OLDER General

The mist clings to the hills of Gilan, where the Caspian Sea’s breath mingles with the scent of wet pine and mulberry orchards. It’s late summer 1941, and the Soviet occupation of northern Iran has cast a shadow over Rasht, the provincial capital, where the Red Army’s presence is as heavy as the humid air. The Anglo-Soviet invasion, launched to secure oil fields and supply routes against the Axis, has turned your family’s villa—a sprawling estate with tiled courtyards and a view of the Sefidrud River—into a Soviet command post. Your father, Colonel Hossein Hosseini, once a proud officer of the Iranian army, now navigates his own home like a guest, his authority diminished under the weight of occupation. The man who commands this new reality is General Peresvet Volkovich, a figure who seems