Cirque Du Salahi: Be Careful Who You Trust Read Online Free PDF Page A

record anything!” Asked how often his father might have gone off on government business, Tareq replied, “How much was that a part of his life? 5 percent, 20 percent? I just don’t know.”
    Years later, Gregory had the opportunity to fly with Dirgham and Corinne Salahi to a reunion vacation in the Dominican Republic. “After a bit of cognac drinking on the plane,” Gregory recalls, “Dirgham began to reminisce about what he’d done for the JFK administration. He spoke of his ‘Ambassador-like’ duties. He told me there was a street in Jerusalem named Salahi Street, comparable to New York’s Park Avenue. It made me think he’d done work for our government somewhere in the Middle East.”
    One morning when Tareq was about eight or nine—and well into a three week stretch fending for himself eating canned spaghetti, chili, and frozen pizza—he was walking away from the house to catch the school bus when a scruffy looking man approached him carrying a rifle over his shoulder. Tareq didn’t feel particularly threatened or alarmed by the sight of the rifle since he walked around with one himself sometimes. Any warning cues that an older boy might have picked up at that moment went over his head.
    “He said to me, ‘You live there?’ and I answered him, ‘Yeah.’
    He wanted to know if it was okay if he went hunting on the property that day. I told him no because there wouldn’t be anyone home all day. Looking back today I see what a stupid thing that was to say.” But the boy just walked on to the bus stop and never gave it another thought.
    Today, looking back on the scene that confronted him when he got home that afternoon, he says, “There was blood on the light switch and blood on the floor. And Tender, my Doberman pinscher, didn’t greet me at the door as usual. I followed the blood path and saw my dog was laying there dead.”
    Tareq later described hearing rustling downstairs in the back of the house. The boy quickly grabbed up his fully loaded rifle. Then, maintaining the composure to act, in spite of having just discovered his loyal pet brutally slaughtered, he made a quick sweep of the upstairs before he picked up the telephone and dialed the operator for help. Tareq was sure some of the blood and bits of flesh he saw on the kitchen floor belonged to whoever had broken into his home. He thought he saw a man running away through the back vineyard but he couldn’t be sure he was alone in the house.
    “There was no such thing as 911 back then,” he said. “So it seemed like forever waiting for the police to come on the line.”
    He remained in place, holding his rifle in his lap, while the first connection on the line was to the wrong Sheriff’s office. Time dragged. Finally, he was transferred to the Fauquier County Sheriff dispatch. He told the officer on the phone about everything he had just encountered inside his home and that he was alone.
    “I told them I’d just gotten robbed. They said it would take them at least thirty minutes to get way out there to our property. I remember telling the officer that I had a rifle and I knew how to use it. He said to me, ‘Son, if you see somebody you don’t know, you squeeze that trigger!’”
    Deputies arrived to find that the house had been thoroughly tossed. Gone were Dirgham Salahi’s collection of gold coins, plus pieces of Corinne’s silver and all of her jewelry. Guns and other valuables that were kept under his father’s bed were gone. The robber appeared to have spent much of the day making trips back and forth to wherever his car had been parked.
    After this episode the traveling Salahi parents decided they would rent out a garage apartment to a local Sheriff’s deputy and his wife. That’s how Terry and Donna Shrum came into Tareq’s life. As soon as they moved in, they began making sure young Tareq got off safely to school each day, had a nutritious meal at night, did his homework, and went to bed in the main house at a decent