Mark and I drove out to the Ibrahims’ mansion in West Kensington to take a look at what Shazia’s home life was like. The place was tastefully decorated with elephant sculptures carved out of wood and South Asian art.
Shazia’s room, however, was a treasure trove of clues to her tastes and personality.
“Our girl’s a geek,” Mark declared, delighted. “I like her already.”
Aside from her textbooks, her bookshelf was lined with science fiction and fantasy novels. She had a flat-screen TV and DVD player in her room, and her DVD collection consisted of box sets for Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and an assortment of anime. She was a huge Sailor Moon fan; both the manga and remastered DVDs occupied a place on her shelf that was practically an altar.
“How do you recognize all that stuff, anyway?” Mark asked.
“My students were into it, so I would hear about it all the time back when I was teaching.”
I didn’t think she’d gone to join any terrorists. A girl who loved escapist genre fantasies that celebrated freedom and tolerance would have an imagination that had been vaccinated against the narrow, restrictive, and repressed nihilism of jihadist ideology. Her parents would be relieved to hear that.
She’d taken her computer with her. If she kept a diary, she must have taken it with her, as well. Maybe she wrote it on her computer. It might be a lifeline to keeping in touch with friends she trusted. And perhaps she didn’t want her parents to look at her computer and find out what she was really up to, including running off without warning. She had also taken her smartphone with her, probably so her parents couldn’t see what was on it or use her contacts list, but she’d kept it switched off since she disappeared. Too bad, but we knew her email address, and Olivia could do something with that.
Back at the office, Olivia ran a search for Shazia’s name and email address to see what kind of websites she might have visited. Mark and I did the obvious, of course, which was to find her social media profiles.
Shazia was a fairly typical twentysomething and not quite the reserved, strictly watched, repressed Muslim kid her parents had raised. She had a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, and an Instagram account. We may not have had her phone or computer, but Olivia easily unearthed her accounts and also the websites that she visited regularly over the last four, five years, as well as her online purchases, mainly geek fan stuff. She followed and was followed back not just by her family and cousins, but she also had friends outside of Asian and Muslim circles. She was part of a few anime fan groups and would meet them at conventions and get-togethers, always with her mother as chaperone to keep things on the up-and-up.
In less than three hours of tracking her online footprints, I had a profile ready.
If developmental psychology had been my field, I could have written a paper about how kids grew up using pop culture to explore and moderate their identities, and how comics and cartoons from Japan had been used by kids to navigate and come to terms with their gender identities and sexuality. That was what I noticed when I was teaching secondary school. Of course, at Golden Sentinels, Roger wasn’t always interested in the hows or whys, merely the results.
“Shazia Ibrahim is a lesbian,” I said. “That’s a major reason for her doing a runner from her traditional arranged marriage.”
“Are you positive?” Cheryl asked. “She could just be experimenting. She’s still young enough to be fluid.”
“Normally, I’d be more cautious about my conclusions, but it all adds up: She’s a big fan of science fiction and fantasy books and shows that featured prominent gay and lesbian characters. She’s a big fan of the Sailor Moon manga and anime, and that series has a big following among lesbian fans because two of the heroines in it are a couple. She’s also a fan of Rose of Versailles, a historical manga set in pre-revolutionary France whose heroine is a cross-dresser who commands the palace guards and is admired by both men and women. Her blog likes to talk about anime and manga that feature lesbian characters. She’s huge on yuri, which is manga about love stories between girls. When we looked at her Facebook and her Instagram account, the photos were of her with a lot of female friends, and several of them were lesbians and members of the LGBT community. She’s a member of several LGBT fan groups for science fiction, fantasy, and anime. One woman is in more photos than the others, and often posing with her. Adelaide Robertson. My bet is Adelaide Robertson is her girlfriend. They’re in love, and wherever Shazia’s run off to, it’s with Adelaide. Adelaide is probably paying the way for both of them.”
“So what we have here is The Case of the Runaway Lesbian Otaku?” Benjamin said.
“Oh, please!” Olivia said. “A female otaku is called a fujoshi.”
Off our blank looks, Olivia rolled her eyes.
“It’s Japanese slang for ‘dirty girl.’ Female nerds.”
Yup, Roger really did hire us for our specialized knowledge.
“Right, then,” Olivia said. “I’ll start checking for air tickets under both their names.”
“Do we tell her parents she’s gay?” I asked.
“I strongly advise,” Roger said, “that we refrain from mentioning that to them.”