My bags were almost packed, and the cabdriver was on his way to pick me up. I was headed to Morocco, where I planned to travel with my parents, visit relatives, and maybe do a little research into my family history. I had already postponed the trip once, a week earlier, when news broke of an attempted coup in Turkey, and I flew there to cover it and the mass arrests that resulted. I needed a vacation. Now, it seemed, I was finally on my way.
At about 6:00 p.m., as I tossed a few final items into my suitcase, I heard a news update on TV: shots had been fired near the Olympia shopping center in Munich. A few minutes later, my sister Hannan got a call from an aunt who lives there. “Your cousin’s wife works in the H&M store in that mall,” she said. Our relatives in Munich were calling around desperately, trying to figure out what was going on.
I sent a message to my editors at the Post, letting them know there had been a shooting and that German TV was already suggesting a possible jihadist connection. It had been a bad summer in Europe—the Bastille Day attack in Nice had happened just a week earlier—and we all immediately wondered whether ISIS was involved.
I dialed my cousin’s wife, Sabiha, the one who worked at the H&M store, and amazingly I reached her. “I’m okay,” she told me. She’d seen the shooter, whom she described as dark-haired and olive-skinned. “He started shooting and we locked the doors and took people away from windows.” Now she, her coworkers, and their customers had crowded into the back of the store, waiting for word from the police.
We were relieved to learn that she was safe. Then Peter Finn called. It turned out that the Post’s regular correspondent was away; Peter wanted me to change my travel plans and head to Munich. The city is nearly 250 miles from Frankfurt, but we agreed I should go by taxi, as we expected train and air service to be shut down. Fighting off disappointment, I grabbed a few things out of my suitcase and threw them into an overnight bag. “Forget the airport,” I told the cabdriver. “We’re going to Munich.”
On the road, Hannan called with more news. Another cousin’s son, fourteen-year-old Can, was missing. I called his father, my cousin Hassan, to ask what had happened.
“He went with his best friend to the Olympia shopping center, and now we can’t reach him,” Hassan said.
I told him to keep calm and that there were many different reasons why Can might not be able to answer his phone. I asked for the boy’s phone number, hoping that one of my police sources might be able to use it to locate him via GPS. I also double-checked that Can had his wallet on him. I knew there was a lot of confusion and that the Munich police were nervous about the possibility of multiple shooters, so I wanted to make sure they could easily identify him if they needed to. Can, whose name is pronounced Jan, is of Turkish descent, and although he looks more Italian than Middle Eastern, I worried that anyone with dark hair and Mediterranean looks might be mistaken for the shooter or one of his accomplices.
Hassan told me that he and his wife, Sibel, were headed to the shopping center to look for their son. When we hung up, I texted a longtime police source in Munich to let him know that one of my relatives was missing and that the family would be very grateful for information. “Please could you give me an update? Or is there somebody I could call?” I wrote.
He called me back and asked who Can was to me and where he had been. Somewhere near the shopping mall, I told him.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Contact me when you reach Munich.”
While riding in the car, I called every source I could think of, trying to pin down the basics. Was there one shooter or more than one? How many people had been killed or injured? The scene was cloudy with rumors.
When my cabdriver and I reached the Munich hotel where I’d booked a room, we saw a crowd of people standing outside looking for taxis. Because of the specter of multiple shooters, the police had banned taxis from operating in the city; it was now 11:00 p.m., and people were anxiously trying to get home. One woman was standing near the entrance to the hotel, shouting into her phone, “The city is on lockdown, probably because some shitty Muslim wanted to kill unbelievers again.”
I glanced at my driver, Malek, a Muslim of Pakistani descent whom I often called when I needed a ride to the airport. He must have seen the mix of anger and shock on my face. Malek parked and I grabbed my bag and climbed out of the car. As I passed the woman with the phone, I couldn’t resist setting her straight. “First of all, not every Muslim is shitty and wants to kill ‘unbelievers,’” I told her. “Secondly, we don’t know who’s behind this yet.” She just looked at me, her mouth open.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Malek, who had come in with me because he needed to use the bathroom.
“No, we need to worry about these things,” I said, but I didn’t know why I’d spoken to her like that. It must have been some kind of reflex. I chalked it up to being worried about my relatives, especially Can. The latest report was that as many as eight people had been killed. I called Hassan, who said they still hadn’t heard anything about their son. I could tell he was trying to stay calm, but his voice was strained.
“Is it true that eight people died?” I texted my police source. “Can we meet?”
“Not yet,” came the response.
We picked up my aunt Emel and her son, then drove to a stadium near the shopping center where the police had asked families waiting for information about missing loved ones to gather. In happier times, soccer tournaments were held there, but now the cavernous space was mostly empty. We roamed around for a while looking for the meeting point, which turned out to be a big hall stacked with benches where spectators ordinarily watched sporting events. Aid workers from the Red Cross and Caritas, along with volunteers, had set out food and drinks for the waiting families. They kept lists of who was missing and who was waiting, but they didn’t have much information. Mostly, they tried to make sure people didn’t get too upset or dehydrated.
Every once in a while, a bus would arrive full of people who had been rescued from the Olympia shopping center. With each arriving bus, my spirits wilted a little more. It’s really late, I thought. Why isn’t he on one of these buses? He should be here. I tried to console myself with the idea that he might have been injured and taken to a hospital and that in the confusion they’d forgotten to tell us, but I had a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. We watched people step off buses into the joyful embrace of their families and happily make their way home.
I texted my police source again but got no answer. When I called, he didn’t pick up. Something felt wrong. My pulse quickened. Why wasn’t he getting back to me?
Hassan’s wife, Sibel, was pale. We embraced. “Have you heard anything new?” she asked, her tone pleading. I told her I hadn’t. “There were many more people here, but their family members were already brought in by bus, and they went home,” Sibel told me. “I don’t understand why my son isn’t here yet.”