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Isfahan. Mem (מ)
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 Fakhravadi. 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.