May 8th

It's a pretty large stretch, at least in my family, between myself and my mother's 2nd cousin, who lives in Paris.  But that gap is shrinking, rapidly, as a story with more twists than a coastal road is unfolding across the globe.  This woman, Nadine is the only name I know her by, has an interesting past.  She lived in the French resort town of Nice, which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.  Then she moved to Paris, and the story gets more intense.  Her two young girls were sexually assaulted by their father, who she divorced. After a long police process that exposed the uselessness of the French system in many regards, the kids still spend time with him.  They were staying with him while she made a spiritual trip to India, to seek meditation in a place known as an ashram.  Think dojo, it's a place based on seclusion and meditation.  People there have reported since that she was acting erratically, and many facets of her behavior were different on this stay than on other visits.  Her sudden departure from the first ashram in favour of a second, unplanned, remote one, was also noted.  But she never arrived at the second ashram.  At this point the alarm was raised.  Family was alerted, and after an extended battle with French and Indian authorities, somehow it became known that she had left the country by air.  This was good news in that she had not been kidnapped, and was travelling under her own will.  But it was also concerning, because of her behaviors at the ashram and increasingly erratic behavior.  People pulled strings and connections worldwide, and through a series of people doing things that could cost them their jobs, we discovered that her phone was in Dubai.  Sure enough, we learned that she had boarded a flight to Dubai, with final destination Paris.  But she had not made the Paris flight, despite it being hours later.  This would be understandable if the flight to Dubai had been even remotely near the plan, but she left a full week before plan.  Today's latest development is that she has boarded another flight, this time to Bahrain.  That's it for the concrete at this point.  We remain bewildered by this whole event, and much of my family is shaken up and trying to help.  I've never met Nadine, and am emotionally somewhat unaffected.  But I felt that the sheer absurdity of this plot needed to be written out, and this is as good a place as any.