disappearance ended, because two days later, planes flew into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania pasture. Among the dead was a Los Perdidos native, an Iranian-American busboy working at Windows on the World.
The next time Tujin’s name appeared in print was when her family returned to Iraq. Then it was buried in a six-line blurb on B-6, below the fold.
But the day after I found Precious Doe, the headline on the
Cochise County Observer
screamed:
SECOND CHILD, SECOND TRAGEDY
Chapter Seven
“Did you know the Rafik family?” I asked Martha Green, after paying for the copies I’d made in the microfilm room. Since Los Perdidos only had two libraries, the Geronimo and the smaller Cochise, there was a chance she had at least met the missing girl.
She continued to shelve books. “I ran into them every now and then at Safeway, but we weren’t exactly friendly. They were reclusive, very Old World, and I never saw the girl out on her own.”
I knew what she meant. In Phoenix, where there was a sizeable community of newly-arrived folks from Middle Eastern countries, a few had trouble blending in. Unlike the European immigrants who entered the U.S. over the past few centuries and were eager to dive into the melting pot, some Muslims, concerned about what they saw as Americans’ lax morals, were loathe to do so.
The upside was that their children tended to be better behaved than most kids. You never heard about roving gangs of Muslim toughs painting graffiti on fences or participating in drive-by shootings. The downside was that some traditionally-oriented Muslims made no effort to enter into the chaotic raucousness of American life. After the events of 9/11, their refusal had brought about increasing government scrutiny, which in turn, made the traditionals withdraw even further.
But Tujin had disappeared
before
9/11. Remembering her father’s seeming fluency in English in the earlier article, I asked the librarian, “Did you ever hear Tujin talk?”
She gave me a baffled look. “What a strange question. She came in here with her mother and father once, asking if I would help her find a book for some class assignment. There was nothing wrong with her voice, if that’s what you mean.”
Had Tujin’s father lied to Sheriff Avery? “Then you had no trouble understanding her.”
“Of course not. She didn’t even have an accent. Her mother was a different story. The poor woman couldn’t speak a word of English but the father was fairly fluent. Say, what’s this all about?”
“Just a discrepancy I’m trying to clear up. By the way, I’m curious as to why this is the first I’ve heard that a child’s been missing from this area for several years? Why didn’t the state media cover it more thoroughly? If she’d disappeared right after 9/11, I could understand, but it happened months earlier.”
A bitter laugh. “See the color of Tujin’s skin?”
I studied the girl’s photograph again. She was dark. Very dark.
Martha explained, “The local media’s about the only coverage Tujin received, because the same day, a blond-haired, blue-eyed ten-year-old went missing in Maine. The media, even the Arizona media, were all over
that
girl’s case.” Her mouth twisted. “Not that color had anything to do with it, of course.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Missing blondes of whatever age received the most press. Something else puzzled me. “None of these articles mentioned anything about brothers or sisters.”
She slid another book onto the shelf, “I hear she was an only child.”
Recently, I’d worked a case in Phoenix, a hate crime against a Muslim Circle K clerk, and had noticed that Muslims enjoyed large families. “Isn’t that unusual, for a Muslim girl to be an only child?”
“Oh, yes. Family is very important to those folks, but Tujin was a Kurd. I’m not certain she was Muslim.”
“The newspaper said she was Iraqi.”
The librarian in her
The next time Tujin’s name appeared in print was when her family returned to Iraq. Then it was buried in a six-line blurb on B-6, below the fold.
But the day after I found Precious Doe, the headline on the
Cochise County Observer
screamed:
SECOND CHILD, SECOND TRAGEDY
Chapter Seven
“Did you know the Rafik family?” I asked Martha Green, after paying for the copies I’d made in the microfilm room. Since Los Perdidos only had two libraries, the Geronimo and the smaller Cochise, there was a chance she had at least met the missing girl.
She continued to shelve books. “I ran into them every now and then at Safeway, but we weren’t exactly friendly. They were reclusive, very Old World, and I never saw the girl out on her own.”
I knew what she meant. In Phoenix, where there was a sizeable community of newly-arrived folks from Middle Eastern countries, a few had trouble blending in. Unlike the European immigrants who entered the U.S. over the past few centuries and were eager to dive into the melting pot, some Muslims, concerned about what they saw as Americans’ lax morals, were loathe to do so.
The upside was that their children tended to be better behaved than most kids. You never heard about roving gangs of Muslim toughs painting graffiti on fences or participating in drive-by shootings. The downside was that some traditionally-oriented Muslims made no effort to enter into the chaotic raucousness of American life. After the events of 9/11, their refusal had brought about increasing government scrutiny, which in turn, made the traditionals withdraw even further.
But Tujin had disappeared
before
9/11. Remembering her father’s seeming fluency in English in the earlier article, I asked the librarian, “Did you ever hear Tujin talk?”
She gave me a baffled look. “What a strange question. She came in here with her mother and father once, asking if I would help her find a book for some class assignment. There was nothing wrong with her voice, if that’s what you mean.”
Had Tujin’s father lied to Sheriff Avery? “Then you had no trouble understanding her.”
“Of course not. She didn’t even have an accent. Her mother was a different story. The poor woman couldn’t speak a word of English but the father was fairly fluent. Say, what’s this all about?”
“Just a discrepancy I’m trying to clear up. By the way, I’m curious as to why this is the first I’ve heard that a child’s been missing from this area for several years? Why didn’t the state media cover it more thoroughly? If she’d disappeared right after 9/11, I could understand, but it happened months earlier.”
A bitter laugh. “See the color of Tujin’s skin?”
I studied the girl’s photograph again. She was dark. Very dark.
Martha explained, “The local media’s about the only coverage Tujin received, because the same day, a blond-haired, blue-eyed ten-year-old went missing in Maine. The media, even the Arizona media, were all over
that
girl’s case.” Her mouth twisted. “Not that color had anything to do with it, of course.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Missing blondes of whatever age received the most press. Something else puzzled me. “None of these articles mentioned anything about brothers or sisters.”
She slid another book onto the shelf, “I hear she was an only child.”
Recently, I’d worked a case in Phoenix, a hate crime against a Muslim Circle K clerk, and had noticed that Muslims enjoyed large families. “Isn’t that unusual, for a Muslim girl to be an only child?”
“Oh, yes. Family is very important to those folks, but Tujin was a Kurd. I’m not certain she was Muslim.”
“The newspaper said she was Iraqi.”
The librarian in her
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