Ellie’s Murder

By Sara Metz

Ellie was the girl who always smiled. Every time someone at the mosque was rude to her, or told her she was doing something wrong, she just smiled and thanked Allah for the barakah they gave her. “I’ll be rewarded for every prick of a thorn,” she’d say and sit down with her weathered copy of the Qur’an and keep working on that surah she never managed to memorize. She came to every jum’aa prayer and even tried to socialize with the aunties during the Ramadan iftars. Sure, she didn’t understand Urdu, drink chai, or know what the heck biryani was, but she never complained.

It’s hard to believe that anyone would murder such an innocent girl.

On her way home from the jum’aa prayer, someone came up behind her and pushed her into the street. Ellie’s strong spirit was no match for the bus that struck her.

My father was the first to suggest it: Islamaphobia. Ellie’s death was no accident; it was at the hands of someone who hated Muslims, he said. Someone who had watched too much Fox News and saw too many images of beheaded journalists in Syria. Someone who thought that Muslims were anti-American immigrants who wanted to overturn democracy with shariah.

Before we knew it, my father was standing at a podium in front of hundreds of journalists. He was denouncing the anti-Islam atmosphere that conquered the country following September 11th and whatever the most recent revealed terrorist plot was at the time. He denounced America for attacking one of its own. Ellie’s smiling face was plastered on newspapers and television screens. Soon, all of America was mourning the loss of a bright, young woman.

In the wake of Ellie’s death, police swarmed the mosque. They asked all of us if we knew anyone that would want to harm Ellie. Of course, we couldn’t think of anyone. She had always been friendly. She never said a bad word to anyone. They asked us about her worklife, but none of us really knew anything; we never thought to ask her. They asked us about her interests and hobbies, about her friends and family, but all we knew was that she was a convert- struggling to get by after her Christian parents kicked her out. That was what she had said that first day she came to the mosque a few years ago, right?

When the police left, we all speculated amongst each other what might have happened. Ellie had stayed at the mosque after the prayer, hoping to speak to the imam afterwards and get some advice about some problems she was dealing with. She waited nearly an hour, but ultimately he left without seeing her; five minutes after leaving the mosque, she was dead. Was the murderer someone who had come to the mosque? Had someone waited for her after the prayer and followed her home?

There was a growing nervous tension at the mosque. Until the police completed their investigation, we started to question who could and couldn’t be trusted. That young man who converted two weeks before- was he an FBI informant? Why was he always sitting off to the side by himself? My father, decrying the American plot to destroy our Muslim community, ran the boy out. We never saw him again.

The next week, the police finished their investigation. My father prepared the press release. An officer approached the podium. Written down in a confession, they had determined the murderer’s identity. Our suspicions were right: the murderer had come to the mosque. My father was right: the murderer hated Muslims. As he held up the note, he announced that the person responsible for Ellie’s death was… Ellie.

Sara Metz currently lives in Northern California, but has previously lived in Texas, Maryland, Syria, and Italy. She has recently completed a work of literary fiction, Awake at Fajr, that is based on her  life in Syria during the first year of the civil war.