(Commentary by Farzaneh Milani, Raymond J. Nelson Professor in the departments of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures) I am not sure I would have believed the incremental and contradictory details of this premeditated murder, its sloppy cover-up, and its international reach had I read them in a novel. And, yet, I know all too well that the abduction, torture, and assassination of a journalist is nothing new in Saudi Arabia or the Middle East.