Юрий Мельников – The Persian Notebook: Architects of Shadow (страница 1)

Юрий Мельников

The Persian Notebook: Architects of Shadow

Isfahan

Aleph: 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?