It has been now almost two months since Mariam Makhniashvili disappeared. I strongly believed from the very beginning that no stone should be left unturned. However, things have been happening very slowly. The measure of how slow everything around her disappearance has been happening is the fact that it took me four days to find out what happened, and I live literally next door to her building and to her school. I had no idea for four straight days that this young woman had disappeared. It makes me wonder, why? Weren't we who live in immediate neighborhood supposed to be summoned somewhere, on the day one, or even day two, and asked: "Have you seen this girl?" But no, it took officials a week even to talk to her school mates. It took them a month to find the backpack, that was tossed from one location to another, by bunch of close to illiterate people, who do not read newspapers, nor they watch TV. I apologize to those who say they are hard working construction people who have no time to watch TV, but, nevertheless, there are so many ways to stay informed in this day and age. I know that I have an issue with people who saw the backpack and did not make the connection. Not that I am angry with them, it is more that I am in disbelief that the backpack could have sat in the plain view of so many people and no one did something: call superintendent, take it to the nearest school, look if there is an ID and possibly phone number and address in it. How can anyone think that a student will leave their backpack unattended for a month??? It does not make sense to me to think that way.
Now police is going door to door in Bathurst Street, Eglinton Avenue and Chaplin Crescent triangle. Knocking on every one's door, asking for permission to check rooms, closets, even refrigerators. If letting them in, to help them find Mariam, is the most I can do at this point, I am happy to do that. I spent hours thinking what happened to her: was she abducted, did she meet with someone and then became abducted, did she leave on her own accord with desire to walk out of her life, and is hiding somewhere with some one's help, or did she walk somewhere where she met some misfortune, either by taking her own life, or someone else hurt her. I went over different scenarios, about what could have possibly happened to her and why. I contemplated that she may have been high functioning person with autism, because it appears that she had some difficulty communicating, not only because of lack of knowledge of English language. But I have no evidence for any of my theories. In the beginning I strongly believed that she was abducted, then I started thinking that she just walked somewhere, in the park, in the ravine, and then... Who knows?
It has been almost two months of questions, anguish for the family, uncertainty for the neighborhood, and time of constant thinking about: What happened to Mariam Makhniashvili? And while police is doing their job, looking around and trying to connect the dots, I am looking thought my window into the fall in Toronto, thinking why we as people are not more connected and more concerned about each other. Is it too much to ask?
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