The Woman from Karaj

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1

The summer, which had been hot even for Karaj, located forty kilometers from Tehran, was finally approaching its logical end. The temperature on the streets no longer rose to the exhausting forty-plus degrees, and in the evenings a wind appeared more and more often, one that at least for a short while drove away the heat accumulated during the day. The asphalt no longer seemed like a heated slab, but the air was still dry, filled with dust and the smells of small shops selling fruit, flatbreads, and spices.

Nadia slowly walked down the narrow street, carrying a heavy grocery bag in each hand. A few tomatoes, rice, a package of yogurt, tea, bread, cheap pasta, and some chicken: a week’s supply that had to be carefully planned.

There were less than a hundred meters left to her home.

"Salam, Khanom Nadia."

She recognized the voice because over the past few months it had become far too familiar to her. Mahmoud Hosseini.

Nadia was about to pretend she had not heard him, but the man, around fifty years old with a short beard and noticeable gray at his temples, was already catching up to her, smiling warmly as if he had met an old acquaintance.

"Salam, Agha Mahmoud," she quietly replied in Arabic, trying to make her voice sound calm and polite.

The language, although not her native one, had become almost familiar after a year of living here. At least enough for her to buy groceries without hesitation, communicate with neighbors, and work as a translator. Once, the very thought that she would be able to freely talk with her neighbors had seemed ridiculous, but now Nadia sometimes even caught herself mentally choosing the necessary word in Arabic first, and only afterward remembering the English equivalent. And in those moments she always felt embarrassed. But much worse were simply conversations with people.

"You went to the market alone again, Khanom Nadia?" Mahmoud asked reproachfully, walking beside her. "That is not right."

"Everything is fine, Agha Mahmoud. It is very close to my home."

She tightened her grip on the bag handles a little, although her fingers were already starting to go numb. She just wanted to walk those last few dozen meters, climb to the third floor, close the apartment door, and at least for a couple of hours stop playing the role this world considered the only possible one.

Mahmoud shook his head.

"No. No, no, no. It is not fine, Nadia. Not fine at all." Mahmoud spread his hands as if explaining something obvious. "A good woman should not walk alone. Especially with such..." His gaze slid over her breasts, which were noticeably prominent even under the loose dark clothing (even modest clothes could not completely hide an F-cup size, and her breasts, despite being tightly held by a restrictive bra, still betrayed her with their movement with every step), after which he let out a heavy sigh. "...heavy groceries. You are a very beautiful woman. You cannot be alone."

A very beautiful woman...

Nadia slightly blushed. Again. But this time not nearly as much as during the first six months.

"Thank you, Agha Mahmoud," she quietly said, turning away. "But I am fine."

2

There were only fifty meters left to the house. She slightly relaxed her fingers to stretch her numb hands when suddenly Mahmoud sharply took both bags from her, doing it with such natural confidence as if he had never even considered the possibility that she should ask for permission.

"Agha Mahmoud, you don't need to..." Nadia instinctively reached after him, but the man was already walking ahead.

"A woman should not strain herself," Mahmoud said without turning around. "When you become my wife, you will not have to carry such heavy things at all. You will live like in paradise. I promise you that."

Nadia was speechless for several seconds.

Every time he said it so calmly, as if the matter had already been decided, as if there was only one small misunderstanding, her stubbornness, which would inevitably disappear with time.

"Agha Mahmoud..." she quietly said, trying to keep her usual politeness in her voice. "I already told you. I am not going to get married."

"Nadia..." he corrected her with a kind smile, looking at her from the side as he opened the entrance door, "A woman sometimes does not know what is best for her. Especially when there is no man nearby who can make the decision for her."

As Nadia entered the building, she felt everything inside her unpleasantly tighten.

Marriage. Her? It was already too far beyond anything she could accept. Something surreal, like a dream that had gone on for far too long.

Sometimes Nadia felt that all she had to do was close her eyes, and she would find herself back in her college dorm, hearing the noise of neighbors on the floor, seeing an open textbook on Roman history lying on her desk. And then she would open her eyes and see the peeling walls of the stairwell, hear the footsteps of neighbors, and feel the wide straps of her tight bra painfully digging into her shoulders, holding her heavy breasts, taking their weight onto themselves and pressing against her fragile shoulders.

They went upstairs in silence.

On the third floor, Mahmoud stopped by her door and turned toward her, looking at her expectantly. The door was old, the paint on it was peeling, but Nadia had replaced the lock herself shortly after moving in, a small but important victory over the feeling of complete helplessness.

"You can put them down," Nadia said while taking out her keys and hinting to Mahmoud that she would carry the bags inside herself.

However, Mahmoud did not even think about letting go of the bags. He simply stood by the door with a kind but stubborn smile, as if her words were a cute childish habit.

"Open the door first, Khanom."

Nadia briefly exhaled. She did not want to argue right there in the stairwell. She inserted the key into the new cylinder lock, turned it, heard the familiar metallic click, and pushed the door open.

The apartment greeted her with its familiar silence.

A small hallway, an old wardrobe, a worn-out mat near the entrance, the smell of cheap laundry detergent and spices that had soaked into the walls over the long months. The only place where she could, even for a short while, stop feeling the eyes of those around her on herself.

But not now.

Mahmoud, without even asking permission, calmly stepped inside, carefully placed the bags near the small kitchen table, and only then turned toward her.

"That is better."

He said it with the satisfaction of a person who had fulfilled an obvious duty.

3

Nadia slowly closed the door.

"Thank you... but you didn't need to come inside."

"Why not?" he asked with genuine surprise. "I helped the most beautiful woman in Karaj."

Nadia immediately grimaced, looking away from his smiling face.

"That is not true," she said, trying to make her voice sound dry and final, however, the high soft tone that after this whole year still had not stopped irritating her because of how much it differed from her previous voice, turned the phrase into something closer to an embarrassed objection, and Mahmoud only smiled wider, as if he had expected exactly that reaction.

"You are just modest, Nadia," he said, taking a step closer and looking her up and down with his usual confidence. "It only makes you more beautiful."

Nadia tensed, immediately trying to cover her too noticeable breasts and instinctively crossed her arms over them, as if that could somehow hide the shape that was impossible to conceal.

"Agha Mahmoud, please..." Her high and soft voice trembled, for the first time during all this short period of time with Mahmoud. "I am tired. I need to be alone."

The man looked at her for a few more seconds, as if considering whether he should continue trying to convince her, but then simply nodded understandingly.

"You are a good woman, Nadia. A woman should not live alone. Think about my words. I am not rushing you. A month... two... however long it takes."

She said nothing.

"You are an Iranian citizen now," he continued calmly. "No longer America. There are different rules here."

Nadia felt a chill run down her spine.

He said it so casually, as if he was talking about buying a new carpet or repairing a roof.

"Thank you for helping with the bags, Agha Mahmoud," she said as gently as possible, trying to bring the conversation to an end. "But I still need to work. I have an order."

The man nodded understandingly.

"Of course. Americans work a lot. My wife does not work."

A light chuckle from Mahmoud interrupted Nadia's heavy sigh.

"Think about it," he repeated from the doorway, raising his index finger as if giving one final piece of wise advice. "Allah does not like it when a woman stays alone without a reason."

"Goodbye, Agha Mahmoud."

"Goodbye, Khanom Nadia."

He finally stepped out onto the staircase and closed the door behind him.

For several seconds Nadia stood motionless, listening. First, she heard his unhurried footsteps on the staircase, then they became quieter as he moved down one floor, and soon they completely disappeared among the familiar sounds of the old building.

Only then did she turn the key one more time and, as if the tension of the last ten minutes left her together with the metallic click, slowly exhaled.

"God..."

She leaned her back against the door, closed her eyes, and stood like that for a few moments.

Then she took a couple of steps deeper into the apartment, passing the bags and the old sofa, and stopped in the middle of the room.

The apartment was filled with its usual silence.

Nadia slowly raised her hands to her head and, despite already instinctively moving her elbow away, still brushed against the soft flesh, which immediately swayed beneath the thin fabric of her loose dress, making her frown in irritation.

"Damn it..."

She unfastened the pin almost without thinking. Then she carefully pulled the fabric back.

4

The thick black scarf slowly slipped from her head, revealing to the world of her small apartment her dark hair, tightly pulled into a bun at the back of her head, and at the same time exposing her neck with a thin, already long-healed scar that completely encircled it right at the base. A stranger would most likely assume that her life had once been saved after a terrible accident.

She carefully folded the scarf and placed it over the back of the sofa. She reached out with her hand to release her hair and let her head rest, but stopped.

Her gaze froze on the phone.

For several moments she simply stood there in silence, taking weak breaths and staring without looking away at the small black mobile phone, made by some Chinese company.

"To hell with it..." she said with a kind of despair, picked up the phone, and carefully sat down on the edge of the old sofa, automatically smoothing the fabric of her long house dress with her palm.

Only now, when the tension after the conversation with Mahmoud had slowly begun to fade, did she feel how exhausted she really was. Her shoulders ached under the weight of her breasts, which had been held all day by a tight bra, the familiar heaviness of the scarf was still felt on her neck even though it was already gone, and the reflection in the dark phone screen showed the familiar face again.

She stared at the screen for several seconds, then opened the contact list.

The number was saved under the letter "C". Her only connection to her past life and at the same time her only hope of getting everything back... Although she already understood that returning everything, in the full, one hundred percent meaning of the word, most likely would not be possible.

She stared at those two letters for a long time, already knowing the entire conversation in advance and understanding the pointlessness of this call, but still... still pressed the call button.

On the fourth ring, a familiar calm male voice finally came through the phone.

"Listening."

Nadia remained silent for several seconds.

"This is... Nadia Collins."

"I know," the man answered almost immediately. "Good evening, Nadia. Is something urgent?"

Once, he had addressed her differently. He said: "Adam, hold on." Then: "Adam... for now it is better to use the new name." Then gradually even that disappeared. During the last few months he had not once spoken her previous name, as if it existed only in old closed reports.

"Sorry for calling without warning," she said quietly.

"That's okay. What happened?"

Nadia immediately shifted her gaze to the door, then after hesitating, looked down at herself, immediately sinking back into her enormous curves, and after a second of awkwardness finally spoke.

"I... wanted to know... if there is any news."

A short pause followed on the other end.

"Nadia, we have already talked about this a million times," the male voice said, now carrying obvious notes of irritation and a noticeably sharper tone. "If there was any news, I would have called you myself."

She pressed the phone tighter against her ear.

"Adam..." she quietly corrected him and immediately shrank back, like a child who had misbehaved and already knew an adult was about to let out a heavy sigh.

A sigh really did come from the other end.

"We agreed, Nadia," the handler said more calmly, but his voice did not become any less irritated because of it. "No Adams over phone communication."

5

"I don't..." she began, but stopped after catching her reflection in the vertical mirror.

A woman in a dark house dress looked back at her, with a tense expression, her hair tied into a bun, and a thin scar around her neck. The phone was pressed against her ear by slender fingers, while her free hand lay helplessly on her knee.

For a moment, she did not even pay attention to the familiar alienness of her once male face, which looked foreign only to her and to those who knew her, and now, at that very moment, had completely disappeared.

"I just... want..." Nadia quietly finished, lowering her gaze to her hand and absentmindedly rubbing the fabric of the dress over her breasts.

A heavy sigh sounded from the phone again.

"Nadia, your case is unique. You are lucky that you were even recognized and provided with documents, housing, and financial support for living. You are the first person in history with something like this. We cannot simply take you and reveal you to the world, I have already explained that to you."

"I am not asking for that," Nadia immediately interrupted him, feeling the growing despair inside her, which somehow gave her strength. "Just send me home. I understand that no one will return my body to me anymore. I just want to go home. I will live as Nadia, but... but not here, Mr. Halls."

Silence filled the phone again.

This time it lasted so long that Nadia briefly thought the connection had been lost. She moved the phone away from her ear, looked at the screen, made sure the call was still active, and pressed the device back against her cheek.

"Mr. Halls?"

"I am here," he finally answered.

His voice had changed. The irritation disappeared, replaced by exhaustion that he usually hid behind calm, carefully chosen phrases.

"Why did you go silent?"

"Nadia..."

"Yes?"

"I am just an employee," Mr. Halls said quietly. "I am not the one who makes the decisions. And, if we are being completely honest... not even my supervisor does."

Nadia remained silent.

She sat there, slightly hunched over, absentmindedly rubbing the edge of the phone with her thumb. The room was quiet. Somewhere outside the window a motorcycle passed by, a door slammed in the stairwell, and then everything sank back into the familiar evening silence.

"But it has already been a year..." she finally said almost in a whisper. "A whole year."

There was no answer, but in that silence she could feel the obvious "I know, but I cannot tell you anything." The fact that Halls had not hung up and told her to leave him alone was already the highest form of support Nadia could receive.

"I understand..." she quietly said, although in reality she understood nothing except that this conversation would end exactly like all the previous ones: with nothing.

"I will check the status of your case again," Halls said after a short pause. "I will try to raise the issue higher and find out whether it is possible to speed up at least the procedure of returning you without changing the remaining conditions."

He spoke evenly, almost officially, but Nadia knew him too well now to believe that this was anything more than a lie meant to calm her down. Still, somewhere deep inside, a small ember of hope continued to burn.

"Really?" she asked, and despite herself, a faint hope appeared in her high voice.

"Yes," Halls answered too quickly. "I will contact Washington and see what can be done."

"Thank you..." she whispered.

"Just don't make any promises to yourself," Halls added. "That's all. Talk to you later, Nadia. Do not call this number without a reason. I will contact you myself."

6

Nadia continued holding the phone near her ear for several more seconds, as if hoping that Halls would change his mind and start talking again. Then she slowly lowered her hand and looked at the dark screen.

"He will contact Washington..." she said quietly in English with sarcasm.

She gave a short laugh, but there was no amusement in the sound.

"Maybe he is already calling the president."

The phone fell onto the sofa beside her. Nadia rubbed her face with both hands, holding her fingers against her temples, then slowly moved them back and finally pulled the pins out of her bun. Her dark hair immediately spilled over her shoulders, heavy straight strands touching her neck and hiding part of the thin circular scar, but it brought no relief; the skin beneath the hair was sweaty, her head ached after an entire day of having her hair pulled tightly back, and several strands immediately fell into her eyes, forcing her to irritably brush them away.

Once, during the first weeks after the operation, she had shaved her hair almost completely off, unable to endure its constant touch against her face and neck, but ten days later she woke up with the same dark shoulder-length strands, as if her body had refused to obey her decision even in something so insignificant. She had done it around ten or twenty times, but every time it was the same, after ten days they reached this length and stopped growing.

They told her it was some kind of side effect of the head transplant. As if they actually knew how to perform a head transplant and what side effects it could have. No, they knew nothing.

She stood up from the sofa and immediately felt her numb legs respond with weakness. She had to grab the back of the chair for a second, while her heavy breasts under the dress swung forward, pulling her shoulders with them and forcing her to bend again.

"Fucking monsters," she hissed, wrapping both hands around herself underneath her breasts and lifting the heavy weight for a few seconds to relieve the pressure from her shoulders, but the relief was so brief that it only made her angrier: as soon as she released her hands, everything pulled downward again, the straps dug into her skin, and her back responded with a dull pain between her shoulder blades.

She walked over to the bags and stood there for several seconds, not wanting to touch them, as if they still carried the presence of Mahmoud, his self-confident voice and his calm certainty that sooner or later she would definitely agree.

"My wife does not work," Nadia mocked in English, lowering her voice as much as her vocal cords allowed. "You will live like in paradise."

She snorted irritably and pulled up the long hem of her dress, gathering the fabric in both hands.

At first, the dress got stuck on her hips, then the tight elastic at her waist reluctantly moved higher. Nadia pulled harder, and the dark fabric crawled up her body, for a moment stretching so tightly over her breasts that she had to stop and adjust her grip on the edge.

"Come on..."

She raised her arms above her head and finally pulled the dress off completely. Her hair immediately became messy, several strands fell onto her face again, and her heavy breasts, no longer restrained by the loose fabric, noticeably lowered inside the white cups of her tight underwear.

Nadia crumpled the dress and was about to throw it onto the sofa, but stopped at the last moment.

"No. Then I'll have to iron it again."

She irritably smoothed out the fabric and hung the dress over the back of the old chair.

7

The room had become cooler, although the air was still warm. Nadia ran her palm over the damp skin beneath her breasts, frowned, and walked toward the small mirror on the wall. She was left wearing a light-colored set, bought several months earlier from one of the shops after almost an hour of humiliating size fitting. The saleswoman had spent a long time complaining that it was almost impossible to find suitable underwear for such a large size, and then called two more women over so they could also look and give their opinions.

In the end, she had to buy this lace monstrosity because the shop simply did not have any other models in the required size. The saleswoman had proudly announced that it was a "very beautiful set," and the two customers had eagerly nodded, discussing how well it fit her and how much her husband would appreciate it.

She remembered how she had forced a smile back then and simply agreed silently, trying to avoid yet another round of questions about why she was alone.

Now she stood silently in front of the old mirror.

The reflection showed a woman with a thirty-year-old body, a tired face, long dark hair, and a thin scar that wrapped around her neck like a narrow line. The masculine features of Adam, a twenty-two-year-old history student who had simply decided to travel around the Middle East with a group of tourists a year and a half ago, had not disappeared anywhere. The high forehead, heavy eyebrows, the familiar curve of the nose.

It was him, definitely him, but at the same time it was not him.

A year ago, his head looked foreign. Extremely foreign.

The pale skin of his face contrasted with the differently colored skin of the body so noticeably that at first it seemed as if the head had simply been placed onto a mannequin. Back then, the scar looked rough and inflamed, the skin around it remained red, and the face and body seemed to belong to two different photographs that had been poorly stitched together.

Now everything was different.

The scar had faded. The skin tone had almost evened out. Even the muscles in her neck moved completely naturally.

If someone saw her like this, in underwear, their attention would most likely be drawn to her breasts rather than the thin line of the scar, because this woman now looked so natural. A year ago, the scar literally screamed that something impossible had happened to her, but now it was perceived as nothing more than an old mark from some serious operation, while everything else formed a complete image of an ordinary woman with extraordinary curves.

That was what frightened her the most.

She slowly raised her hand and touched her neck with her fingertips.

Her fingers touched warm skin with not even a hint of stubble and slowly moved along the thin line of the scar, as if trying to find the place where one person had once ended and another had begun. The skin was warm, soft, sensitive. The scar could barely be felt anymore. Only a barely noticeable thin line, almost no different in texture from the rest of the skin, reminded her that just a year ago this had been the border between two lives.

Nadia did not remove her hand for several seconds.

Her elbow, resting against the cup of her bra, caused the fabric to stretch slightly, but Nadia barely noticed it. All her attention was fixed on the reflection.

8

She slowly ran her fingers along the scar once more.

"Don't you dare disappear..." she whispered in English, lowering her gaze and immediately fixing it on the white lace fabric of her underwear, which tightly covered the two enormous halves that had, over this year, become just as unavoidable a part of her everyday life as the constant heaviness in her shoulders or the need to write while sitting down, and then wash herself afterward, because otherwise, due to this damned anatomy, everything inside her vulva would start becoming irritated if she tried to live as if nothing had changed.

A strange cramp twisted low in her abdomen.

Nadia froze.

She did not even bother checking. Over the past year, her body had managed to teach her to recognize this warning. First came this dull, slowly increasing pain, then heaviness in her lower back, and a few minutes later began something that Adam Foster had known nothing about during the first twenty-two years of his life.

"Not now..." she muttered tiredly.

As if hearing her request, the spasm returned, already stronger.

She closed her eyes and briefly exhaled.

"Fine. I understand."

A year ago, the very thought that one day she would be able to calmly talk to herself about things like this would have seemed insane. Now it had become as much a part of her schedule as paying rent or going to the market every week.

Nadia opened a small cabinet, took out everything she needed, and headed to the bathroom.

The old door creaked as usual.

The blue tiles on the walls had darkened in places with age, the mirror above the old sink was covered with tiny scratches, and the only light bulb above the mirror gave off a warm but dim glow.

With a familiar movement of her hands, Nadia reached behind her back, found the clasp that just a year ago had taken her almost five minutes to locate, and unfastened it with one confident movement. The pressure on her chest immediately weakened. She involuntarily exhaled, holding her heavy breasts with her palms so they would not drop too suddenly, then carefully removed the straps from her shoulders.

"Phew..."

The quiet voice of pure, feminine relief, caused by the heavy pressure finally disappearing, escaped her lips before she could stop herself. Her palms barely managed to hold the sudden downward pull of the weight, after which she carefully lowered her hands, allowing her body to settle into its usual position. Her huge breasts immediately sank heavily under their own weight, making her shoulders straighten for the first time all day. The relief was so noticeable that Nadia simply froze for several seconds with her eyes closed.

"At least five minutes..."

She tiredly rubbed the red marks left by the straps on her skin, then placed the underwear on the edge of the old washing machine.

Turning on the faucet, Nadia waited until the cold water stopped coming out in bursts, and only then turned the hot water valve. The old pipes began humming as usual, something quietly clicked somewhere inside the wall, and a few seconds later a steady stream of warm water finally came from the shower head.

She stepped under the water.

The warmth almost immediately relaxed the tense muscles in her neck and shoulders. Several long strands stuck to her cheeks, then the water completely soaked her hair, and it fell down her back in heavy dark strands. Nadia closed her eyes, allowing the water to run down her face, over the scar around her neck, and across her shoulders.

9

If there was a place where she could at least temporarily stop thinking, then it was these few minutes under the shower.

Almost stop.

Because her heavy breasts did not disappear anywhere. Even under the warm streams of water, they pulled her shoulders downward, changing her posture, forcing her to move differently, constantly reminding her of the body that had belonged to a completely different person a year ago.

Nadia slowly ran her palms through her wet hair, combing it back. Water ran down her face, down her neck, along the faded scar, and further, disappearing somewhere behind the curves of her body. She stared straight ahead, not noticing the old blue tiles.

In her mind, memories of the time when she had been Adam Foster flashed again, a twenty-two-year-old history student who loved arguing with professors about the reasons behind the fall of the Roman Republic more than anything else and sometimes stayed up until deep into the night studying books in the library.

A sudden flash of pain made her involuntarily bend forward.

"Ah..."

Her palm immediately moved to her lower abdomen.

The spasm passed as quickly as it had appeared, but afterward left behind a heavy, pulling sensation that had become very familiar during this year. Nadia slowly exhaled and lowered her head. The hot water continued flowing down her hair, over her shoulders, over the faded scar around her neck, but now she barely felt it.

Her body was once again reminding her that it lived according to its own schedule.

"Great..." she muttered. "Just wonderful."

She turned off the shower, carefully stepped over the low edge, and stood motionless on the old mat for several seconds, listening to the last drops falling into the enamel tray.

Then she took a towel. A hair dryer. She carefully dried her entire body, touching the sensitive area between her legs with the rough fabric, which had already begun to ache unpleasantly, warning her that in just a few minutes the discomfort would become much stronger. She cast a brief glance at a small package of personal hygiene products lying on the shelf, sighed heavily, and took the hair dryer and comb.

"Later..."

The hand holding the hair dryer stopped in midair.

Nadia looked at her own reflection in the fogged mirror, where through the blurry streaks she could make out familiar facial features, wet dark hair, and the thin pale scar at the base of her neck.

"And what now?..." she quietly asked in English, although she perfectly knew there was no one to answer her.

The hair dryer hummed softly.

The warm stream of air lifted several strands, and she slowly began combing her hair, patiently running the brush from the roots to the ends. The movements had long become familiar. So familiar that sometimes it frightened her more than anything else.

She no longer even thought about how to do it. She simply did it.

Instead, her head was filled with a mess of thoughts. Thoughts she pushed away as much as she could, but the longer she lived here in this body, the more often they came on their own.

The simplest and one of the most painful ones: 'You are a woman', over which another, even more desperate thought immediately appeared: 'You are a woman in a family with very traditional values, and for a normal life you need a husband.'

The brush slowly passed through her wet hair once more.

Then again.

She suddenly caught herself realizing that she was already doing it almost automatically, without thinking about every movement, and because of that, something inside her became especially empty.

"No..." she quietly said to her reflection. "It doesn't mean anything."

But the thought did not disappear. On the contrary, it only grew stronger because, apparently, she would not be able to return to America, because... looking the truth in the eyes, she was unique. Everything pointed to the fact that nobody wanted publicity.

10

She could record a video and somehow inform the world, but what would happen next?

How would she prove it? Who would believe this insane story, especially when the entire administrative system of her own country would be turned against her?

At best, there would be some enthusiasts who would believe her.

But would they truly believe her, or would they simply want to use it?

Besides, it would not solve the main problem. Officially, she had an Iranian passport, an official cover story that she had told everyone for a year: her parents had been Iranian, many years ago they had emigrated to the United States with their daughter, who was born in Iran, and changed their surname there, then they broke the law and lost their citizenship. They died, and she returned to her historical homeland according to a court decision. The story had been planned down to the smallest details. Dates. Cities. A nonexistent job. Even the names of fictional relatives. Over twelve months she had repeated it so many times that now she could tell it without a single hesitation.

The cover story explained almost everything: her accent, her lack of knowledge of local customs, the absence of family, her American surname.

Even the strange behavior of a single woman who worked online, rarely invited guests, and constantly avoided questions about her past.

And the longer Nadia lived in Karaj, the less this story resembled a temporary measure.

It was becoming her biography.

"Born in Isfahan. Moved to the United States as an infant with her parents. Father, an engineer. Mother taught English. After their deaths, returned to Iran..."

The hair dryer turned off. The hand holding the comb lowered.

She took a heavy breath, and with this movement her massive breasts slowly rose and then just as slowly fell under their own weight.

Nadia stared at her reflection for several more seconds, after which she unexpectedly smiled.

"Am I really thinking about becoming someone's wife..."

The smile disappeared almost immediately.

She slowly placed the comb on the edge of the sink and leaned on the cold porcelain with both hands, without taking her eyes off the reflection.

"I've completely lost my mind..." she quietly said to her reflection.

However, the thought would not leave. It became brighter and brighter.

There she was, standing by the stove, cooking ghormeh sabzi for Mahmoud, stirring the dark aromatic stew and checking whether the rice had burned, while he, talking busily on the phone with someone, walked past and slapped her ass. In the next scene, she was lying with him in bed, naked, spreading her legs and quietly moaning so she would not wake the children...

Children? What?!

Nadia jolted so suddenly that her breasts swayed again, beginning to swing like pendulums.

"No..."

She stepped away from the mirror and almost knocked over the plastic cup standing near the sink.

"No. No, no..."

The words escaped on their own.

She quickly shook her head, as if this movement could somehow shake the newly appeared image out of her memory, but the harder she tried to drive it away, the clearer she understood that it was not the thought itself that frightened her.

What frightened her was the fact, the simplest fact, that the human brain knew how to adapt. It desperately searched for a way to make any reality at least a little more bearable. It looked for patterns, built scenarios for the future, and offered solutions for a normal life.

'You are here forever.'

'Then you will have to live.'

'Then you will have to find your place in this world.'

She slowly shook her head.

"I am still Adam," she quietly said to her reflection, but her voice sounded no longer as confident as she wanted it to.

Outside the window, the long evening call to prayer began, and she closed her eyes, deciding that she simply would not think about it...