She vividly imagined their meeting in the hotel in Tunisia and how she would depict the joyful surprise at first, and then would tell him that she had already figured out everything long ago!
They set up their meeting for mid-September.
Nina bought a package tour for that time in the city of Sousse, in a four-star hotel on the beach. She sent all the info about the hotel to Yasser.
He wrote that he would wait for her on her arrival day in the lobby of the hotel, since he would be coming from Algeria directly to the hotel by car, as his country is bordering Tunisia.
“What about Ismael?” thought Nina, “will he fly from Cairo by plane?… But, in the end, that’s his problem!” she finally concluded. Whatever happens, the main thing is that they, Ismael and Nina, will meet, because they both want this so desperately!
There was not much time before the trip, a little more than three weeks. Nina was nervous that she didn’t have time to do anything before leaving, as her job was a full time trouble.
Then there was the boy, or rather, Yasser, who was sending his messages actively. They had once again discussed the meeting at the hotel: where to meet, what to say to each other, what Nina and Yasser would be wearing.
Yasser asked Nina to send her photos in all the outfits that she planned to take with her. Nina had a photo session in front of the mirror, as if for a fashion show, and sent the photos to Yasser.
He chose a black shirt with an orange long skirt. He said that that outfit fits a very stylish and sophisticated lady, and he wanted to see her for the first time in these particular clothes.
He sent his photo in a white Adidas t-shirt and blue jeans. That, again, was a photo of man from Algeria, whose passport Nina had seen before. She felt annoyed again and she wrote:
“Don’t worry; I’ll recognize you because of your special feature, even if you’re going to wear different clothes!” (Nina was referring to the mole on his upper lip, but didn’t explain anything in order to pretend that she had not found out his disguise!) He responded with a cunning smiley, and Nina calmed down. Everything was going as planned.
Virtual games
At the same time, along with the intensification of Yasser’s messages, new friend requests from many men of different ages and nationalities suddenly appeared on her profile. They were mainly Turks and Arabs from Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, as well as white men from European countries and the USA.
Every time Nina was looking through a profile of a new friend, something signaled her that it was another mask of the boy.
She became even more convinced of this, when a new friend had started to write her about love and send romantic or erotic pictures right off the bat. In fact, these strange new friends had been falling on her head for a long time already, almost right after the first serious quarrel with the boy.
It was that they had suddenly started to multiply in even larger quantities. Nina knew that all these friends were part of the boys’ virtual games. And each time the profiles of these “masks” became more and more plausible.
These accounts already had had a long history with friends and photos. There were new posts on their pages regularly. How did he do it?
Nina was interested in this issue and soon found out that on the Internet you can buy ready-made accounts for any social networks, of a male person, female, of any country, absolutely real ones, with friends and full of personal info.
You can also copy the accounts of existing people, take their photos and information and create a complete copy of a page of a real person.
Nina even tried to make a couple of fake accounts herself, one of a female and one of a male to visit the page of the boy, since he had blocked her and she couldn’t visit it from her real page.
She got the hang of creating such pages easily, but soon got bored, as it took a lot of time! How was he making hundreds of fake accounts? When she blocked one, he created another!
“God!” thought Nina, “when does he study? When does he sleep?”
Often, when Nina couldn’t sleep at night, she went online and saw one or more of his accounts active. She realized that it was all under his supervision, as prey is with flags during the hunt.
She was no longer capable of erasing all those false friends from her profile, because there were too many of them so that it actually was easier to completely delete her entire page!
Nina sometimes felt uncomfortable from such unceremonious and total invasion into her life. It seemed to her that the boy was watching her every move. Moreover, he even entered the Russian social network where Nina also had a page. There was she, all her relatives and close friends. He was already there and was sending friend requests from fake accounts to Nina! Nina suddenly remembered his words:
“I love you and won’t let you leave,” he said once in response to her another try to speak about the age difference and the necessity to break up.
“Little fool!” thought Nina. “He wants to control me and know what I’m doing in social networks, how I chat with my friends, whether or not I cheat on him!”
He would often write and call her from several accounts, creating somewhat a simultaneous game! Keeping this in mind, Nina behaved in a very restrained manner and if anyone would cross the boundaries, immediately blocked these so-called “friends”.
She couldn’t start new relationships because of this. It was due to the fact that even if it could be a real person, she was afraid to face the fake account, created by the boy.
Yes, indeed, she did not want to chat with anyone. She was so into Ismael! He created truly fantastic worlds for her.
He was at the same time a black African Catholic teenager, volunteering for an international African children aid organization, who had found an abandoned baby girl under the bridge and his older brother was raising her, while he was buying her baby food in a pharmacy; a teacher of Arabic at the school for girls, from Tunisia, who was eager to teach Nina Arabic; an Indian Hindu boy, who had a degree in arts, but couldn’t find a job to support his elderly parents in the province. He would paint their hut in different colours, turning it into a palace and then would go to work in Delhi…
Moreover many, many other different people and stories. And they all liked Nina and opened up their hearts to her, surrounding her with love.
Often Nina didn’t even exchange a word with some of her newfound friends. They only communicated using pictures, photographs, emoticons and stickers. It looked like comics books sometimes. It was fun, actually…
However, among those fake friends were some who terrorized Nina with obscene images and suggestions. When they made her really mad, Nina would block them, although she was sure that under those masks was her boy, too! He wanted to control her and see how she would behave with different people.
He was doing all of that, blocking her from his real account. Though he called from time to time from his real page, he would always block her again. Nina was very offended and didn’t understand why he kept on doing that, but at the same time, her life had never been as exciting as with this Egyptian boy.
And now there was this Yasser, with whom she had a long and confidential conversation… Nina was sure that even if Yasser existed in reality, these chats were still with Ismael, who was writing from Yasser’s page!
“Who will meet me in Tunisia?” thought Nina and her heart froze with uncertainty. It was so mysterious and so intriguing!
A journey to Tunisia
And the day had come. Nina had a departure from Vnukovo airport at ten in the morning. When she was packing her suitcase, she