always stubs his cigarette on the back of a human hand he never smokes more than forty a day and the first caress is always the privilege of this Pahlavi slut and the last caress too between the two cuffs Azudi and Rassuli and Shadi and Manuchehri Azudi and Parvizkhan and Rezanvan and Hesseini nurse the patient one extracts his nails another his teeth a third scours the skin a fourth provides the shock treatment a fifth the re-flagellation and the sixth prepares the ailing for the coup de grace there’s a short man whose name is Ardalan —say Doctor Ardalan!— he fucks the afflicted man and woman are the same to him he holds a Ph.D. in rapacity (and you, prisoner! you try all this time to forget the name of the half-blind man who printed that article of yours. He has a wife, three children, a father, and a mother, and he provides for them all) 46 and then Hosseinzadeh —say Doctor Hosseinzadeh!— administers the final cuff the final verdict to shoot you comes between the two caresses Translated by Michael Henderson and Reza Baraheni ...

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