Who is she and why is she stopping in every room to get her picture taken?
Wish I were a fiction writer. A mysterious woman poses in every room in Istanbul’s magnificent Topkapi palace. Click, click. A photographer follows her. I watch. She doesn’t change her expression, which is devoid of emotion.
She’s a celebrity or a Turkish politician or a model. A cover story will appear in next month’s Vogue. And I won’t even know about it, although I followed her until I tired of guessing her identity.
I like to know what’s going on. A young mother from Staten Island was found dead in Istanbul the day that I left the city, returning to Tel Aviv to catch my flight home. A photojournalist, she had walked all the places I had walked alone at night. It was her first trip out of the United States and she was excited, her husband said.
She had stayed in a supposed “seedy part” of the city. She had written to a few men via the Internet before leaving home, unfortunately, on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Quite a story.
Apparently a homeless man who had sniffed glue “excessively” the day she was murdered was responsible for this hideous violence. There’s something odd about his confession, my friend Gail told me. The man wasn’t sure of how the killing took place. Seems like homeless people are often accused of crimes they didn’t do.
I want to know what really happened. Her husband reported there was no hanky-panky between his wife and the men she contacted online. Maybe that’s true. Maybe the real story is different.
I make up stories all the time. Sometimes I wish I wrote fiction. But not very often. What I really like is asking questions.
Tucson Writer Editor 
The photo is great. The killing of the woman is sad, but what a great movie the whole story would make….scenes from Turkey and Syria. I hope we learn the results of who did this nasty thing.
Me too!
Very well-written article, Sheila! I always look forward to your new entries. With the Sierra case, there seem to be many unconfirmed details, so what’s fact and what’s fiction are hard to determine…but it’s got the makings of a seriously intriguing novel…especially if you can throw Topkapi-Palace-lady in the mix 🙂
I await your inside report…thanks Gail. It’s a very sad situation but I agree that it would make a great novel and movie.
If not fiction, perhaps the verbiage for the J Peterman catalog??
Ha ha ha!
Good mysteries!
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Thanks Sydney! Would be fun to try my hand at writing a novel but since I have a job I’ll just have to wait for the truth. Dang.