Issachar

In a telephone interview from Israel, her mother, Yaffa Issachar, said that her daughter had cried when she heard about Ms. Griner’s case, telling her: “I know what she’s going through now.”

Ms. Issachar, who was allowed to visit her daughter twice a month, also remembers the Lenin monument — along with the din of barking prison dogs that, she said, were being trained in the yard.

Russian authorities said they found hashish in Issachar’s luggage while she was transferring between flights in Moscow en route from India to Israel, at the same airport where Griner was detained.

We do eventually learn that Issachar and Zabulon believe themselves unloved; as far as this viewer is concerned, they’re absolutely right.

Ms. Issachar’s family said they had been told that her destiny might depend on the fate of Aleksei Burkov, a Russian hacker who was arrested in Israel and was later extradited to the United States.