The Girl at the Border

by Leslie Archer

  “Ah, Professor Mathis’s daughter.” She clucked her tongue. “It’s a dreadful thing. Just disappeared into thin air. No one knows where she went, what happened to her.” She sucked in her lower lip. “There was a girl, Gale Fisher, about Bella’s age. She disappeared a year or so ago.” Her eyes took on a glassy, faraway look. “The police searched for her for weeks. In the end, a hunter found her. Or what was left of her, poor thing. No one should die like that, especially a sheltered child of sixteen.”

  Laurel, trying to repel the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, said, “Did the police ever find out who did it?”

  “The FBI was called in. I remember what an awful uproar that caused in the community, everyone locking their doors, afraid to let their daughters play outside or go to the mall—or anywhere, really. Just shuttled ’em back and forth to and from school. It’s just like now, isn’t it?” Her eyes cleared a bit. “But now all everyone talks about is terrorism. Well, I suppose it’s no different here than in Ann Arbor or anywhere else in the country.”

  “Is that the current theory?” Laurel asked, her gut churning. “That Bella wasn’t taken by the same person who murdered Gale Fisher?”

  “I believe that’s the theory that has the most currency now. Well, the FBI thinks so, anyhow. That she was recruited.”

  “But why would they think that?”

  “Because of that neighbor family, the Shehadis. Arabs, you see.”

  “Don’t you mean Arab Americans?”

  “The daughter, Elin, was Bella’s nanny for years and years,” Rosie said, giving no indication she had heard Laurel. “When the girl went missing, they brought the father, Hashim Shehadi, in for questioning, for the second time, I believe. Well, he’s in import-export, you see, so he’s automatically suspect.”

  Laurel wondered whether a Caucasian import-exporter would be automatically suspect for anything. She thought not.

  “Then the mother was interrogated,” Rosie was saying. “Jesus protect anyone from interrogation. Then they hauled in the oldest boy of theirs, Gabriel—he’s the troublemaker of the family. Full of hate. I heard he and a bunch of his friends beat up some Christian boys several days ago. Mark my words: if anyone’s a suspect, it’s him.”

  “A suspect in what?” Laurel asked.

  Rosie made a conciliatory gesture. “Listen—I don’t have anything against Muslims per se. We have a lot of them here, and they’re mostly model citizens, just the same as you or me.” Her face clouded over. “But still, when you hear about these girls being inducted into what amounts to slavery, I mean, you can’t help thinking the worst when you see a full beard or a hijab, can you.”

  She planted her elbows forthrightly on the table. “But if that’s what did happen to Bella . . . it’s too late, isn’t it? More likely than not, she’s already on her way to Syria to be with those awful brutes. The things I’ve read and seen on the nightly news. God alone knows why any Western girl would willingly join them.”

  “Maybe she had nowhere else to go,” Laurel said quietly.

  Rosie pursed her lips. “Well, this whole mess is the Shehadis’ doing, if you ask me.”

  No one is, Laurel thought and pushed on with her line of questioning as Jimmy Self had taught her to do. “You took care of her mother, didn’t you? At least that’s what I heard.”

  Rosie nodded, remained tight-lipped.

  “It was a long slide down, wasn’t it?”

  “There were reasons.”

  “There always are.” Laurel cracked a sugar cookie in two, its crystals glittering like diamonds. “But do you think those reasons mattered to Bella?”

  Rosie regarded her, her hard stare slowly softening. “No,” she said. “I don’t suppose they did.” She turned away for a moment, and it was only the fact of her bosom heaving that Laurel became aware that she was sobbing.

  “Excuse me,” Rosie said. “I’m sorry.” Rummaging in her pocketbook for a package of tissues. She held one to her nose, as if it were an ice pack, as if it would calm her down.

  “I’m the one who’s sorry,” Laurel said. “I obviously overstepped—”

  “No, no.” Rosie sniffed, waving a hand. “Not at all.” She blew her nose, crumpled the tissue into a ball, stuffed it back into her handbag. “It’s a terrible thing when people confess to you, a dreadful burden that’s difficult to bear alone.”

  Laurel didn’t want her to bear it alone, but she sensed the best thing she could do was to put on a sympathetic face and keep quiet. Neither of those things was difficult for her; she felt once again her false identity slipping, as it had with Richard. This close to Bella, she could no longer ignore the parallels in their lives. Missing. Everyone who meant something to them missing. Laurel had her father, until she hadn’t. Bella had her father, until she hadn’t. But who would stand up for Bella? Who would care whether she was found? Not her parents, and not the FBI, who seemed more interested in interrogating Muslims than they were in finding her.

  Rosie’s gray eyes searched Laurel’s. “I don’t want to bear this secret alone, Jenn.”

  Her false identity once again reared its head, not to be helped. “You don’t have to, Rosie.”

  Rosie nodded. Bit her lip. Laurel poured her some tea, stirred the milk in. This simple gesture of kindness cleared the final barrier as a jinn cleared the way with smoke and sparking flame.

  Rosie took her hand, squeezed it. Then she told Laurel Maggie and Richard’s terrible secret: how Maggie had been carrying twins, how one of them had turned in the womb, her elbow pressing against her sister’s chest. How Bella had been born alive, her twin dead within seconds of drawing her first gasping breath. “I know how this must sound,” Rosie concluded. “Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know how it sounds, but Maggie never wanted kids. Professor Mathis forced her into it, so she said. She was near the end of her tether. People like her, just before they go for good, often experience a moment of absolute lucidity. This is what happened with Maggie. She told me . . . well, she could never get over what Bella did.”

  “What did Bella do?”

  “What did she do? In Maggie’s disturbed mind, she murdered her sister.”

  Laurel looked at her in complete shock. She felt cold down to her bones. An odd kind of keening, animal atavism rose from the core of her. You have no idea. “But that’s crazy,” she said when she found her voice. “Completely insane.” Richard had never even hinted at such a horrific tragedy. Good God, did Bella know? Had her crazy mother told her why she hated her? Tears stood out, trembling on her lower eyelids. “It was an in utero accident of nature. Dreadful and tragic, yes. But Bella had no volition. How could her mother blame her?”

  “Maggie wished they had both died in her womb.” Rosie’s hands were trembling. “That was what she was holding on to, what was eating her alive from the inside out.”

  You have no idea. Now she did. Now she knew why life must have been hell for Bella without Richard, alone in the house with that venomous creature.

  Laurel knew what she must ask now, though she very much didn’t want to. And yet there was no way around it. She had to know. “And Rich—Professor Mathis. What was his role in all this?”

  If Rosie heard Laurel’s slip, she gave no indication of it. “He stayed away.” The bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. “As far away from his family as he could. That was his solution: to bury himself in his work, polish his image, wash his hands of it all.”

  And now Laurel understood why Rosie Menkins had chosen her, of all people, to tell this story to. While it was often true that it was easier to unburden yourself to a stranger, this was not her objective. To her, Laurel was a wide-eyed grad student who idolized her professor, a man who, according to the story she told, had mentored her, while turning his back on his own daughter. She might just as well have said to Laurel, You see, my dear, your darling professor Mathis had feet, boots, and coat of clay. He was a shit, and now you see him in all his muddied glory.

  Abruptly
sick to death of Rosie Menkins and her rancid personality, she stood up. “Thank you for your time,” she said, dropped a fan of bills on the table. She didn’t want to owe this woman. Not one damn thing.

  THIRTY-ONE

  When Bella retired to her room after school, she read any number of fantasy and science fiction novels, from Frank Herbert’s Dune to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. She liked these best because they allowed her to travel to different worlds, to get out of her stifled self; the teen fantasies then in vogue were too silly and immature for her. But more often than not, she read chunks of Moby-Dick—in the beginning because it was a gift from her father, but eventually, as she used a dictionary, came to understand it better, something about it hooked her deep in her psyche and wouldn’t let go.

  But that wasn’t all she did. Her rage at her situation had incited her to expand her world far beyond the confines of Dearborn, of Michigan, of America. Bella had collected a cadre of friends—almost two dozen, in fact. Or perhaps they had collected her. They were all online; they were spread all over the globe; they were all young, all Muslims, all radical, all oriented toward ISIS and its self-proclaimed homeland, the caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Although she had never met any of them in the flesh, they were real to her in their mind-sets, their dedication, their adherence to the teachings of Allah, the oneness of God.

  “Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world,” they told her.

  They sent her money, sweets, gift certificates to IslamicBookstore.com and directed her to internet radio stations that played ISIS anthems, twenty-four seven. At first they chatted away for hours on end, talking about anything and everything, but really, when she looked back on it, she realized they were subtly urging her to talk about her loneliness and isolation, her repugnance for the culture of money, cheap fame, the never-ending barrage of sexual explicitness, the shallowness, hypocrisy, and corruption everywhere she looked. But her enmity went far deeper than that. She was an outsider without friends or, other than Elin and Umm, family. But even at the Shehadis’ she felt as if she didn’t belong. Of course, Elin and Umm did everything they could to make her feel at home—but that house wasn’t her home, and being there only heightened her sense of isolation, her conviction that she was no one, that she belonged nowhere.

  This was how her friends in ISIS caught her, trapped her, offered her an alternative. And to be truthful, how enticing did an alternative need to be when compared with nothing? When they judged they had drawn her in sufficiently, they little by little began to define the larger group to her. In a sense, they ceased being individuals as they drew back the curtain to show her the infinite blessings of the caliphate, where she, too, could live a life according to God’s dictates.

  “We came into existence,” they told her, “as a response to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. We began a Sunni uprising against the infidel oppressors and then an insurgency. In those early days, we were part of the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda led by the sanguinary Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Have you read your books? Have you heard of him? He was a Jordanian jihadi who, it turned out, had lost his way. His teaching had become obscure, muddled. He had begun to think of himself rather than the group.

  “We left him. We left al-Qaeda for much the same reason. We became who we are now, dedicated to eradicating the infidel who blindly attacks us, invades our land, grasping for everything we have, everything we are. The infidel stands in opposition to Islam, to Allah, to our very way of life. So we must act, swiftly, violently, without hesitation, without remorse.

  “We fight against great odds, so we provoke here, there, everywhere. Do we want a reaction? This is what we want the infidel to believe. This is, in fact, what he does believe. But no, in point of fact, our aim is to provoke an overreaction.”

  The battle cry of the harried, the downtrodden, the underdog held immense appeal for Bella, as they strongly suspected it would. Too, they were meticulous in providing her with a clear sense of sisterhood, family, a welcoming home. Through their incessant conversations long into her nighttime hours, they had determined her psychological weaknesses and now were in the process of exploiting them to the fullest extent.

  Assalamu alaikum, Salim writes. It is imperative that u tell no 1 of ur conversion to Islam, especially ur family.

  Walaikum salaam. I have no family, LOL, Bella replies, typing on her cell. Unless u count my neighbors. They’re Islamics. 1 of them gave me the Qur’an. Great, right?

  No! These people r a grave danger to u. You must especially stay away from them. Islamics in America r always under surveillance, they r always suspect, they r always a threat to u & me. U must remain true to our online community.

  That will be difficult. 1 of them brought me up. She’s like my mother. I love her.

  What u feel isn’t love, Bella. It’s dependence. This is how America traps people, by making them dependent on all the decadence, the possessions, the wealth, the soft life that draws them further and further away from themselves. Life is not possessions & wealth—these r illusions. Life is ideology; r motivation is ideology. Everything else—all the illusion—is stripped away. We r clean, we r pure, we r doing God’s duty. Everything u have been taught about the world around u is false. When u are here with us, u will understand. The truth transcends time & space. It is truth that will protect u, it is truth that will save u. Truth will be ur mother, truth will be ur father. Truth will love u as no other. U will bow down to Truth & it will be ur everything.

  Listen to me, u must keep a low profile. U must wrest urself from the last bonds of American slavery. This is the present task Allah has set before u as a test of ur faith & devotion. This is how u must think from now on as u have already embarked upon ur rebirth, ur new life.

  Yes. I think I understand.

  Of course u understand, Bella. Understanding, faith, devotion—these were the reasons u contacted me, these r the reasons we r friends, these r the reasons to undertake hijrah—the necessary & sacred voyage from the land of unbelievers to become 1 with the Islamic State in Syria & Iraq.

  I am frightened. I hear stories abt the barbarous atrocities ISIS commits on a daily basis.

  Bella, these r all lies ur govt commits abt us. That is why I am here; to set the record straight. To tell u the truth. To assure u not to worry. I will take care of u. I will be waiting for u at the end of ur hijrah. Here u will be loved, here u will be cherished, here u will find and fulfill ur destiny in sight of Allah.

  I must confess, Salim. Sometimes I feel I am betraying Jesus.

  O Bella. U must understand that Islam recognizes Jesus as a prophet, along with Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad. In fact, during our prayers, we press our foreheads to the ground because the Bible tells us Jesus & all the prophets before him prayed in that fashion. But Jesus is not God, Bella. In this Christianity is mistaken. Do u understand me?

  I’m not sure.

  Here is my meaning, put another way. I have invited u to embrace Islam. I am not telling u to leave Christianity. I am informing u that Islam is the correction of Christianity.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Laurel approached the Shehadi house with a high degree of alertness. She walked at a normal pace. She did not look to the left or the right, did not swing her head around to glance behind her as characters in thrillers did. That kind of behavior might heighten tension, but in a real-life situation it was bound to draw attention.

  Having picked up tips from Orfeo and Jimmy Self, she was able to ID two cars parked at either end of the street that seemed suspicious. They were both Chevys that looked as if they had been subtly modified, like detective cruisers.

  There was still time to back out. She was not yet in their line of sight. She could turn around now and leave, but once she moved forward from here, they would mark her. She would be of interest to them because she was walking up the steps to the Shehadi house, which they had under surveillance. She did not kid herself. These people were not Dearborn police. They weren’t state police ei
ther. They were feds. FBI. All at once the full force of Gael’s warning smacked her in the face. Considering what had gone down with Dey, she was in no position to walk into the FBI’s sights. If they decided to interrogate her, to look into her background, she was pretty sure it would be game over. Gael’s work was excellent, but she had to wonder if it could stand up to a small army of feds. On the other hand, Gael worked for the feds; they were in some sense dependent on him for a good portion of their deep-cover work. Could his network save her? Maybe, maybe not. Nothing in life was assured: she knew that better than most.

  Here, then, was her border. If she stayed where she was, she would be safe. She could turn around, take a plane to JFK or LAX, and be off to anywhere in the world except here. Yes, of course, she thought, why not keep running away? That’s what you’ve been doing all your so-called life, which, she bitterly had to admit, wasn’t much of a life at all.

  Intuition and an admittedly fragile spiderweb of information she had gleaned had led her to the conclusion that Bella had not been abducted. She had run away. Why wouldn’t she? She was not only unloved and abandoned; she believed herself despised by her mother, unwanted by Richard. And now here Laurel was, at the epicenter of Richard’s life and now her own. That was her choice. Life or no life. That was no choice at all. She was the only one who had a chance to find out what had happened to Bella, to possibly do for her what her parents could not, what Laurel’s own parents had failed to do for her. Stand by her, protect her, because no one else was capable of doing so. To go on, to do what she knew she must do, might very well put her in harm’s way. But wasn’t that what a parent did for her child? Wasn’t that called responsibility? Laurel knew, deep down, that if there was any chance at all that by some miracle Bella was here, she had to find her. She had to save her. She was convinced that she was meant to be here. How did she know this? It was faith and faith only. A faith she had never known existed, let alone known she could possess.