Of Not Knowing
Not a big surprise that Jonathan Mark Karr did not kill JonBenet, right? I mean, we know he’s off but the details just didn’t add up, even if we wanted them to and believe me, I wanted them to. A few cases have me just as obsessed as Karr and the tragic mystery of JonBenet is one of them. It would have been nice to cross it off emotionally, even though it could never be as satisfying as when Elizabeth Smart was found, thankfully alive. To me, there is the most horror in the not knowing, which always brings to mind what is for me the most haunting of mysteries; those who are old enough will remember Etan Patz, the little boy snatched on his way to school in New York City maybe 20 years ago. This week we learned of a little girl, Natascha Kampusch, in Vienna, Austria who was similarly taken when she was ten, and now turns up alive and living with her abductor, albeit clearly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, (whereby a victim aligns with her captor,) but she’s alive, nonetheless. No doubt she has years of emotional healing ahead of her and the nightmares of her abuse have yet to be addressed but can you imagine the nightmares put to bed for her parents? Amid the joy for Natascha and her family I once again think of the Patz family and wonder if this renews their horror or their hope. How do they manage to avoid looking into the face of every twenty-something boy they pass? The horror of not knowing has to be the most evil kind of torture imaginable. As a mother, I can’t imagine anything worse. Perhaps I even write this piece believing it is some sort of talisman against it. And that leads me to the latest and most sensational of cases; Natalie Holloway. Don’t even get me started. Any American that goes to Aruba after the way the Aruban government handled that case should be ashamed.
Years ago, before 9/11, I wrote the outline for a novel I’ve since abandoned. It had to do with white slavery and the snatching of white, blond teenagers from wholesome American locales like shopping malls. Needless to say it was sparked from the deep, fearful parts of my heart. I abandoned the book because I’d set it in Afghanistan, having chosen that country as much for my ignorance of it as my gut impression; dark, dusty, and oppressive, especially to women. I had begun research and had even collected news articles, beginning to get a feel for the people and geography so I could authentically set the book. This was in the summer of 2001. After 9/11 and Osama I couldn’t begin to go there. So I’ve waited for the time to be right and I believe my outrage is just hot enough to bring back to a boil and my psyche just healed enough to settle into this disturbing subject, this horror of not knowing. One thing I expect is to set it in a different locale, perhaps one with a distinctly Dutch Caribbean flavor. Stay tuned. And pray for all the missing children and their families.