такое кино
Isfahan. Aleph (א)
The Transcript
CASE FILE No. 788-AT/IRGC-ISF
RECORD OF INTERROGATION
Date: 24 Ordibehesht 1402 (May 14, 2023)
Time Start: 14:47
Time End: 15:58
Location: Counterintelligence Directorate of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Isfahan. Interrogation Room No. 4.
Subject: Musavi, Zahra, daughter of Ali.
Interrogator: Major Mohsen Karimi, Directorate Investigator.
Present:
The Investigator.
The Secretary (recording the minutes).
Musavi, Z.
(The room is sterile. Beige walls. A metal table. Three chairs. On the table: a switched-off voice recorder, a glass of water for the subject. An air conditioner hums monotonously, maintaining an unnatural chill. There is no smell. None at all. This in itself is unnerving.)
Investigator: Bismillāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm. In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Dr. Musavi, let us begin. State your full name.
Musavi: Zahra Musavi, daughter of Ali.
Investigator: Date and place of birth?
Musavi: 25 Bahman 1361. The city of Shiraz.
Investigator: Age?
Musavi: Forty years old.
Investigator: Marital status?
Musavi: Married.
Investigator: Husband’s name and occupation?
Musavi: Amirkhan Musavi. Head of Security for the Isfahan Municipality.
Investigator: Children?
Musavi: Two daughters. Nasrin, seventeen, a high school student. And Zeynab, twelve, a middle school student.
Investigator: Education?
Musavi: Graduated from the University of Tehran, Faculty of Physics, Department of Nuclear Physics. Doctorate in Plasma Physics.
Investigator: The year you defended your dissertation?
Musavi: Thirteen eighty-seven. By your calendar, two thousand and eight.
Investigator: The topic of your dissertation?
Musavi: “Modeling Plasma Instabilities in Tokamaks Using the Gyrokinetic Approximation Method.”
Investigator: Current place of employment?
Musavi: The Nuclear Technology Research Center, Isfahan. Laboratory Number Four.
Investigator: Position?
Musavi: (The investigator fingers his tasbih—prayer beads.) Senior Research Fellow.
Investigator: Your supervisor?
Musavi: Dr. Hassan Rezai.
Investigator: Do you wear the hijab out of conviction or out of necessity?
Musavi: (A pause) As required by the law of the Islamic Republic.
Investigator: That is not an answer to the question.
Musavi: I abide by all the laws.
Investigator: How often do you pray?
Musavi: Five times a day, when my work allows.
Investigator: Is there a prayer room in the laboratory?
Musavi: Yes. A separate one for women.
Investigator: Who are the other women working in your laboratory?
Musavi: I am the only one.
Investigator: Does that not create difficulties?
Musavi: I am used to it.
Investigator: We see a note in your file about an internship abroad.
Musavi: Yes. From 2009 to 2011. In France. At the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, the Saclay center.
Investigator: Have you maintained contact with any of your French colleagues since returning to your homeland? Name them. Dr. Philippe Dubois? Dr. Agnès Fournier?
Musavi: All contact was of an exclusively scientific nature and was terminated upon my return to Iran, as the protocol required. Our email correspondence concerned only the finalization of a joint publication on the behavior of uranium isotopes in a gaseous medium at supercritical speeds. The last email was sent in 2012.
Investigator: Are you saying that reality consists of protocols, Doctor? Or that protocols are reality?
Musavi: I am saying that I followed procedure. Reality is the aggregate of physical laws. Protocols are merely a faint reflection of them in the social sphere. An attempt to bring order to chaos.
Investigator: An interesting philosophy… Your colleague, Rustam Yazdi. How long did you know him?
Musavi: Since I first joined the laboratory. About ten years.
Investigator: Describe your relationship.
Musavi: Collegial. We worked on adjacent aspects of the cascade centrifuge. Sometimes we would discuss the Helmholtz equations. Sometimes we would drink tea in the canteen. He had good taste in dates.
Investigator: Were you close?
Musavi: Proximity is not a category from the world of physics. Our orbits intersected at strictly designated points. We were not friends. We were functions in the same system.
Investigator: When was the last time you saw him?
Musavi: Last Thursday. At the end of the workday. He was leaving a little earlier than I was. He said “Khodahafez” (Persian for “God protect you,” a farewell). As usual.
Investigator: Did you notice anything unusual in his behavior in recent weeks?
Musavi: (After a pause) He was more silent than usual. Distracted. Once, I saw him sketching on a napkin, not formulas, but something that resembled a Fibonacci spiral, only with an error in the sequence. It was irrational. Not like him.
Investigator: Irrational. (He makes a barely perceptible note on a sheet of paper. The pen makes no sound.) Dr. Musavi, do you consider yourself a loyal citizen of the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Musavi: My work is the best proof of that. I serve my country using the knowledge it gave me.
Investigator: Your work is splitting the atom. The atom, as you know, can be used for creation and for destruction. It all depends on the intention. The same is true of loyalty.
Musavi: My intentions are pure. As a vacuum in a centrifuge.
(The investigator puts down the pen and picks up the tasbih again. He leans forward slightly. The room becomes even quieter, as if the hum of the air conditioner has muffled itself to listen. The investigator’s voice, until now as monotonous as a metronome, takes on a different, metallic edge.)
Investigator: Dr. Musavi, have you ever consumed alcohol or illicit substances?
(The question lands in the silence like a drop of acid on marble. Absurd, out of place, insulting. Her fingers, resting on the table, grow cold. She looks at the investigator, trying to solve this logical anomaly, to find the reason for such a failure in the protocol.)
Musavi: No. Never. It is haram. And it is… illogical.
(The investigator does not react to her answer. He does not blink. His gaze is like a camera lens, dispassionate and all-seeing. He holds the pause, letting the first question do its destructive work, and then, without changing his tone, delivers the second blow.)
Investigator: How did you know that Rustam Yazdi was murdered?
Musavi: (A long pause. She mechanically adjusts her maghnaeh—a part of her hijab.) I… I never said that.
Investigator: But you suspect it.
Musavi: (Barely audible) Yes.
Investigator: On what grounds?
Musavi: Intuition. Just intuition.
Investigator: A woman’s intuition? Is there a place for intuition in nuclear physics?
Musavi: They are different things.
Investigator: The interrogation is suspended at 15:58. Dr. Musavi, you will remain here. We will have additional questions.
Time in the room stops.