Isfahan. Dalet (ד)

Tea and French Lace

30 Mehr 1401 (October 22, 2022)

“Zahra-jan, Reza and his wife, and Morteza and his family are coming over this evening,” Amirkhan said, fastening the cuffs of his shirt without looking at his wife. The morning light slanted through the blinds, striping his face with parallel lines. “Wear something more modest, janam. Appropriate. A long dress, a thicker headscarf. You know they hold very traditional views.”

Appropriate. The word hung in the bedroom air like an equation demanding to be solved. Zahra knew its meaning: a black chador instead of her usual manteau, no jewelry, minimal makeup. The transformation from a doctor of physics into a shadow, a function of service. She, Dr. Musavi, whose mind penetrated the secrets of the atomic nucleus, had to become the faceless function of “hostess” for men whose greatest intellectual achievement was knowing how to properly file a report. A dull, cold wave of indignation rose in her chest, but she only nodded.

“Of course,” she replied, continuing to brush her hair.

But the mirror reflected a woman she barely recognized. That other Zahra, the one who had defended her dissertation with honors, who had argued with Professor Martineau about the nature of quantum fluctuations, seemed like a character from someone else’s biography.

The day dragged on like a viscous fluid in a centrifuge. At work, she performed her calculations mechanically, but her thoughts kept returning to the previous evening. To the man under the plane tree. To the feeling of recognition without memory—like a déjà vu in reverse.

By seven in the evening, the house was ready for the guests. The living room was divided by an invisible boundary: the sofas for the men were closer to the television, the armchairs for the women by the window. In the kitchen, a tray held tea glasses in golden holders, small bowls of local gaz candy, and pistachios from Kerman. Every detail was in its place, like atoms in a crystal lattice.

Reza and his wife, Maryam, were the first to arrive. Reza was Amirkhan’s deputy, a man with a face nature had designed for mistrust: narrow eyes, thin lips, and a habit of squinting even in dim light. Maryam was his opposite: buxom, loud, with gold bracelets that jangled with every movement.

“Salam, Zahra-jan!” Maryam embraced her, enveloping her in a cloud of cloying perfume. “How are your girls? Is Nasrin still such a rebel?”

Zahra smiled the rehearsed smile she kept ready for such occasions.

“They’re growing up. Nasrin is preparing for her exams.”

Next came Morteza, with his wife Fatima and their teenage son. Morteza worked in cybersecurity, a man who saw threats in every byte of data. Fatima was quieter than Maryam, but her silence held a certain vigilance—she noticed everything, cataloged everything.

The men occupied their territory. They turned on the television—Persepolis was playing against Esteghlal. Amirkhan poured tea, Reza was already criticizing the coach, and Morteza checked his phone between comments on the game.

The women settled by the window. Zahra brought the tea and poured it, adding cardamom—exactly two pods to each glass, as her mother-in-law had taught her. A ritual honed to automation.

On one side: male shouts, arguments about offsides and politics, the smell of sweat and confidence. On the other: female chatter, as quiet as the rustle of dry leaves. Talk of children, of market prices, of a new fabric that had arrived at a shop in the bazaar.

“Did you hear about Goli’s daughter?” Maryam began, sipping her tea. “They caught her without a hijab near the university. Now they’re in trouble.”
“The youth have completely lost their minds,” Fatima sighed. “My nephew too… well, it doesn’t matter.”

The rest of the conversation flowed predictably: vegetable prices, a new TV series, someone’s wedding, someone’s funeral. Zahra nodded, agreed, refilled the tea. Her mind, accustomed to complex calculations, was bored in this swamp of banalities. She thought of the flawed Fibonacci spiral Rustam had drawn. Of the code in his note.

“And I updated my wardrobe last week,” Maryam suddenly perked up, lowering her voice. “Reza took me to a… special place.”

Fatima leaned closer. Even Zahra found herself listening.

“Can you imagine, a whole underground boutique! French lingerie, Italian dresses. All genuine, not Chinese fakes.”
“How do they get it in?” Fatima asked. “That’s contraband.”

Maryam smiled mysteriously, enjoying the attention.

“Reza says they have their own channels. Something… diplomatic. Certain people fly back and forth, carrying it in their luggage. For the wives of the big bosses. They have connections at the embassies. They bring it in diplomatic pouches, which don’t get searched.”
“And is it expensive?” Fatima inquired.
“Oh, yes! But it’s worth it. Handmade lace, silk…” Maryam rolled her eyes dreamily. “I bought a set the color of Burgundy wine. Reza was thrilled.”

And in that moment, between the words “diplomatic channels” and “Burgundy wine,” a switch seemed to flip in Zahra’s memory. The revelation didn’t come in a flash, but like a photograph slowly developing in a chemical bath.

Paris. Charles de Gaulle Airport. February 2014. She was returning from a conference, had missed her flight, and had to book the next one. Economy class was full, but she got lucky—a window seat, and next to her…

A man with an academic face, engrossed in his laptop. She caught a glimpse of the screen—tanks. He was playing World of Tanks. It was so unexpected, so… human. A respectable man in an expensive suit, enthusiastically driving pixelated tanks across virtual battlefields.

“Excuse me,” she couldn’t help herself then, “is that World of Tanks?”

He looked up, slightly embarrassed.

“You know the game?”
“I play sometimes. When I need a distraction from work. I have a T-34-85.”

His face lit up with a smile—that special smile that appears when one finds a kindred spirit in an unexpected place.

“A Jagdpanther—a ‘tank hunter’,” he replied with pride. “Just bought it. You’re a physicist, aren’t you? I saw your bag from the conference.”

Jagdpanther. The name echoed faintly in her memory, like the sound of a distant explosion. It had been her first serious vehicle in the game. She had bought it a year earlier, in 2012, in Sarov. During that internship at the Russian nuclear center, about which her official file contained only three lines. Long, lonely evenings in the closed city, snow outside the dormitory window, and virtual battles as the only escape from the oppressive silence and the constant feeling of being watched. It was there, in the heart of a foreign nuclear program, that she, an Iranian physicist, had chosen the German tank destroyer for its precision and elegant engineering.

But after returning to Iran, everything changed. That period of her life had to be sealed off, stored in the furthest compartment of her memory. She had «forgotten» the password to her first account, the way one forgets an uncomfortable dream. She created a new one and switched to the Soviet T-34-85. It seemed more… appropriate. Safer. And so, German precision was replaced by Soviet reliability. But she didn’t mention this to Mr. Fakhravadi. She just smiled back at him, as if the name Jagdpanther was just one of many in the game’s endless catalog.

They talked for almost the entire flight. About tank battles and shell ballistics, about the physics of armor penetration and optimal angles of attack. He said he worked in a trade mission. Import-export. Textiles. He had a slight accent—not quite Iranian, as if he had lived abroad for a long time.

“The game is a perfect model,” he said somewhere over Istanbul. “Limited resources, the need for strategic thinking, understanding the enemy’s weak spots. Just like in life.”

He introduced himself. Mr. Fakhravadi.

But that wasn’t what she remembered most. It was how he was met at the airport.

He wasn’t just met. He was met by a man holding a sign that read “Diplomatic Service.” They walked past the long line for passport control, past customs, and disappeared through the doors of the VIP lounge. No inspection. No questions.

And now, ten years later, this man with whom she had discussed virtual tank battles was standing in the rain, watching the protest dispersal. Watching her.

“Zahra-jan, you aren’t listening!” Maryam’s voice brought her back to the present. “I’m asking if you’d like to visit that shop too.”
“What? No, thank you. I have everything I need.”

But now she lacked the most important thing—an understanding of why a man who played with tanks at thirty thousand feet had been in the right place at the right time. And why he had been looking specifically at her.

A roar erupted from the living room—someone had scored a goal. The men shouted, argued. The world was divided into those who cheered and those who cursed the referee.

And Zahra sat between two worlds—between the lace of contraband lingerie and virtual tank battles—feeling invisible threads begin to tighten around her, forming a pattern she could not yet decipher.

The tea in her glass had grown cold. The cardamom had settled at the bottom, like heavy isotopes in a centrifuge.

“Limited resources, the need for strategic thinking, understanding the enemy’s weak spots,” she recalled his words. Now she understood: he hadn’t been talking about the game.

He (ה): The Tank Hunter