Isfahan. Kaph (כ)

Dance in the Looking-Glass

12 Azar 1401 (December 3, 2022)

Winter entered Isfahan unhurriedly, the way an illness enters a house: first, a light chill in the mornings, then a gray, colorless sky, and finally, a cold that pierced to the very bone. The trees on Chaharbagh Avenue stood bare, their black branches stabbing the low sky like lines from a forgotten, tragic poem. For Zahra, this slow death of nature was a mirror of her own state. She was living in a lull. In the emptiness that followed the stone cast into the abyss.

Twice a week, she lied. “I’ll be late, I have to finish a report.” “An equipment malfunction, I need to double-check the calibration.” Lying was becoming a habit, a second skin. She drove not home, but to the Jameh Mosque of Isfahan. Her pilgrimages were secret and had a single purpose. The library. The netbook, hidden behind tomes of Sufi poetry and magazines from the era of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was her oracle. A silent oracle.

There were no messages. Silence. Only on the forum, in the news section, did she see the reflection of her sin. A Reuters report: “Iran enriching uranium to 60% purity at underground Fordow site, IAEA sources say.” Her numbers, her conclusions, torn from context and turned into a weapon in someone else’s information war. They had heard her. They had used her. And they were silent. But she had no new data. She had given everything she knew and was now empty, like a spent fuel rod. She had become a function that had fulfilled its purpose and was now waiting to be either called upon again or erased.

The world at home was also frosting over with suspicion.

“You’ve been staying late a lot,” Amirkhan said one evening, not looking away from the television, but the question was thrown at her like a stone. The professional habit of a security officer—to notice changes in behavior. Two weeks of “staying late at work” had not gone unnoticed.
“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 (ל): The Theater of Fire