The Persian Notebook: Architects of Shadow

“End of the year. Audits. You know how it is.”

“Are you all rushing before the inspection?”

“Preparing documentation. Bureaucracy.”

“Strange. You never used to stay late for paperwork.”

“There wasn’t this much pressure before.”

He said nothing in reply, but she felt his silence probing her words for cracks.

And one evening, Zeynab, drawing in her sketchbook, suddenly looked up at her with her clear, pure eyes.

“Mama, are you not playing with tanks anymore?”

The question was so simple and so monstrous that it took Zahra’s breath away for a moment. It was the key to a locked room that the child was twirling in her hands, unaware of its power.

“No, azizam,” she answered, forcing a smile. “I deleted the game. I think I’m too old for it now.”

The lie was like the truth, but its mirror image. She hadn’t outgrown it. She had fallen into the game so deeply that it had become reality. And reality had become a game.

“I thought you don’t outgrow games,” the girl said thoughtfully. “You just trade them for different ones.”

In the morning, Dr. Rezai summoned her to his office. He stood by the window, looking at the snow-capped peaks of the Zagros Mountains, his silhouette seeming as if cut from black paper.

“Dr. Musavi, on Monday, you and Rustam Yazdi are going to Tehran.”

“Tehran?” She tried to hide her surprise.

“A meeting with the IAEA inspectors. Unofficial, preliminary. They need technical clarifications on our program. You and Yazdi will represent the scientific side of the issue.”

“And you?”

Rezai turned. In his eyes was the weariness of a man tired of an endless game of cat and mouse.

“I am too… politicized for such a meeting. They need pure scientists, who speak the language of physics, not ideology. You are a perfect fit – a female physicist in the Islamic Republic, who has interned in the West. You are a mother. You are a symbol of our peaceful intentions. Living proof of our openness.”

“Yazdi will go with you. He speaks English well and is a good theorist.”

“I understand.”

“Prepare a presentation. Facts, only facts. No politics. Show them that we are engaged in science, not creating an apocalypse.”

That evening, when she told Amirkhan about it, he was silent for a long time, stirring the tea in his glass.

“To Tehran?” He frowned. “So suddenly?”

“The IAEA is insisting on an urgent meeting.”

“And why isn’t Rezai going? He’s the head.”

“He said he’s too politicized. They need technical specialists.”

“And why with Yazdi?” A note she had never heard before appeared in his voice. Suspicion? Jealousy?

“He’s a specialist in cascades. We complement each other.”

Amirkhan was silent, watching her add walnuts to the sauce. The silence stretched like molasses.

“Be careful,” he finally said. “The IAEA isn’t just scientists. There are people there with other tasks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Recruitment. They are always looking for sources within the program. Especially among those who have been to the West.”

The blood drained from her face, but she continued to stir the sauce, not looking up.

“You think they’ll try…?”

“I think you should be prepared for any offers. And remember who you are and where your home is.”

She nodded, feeling the irony of the situation tighten in her throat. He was warning her about what had already happened. But it hadn’t happened the way he thought. Not the IAEA, but a ghost from the past, a tank hunter from a virtual world.

“I’ll just talk about physics,” she said. “Only physics.”

“Physics is also politics,” Amirkhan replied. “Especially nuclear physics.”

He came over to her, took her hands in his. His palms, usually warm, were cold.

“Be careful,” he said so quietly that it sounded almost like a threat. “In these games, it’s not the pieces that lose, but the people.”

“I’m always careful.”

That night she lay sleepless, thinking about the upcoming trip. Tehran. The IAEA. An opportunity or a trap? And why now, when she had already made her choice? She was being sent to lie to the world on behalf of a system she had betrayed. A mirror facing a mirror, creating an infinite corridor of reflections, with only emptiness at the end. And she had to walk into that corridor.

Lamed: The Theater of Fire

15 Azar 1401 (December 6, 2022)

Tehran greeted them with a steel-gray sky and air thick with the smell of exhaust fumes and cold anxiety. The car drove them down Enghelab Avenue, and the city outside the window seemed not a living organism, but a vast mechanism whose gears turned with a strained, pained creak. Zahra looked at the flashing streets, but she didn’t see them. She saw beauty and fury, fused together in a ritualistic dance that was unfolding at the university gates.

On one side of the avenue, a fire raged. It was a sacred, cleansing fire, devouring symbols. Young men with burning eyes and headbands, their faces beautiful in their fanatical conviction, tore apart flags with stripes and foreign stars. The fabric, a symbol of a hostile universe, writhed in the flames, turning to black ash that the wind carried away and mixed with the snow falling from the mountains. The fire consumed it with the same methodicalness with which the crowd consumed its own rage, turning it into the ashes of satisfaction. Their cries – “Marg bar Āmrikā! Marg bar Esrā’īl!” – were not just the words “Death to America, Death to Israel.” It was a liturgy, a mantra, a collective prayer addressed to a god of wrath. Their fury was as pure as steel and as beautiful in its finality as a samurai’s ritual suicide. They were sacrificing not themselves, but their hatred, and in this act, they found their unity and meaning.

And just a few dozen meters away, separated by a cordon of black helmets and shields, another ritual was taking place. A ritual of silence and pain. Other young people stood there. There were fewer of them, and their weapons were not fire and shouts, but silence and gazes. They didn’t burn flags. They held white sheets of paper in their hands – a symbol of all that was unsaid. Their protest was as fragile as thin ice on a puddle, and just as doomed. The dispersal was not a battle, but a surgical operation. No fury, only cold resolve. Batons fell on shoulders and backs with a dull, business-like thud. Fragile bodies fell to the cold asphalt like autumn leaves. Their silence was louder than any cry, and their defeat more beautiful than any victory, because it held a truth that needed no justification. The blood on the asphalt didn’t scream – it simply spread, finding cracks in the pavement, creating abstract patterns.

Zahra watched, and her soul was torn in two. She was part of the world of those who burned flags, and the mother of those who were beaten with batons. Two rituals, two aesthetics of death, and between them – she, the bifurcation point.

“Don’t look,” the driver said, turning into a side street. “It’s a theater, for our guests. So they understand what kind of country they are in.”

The car entered the university grounds. Here, silence and order reigned.

The meeting took place in a conference room with a high ceiling and portraits of ayatollahs on the walls. The air was sterile and cool. The IAEA delegation – three men and one woman – sat opposite them. Their faces were as impenetrable as the pages of a diplomatic protocol. Next to Zahra and Rustam sat two nondescript men from the Iranian Foreign Ministry, whose job was not to speak, but to listen and remember. In the corners of the room, like shadows, stood several other men whose affiliation with the IRGC was as obvious as the geometry of a pistol under a jacket.

The conversation was less like an argument and more like a game of chess, where every word was a calculated move.

“We appreciate your willingness to engage in dialogue, Dr. Musavi, Dr. Yazdi,” began the head of the delegation, a gray-haired Austrian named Bauer. “However, our satellite data and analysis based on open sources indicate certain… discrepancies in the operation of the Fordow facility.”

“Discrepancies or interpretations, Herr Bauer?” Rustam gently countered. “Any set of data can be interpreted differently. A physicist sees a dance of quarks in particle traces, while a politician sees the outline of a bomb. It’s a matter of optics, is it not?”

“Our optics, Dr. Yazdi, are the Security Council resolutions. And they direct us to look not for dances, but for facts. For example, the fact of exceeding the enrichment level.”

“Facts are a relative concept,” replied the senior of the Foreign Ministry officials. “Glass is transparent, but it distorts the image. We prefer clarity.”

“An enrichment level of 60 percent is inconsistent with the needs of a civilian program,” one of the inspectors noted.

“We are conducting scientific experiments,” Zahra interjected. Her voice was as steady as the line on an oscilloscope. “We are studying the stability of cascades at peak loads. Any scientist understands that to obtain reliable data, a system must be pushed to its theoretical limit. This is not production. This is research.”

“The Tehran Research Reactor requires fuel enriched up to 20 percent, but to create a stockpile, we are forced to produce higher-enriched material, which is then downblended,” Rustam added.

“An interesting logic,” the Austrian smiled. “You create a surplus to achieve a sufficiency?”

“We create capabilities,” Zahra replied, and everyone turned to her. “In physics, as in life, potential is more important than kinetics. We are demonstrating a capability, not an intention.”

They spoke the language of physics, but every term had a double meaning. “Peak loads” meant “weapons-grade.” “Cascade stability” meant “warhead reliability.” It was a labyrinthine dialogue, where the direct path was the shortest path to failure. They exchanged formulas, graphs, references to scientific articles. And it was all just a facade, behind which the real game was being played – a game of intentions and suspicions.

After two hours of this intellectual fencing, Bauer announced a break. The delegates stood up. And at that moment, one of the delegation members approached Zahra – a Frenchman named Alain Duval, whom she remembered from her internship in Saclay.

“Dr. Musavi, it’s a pleasure to see you again,” he said with a polite smile. “Since I have the opportunity, I would like to pass on a personal greeting.”

Zahra tensed.

“From whom?”

“From Dr. Vitaly Smirnov. Do you remember him? The Russian physicist. He’s been working with us at the CEA since May of this year.”

Smirnov. Sarov. 2012. The man who had overseen her internship. The man with whom she had discussed the merits of the German Jagdpanther tank destroyer. Smirnov at the French Atomic Energy Commission. A coincidence? A signal?

The blood drained from her face.

“Yes, I remember him,” she managed to force out.

“He spoke very warmly of you. Said you were one of the most brilliant minds he’d ever had the pleasure of working with.” Duval paused, his gaze becoming serious for a moment. “And we, at the Agency, very much value your work and your contribution to science. We hope for further fruitful collaboration.”

“Science knows no borders,” she replied, quoting a platitude. “Only politics creates them.”

“That’s precisely why such meetings are important,” the Frenchman smiled and walked away.

The words hung in the air. They could have been simple politeness. Or they could have been a password. A confirmation. An order to continue.

He had extended his hand to her. She shook it automatically. His handshake was brief, dry, business-like. But for a moment, she felt his fingers squeeze her palm slightly harder, as if transmitting an invisible signal.

Or had she just imagined it?

On the way back to the airport, Rustam was silent, looking out the window at the passing scenery. Finally, he said:

“They know more than they’re letting on.”

“They always know more,” Zahra replied.

“No, I mean…” he turned to her. “Their questions were too precise. As if they have a source.”

She shrugged, feeling a cold sweat break out between her shoulder blades.

“Satellites. Open-source analysis. They’re no fools.”

“Yes,” Rustam agreed. “They’re no fools.”

But there was a note in his voice she had never heard before…

Outside the window, the Iranian winter flew by – gray, cold, full of hidden meanings. Just like her life. She remembered Rustam’s words: “They don’t want to weigh it, Zahra. They want to be sure the shadow doesn’t belong to a monster.” And she understood: she herself had become that shadow. Or perhaps, the monster.

Mem: The Theology of Retribution

8 Dey 1401 (December 29, 2022)

December descended on Isfahan like a shroud. The month passed in a state of suspended animation, in a frozen time between action and consequence. Zahra had stopped going to the mosque. The netbook slept in its tomb of old newspapers. She was afraid not that she would find a new message there, but that she would find nothing. The silence had become her chief tormentor.

She returned to her old rituals, to the geometry of her former life. She came home on time, helped her daughters with their homework, made small talk with Amirkhan. But her normality was too perfect, too calibrated, like the flat line on a dead man’s EKG.

“You’re not staying late anymore,” her husband observed one day. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact.

“The reports are submitted. The pressure is off.”

“Good. A family needs a mother at home, not a ghost drifting between work and the unknown,” he said, but he continued to look at her as if trying to spot a crack in a flawless glaze.

The surveillance had resumed. This time it wasn’t a gray Peykan, but a nondescript silver Saipa. It didn’t follow her constantly. It just appeared. In the parking lot at work. In the rearview mirror halfway home. As if her life had become a book, and someone was occasionally placing a bookmark in it so as not to lose the page.

The cause of her numbness was a memory. Back then, at Mehrabad Airport, their flight to Isfahan had been delayed. No explanation. And then two men in plain clothes had approached them. Politely, almost apologetically, they asked her and Rustam to come with them. They were placed in separate rooms. “A small formality.”

The room was featureless, smelling of coffee and cigarette smoke. The man who conducted the “chat” did not introduce himself. His questions were like surgical probes.

“The Frenchman. Alain Duval. What did you talk about?”

“About science. About old acquaintances from Saclay.”

“Vitaly Smirnov. The Russian physicist. Why did he leave Russia for France?”

“I don’t know. People change jobs.”

“People of Smirnov’s level don’t just ‘change jobs.’ They change loyalties. Did Mr. Duval give you anything from him? A note? An object?”

“No. Just his regards.”

He looked at her for a long time, and his gaze was as heavy as X-ray radiation.

“You are an asset to us, Dr. Musavi. A valuable asset. We would not want you to become a threat.”

She was released. But she understood: she was no longer just a scientist. She was a piece on a board, and now other hands were moving her.

Today had thawed her fear. In the laboratory, she had become an unwilling listener to a conversation between Rezai and Rustam. They were standing by a blackboard covered in formulas, but they weren’t talking about them.

“The latest data from Fordow confirms it – we have almost reached the required level. Eighty-three percent. Nearly weapons-grade,” Rezai was saying in a quiet, almost casual voice. “From here on, it’s no longer theory. It’s a matter of political will.”

“Will for what?” Rustam asked.

“To establish a balance. To launch a preemptive strike against any enemy in the region, if necessary.”

Rustam was silent.

“We have the delivery systems,” Rezai continued, as if thinking aloud. “The Shahab-3 covers the entire necessary territory.”

“And what if their air defense system intercepts it?” Rustam’s voice was barely audible.

“Allah knows best. It is all in His hands.”

“Or they will retaliate. And then a balance will be achieved. A balance of ash.”

“Perhaps. But did the Prophet Hussein retreat at Karbala, knowing the enemy’s superior forces? Martyrdom is also a form of victory,” Rezai concluded the conversation.

Zahra stood at her desk, feeling the floor give way beneath her. A preemptive strike. A theology of retribution. This was no longer deterrence. It was madness, cloaked in the form of state doctrine. They were truly prepared to turn the region into a radioactive wasteland in the name of an abstract idea of resistance. She had to do something.

After work, she didn’t go home. For the first time in a month, she headed for the Jameh Mosque. In the rearview mirror – the familiar silhouette of the silver car.

Don’t look back. Don’t speed up. Breathe steadily. You are just a woman going to pray.

She parked near the mosque, got out, and walked toward the entrance. But instead of going in, she turned into an alley leading to the bazaar. In her peripheral vision, she caught a figure – a man in a dark coat, for a moment she thought it was Fakhrabadi. The same tilt of the head, the same gait.

Impossible. He couldn’t be here. Or could he? A game within a game within a game?

Her thoughts leaped like electrons between orbits. He saw me leaving the mosque. He knows about the library. Or has he been following me from work? If it’s the IRGC, they already know everything. If it’s not them, then who? She walked quickly but steadily, weaving between merchants and shoppers. I need to disappear. To shed my skin.

She quickened her pace, diving into the labyrinth of the bazaar. Here, among hundreds of stalls and thousands of shoppers, she could dissolve. Carpets, spices, fabrics – a kaleidoscope of colors and scents. She stopped at a stall selling women’s clothing.

“I need a different hijab. A black one. And a longer manteau.”

The shopkeeper – an elderly woman with hands lined with time like an ancient manuscript – nodded knowingly. Not the first customer wanting to change her appearance.

He’s following me. I can feel his gaze between my shoulder blades. No, it’s paranoia. No, it’s reality. Both a particle and a wave at the same time.

Zahra went into the fitting room – a tiny cubicle curtained off. She took off her light gray hijab and put on a black one. She changed her beige manteau for a dark blue one. The mirror reflected a different woman – one of Isfahan’s thousands of faceless shadows.

Walk out calmly. Turn left, toward the north exit. Don’t run. Running is a sign of guilt.

She came out of the cubicle, paid, and stuffed her old hijab into her bag. The shopkeeper watched with a slight smile – she had seen it all before. Women changing their appearance, fleeing from husbands, from the morality police, from their own shadows.

Zahra moved deeper into the bazaar, weaving between the stalls. The pursuer’s logic would dictate looking for a light gray hijab. She had given him a false target.

Right, through the jewelry row. The gold in the windows like frozen solar flares. Left, past the carpet stalls. Patterns in which one could get lost, like in a Borges labyrinth.

She left the bazaar through a side exit onto Chaharbagh Avenue. She glanced back – no one who looked like a pursuer. But that meant nothing. A professional always keeps his distance.

She returned to the mosque by a circuitous route. The library. The old librarian was dozing over a Quran. She went to the far shelf. The netbook was in its place, as cold as a corpse.

She turned it on. VPN – a server in India today. Forum. A private message for JagdpanFer_83:

“Critical mass almost reached. 83%. They are talking about the possibility of preemptive use. This is not a drill. I repeat: this is not a drill.”

She turned off the netbook, hid it again. Left the library. Evening prayers were underway in the mosque. She joined in – rows of women in black, bowing in unison. There was salvation in this anonymity.

After the prayers, she left through the main entrance. The silver car was gone. Or it was somewhere else, with a different observer.

At home, Amirkhan was watching the news. The anchor was talking about new sanctions, about the machinations of Iran’s enemies.

“Where were you?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the screen.

“At the mosque. Praying.”

“In a new hijab?”

She froze. He had noticed. Of course, he had. An investigator notices details.

“I bought it at the bazaar. The old one was worn out.”

He nodded, but something remained unsaid in his gaze. A suspicion, coiled up and waiting for the right moment to strike.

Quantum superposition: she was simultaneously a traitor and a patriot, a savior and a destroyer, until an observer opened the box and saw which one she really was.

Nun: The Fragility of Porcelain

29 Dey 1401 (January 19, 2023)

The January snow fell on Isfahan in sparse, hesitant flakes, as if the sky had forgotten how to cry and was now merely feigning sorrow. After weeks spent on the razor’s edge of paranoia, a calm had set in. Life seemed to be settling into its winter groove, and in this monotony, there was an illusion of peace. Zahra clung to this illusion like the last thread connecting her to a world where equations had solutions and the future held at least a hypothetical predictability.

On Friday afternoon, the doorbell rang. On the threshold stood Adil, Nasrin’s classmate. The same boy with the eyes of a medieval poet who had been led away from the schoolyard by men in plain clothes.

He stood there, shifting from foot to foot, holding a plate of homemade cookies covered with an embroidered napkin.

“My mother asked me to give you this. As thanks for your help with math.”

Zahra looked at him and saw not so much a boy as a scar. Those two days at the Ettela’at had aged him by ten years. The childish roundness of his cheeks was gone, his gaze had become deep and weary, as if he had peeked behind a curtain where there was nothing but emptiness. But he was smiling, and in his smile there was not brokenness, but a new, bitter strength.

Nasrin fluttered into the hallway, a blush flaring on her cheeks as bright as pomegranate seeds. She looked at Adil as if he were not just a classmate, but a hero returned from a perilous journey. And in that gaze, Zahra saw all the poignant, clumsy beauty of a first crush – a feeling as fragile as the old Chinese porcelain from her father’s collection.

“Come in, Adil, we were just about to have tea,” Zahra said, stepping aside.

They sat in Nasrin’s room, surrounded by posters of K-pop groups, whose members with their brightly colored hair and flawless faces looked down from the walls with an otherworldly, androgynous beauty, and stacks of textbooks.

Her daughter sat on the edge of the bed, her legs drawn up; Adil sat on a chair by the desk. Between them was a meter of space and an entire universe of the unsaid. They didn’t speak of what had happened. The topic was like a radioactive object that everyone could see but no one dared to touch. Adil said he had come for advice.

“Dr. Musavi, I want to choose a foreign language for advanced study. But I don’t know which one. Russian or English?”

Zahra sipped her tea. The question seemed simple, but in it, as in a drop of water, their entire fractured world was reflected.

“That depends on which road you choose, Adil. Which universe you want to discover for yourself. Russian is the language of our current ally. We work with them, we buy and sell technology. If you become an engineer or join the military, it will be useful. But that is a road leading north, into the cold.”

She paused.

“English is different. It is the language that science speaks today. Articles are written in it, debates at conferences are held in it. It is a global language, like Latin in the Middle Ages. It opens doors to the West. But those doors can turn out to be a trap.”

She looked at him, at his serious, uncharacteristically adult face.

“And then there is the East. China. Their language is ideograms, an entire universe in every character. They are building the future with the same speed we are trying to preserve the past. Perhaps in twenty years, it will be more important than both Russian and English.”