Mornings at the Ministry

It was the memory of Ms. Musavi’s arrogant eyebrows, rising up toward her chador like two sideways parentheses, that made Amir lift a hand to strike his twelve-year-old daughter for the first time.

Amir and his wife, Seema, had never hit their children, not even a light slap of the hand when chubby fingers reached for something dangerous. Amir himself had grown up with plenty of well-deserved smacks, a few twisted ears, and even a hard kick to the rear once when his father was trying to break up a sibling tussle. So he’d been surprised to discover, when he became a parent, that he simply couldn’t bring himself to inflict physical pain on the small beings in his care. And he was grateful that his wife felt the same, in part because the children were Seyed-e Tabatabaee, descendants of the Prophet through both parents. To hit them would be wrong, she said. It would be like injuring the Prophet himself—peace and blessings be upon him and his family.

Besides, Amir and Seema had been lucky to have good kids, who were quite responsive to gentler forms of discipline. Even the two boys, more rambunctious than Fatimeh by far, were easily extricated from inevitable conflicts without any need for violence. If they fought over a toy, it was simply taken away. If they hit each other, they were separated until they cried to play together again.

When the boys were ten and eleven, Mohammad came home one day with a swollen cheek from a classmate who’d heard the boys had never been beaten by their father. Over dinner, Mohammad described how the boy had said that they needed to know what a good licking felt like. Morteza, younger than Mohammad by only fourteen months, leaned his head onto Amir’s shoulder and said, “I’m glad we don’t have hitting at our house,” while dear little Fatimeh—then a precocious five-year-old—stood on her chair, chanting “No hitting! No hitting!” and waving her hands like an orchestra conductor until everyone sang along.

And yet, hitting his beloved only daughter was exactly what Amir now found himself compelled to do. Fatimeh would one day be a Ms. Musavi, in name as well as prospects, and Amir was determined to save her from the other Ms. Musavi’s fate.

Ms. Musavi and Amir shared the same last name, although they weren’t related. They’d met when they overlapped at the University of Melbourne during Amir’s last year. At the time, Amir and Seema had been so overwhelmed with school and their baby boys that they hadn’t been as welcoming as they’d have liked to the new Iranian student whose headscarf indicated that she shared their loyalty to religion and culture, even outside the country. They’d never even gotten around to having her over for a meal before they returned to Tehran, earlier than planned, so Seema could have the help and support of her family as Amir finished his dissertation from afar.

Five years later, Amir had been surprised to see Ms. Musavi introduced at the weekly staff meeting of the Ministry of Reconstruction Jihad’s Rural Research Center. The surprise wasn’t just at the unexpected—but welcome—crossing of paths with an old acquaintance; no one had bothered to tell him that his division would be expanding. It was great news, but he’d have appreciated a heads up to prepare the team, particularly as Khanoom Doktor Azadeh Musavi was joining as a Research Specialist, Level III. New PhDs usually started no higher than a Level II. When Amir himself had joined the RRC, it had only been as a Research Specialist, Level I. He’d worked hard to prove himself before moving up the two additional levels and becoming the Division Lead for the Level IIIs. 

Of course, unlike Ms. Musavi, Amir hadn’t come on board as a full PhD. When he and Seema had returned to Tehran, he’d thought it would take six months, at most, to finish his dissertation. But his professor had ambushed him with additional research demands after Amir had submitted what he thought was the final draft. Between work and family, it took another two years to finally become a doktor.

Amir went out of his way to help Ms. Musavi settle in. He introduced her to her new colleagues, he showed her around the library, and he made sure she got one of the new roller chairs with levers to adjust seat height, armrests, and even the tilt of the cushions. Amir had suffered for years in a Soviet-style steel chair with the stuffing leaking out of its mustard-colored nylon backing before the new ones were made available to those with the most seniority. But Ms. Musavi, as the only woman in their division, deserved some additional comforts.

“I don’t know how she does it,” Seema said when Amir told her about Ms. Musavi that night, as they were getting into bed. “Wearing a heavy chador all day long around those men! If I was going to work outside the house, I’d get a job at a women’s spa or girls’ school, where I could be comfortable.”

Amir yawned as he leaned against his pillows. “A woman’s spa probably doesn’t need a specialist in rural economics.”

“Is it confusing having two Dr. Musavis at the office?” Seema asked, brushing her long hair out as she always did before bed.

Amir chuckled. “Not really. I’m Dr. Musavi and she’s Khanoom Doktor Musavi.”

“That makes it sound like she’s your wife,” Seema sniffed, setting the hairbrush down on the vanity table.

Seema was right. “Khanoom Doktor” could mean “wife of the doctor,” and Seema herself was often called Khanoom Doktor Musavi. But it could also mean “lady doctor,” signifying a woman who had attained the rank of a doctor. In the context of the ministry, it was a useful way of differentiating between Amir and his new colleague.

“And how did she end up a Level III, anyway?” Seema asked as she took off her house robe and clambered into bed beside Amir. “Does she know someone?”

“See, now you’re just being sexist, assuming a woman can’t get ahead on her own,” Amir chided as he pulled his wife near, enjoying the feel of her silky nightgown over her swelling belly and wondering if baby number three would be the girl they were hoping for, the girl they would name Fatimeh after the beloved Prophet’s daughter. “Maybe she’s just exceptionally smart and talented.”

“Oooh, you seem to admire Ms. Musavi a great deal,” Seema said, beating on his chest lightly with one fist.

“Not nearly as much as I admire you,” Amir growled as he nuzzled his wife’s soft neck.

The truth was that he did admire Ms. Musavi, though not in the way his wife suggested.

During Amir’s years abroad, a few of his Western colleagues had been bold enough to ask pointed questions about Seema’s hijab, implying that veiling diminished women and cemented a second-class status. Amir and Seema would disagree, vigorously, but Amir wasn’t sure they were ever able to convince Westerners that the chador actually elevated and empowered women by protecting their delicate and yielding parts behind an impenetrable, iron curtain. 

On an intelligent woman, like Ms. Musavi, a chador made her even more intimidating and powerful as she interacted with the unveiled and vulnerable men that were her colleagues. It also—contrary to his wife’s teasing—made it impossible for Amir to have any sort of sexual feeling toward her. It was exactly as God intended when he made veiling compulsory as a gift, not a burden, to women.

No, Amir’s admiration for the young woman was entirely professional. Five years was a blistering pace for her to have completed her PhD, even if her adviser had a reputation for leniency. And the hours the woman worked were impressive. Amir had always been the first one in the office, so he could leave early every day to get home to Seema and the kids. But Ms. Musavi arrived as early or earlier than him and still, Amir heard from the janitor, didn’t leave until the building was locked up for the night. 

In meetings, Ms. Musavi was concise and to the point. She never added unnecessary chatter like some of their colleagues did when, say, chiming in with unoriginal arguments in favor of a village electrification project that nobody opposed. When Ms. Musavi spoke, it was because she had some fresh insight or information to offer that might move the group in an entirely different direction, such as asking whether the villagers themselves ranked electricity among their top needs or if they understood how the introduction of television and other electronics might impact their children and families. When Ms. Musavi spoke, everyone listened. And while some of that might have been due to the natural respect accorded the sole female in the room, the bulk of it was because of an impressive combination of charisma and intelligence that Amir, as his wife noted, greatly admired. 

When Charles Roberts, a British field researcher who had popularized the concept of Participatory Rural Appraisal, traveled to Iran to conduct a workshop on his techniques, Amir appointed Ms. Musavi to serve as the visitor’s guide and primary counterpart. He knew Ms. Musavi would challenge Dr. Roberts’s assumptions and stereotypes about Iranian women and what they could achieve. Plus, Ms. Musavi’s English was impeccable. She’d somehow conquered the weirdly soft Western rs, with their flat edges, and even managed to keep her pronouns straight—a task that was especially challenging for Iranians whose language had only one pronoun for all genders. Ms. Musavi impressed and charmed the foreigner so much that he offered the team a scholarship for three Ministry colleagues to travel to his institute in Lexington for a workshop on PRA’s application in semi-rural settings.

Her only misstep, Amir thought, was an inability or unwillingness to make friends at the Ministry. Of course, as a woman, she did have some additional challenges. She wasn’t able, for example, to join the men in certain spaces, like the lunchroom where Amir and the other Level IIIs and IIs came together every day over herbed rices and stews to talk through work challenges or simply relax. But even in their shared office space, where conversation and banter would be allowed—expected, even—she was all business, all the time. She never asked anyone about their children or holidays. She never joined in when everyone else pushed their chairs away from their desks to take a break over tea and swap stories about experiences out in the field. If she passed a colleague in the hallway, she might nod or say hello but would never smile. A few of Amir’s colleagues started to call her The Robot behind her back.

On an early morning in September, just a few months after Ms. Musavi had started at the Ministry, Amir decided to say something—in the spirit of an older brother or mentor guiding a younger colleague.

“Khanoom Doktor,” he called to her, and she swiveled in her chair immediately. She looked at him with intense focus, as if certain he must have something important to say, something worthy of interrupting the precious morning hours in which the absence of their colleagues’ chatter and clatter gave them quiet time to concentrate. Amir momentarily lost his nerve.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat as he chose his words. “If I can be so bold, I wanted to offer a small word of advice to you, my dear sister. You might try getting to know your colleagues better and becoming—you know—friends with everyone.”

“Friends?” Ms. Musavi repeated, her lips curling. “You think I should become friends with all the men in this office?”

Amir felt the blood rush to his face. Why did the idea suddenly sound so dumb? “Not friends, exactly,” Amir backpedaled. “Just have friendly relationships. So that—you know—when the inevitable work conflicts arise and people disagree—well, that way people won’t take things personally, you see?”

As Ms. Musavi looked at him steadily, Amir noticed the perfect shape of her eyebrows and how symmetrically they spread right and left, almost like the wings of a bird without a body. His wife was vigilant about keeping her own eyebrows in a similar shape, wielding her tweezers and razor against errant hairs as they appeared. Did Ms. Musavi do the same? Amir dropped his gaze and looked at the woman’s feet.

“What do you think would be said about me if I tried to be friendly with all you men?” Ms. Musavi asked. She made it sound as if Amir was encouraging her to flirt with or even, astaghfirullah, God forbid, sleep with her colleagues. Amir’s scalp burned.

“That’s not what I meant,” Amir sputtered. “It’s just, well, people will be more receptive to your ideas if you … Look at Ms. Khoini in the library. She always has a kind word and a smile for everyone. And in return, no one takes offense if she tells us that we can’t take items out of the library or that our research plan doesn’t make sense. We would do anything she asked. She’s like our …”

Amir stopped and looked at Ms. Musavi. She raised an eyebrow at him. It was as if the bird across her brow was dipping one wing, circling for an attack.

He’d been about to say that Ms. Khoini, who could always be relied upon to help researchers dig out village maps or lists of grain disbursements or other necessary items from library archives, was like their mother. But therein, perhaps, lay the reason for her ability to be so comfortable and, yes, friendly. She was older than most of the researchers by at least a decade, maybe two. And she was married. Ms. Musavi was neither.

“You do whatever you want,” Amir said, shrugging as if he couldn’t care less. “I was just trying to …”

“Dr. Musavi?” Amir was cut off by the mail boy, who stuck his head in their room.

“Which one?” Ms. Musavi asked. The boy squinted at the white envelope. “Dr. Amir Musavi,” he read, and Amir reached forward to take the letter. It was from Bangladesh, perhaps an answer to his application to travel to the Grameen Bank for a training on microcredit.

“Anyway,” Amir said to continue the conversation. But as he turned toward her, he saw that Ms. Musavi had already swiveled away from him, her head bent over her unadorned table.

It was simply unnecessary, Amir thought in the days that followed, for Ms. Musavi to be so hostile, so critical, when he was only trying to help. Yes, perhaps he didn’t quite understand her situation, and he could see that it might have been presumptuous of him to think he had any worthwhile advice to offer a young woman trying to make her way in a male-dominated field. But his intentions were good. Didn’t that count for something? And by being so dismissive, so scornful, Ms. Musavi was simply alienating someone who was on her side. 

In the months that followed, Amir was less inclined to choose a charitable interpretation for behaviors he’d previously noticed and forgiven. Like the way she charged through doorways as if she were the Queen, never pausing to offer those she walked with the opportunity to go first. Of course, her male colleagues would have uniformly insisted she precede them, so Amir had initially appreciated her inclination to avoid wasting time on the Iranian custom. But really, oughtn’t she at least pause a bit or nod to acknowledge the fact that she was given the honor of going first? And for colleagues that were more than twice her age, shouldn’t she at least make a pretense of insisting that they go ahead?

And then there was the matter of how she treated students. PhD candidates from the University of Tehran often worked as research assistants, some of them even recruiting Ministry employees to their dissertation committees. Most of Amir’s colleagues went out of their way to be encouraging and kind to these young people who brought fresh eyes and opinions to their work for little compensation. But not Ms. Musavi. She worked every one of her students up to the maximum limit of twenty hours a week. There were even rumors, which Amir had initially been inclined to dismiss, that some of them ran personal errands for her like shopping for food items or picking up dry cleaning in between pulling articles and drafting arguments.

Ironically, Ms. Musavi seemed to be hardest on her female students. One day, Amir overheard her berating a young woman in the library. “Are you even trying?” Ms. Musavi spat, her voice so loud that everyone turned to stare. “Do you think the Journal of Applied Economics will accept something that sounds like a high schooler wrote it?” Then Ms. Musavi threw the manuscript to the ground and stalked out of the library, leaving the humiliated young woman to pick her papers off the ground as she wept into her chador.

But the thing that bothered Amir the most—as he observed Ms. Musavi closely in the weeks and months following their awkward, early morning conversation—was the obsequiousness with which she interacted with senior leaders in the Ministry. Ms. Musavi, who was known to eviscerate colleagues and pick apart arguments with a flick of her chador, suddenly became all smiles and big eyes whenever the Vice Minister or Assistant Vice Minister stopped by. The most pedestrian, and even incorrect, points these men would make were met with words of praise one never otherwise heard from the woman. “Wow, you’re absolutely right,” Ms. Musavi would gush. “How did you come up with that idea?” 

It was sickening. Worse, it was entirely unethical. Research Specialists were hired for their brains, and their responsibility was to share an honest assessment, politely, of the ideas presented before them. To do otherwise for the purpose of currying favor was to sacrifice the common good for personal advancement.

So it wasn’t just jealousy that made him do what he did on that terrible Saturday morning. Amir had already decided that he disliked Ms. Musavi for her pride, her selfishness, her boundless ambition, long before she was promoted over him to Deputy Division Manager.

But the jealousy wasn’t irrelevant. When Ms. Musavi’s new role was announced at their weekly staff meeting, envy crashed down on Amir with a force as immobilizing as the powerful ocean waves that hit him the first time his friends had taken him surfing in a small town outside of Melbourne. Both experiences were all the more overwhelming for being entirely unfamiliar.

Amir had never been a jealous person. Life had come easily, and he’d had so much to be grateful for. He’d been at the top of his class in every grade, winning an all-expenses paid slot at the University of Tehran and then a scholarship to fund his studies abroad. Given his academic success, he’d been in school all throughout the war and, therefore, was never in danger of being conscripted or expected to join the war effort. He’d married a distant cousin, who he’d admired from afar, and they’d turned out to be incredibly compatible in a joyful marriage. And he had three children—the boys plus their long-desired little sister—who he adored. What was there to be jealous of?

Amir hardly recognized himself in the months following Ms. Musavi’s promotion. It was the injustice of it all that inspired a barely suppressed rage and an obsession with plotting a million small and large ways in which he would get revenge. The fact was that he was the better person for the job. His colleagues knew and liked him, and he already inspired their trust in his leadership, even without the additional title. He was the one who was able to bring the team to consensus on things like which villages would get their roads re-paved in the spring. He listened, asked questions, helped opponents find the overlaps in their positions where they could agree, and then nudged the group to a final decision, which, if not unanimous, was at least understood by all who participated and made them feel included in the process. Skills like these were decidedly not in Ms. Musavi’s repertoire.

It was true that Ms. Musavi had an impressive number of publications in prestigious international journals—including the most recent one she’d worked on with the female student she’d berated in the library. But this was only because, as a young, unmarried woman, living with her parents, Ms. Musavi had so few real responsibilities. Once she married and had children, she’d slow down like the rest of them, probably even more so given the additional burdens of childcare for women.

What Amir suspected, and what made him so angry, was that her false praise for the senior leaders at the Ministry had worked. Her affirmation of their opinions made them feel smarter, so they liked having her around. Or perhaps they were so convinced of their own ideas, so used to going unchallenged, that they imagined anyone who disagreed with them must be intellectually inferior.

Amir’s secret jealousy made him feel like a spy or assassin who was obsessed with the mission of slipping a dagger into his enemy’s side, even as he pretended to the world to be the same happy family man and respected Ministry employee he’d always been. Even at home, cooing at his new daughter—whose long-awaited arrival delighted the whole family—Amir’s thoughts would inevitably turn to his latest interactions with Ms. Musavi and whether he’d succeeded in making her look or feel just a little bit smaller.

The trick of it was in the subtlety of inflicting a wound without being noticed. Like waiting a few extra beats before acknowledging Ms. Musavi’s entry into the conference room or quickly turning his attention to someone, anyone, who interrupted her. As colleagues followed Amir’s lead, these little slights added up to a collective cold shoulder against the woman. One day, frustrated that she wasn’t getting the room’s attention, Ms. Musavi was reduced to pounding on the table with her fist, shouting like an impetuous child, “Listen to me! This is important.” That was a proud moment.

Another scene that Amir savored for weeks was when he caught an actual error in a paper Ms. Musavi was presenting to the Level III researchers. He was so excited, he actually hugged himself, and then, affecting a confused tone asked, “Sorry, I don’t quite understand. How did you account for the variability of seasonal rains?” The best part was how irritated she got, as if she couldn’t believe he was asking something so stupid. And then, as he continued pretending that he was just confused, there was a beautiful, satisfying moment when she suddenly started, exactly as if someone had slammed the door behind her. “Forgive me for being such a dunce,” Amir continued, twisting the knife with each word. “I’m surely missing something obvious, but could you explain one more time how you can assume even rainfall throughout the year?” Ms. Musavi, her flaming cheeks framed by her chador, stammered that she didn’t want to waste any more of the group’s time and that he should see her separately if he’d like to continue the discussion. The entire room understood what was happening, and it was all Amir could do to keep from revealing his hand with one last sarcastic comment or question about how grateful he’d be if Ms. Musavi could simply explain the brilliance of her thinking one last time.

The morning the envelope appeared, Amir had spent the cab ride to work thinking about how to use an upcoming Division presentation to the Assistant Vice Minister to good effect. It was one thing to cut Ms. Musavi down to size within their own division. It would be another thing entirely to do so in front of the big bosses. 

The envelope was on Amir’s desk when he arrived. It was one of those gold envelopes, about the size of a folded sheet of paper, with a flap that had a small hole for a metal clasp. Amir could tell immediately that the letter was from abroad, and he was pleased to see the return address from his alma mater. He sometimes got nostalgic about his years in Australia, where he and Seema had begun their married life, falling even more deeply in love and starting their little family. It was nice to know that someone at the University was thinking of him, even if it was just a form letter asking alumni for money.

But as soon as he picked up the envelope, Amir could tell it was too heavy to be a form letter. He tugged at the flap and ripped through the top seam, dumping the contents out on his desk—a pile of pictures plus a short, handwritten note on University of Melbourne stationery.

Surprise! I found these pictures of our last barbie. Fun times! Hope you’re doing well back home. If I can ever finish this bloody dissertation, I’m going to visit. -K

Amir had no idea who K was. He picked up the first picture. It was a group shot of two women and two men huddled together beside a swimming pool. One of the men held long tongs that might be used to flip a steak. 

Amir examined the men closely. He didn’t recognize either of them. One had glossy skin, flat hair, and big eyes in a shade of brown or black that marked him as Indian or Bangladeshi. The other wore big wrap-around sunglasses, so you could barely see the paper-white skin and shaggy blond strands of hair poking out from under a protective sun cap that someone with his complexion needed but that too few Australians actually used. Maybe he was a visiting Englishman or Norwegian.

Amir turned his attention to the women. One of them looked Chinese or Taiwanese, with shoulder-length hair and glasses. Amir had been surprised by how many Chinese there were in Australia—not just in a PhD program that attracted internationals, but folks who were born and raised there and spoke flawless English with thick Aussie accents. 

The last woman had white skin with dark hair and eyes in an attractive combination that vaguely reminded Amir of Seema. But he didn’t know her or any of these people. Which one was K? Which one had sent the letter?

Amir flipped through the rest of the photos. There were more people he didn’t recognize, standing or sitting or posing for pictures at a typical Australian barbecue. The two women showed up in almost all the pictures, as if they were documenting their visit at a tourist attraction. He flipped back to the first picture, the one with the clearest view of the women’s faces.

Recognition hit Amir like a slap across the face, like the slap that—more than a decade later—he was preparing to deliver to his own daughter’s cheek, both of which caused his heart to race in confusion at the shocking position he had found himself in. Ms. Musavi unveiled, his daughter afraid of him—it was all wrong in some deep and fundamental way.

It was the eyebrows that confirmed it. Amir had seen those eyebrows swoop and lift and cluster with arrogance and irritation. He’d been obsessed for weeks and months with what he could do to flatten them in defeat. But he’d never imagined how they might look when not shrouded by the soft folds of a scarf and chador. He’d never guessed that those eyebrows could look so rounded and relaxed as they were tugged apart by smiles and laughter he’d never seen, or even imagined, on Ms. Musavi’s face.

As he looked more closely at the photographs, he was surprised that it had taken him so long to recognize his nemesis. Despite the unfamiliar expression and missing chador, Ms. Musavi still exuded the same air of a serious and ambitious young woman. Her posture was strong, with an upward lift of her chin that communicated confidence and made it seem as if she was looking down her nose at the camera, even though she was the shortest person in the group. In one of the unposed pictures, she held her finger and thumb together in front of her body, clearly making a point that, Amir knew from experience, was likely brilliant. She wore no makeup and her clothes—a striped long-sleeved t-shirt and long pants—were quite conservative compared with the bikinis and swim shorts the other party attendees wore. Still …

Footsteps in the hallway reminded Amir where he was. In the Ministry of Reconstruction Jihad of the Islamic Republic of Iran, pictures like these were tantamount to pornography. He scrambled to shove them back into the torn envelope before anyone laid eyes on them, but the effort was unnecessary, as the footsteps receded down the hallway. Perhaps it was Ms. Musavi herself, headed to the private office she’d moved into when she was promoted.

Amir turned the envelope over and noticed that the “Dr.” portion of the “Dr. Musavi” in the address was underlined twice, as if someone—K?—was making a point of highlighting or celebrating the fact that the recipient was, in fact, a doctor. Clearly the letter had been meant for Ms. Musavi and was dumped on his desk by mistake.

It dawned on Amir that there might be severe consequences for Ms. Musavi if the photos were to get out.

Not that everyone working for the Ministry, or other parts of the government, was as religious as they appeared. On road trips to the villages, when Amir and his colleagues had time to bond and reveal more about themselves, he’d been surprised to learn that some of the men he worked with never woke up for early morning fajr prayers. And when it came to ladies’ hijab, well, everyone relaxed a bit while abroad. In Australia, even Seema—Amir’s devoutly observant wife—traded in her heavy chador for a light, tunic-like manteau paired with cotton scarves that were tied, not pinned, under her chin.

But Ms. Musavi didn’t even have a hat or bandanna on her head in a symbolic nod to Islamic coverings. And in some of the group pictures, she stood right up against male colleagues, everyone’s arms draped around one another. Amir knew from experience that, in the Australian context, such proximity didn’t mean anything sexual. But in Iran, a country where men and women didn’t even shake hands, Ms. Musavi’s behavior would be seen as unacceptable, unforgivable.

Really, how could she have been so stupid? Had no one taught her the consequences of letting down her guard? It would have been one thing if she’d wanted to emigrate and leave Iran altogether, but this was an ambitious woman who clearly wanted to succeed inside Iran. Her mother, her father, her brother, someone should have made sure she would be careful enough to keep some sort of covering or, at least make sure she was never photographed without it.

It dawned on Amir that he could get Ms. Musavi in trouble. He could go straight to the Deputy Vice Minister’s office and hand over the envelope. Or he could just leave the pictures out casually, anonymously, in the break room, where their colleagues would eventually discover them, and the rumors would fly. How long would it take—hours? days?—before she was told to pack her bags and leave the building? How long would it be before Amir inherited her office and no longer had to tolerate the maddening sound of his colleagues chewing and belching and loud-mouthed breathing at all hours of the day in their shared space?

Amir tried to savor the image of the proud woman’s humiliation. He wondered how her eyebrows would react. But he couldn’t muster much enthusiasm. 

Was he really going to hand over these private pictures so they could be examined and passed around and pawed over by any number of men? Did Ms. Musavi, no matter how arrogant and rude, deserve that? She’d had a severe lapse in judgment in Australia, yes, but Amir was sure the woman had always been veiled in Iran. She wouldn’t want her male colleagues to see her in such a state of undress, revealing everything that was hidden under her chador.

Amir sighed. He pushed his chair back from his desk and stood. Then he walked out into the hallway and toward Ms. Musavi’s office.

“Yes?” she said when he knocked. Amir turned the handle and pushed open the heavy door. Ms. Musavi had her back to him, hunched over her computer. Amir waited and she eventually swiveled her chair toward him, her body first and then her head, and finally her eyes pulled reluctantly from her computer.

“Another mix-up,” he said as he placed the envelope on a side table.

“You interrupted me for this?” she asked, clearly irritated.

“Well, I think you’ll see that—”

“Where’s the report on the Grameen Bank?” Ms. Musavi demanded. “It was supposed to be finished yesterday.”

“Yes, well, it’s not quite ready, but I should be able to have it to you by this aftern—”

“Unacceptable!” Ms. Musavi snapped. “Do you think I create deadlines for fun? Entire programs of research are based on these initial stages, and when you’re late, it throws the whole schedule off.”

Was she serious? An entire schedule of research thrown off because a report was one day late?

 “If I can’t depend on you to deliver,” Ms. Musavi continued, “perhaps it doesn’t make sense to keep you on the PRA account with Dr. Roberts. I worked hard to make sure the Ministry would be taken seriously by an internationally renowned program. I’m not going to let you ruin that.”

There was something about the set of her jaw and the tilt of her eyebrows, with one slightly higher than the other, that let Amir know she wasn’t really worried about his report or Dr. Roberts. She was simply enjoying the power she had to scold him as he stood before her like a servant, unable to do anything but submit.

“You …” he breathed.

Ms. Musavi smiled and raised her eyebrows as if she was quite satisfied to see that she’d rattled him.

Amir grabbed the envelope and pulled out the photos.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” he sneered as he threw all the pictures on the desk. All of them, except one, which he held up before her.

It was a gorgeous thing to watch Ms. Musavi’s self-satisfied smile collapse on itself as she examined the picture in his hand, the pictures on the desk. Her entire face fell as if the interior infrastructure behind her forehead and cheeks had suddenly gone slack. Her jaw dropped and then closed, and her lips pressed together, tight as a razor blade. Her eyes flitted around the room, giving her the appearance of a trapped animal looking for escape, before coming to land on the photo still in Amir’s hand.

“Please …” she whispered, as she reached for it.

The sweetness of the moment was almost overwhelming, as if Amir’s entire body was made of taste buds activated by a flood of sugar. Who was the powerful one now?

Amir lifted the photo triumphantly. It was the one in which Ms. Musavi, the Chinese woman, and the two men were bunched together. Ms. Musavi let out a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a whimper. She leaned forward, her arm outstretched, her fingers grasping. Amir backed away. Then he slipped the photo into his pocket and left the room, carrying with him the satisfying scene of his utterly vanquished foe.

A decade later, this was the scene that flashed before Amir’s eyes as he raised his hand to his daughter—beautiful Fatimeh, so bold, so bright, so likely to one day inspire as much jealousy as Ms. Musavi.

“No, azizam. Not like that,” Seema said softly.

Didn’t she understand? It was his duty to hit their daughter, slap her hard enough to leave a mark, make sure she remembered this moment and never dared cross certain boundaries again. If word got out, if someone at the school had seen her talking to that boy or discovered the note he’d written, her reputation would be sullied, perhaps beyond repair. She might even be expelled. As she got older, the consequences for this sort of thing would only grow more fearsome. She might be taken to prison, flogged, have acid thrown in her face, her feet dipped into a vat of cockroaches. Amir had heard horrible things.

Amir ignored his wife and kept his focus on Fatimeh.

“How dare you?” he roared, reaching even higher so there was more space to cover, more opportunity to gain speed and maximize the pain he might inflict when his hand finally fell.

Fatimeh cowered before him, gaping at him from behind arms thrown up in self-defense. In his daughter’s eyes, Amir could see confusion as she grappled with the question of who her father was and what he was capable of doing.

Amir’s resolve faltered. Could she detect the fabricated nature of his anger? Could she see that it was all an act, that he didn’t blame her at all, that he still wasn’t sure he could actually bring his hand down to crash into the bones of her face? And for what? A scrawled note from a schoolboy? Amir had had his own childhood crushes. There was nothing more natural.

Now! Amir told himself. Do it now!

But he hesitated too long. Seema stepped between him and their daughter and gently pushed him back until Fatimeh was entirely out of reach.

“Fatimeh, go to your room until your father settles down,” Seema instructed. Her voice was calm and assured. She knew him too well, knew that he didn’t have it in him.

Panic took hold of Amir like a many-taloned creature sinking its claws into his chest as he remembered moving into Ms. Musavi’s abandoned office. Amir screwed his eyes shut to block out the vision of his beautiful wife and daughter as he reached for the emotions he needed and found the anger and disgust that would serve him. Amir’s pulse rose, along with a wave of repulsion until, eyes still closed, he spat, “I didn’t raise my daughter to be a jendeh whore.”

Seema gasped and Amir opened his eyes to see the effect of his pronouncement. Jendeh was a horrible word, an unspeakable word that conveyed the most dirty, depraved, and ugly aspects of human behavior. It was a shameful word that had never crossed Amir’s lips, even when he had been a teenager and friends used it to show their daring. It was a word that had nothing to do with his radiant daughter, who was as pure and bright as the fields of poppies that greeted them every Nowruz on the way to Hamedan.

Fatimeh emitted a small cry. She hugged her arms across her belly and doubled over as if Amir had actually punched her, bruising the soft tissue under her rib cage. She backed into the corner and slid to the floor, her face crumpled into silent sobs.

Amir felt beads of sweat on his forehead. His legs were weak as if he’d climbed the steep trails of Jamshidieh.

“How dare you?” Seema exploded. “She’s your daughter. Your own flesh and blood!”

Looking at Fatimeh, crying as if her heart was breaking, Amir couldn’t answer. The long muscles of his digestive system shifted, and he felt sick, like he might throw up or have a bowel movement. How much damage had he inflicted? Had he gone too far, saying words that might cause her to doubt her worth? All he wanted was to protect her.

If Ms. Musavi’s father had done the same, she’d be running the Ministry by now, Amir was sure of it. Instead, she’d resigned the very morning Amir had given her the pictures. Rumor was, she’d told the Vice Minister she was engaged, and her fiancé didn’t want her working.

When he’d heard the news, Amir had run to Ms. Musavi’s office, hoping to catch her and convince her to stay. He hadn’t shown the photo to anyone and would be happy to return it. He’d just been momentarily angry—he’d never really intended to use it against her.

But Khanoom Doktor Azadeh Musavi had already left the building. She would never return again.