Not long after that first phone call, he started sending me e-cards. I rarely opened them and never responded. I just wanted him to go away.
On campus, I was on high alert. When I drove, I looked intently at every person in every car I passed. I tried to memorize every detail that surrounded me—makes and models of vehicles, license plate numbers, street names that I hadn’t bothered to learn before. If I had to call for help, I would need those details. I varied my routes to and from class to try to throw off any would-be stalkers. The problem was that I had a set schedule. Still, I wouldn’t make it any easier for “them” than I had to.
All these measures took time and an incredible amount of mental and physical energy. I desperately needed sleep, but I was too scared to let my guard down enough to rest. What if the attack came in the night while I was asleep? I survived on around three hours of sleep a night, and the sleep deprivation left me manic and jittery.
Over the years Mom and I had put great effort into balancing normalcy with safety. I had become accustomed to taking extensive security precautions while managing to engage in most of the activities I had desired. Up until now, my life had moved on rather smoothly in spite of my dad. This was the first time he had proven so disruptive to my daily functioning.
I felt selfish for wanting to go back to my normal life. I didn’t want to abandon Mom, and I didn’t want to endanger my roommates, but the drive from Mom’s to East Lansing was brutal, and I missed my friends and my apartment. One evening, just before Christmas, I decided to go back to the apartment just long enough to celebrate and exchange gifts with my roommates. Once I was there, it felt so good to have a taste of my real life again that I decided I would spend just one night. It was already late, and we were having such a joyful time. And then the call came from Mom.
Someone had just fired a gun outside John’s house. Earlier in the week, Joe’s dog, who never left the yard, had disappeared without a trace. I didn’t want to believe it had anything to do with me, but now that both of my brothers had been affected, I couldn’t deny the likelihood that these mysterious happenings were all connected.
Just like that, the party came to an end. I scurried around the living room throwing my gifts in a bag and sprinted down the stairs. I had to go home. I couldn’t handle being the one to lead “them” to my friends as I had to my family. My three roommates followed me to the door, offering their encouragement as I put on my boots. Unable to find words to comfort me, they wrapped me in an embrace. “This is never going to end,” I sobbed, feeling utterly defeated.
For reasons beyond my understanding, my family’s struggle had become so much bigger than my family. Governments were involved; readers and viewers were involved; a documentary producer was involved, and in recent days I had learned that even an MSU student had become involved, working as an intern on the film project. In that moment, I knew that even if my dad were dead, I would never be free of this curse.
Around that time my niece, Kelsey, was pulled from school. She had just started preschool when my dad found me. How do you explain to a four-year-old that even though she loves school and all her friends get to go to school and play with each other, she has to stay at home just in case her aunt’s daddy tries to steal her? She looked so much like I had at four that we were afraid my dad would try to kidnap her in an attempt to relive the years he had lost with me.
John, Dianne, and Kelsey lived in a small town nearly an hour from Mom’s house, yet they had experienced a number of mysterious incidents that we feared were not coincidental. On several occasions my brother and sister-in-law had had a strange feeling that someone had been in their home while they were away. The gunshot near their home seemed to confirm that we all had valid cause for concern. We weren’t just collectively imagining these things.
The weather forecasters were calling for a blizzard the night before my last final of the semester. The state police had issued a statement asking people to stay off the roads, so I had no choice but to stay at my apartment. In the morning there were mountains of snow everywhere. Every school except MSU was closed, many businesses were closed, and public transportation had shut down.
When I arrived on campus and saw that the parking lots had not been plowed, I grew nervous. I would have to park in the parking garage, which was against my policy. It was just too much of a risk. Entry and exit points were far too limited, and there were virtually limitless places for an attacker to hide. I circled around in the hope of finding a lot somewhere on campus that had been cleared. Even if it meant walking farther, it would be better than parking in a ramp. Finding no other alternative, I returned to the closest ramp and parked.
There’s something exhilarating about breathing deeply on a snowy day, and everyone in the lecture hall seemed to feel it. The mood was light and jovial, something I hadn’t experienced with any exam I had ever taken. The students were laughing and smiling, swapping stories of their adventures of getting to class that day. We only quieted down when the exam was passed around.
I quickly lost myself in the multiple-choice questions. I couldn’t fill in the corresponding bubbles fast enough. I knew this material. I reached the end with a smile, feeling absolutely confident that I had answered each question correctly. With a satisfied sigh, I lifted my head and realized that I was the first one done. This was really unusual for me. I’m a slow reader and a slow test taker, more likely to be the last to finish than the first.
Perplexed, I looked back over my answers. Still, no one else was finished. I read through the entire exam a third time and decided I had waited long enough. Quietly I walked to the front of the lecture hall and, with a shrug, handed the paper to the professor.
Out in the main corridor, students filled the halls. I squeezed my way through the crowd, pausing at the door and taking a mental inventory of the surroundings. Everything seemed fine, so I gave the door a push and stepped out onto the sidewalk. Already, I was dreading going back to my car in the parking garage.
Other students were headed the same way I was, but their numbers dropped off one by one as I made my way toward the ramp. Soon there were just two male students a short distance behind me. Across the street there was a lone vehicle in the parking lot of the planetarium. Something about it made me uneasy. It was a van, the kind with no windows on the back, and it was parked perpendicular to the parking spots. As far as I could see, there were no other people around except for the two young men behind me. I could hear them quickening their pace.
My mind raced, trying to put the pieces together. All I could think of was that my dad and the film crew were inside that van. What was their plan? Were they going to jump out and force me into an interview or a reunion, or were they just going to grab me, throw me into the van, and drive off?
The footsteps were right behind me. Then came the tap on my shoulder.
I knew there was a student working as an intern on the documentary. I knew his name. I knew his hometown. I knew which dorm he lived in. I even knew his major. The only thing I didn’t know until that very moment was what he looked like.
I stopped dead in my tracks. If there was going to be a confrontation, it was going to be out here in the open and not under the cover of the parking garage.
“Are you Mahtob Mahmoody?” he asked. His friend didn’t say a word.
“No,” I lied.
“You’re not Mahtob Mahmoody?”
“No. What do you want with her anyway?” I was shaking and cursing my ridiculous hat, which had slid down and was partially obstructing my view of the van parked across the street.
“I’m trying to deliver a package to her. It’s from her dad.”
“Well, good luck with that. I don’t know who she is.” Trying with every ounce of my being to sound confident, I turned and walked calmly away from them, all the while praying that they wouldn’t follow me, that the doors of the van wouldn’t fly open to swallow me up, that the film crew wouldn’t emerge from the shadows. With great effort I steadied my br
eathing and straightened my shoulders. I glanced behind me once, and they were standing still where I had left them as if deciding what to do. Then they turned, and I heard their footsteps retreat.
That’s when my bravado crumbled. Running to the parking garage, gasping for air, tears streaming down my face, I hurtled myself up the stairs and darted for the safety of my car. There I locked myself inside and sat frozen with fear behind the wheel. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. “Dear God, please help me,” I begged aloud.
I hadn’t asked the young man’s name. Why hadn’t I asked them to identify themselves? I needed to give the police something to work with. I pulled out of the parking structure and turned toward the dorm where I knew the intern lived. As suspected, I spotted the two of them along the route. I turned off before I reached them and circled around just in time to see them walking up the steps of the building where the intern lived.
That was all the proof I needed to race to the police station, where I filed a tearful report with the detective who was working my case. The package, I would later learn, was a video from my father. The detective offered to try to get it for me, but I told her I didn’t want it. I wasn’t interested in anything my dad had to say.
Of all the law enforcement agents who helped us, that detective stood out. She wanted so badly to help me. She gave me a parking pass that would get me into the faculty lots so I could park as close to my classes as possible. She followed up on every lead, ran patrols by my classes, and encouraged me to report anything that made me the least bit uncomfortable. She assured me it didn’t matter if it ended up being nothing. No suspicion was too trivial.
At one point I even sat with a sketch artist and described a middle-aged man who had smiled at me in passing. It hadn’t been a flirtatious smile, just a smile of acknowledgement. But it was midsemester, and I had only recently begun to see him as I made my way between classes. That was the first red flag. The second was that he made eye contact and smiled one day as we met on the sidewalk. People just didn’t do that on our campus. We kept our heads down and walked with purpose from one building to the next. But this man walked amiably with his head up, smiling at students as he went. On top of all that, he bore a slight resemblance to my dad. They had the same slouchy jowls.
I knew it was probably nothing, but I was afraid to leave any stone unturned, so I mentioned the man to the detective. She had the sketch artist make a rendering of the man I had seen, and she went and talked with him. As it turned out, he was simply a friendly professor who taught a class in a nearby building. It really was nothing, but in those days, as far as Mom and I were concerned, everything was something.
The following spring I took Kelsey to Mom’s house for a sleepover. John and Dianne were out visiting some friends when I took her home the next evening. They’d left the door unlocked for me and said to call when we got there. Before I could pull into the driveway, their dog, an extremely intelligent and mild-mannered chocolate lab, ran into the road. She paced back and forth in front of my car, barking and growling.
I’d never seen Cocoa behave like this. She tried with all her might to caution me to keep away, but I didn’t heed her warning. I inched my way into the driveway and parked. She ran circles around the car, begging me to stay in the shelter of the locked vehicle. Still I didn’t listen. Kelsey and I got out, walked around to the trunk, and loaded our arms with her sleepover paraphernalia. All the while, the dog continued her frenetic pleas.
“Cocoa, it’s just us. You know us.” I said, holding my hands out for her to sniff. When reasoning didn’t work, I turned to commanding her to be quiet. Kelsey, even then independent and fearless beyond her years, headed through the darkness toward the house. The gravel of the driveway crunched beneath the wheels of the tiny pink suitcase she dragged as I slammed the trunk and locked the doors.
Cocoa carried on pacing nervously in our path, begrudgingly letting us force her backward as we approached the front door. When we climbed the porch steps, she growled and bared her teeth, something I’d never known her to do.
“What on earth has gotten into you? Move out of the way,” I ordered, but she didn’t. Even as I reached for the door handle, she wedged her body in between us and the danger she knew lurked inside.
The door didn’t budge. I pulled again and nothing. It was locked. Finally, comprehending Cocoa’s distress, I calmly turned Kelsey around and said, “Come on, sweetie, back to the car. The door’s locked. It looks like we’ll have to wait for Mommy and Daddy to get home to let us in.”
She didn’t argue. “Quickly now,” I urged her, trying not to sound alarmed. “Let’s see how fast we can make it to the car. Hurry.”
“I’ll beat you,” she giggled, moving her little feet as fast as they would go.
“Go to the driver’s door. You can climb over the seat and into the back, like an obstacle course,” I instructed as if we were playing a game. She didn’t see me looking over my shoulder to make sure the intruder wasn’t coming after us. Cocoa, ever faithful, continued to stand guard.
I opened the door, and Kelsey jumped in. In one fell swoop I threw the suitcase into the front passenger seat and squeezed myself and my armload of stuff behind the steering wheel, slamming the door and locking us inside. I was buried in the pink and purple makings of a slumber party—a pillow, a blanket, a stuffed animal, and a Tupperware container filled with the homemade cookies Kelsey and I had baked together with Grandma Betty—the ones that were her daddy’s favorite. Shoving it all on top of the suitcase, I eyed the house, my gaze darting from window to window, searching for any movement. I saw nothing but darkness.
“Wow, good job,” I said to my niece. “You were speedy! I almost couldn’t keep up with you. How fast can you get yourself buckled?” I fastened my own seatbelt and reaching for my cell to call my brother. I was backing out when she announced her success.
John answered in his normal jovial way, “Heeeh-lo,” he said, putting the accent on the first syllable and drawing it out. “What’s up?”
“You’re not home, are you?”
“No, haven’t left our friends’ house yet. We’ll be there shortly. Make yourself at home. Cocoa’s outside. You can let her in. She’ll just sit on her mat by the door.”
“The door’s locked.”
“No it’s not. I left it open for you.”
“The door is locked. Cocoa was going crazy, trying to keep us away from the house, and when I tried to open the door it was locked. We’re fine. We’re back in the car and driving. No one seems to be following us.”
“Keep driving. Don’t come back until I give you the all clear. I’m on my way.”
“Don’t go in alone,” I pleaded.
John arrived home in a matter of minutes to find the house just as he’d left it. The door was unlocked. Nothing was missing, and nothing out of place. Whoever had been inside had vanished.
It was infuriating—one more incident that could easily have been imagined, only it wasn’t. Who was behind it? Was it my dad? I doubted it was him personally. Had he hired someone? What kind of person accepts such a job? What else are they capable of? What was my dad trying to accomplish?
How could I make this end?
CHAPTER 26
In the fall, when my senior year began, I moved into an apartment with Trish and Brian. Mom had agreed to let me move back to East Lansing only if I had a male roommate, and Brian had been a faithful friend since my first day on campus. Things had quieted somewhat with my dad, but the intrusions had not completely gone away, and we were all still on high alert.
One evening I sat at a small table in the university library café, surrounded by a sea of students. Beside me was a boy, sitting alone. His table matched mine—a mess of books and papers. He looked to be of Asian descent. I wondered about his story. Was he like me, a mix of two cultures? Had he been born here or there—wherever there was? Did he grow up afraid of being taken back by a parent?
To my left, a group of coeds interru
pted their flirting with an occasional round of questions from their study guides. A steady stream of hungry, caffeine-addicted students filtered through the line at the coffee bar just behind me.
I preferred to sit along a wall, not just so I could more easily maintain my illusion of invisibility, but because along the wall there were fewer directions to monitor—it was safer. In my four years at MSU, I had come to know the library well and could easily and inconspicuously navigate the stacks to several exits on various sides of the building. This had become second nature. My cell phone was always within reach, as was a can of mace and a massive tangle of keys studded with a chain of carabiners, extra key chains and a whistle. If no one heard me blow the whistle, the mace and my makeshift metal whip could be used as weapons.
Not long into my cramming session, I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye. Without raising my head, I watched three Asian teens approach the boy at the next table. I wasn’t listening to their hushed whispers. My mind was back on my notes when I heard it. The sound cut through the cacophony and startled me to attention.
How many years had it been since I’d heard that terrible sound? Later I would do the math: 2002 minus 1986 equals 16 years. How differently I had reacted to it as a child. Somewhere along the road of life I had lost my courage. I wondered when that had happened.
As a twenty-two-year-old, the sound of angry fists slamming into human flesh left me frozen with terror. It’s strange the way a body absorbs the sound of a punch. If that same force hit a table, plates would jump, silverware would tremble, water would ripple in the glasses. But a body quiets the blow to a grotesque dull thunk.
The scene played out before me in slow motion. The boy whose table matched mine was badly outnumbered, and I watched silently as the three ruffians beat him up. They knocked him out of his chair, punched him, kicked him, and cursed him. I looked around the room at all the other students, my eyes pleading with them to do something to protect this boy who wasn’t able to protect himself. No one moved. In my head I was screaming for someone, anyone, to make it all stop. How could it be that not one person would take action? How could it be that I, of all people, could be one of them?
My Name Is Mahtob Page 20