Where Have All the Young Girls Gone

by Leena Lehtolainen

  “It her duty. She get go to school, she help at home. Everyone help—boys too. Father and Hamid go work. We no ask why do, we do. I say and Noor do.”

  Reza senior became agitated because he didn’t understand what his daughter-in-law was saying, and the interpreter had to repeat what she’d said in Persian. Puupponen was sitting directly across from me in the circle, fidgeting. If I could have, I would have reminded him of the 90 percent rule in police work. Most of what we did was always a waste of time. Roni Timonen, a young investigator hired by the Violent Crime Unit while I’d been away, looked eager. He probably hadn’t participated in a mass interrogation like this since he’d been at the academy.

  “You all gathered at the dinner table. What did you discuss?”

  The interpreter translated Ruuskanen’s question.

  “Soccer. We talked about soccer,” Rahim said next to me. I was hearing his voice for the first time. It was hoarse, as though there were something wrong with his vocal cords.

  “We talked about when the field would melt again so we could play,” Hamid added, and the others nodded. The interpreter translated for the grandfather, who smiled and said something so quickly that I wasn’t able to discern individual words.

  “The boys are like little children when there is talk of soccer. They follow the Iranian league with the help of the satellite dish.”

  “Did Noor participate in the discussion?” Koivu asked. The men went silent, and then Noor’s father, Reza, shook his head.

  “No, probably not. Noor quiet girl. Listen much, not speak much.”

  “Did you have an argument about soccer?” Koivu asked. The answer was a firm no in two different languages. Both Rezas assured us that there was no disagreement at the dinner table. They started to talk over each other, and Noor’s mother sank even deeper into her chair, as if she wanted to disappear. She exuded fear, but I wasn’t able to tell of whom or of what. The men seemed calmer, if alert. They each repeated the same story almost word for word about how they’d eaten chicken and eggplant and how there had been too little sugar in the tea and they’d had to add more.

  “Where did Noor go after dinner?” Ruuskanen was clearly beginning to be irritated that there weren’t any holes in their story.

  “To her club, to get to know the Finnish girls,” Noor’s father answered.

  “Was there any difference of opinion about her leaving?”

  Again, the answer came as vigorous head shaking and a profusion of words. I was already picking up on the word nakheir, Persian for “no.”

  “Noor always went there,” her younger brother, Vafa, said. “It’s a good club, since there are only girls. The girls get left alone.”

  “Did Noor’s boyfriend, Tuomas Soivio, ever visit you?” Puupponen threw this out like a forward in a soccer match who has realized that the coaches’ tactics aren’t working and takes off alone on a mad dash that even he doesn’t believe will work. Puupponen’s question and the interpreter’s version were followed by a silence that was almost more overwhelming than the exultation following the home team scoring a goal. They obviously hadn’t agreed on a common answer.

  “Noor did not have boyfriend,” her father finally said.

  “We have several witnesses who have stated that Noor was dating her schoolmate, Tuomas Soivio. Did Noor neglect to tell you?” As I asked this, I looked straight at Noor’s mother, who avoided my gaze by staring at the floor and then by closing her eyes. The Rezas, father and grandfather, traded a few heated sentences in their own language.

  “What are they saying? You have to translate everything!” Ruuskanen bellowed at the interpreter.

  “Wait. That Noor wasn’t a liar, that the boy is trying to ruin her reputation. That the boy was following Noor around even though Noor didn’t want him and so he killed her.”

  It was the same thing they had claimed in previous interviews. Ruuskanen tried to steer the conversation back to Noor’s departure for the Girls Club. According to her family, she’d been completely normal, not crying or angry. It was starting to get hot in the room. I reeked of garlic, and I could still smell its stink on Koivu’s and Puupponen’s breath. Maybe that was why Timonen was breathing through his mouth.

  Noor had helped her mother clear the dishes from the table before going out. Vafa admitted, a little abashed, that he’d helped his mother wash the dishes while the rest of the men had been trying to fix the rear mudguard on Hamid’s bicycle—the interpreter’s help was needed for “mudguard.” Grandfather, Farid, Jalil, and Rahim had gone home around nine p.m. Around ten p.m. Mrs. Ezfahani started to wonder why her daughter hadn’t come home.

  “Did you try to call her?” Ruuskanen asked.

  “She not answer. Hamid go to Grandfather’s house, see if girl there. She not. Everyone sleep. Then not sleep when hear Noor not at home. No one sleep that night. Not sleep anymore ever, not ever. No sleep with sorrow,” Noor’s father said quietly.

  “You arrest the boy,” Jalil said. “Or we take revenge ourselves.”

  His father, Farid, spoke angrily to his son, and the men of the family began another rapid conversation in Persian, which made the interpreter’s head turn from person to person and her pen fly across her notebook. Then the grandfather gave everyone an order, evidently to be quiet.

  “Mr. Farid Ezfahani says no revenge. Mr. Reza senior says that in Finland the police take care of revenge, and that we will trust the Finnish police. Mr. Jalil asks forgiveness but says that his cousin has been violated and that this cannot be done. A cousin is like a sister, his brother’s future spouse.”

  Those final words made Rahim flinch next to me. He was sitting so close that I could see the blood drain from his face, and his skin turned a pale yellowish color, like grass after a night of freezing temperatures. Tuomas Soivio had mentioned that Noor was promised to her cousin, but it was good to hear the same from the cousin’s younger brother’s mouth.

  “It not true,” Noor’s mother said in a louder voice than I had heard her use before. “Noor not promised anyone, not married. Wanted be doctor. Not promised anyone.” She rose, stretched over me, and slapped Rahim across the face. Then she fell straight into my lap.

  11

  Mrs. Noor Ezfahani was incoherent after she regained consciousness. Her skin felt dry and hot, and she didn’t react to the interpreter’s Persian. I asked Noor’s husband, Reza, to help, and together we carried her to the nearest room that had a couch for her to rest on. Koivu called the paramedics. They would get to decide whether Mrs. Ezfahani would need to be taken to the emergency room at Jorvi Hospital.

  “Why did your wife hit Rahim?” I asked Reza when we were left alone with his wife.

  “I cannot see into her soul,” he answered, and I had to content myself with that. The paramedics arrived, and I left them to do their work in peace. Luckily one of them was a woman, which appeased Reza. Mrs. Ezfahani had an arrhythmia and was also seriously dehydrated, so further tests would be necessary. The men demanded to be allowed to follow her to Jorvi, and Reza attempted to climb into the ambulance as it was leaving. It took a good amount of police muscle to keep him out of the vehicle.

  “Shall we proceed without the mother?” I asked Ruuskanen, though part of me wanted to dismiss the interpreter so she could go help Noor. The older woman’s Finnish was passable, but medical terminology wasn’t usually the first thing covered in language classes. But Jorvi was a big place—maybe they would be able to find another Persian speaker there.

  There was a scratch on Rahim Ezfahani’s cheek, left by his aunt’s blow. Ruuskanen drove the men back into the conference room like a sheepdog with a flock. I walked back next to Vafa, and I could hear his stomach rumbling. He was eighteen years old, ideal cannon fodder for any army in any country, and he looked like he was on the verge of tears. Apparently, the combination of his sister’s death and his mother’s fit was too much for the boy.

  We sat down in the circle again, and Ruuskanen began to press Jalil about what he�
�d meant when he’d said Noor was promised to her cousin Rahim. Jalil claimed that he hadn’t said it at all, that the interpreter had misunderstood him, and the other men backed him up. The interpreter’s face turned bright red.

  “He said it, I swear! I understand my native language just fine.”

  The men of the second generation, whose Finnish was the best in the group, became agitated at this and began to berate the interpreter in Persian. Her expression turned even more wretched. Her feet were clad in elaborately decorated boots, which she swung under her chair like a little girl.

  “What are they saying?” Ruuskanen asked amid the tumult.

  “That I’m twisting their words, that I’m on the police’s side,” the interpreter almost shouted.

  “We want another interpreter,” Farid Ezfahani said.

  “This interpreter will have to do.” Ruuskanen had to work to control his temper. Puupponen’s eyes glinted impishly—chaotic situations appealed to his sense of humor, so long as no one was in physical danger. He’d never been very good at tolerating authority figures, and Ruuskanen wasn’t exactly his favorite boss. Koivu, on the other hand, looked concerned; he understood, as I did, that the interrogation had gone off the rails and hadn’t moved the investigation forward at all. Rahim Ezfahani, who sat next to me, shifted restlessly. He’d smoked a quick cigarette as we escorted Mrs. Ezfahani to the ambulance, and now he probably wanted another one. He’d tried to sit as far away from me as possible for the whole interview; even though I was old enough to be his mother, I was still a woman and dressed wrong. Years ago, when I’d taken my children on bus trips in their baby buggies, the immigrant men, particularly Somalis, were often the ones who were most willing to lend a hand. The first time I’d gratefully looked the man in the eyes and smiled, but later I realized that that was a violation of their customs. Since then, at least some of the newcomers must have adapted to Finnish women behaving differently than they were used to. I’d worn a headscarf in Afghanistan, but in Finland I could wear my hair down and smile at anyone I wanted to.

  Ruuskanen pressed the Ezfahanis about why they hadn’t contacted the police when Noor didn’t come home. Noor’s father said that they hadn’t wanted to bother the police, that they’d hoped she’d just fallen asleep at a friend’s house. He said this in Finnish, pausing now and then to search for the right word.

  “Did Noor often stay out overnight?” Koivu asked.

  “No. Noor good girl.”

  “Did she say that she might not come home on Tuesday?”

  “No. Everything the same as always. No fight, no nothing. Everything OK.”

  “Did you call her friends, like Susanne Jansson, or other girls from the Girls Club?”

  “We not have their number.”

  “You could have gotten it from Information.”

  “We not bother strangers at night. When Noor not at grandfather’s house, we try sleep. Not able very much.”

  The other men repeated the story: they’d gone home, and a little later Hamid came over to see if Noor had stopped by for a visit. No one had heard from her, and they hadn’t been able to reach her cell phone. Noor’s telephone records would tell us if she’d used her phone on Tuesday night. All the family members claimed they hadn’t been able to get in touch with Noor after six p.m., just as Tuomas Soivio had said. Where had she disappeared to?

  The Ezfahanis stuck to their story, and we didn’t have any evidence that a family member had been party to Noor’s killing, so eventually we had to cut them loose. Before they left, Ruuskanen forbade any of them from leaving the country and received a cutting reply from Grandfather Ezfahani in return.

  “We’re not going anywhere until Noor has been buried the right way!”

  Once they were gone, we discussed the interview, and everyone seemed just as frustrated as I was. In Puupponen’s opinion, the men had seemed agitated, but that didn’t mean much; few people would be calm right after a close relative’s murder. Koivu said he had watched Noor’s mother, who’d struggled to keep her expression in check throughout the entire interview.

  “That woman is the weakest link. It would be a good idea to question her alone. Maybe I could go with Maria,” Koivu suggested, “once she’s able to talk.”

  “You have to admire them. They played together like a pro hockey team,” Timonen said.

  “More like a soccer team,” Puupponen corrected. “The strategy they agreed on held. Only the mother sent a stray ball.”

  “Maria, since you’re a woman—,” Ruuskanen said.

  “Very astute observation, Detective,” Puupponen interrupted.

  “Could you be quiet for once?” Ruuskanen roared like a teacher to a misbehaving student. “Now, since you’re a woman, and a mother, how likely do you think it is that a mother would protect her daughter’s murderer?”

  “I think anything is possible. Mothers even kill their own daughters. We’ve seen that before. And it could be that Noor senior doesn’t know the truth, that only the men of the family have been initiated. But their stories are too similar. And why didn’t they go out to look for Noor? There are six able-bodied men in the family, plus the grandfather, who could have stayed behind to support the mother while the others went out to search for the girl. Their behavior doesn’t seem logical, and I don’t believe that it’s just a matter of cultural differences.”

  During the interrogation the need to go to the restroom had hit me, so I was happy when Ruuskanen announced he was leaving to go review the results of the forensic investigation. I rushed to the nearest ladies’ room. In it there was a sink and two stalls, one of which was occupied. I went into the free stall and did my business. I could hear a strange whimpering coming from the other stall.

  The doors of the stalls didn’t go all the way to the floor, but the wall between them did, so I couldn’t see the shoes of the woman using the other stall. When I went to wash my hands, I bent over and looked underneath the door, where I saw the same low-heeled black suede boots with gold fringe that had been swinging in front of me for the last couple hours.

  I stood up, dug my makeup bag out of my purse, and began to apply some mascara, though I already had plenty on. I added a layer, separated my lashes with a comb, and then added another layer; I was starting to look ridiculous.

  The whimpering had stopped. Whoever was in the stall had not come out, so I decided to make a feint and opened the restroom door. I stepped out, waited a moment, and then slipped back in. The interpreter, whose name I couldn’t recall, was rinsing her face. Her eyes were teary, and she blushed violently when she saw me.

  “Are you OK?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I . . . I didn’t make a mistake! They were lying.” The interpreter’s face contorted as she tried to hold back her tears.

  “That happens. People change their stories. Sometimes they aren’t even lying intentionally.”

  “But the oldest man said to me that I was putting them in danger with my poor translations, that I’m a stupid woman who shouldn’t be allowed to work as an interpreter. That I lie to the police.”

  “The oldest man? You mean Reza Ezfahani, the victim’s grandfather? Did he threaten you?”

  “I’ve helped them a few times, explaining taxes and things like that, and I was with Rahim and a couple other boys in court when they were in that gang fight last year. Rahim didn’t like that the interpreter was a woman. They think I’ve become too Finnish, that I’m on the side of the Finnish police, not my own people.”

  I was sure that they’d discussed the role of the interpreter during her training—interpreters aren’t supposed to interpret, but rather translate as directly as possible. What was said wasn’t the interpreter’s responsibility, and of course the interpreter was supposed to be impartial. A person who couldn’t stand conflict wouldn’t last very long in that profession.

  I looked for a highlighter in my makeup bag so I would have an excuse for extending the conversation.

  “Does that help wi
th redness?” the interpreter asked as I dabbed it on.

  “Yeah, it covers it up a little. Do you want some?” She held up her hand, and I smeared a little makeup on the back of it. The shade was too light for her, but so be it. If sharing makeup helped create a sense of sisterhood, it was worth it.

  “Did you leave anything out, other than the insults directed at you? There was a lot going on—the Ezfahanis and the police were talking over one another so fast at times.”

  The interpreter dabbed the highlighter under her eyes and then assessed her face in the mirror. She was about thirty, graceful and thin skinned; there were already small lines at the corners of her eyes. Her eyebrows were dark and thick, and her lashes didn’t need any extra mascara. Interpreters were invaluable to the police, and I didn’t want to intimidate this woman, whose name I still couldn’t remember. Had Ruuskanen even mentioned it?

  “The whole time I had the feeling that it wasn’t about what was being said but what was being left unsaid. As if every word was precious and had to be conserved. Previously, Farid, Rahim, and Jalil were talkative, even at the tax office and in the courtroom. Today they didn’t talk much at all. Maybe it’s because they’re sad. I don’t know.”

  “Do you remember the reason for the skirmish between Rahim and his friends and those Finns? Who started the fight?”

  It was the usual story. The gangs had been eyeing each other at the Big Apple Mall, and when the guards came to shoo them away, the teenagers moved to the courtyard of a nearby apartment building. The Iranian gang asked the Finns to let them be, and when they didn’t, Rahim was the first to blow up. He tried to chase off the leader of the Finnish contingent, who then pulled a knife, at which point Rahim grabbed the nearest bicycle as a weapon. The others joined in the fray, and residents in the surrounding buildings called the police.

  “People are afraid of what they don’t know. Rahim only wants to be with Iranians. He thinks Finnish customs are dangerous, that they eat away at our own wonderful thousands-of-years-old culture, which was flourishing when the Finns were still living in igloos and gnawing on pine bark.”