In Safehouse, Sheida Soleimani narrates her father’s long journey through the Zagros Mountains, his flight from Iran to Turkey condensed into a single, dreamlike image. He escaped on horseback – here a tiny, shadowy figure travels through paper arches and a checkered landscape. The floating chess board refers to a man he met, the host of one of the safe houses on his route. This shelter belonged to a fellow exile who, like him, opposed both the Shah and the Ayatollah, a then-rare stance of dual resistance (whose dynamics are at the forefront today). The host played chess, or rather shatranj (the Persian precursor to the game) with each traveler; now his board hovers over the mountains, larger than life, as Soleimani’s father opens with a knight. The game becomes a defining image for this memory, a moment of strategizing and trust between two strangers.