Lie: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” —Donald J. Trump, July 24, 2018
Truth: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” —George Orwell, 1984
Fact: Truth is stranger than fiction.
“No way,” Asma said in a voice that was too loud for the library. I immediately shushed her. It was the first morning of my forced volunteer work, and I wanted to keep my head down, even if I was the only one at the checkout desk while the librarian was in the back room sorting through new acquisitions.
Asma rolled her eyes at me but lowered her voice and continued. “You think Nate sent that threatening note to your mosque?” Despite all of us being Muslim, Asma, Usman, and I all went to different mosques for a combination of reasons linked to ethnicity, sect, and geography. It was pretty old-school. None of those differences mattered to us—we were all Muslim.
“Don’t you think it’s weird he blurted out ‘God is dead’? The exact same line that was in the letter my mosque got?” I asked, pulling my hands into the sleeves of my cozy sweater.
“It’s strange, but he’s pretty strange, too, so…” Asma shrugged.
“That’s not all, though.… I thought it was just some Islamophobic thing that someone wrote, but after Nate said it, I Googled it. It’s a Nietzsche quote, too. And so is ‘Swallow your poison.’”
“What. The. Hell. You have to tell the police. You think Nate sent the text, too?”
“Shhh,” I whispered, looking around the library. “It could be a coincidence, but that’s a bizarrely huge amount of Nietzsche. Like, I never even heard of the dude until Usman mentioned him, and now he’s everywhere in my life.”
Asma shuddered. “Something’s rotten in the state of DuSable. It’s creepy. Dangerous. And with that kid missing—”
“Jawad. His name is Jawad,” I whispered. I hated how everyone seemed to forget his name. Especially the press, who constantly referred to him as an “Arab American teen” or the “son of Iraqi refugees.” Taking away someone’s name was how you made them an object instead of a living, breathing human being.
Asma nodded. “Jawad. With Jawad still missing and you getting that text and the hack and that swastika…”
I paused. Took a breath. A chill ran through me. It seemed impossible that it could all be Nate. “So you think it might all be connected, too?”
“I’m saying a lot of scary, violent stuff is going down all around us, so be careful. And tell the police. This is like a true crime story waiting to happen, and it’s way above your editor-in-chief pay grade to figure it out.”
“Exactly!”
I rubbed my forehead. “I don’t trust that the police are going to believe it, believe me. Besides, I don’t want my name associated with this mess. My parents would find out and they’d freak.”
“Safiya, seriously. Even if it’s not Nate, at the very least there’s some psycho white supremacist running around quoting a dead German philosopher. Your parents going ballistic should be the least of your worries.”
Asma was right. I knew she was. So why was I hesitating? I know a part of me didn’t think that the police would do anything. But a part of me wondered if I was paranoid and making connections where none existed. I mean, Nate? He’s a friggin’ bird-watcher. That doesn’t exactly scream criminal mastermind.
“Look,” Asma continued, “you can report it anonymously. You don’t have to share your text, but your suspicions about Nate seem legit. Do it now. I remember we got a postcard from our alderman about a tip website. Hang on.” Asma whipped out her phone, looked up the site, and then handed the phone to me. “Boom. TipSubmit. Hurry up and use the librarian’s computer if you’re worried about them tracing the ISP.”
I smiled. “Fine. Hang on.” I typed in the address, agreed to the terms, and wrote a few sentences about overhearing Nate utter the same words that were in the threatening note to our mosque. I named our school, but not the specific class. Of course, if the police wanted to figure out who sent it, it wouldn’t be that hard. The Venn diagram of Muslim kids who go to my mosque and attend this school was a complete circle, and I was the only one in it. “There,” I said, tilting the computer screen and hitting ENTER as Asma leaned way over the counter. “One more hot tip for the police to ignore.”
“The note to your mosque was postmarked from London, right?” Asma asked. I nodded. “Well, where did Nate go during winter break? I was in Paris. I could’ve sent a letter from there.”
“I can’t exactly go up to Nate and ask him if he was in London in December. I’ve never spoken a single word to him outside of class. Barely in class, either.”
Asma groaned. “Have you seriously not listened to any of the true crime podcasts I rec’d?”
“They give me nightmares.” I seemed like the kind of person who would be a true crime, murderino type, but I couldn’t deal with gruesome. “I listened to Gone and Forgotten, but I was tossing and turning all night, thinking about that girl in the trunk who has never been identified. Like, how can no one have claimed her? Plus, it’s messed up that a lot of stories make the murderers famous while their victims are forgotten by everyone but their families, who have to relive their trauma over and over because we’re all obsessed with true crime.”
“I hear you. But what I meant was, you have to be stealthy and resourceful about your research. If only you knew a plucky journalist who enjoyed cross-referencing and other nerdy pursuits. Oh, wait.” Asma folded her arms across her chest.
“Ha! I’ll let you know if I meet one,” I said as the bell rang, rushing Asma off to her next class. I gathered my things. I didn’t know why I was dragging my heels. I had an actual possible lead—okay, maybe more like a tiny hunch—connecting Nate to the threatening letter the mosque had gotten. But it was an even bigger leap from there to the stuff that had happened at school and my text—a leap with no net below. Still, it did all go down in this neighborhood.… There was a voice inside my head telling me that if I pulled on this thread, I was going to unravel a whole mess that would entangle my entire life.
I stepped out of the library into the busy hallway. There was a faint ringing in my ears again—the sound I’d been hearing on and off since my suspension. I thought maybe I’d been listening to music too loudly with my earbuds. But I swear to God, underneath that ringing, I heard a whisper: Help me. I looked over my shoulder, but no one in the hall was paying attention to me. I turned around and continued walking to class. Then that incense smell wafted over me again, like an echo. Like a moment that was about to become a memory.