The German Mujahid

RACHEL’S TRIP TO CAIRO, 10–13 APRIL 1996

I used to come to Cairo all the time when I was working for the multinational. I loved it, I was always impatient to be back in the sun, in this dreamlike city, eager to melt into the vibrant crowds, to let myself be swept up in the intoxicating atmosphere you only find in the south, in a world turned upside down like Egypt, a mass of contradictions, clinging to the past but far removed from its three-thousand-year-old history, open to all the world but only through the narrow chink of tourism, peaceful only in its monuments to the dead. This is why we come, we are drawn to the exotic, we leave conformity at home. Egypt is a miracle whose existence depends entirely on the Nile delta, the meagre market gardens, the fellahs who look as though they have stepped from a bas-relief. But agriculture requires irrigation and I was working for a company selling pumps and sluices, turnkey solutions, cash up front, US dollars only. This was the way we looked at things — it was the only way to look at things — a market needs suppliers. We were suppliers, and we knew everything there was to know about their needs, their weaknesses, their endless tales of woe. We called it market analysis, an essential part of a global marketing strategy. The minute we got a green light from head office, we descended on the country like locusts in some biblical plague. By the time they had a chance to look up and say “Allahu Akbar,” we had the whole country kitted out with pumps and sluices and deep in debt for the rest of its days. No longer would the waters of this legendary Nile flow serenely to the sea as they had done for thousands of years to the haunting cries of helmsmen in their dhows, the absurd croaking of the gulls and — at auspicious moments — the happy gurgling of a chubby baby kicking in his basket of bulrushes carried by the sacred waters. We had dammed the Nile, diverted it, churned it, filtered it, canalized it, pumped it, fertilised it, cycled and recycled the water and only then, pumped it back — filthy and reeking — so that the ancient, troubled Nile might flow onwards to the sea. No longer would people wait for the Nile to flood as a sign from the gods, something to be celebrated like New Year. All this we did for thirty pieces of silver and a five percent baksheesh: we changed the course of a history as old as the world. They need to update their hieroglyphics.

When business was done, we’d dive into the crowds and commune with our human brethren in the medina. The moment we stepped out of our air-conditioned offices, we were off in search of neighbourhoods so poor they could only exist in the imagination of the destitute south, places that endure only by some miracle, breathe only by the grace of God. We would seek out the most tortuous streets, the narrowest alleys, the riotous confusion, the flood of colours, sounds and smells, the bewildered smiles of the destitute—Al-Masakeen—the relentless patter of the merchants in the souk, whose age-old spiel can still dupe an international conman, the lyrical flights of the beggars, the teeming packs of children, the Bounayes, the walads, the affected indignation of the thieves, the sirakinn, the bleating of fat chaouchs pleading poverty, like ticks feeding on the misery of others, the cursing of the carters, the pleas of the beggars, the toulabs, so piteous that no one ever hears them, the dreamlike pronouncement of the scribes, their ears so full of secrets they would make a saint blush, but more than this, watchful as hawks, we were seeking a glimpse of an Egyptian woman wearing a close-fitting tunic, a headscarf framed by coloured pompoms. If their husbands were nearby, keeping an eye on them, it was all for nothing, they have no control over their wives for all their furious glares, the whistle of their canes, their wives have lots of tricks to give these latent murderers the slip. Then, finally, we’d find a woman who looked as though she has stepped from some furtive dream, a devil in the flesh, hips swaying, arms outspread, full breasts, a mischievous smile, a pair of bewitching eyes. This was what we have been looking for: the living gaze of the Sphinx that sees beyond the Beyond. It is as mysterious, as enchanting as everyday immortality, her eyes flash like lightning, more terrifying than the curse of a pharaoh, were he Tutankhamen himself. What we saw in these women was the reincarnation of Cleopatra, a Malikah worthy of the Caliphs, a houri beloved of Allah, a princess from the Thousand and One Nights, a siren conjured from the troubling world of the djinn. We were all widely travelled, we had all seen the world, but we all agreed that there was nothing on earth more thrilling than the dazzling, kohl-rimmed eyes of an Egyptian woman, glittering with the most ancient mystery in all the world.

Having made our pilgrimage, and with a little ebony scarab or a terracotta sarcophagus for Ophélie packed into my suitcase, we would go our separate ways to different countries, petrified at the prospect of having to face the ruthless realities of the modern world.

But these are memories of a past life, a carefree life. Now I am mired in the past, plunged into a hideous war, crushed by horror, tormented by my own father. Egypt will never again be a dreamlike country, a picture postcard. This was where my father came, his crimes packed up in his suitcase and, from what I can tell, he had a wonderful life, he became a new man here and found a position in the Egyptian secret service. What I need to understand is how, arriving from a hell of your own making, from the bleak horror of life in the camps, does this man adjust to a shimmering world of sweltering sun, gentle humility, affably shambolic poverty, where a hookah and a glass of mint tea are always to hand, a belly dancer’s navel is always at eye level, where your bed is always open to the stars? What does he think, this man? What regrets haunt him? What pleasures can help him forget the pain he so lavishly meted out in the cruel, sinister world of his former life, an absurd, insane, incessant mechanical ballet where every day was reduced to nothingness, to listening to agonised howls bleed through the walls, to watching the columns of black smoke rising into the heavens? I know this man is unscrupulous enough to forgive himself everything, but surely no pity, no compassion, no mercy can absolve such vile, unspeakable things? Or maybe this man is not a man, nor even the shadow of a man, perhaps he is the devil incarnate. My God, who will tell me who my father is?

You quickly realise that the old Egypt, the cheerful, cosmopolitan, raucous, romantic Egypt of Naguib Mahfouz, does not exist anymore. Modern Egypt—Misr—is dominated by twin giants as formidable as the great pyramids: religion and the police — leaving not one square inch where a free man may set foot. If he’s not taken to task by the police — the chorti—he will be by the fanatic, the Irhabi. In Egypt, the police force of the Raïs and the religion of Allah conspire to make life a living hell for every single person. Death and dishonour are the twin tracks of this miserable fate. It is hard to believe that in a country subjugated by faith and fear, things would change so quickly. The last time I was in Cairo, two years ago, when we delivered our most powerful pump, the H56—H for horizontal, 56 the diameter of the outflow in inches — from what I saw then (constantly chaperoned by official guides and escorted by patrols of helpful chortis) intimidation was so gentle, so graceful you might almost have been tempted to convert to Islam and proclaim your joy. We knew at the time that the guides had been taught to misinform us, but even so the noose has clearly been tightened since then. The people who roam the streets now are not men, they are victims seeking some refuge from the police station and the mosque. Egypt has become intolerable, it is no longer a country for men, or even saints, and all the picture postcards in the world cannot change that. I pity any Egyptian who is not a policeman or a fanatic.

I felt anxious as I walked around the city. I was constantly watching my step. Not a gesture, not a look, not a thought was out of place. I wandered past the Ministry of Interior Affairs, the headquarters of the Mukhabarat where my father in his time had been a frequent visitor; this was where they had made his fake papers for him, this was where they had required certain favours in exchange for the hospitality afforded him by King Farouk and later by Nasser. What could they have asked him to do but infiltrate European circles in Cairo, decode secret Nazi documents bought on the black market, develop some sort of chemical weapon and later train Algerian revolutionaries in some anonymous building in the city? I quickly realised I had been spotted — the chaouchs were making a pincer movement, indestructible old bangers would suddenly break down nearby, choufs would diligently pretend to read their newspapers as they watched. I slipped away just in time. Many things have changed here since 1945—the curtains that hang in the windows, the official cars, the suits worn by the civil servants, the complaints of the orderlies, the sound of the sirens — what has not changed is the atmosphere. Hans Schiller, SS officer, would have felt at home here. Then I remembered that the war never really ended in Egypt — if the Egyptians weren’t starting a war, someone else was — wars against the Mamelukes, the Turks, the king, against the British and the French, the war against American imperialism, the wars with Israel, the wars against Islamic terrorists, against the Copts, against the kaffirs, the war against the Great Satan and, worst of all, the war they waged against their own people. Having waged all these wars, there was only one thing for the country to do — make peace with itself, return to the happiness of yesteryear, to the Great Egypt, serene, eternal.

I doubled back, went and joined the tourists. They don’t know anything, don’t suspect anything, they don’t care about history, about anything, they’re here for the sun and the Kodak moments. Being with them is relaxing, even if they look impossibly pretentious posing for photographs next to the Great Pyramid as though it were an old friend. The pyramid is ageless. How many years have they lived, how many years do they have left before they’re six feet under? Why, when they leave their own country, do tourists suddenly forget they are human, mortal? Thinking about Kodak moments, I remembered the photo in my pocket, the photograph of papa next to the Pyramid of Cheops that I’d found it in his suitcase in our house in Aïn Deb that vast and lonely night. Suddenly I was seized by that same frenzy, searching for the roots of evil, staring at the photo of papa dressed like a gentleman from the Belle Époque posing with two English ladies next to the pyramid. In those days, you needed to be rich and somewhat reckless to be a tourist, travel was the hobby of the idle rich accustomed to cruises, to vacations. I don’t know when the photo was taken, probably while Farouk was still on the throne — between 1945, when papa arrived in Egypt, and 1952, when Farouk was toppled in favour of General Mohamed Naguib. Probably the summer of 1946 or ’47. A year later, tensions in the Middle East were running so high after the Palestinian war that it put an end to tourism in Egypt for years. The ladies in the picture, their extravagant outfits, seem suited to the period of the monarchy. I can’t imagine papa dressing up in a white suit and pith helmet in the time of the colonels. Nasser considered revolutionary austerity a great virtue and imposed it on everyone. I can picture life during the monarchy, the sumptuous embassy banquets, the palatial boats, the great mansions of the pashas and the vizirs, the horse rides through the vast demesnes of the Effendi, the cultural visits to the great museum in Cairo, the elegant cruises down the Nile stopping at archaeological sites from Karnak to Aswan, the solitary trips gentlemen made to the hammams, the secret harems, the opium dens. No one evokes this atmosphere, placid and refined, cynical and strained, as powerfully as Agatha Christie, the queen of civilised crime. Papa would have effortlessly fitted into this life, he was educated, spoke several languages and, unlike many German officers, he was extremely cultured, he was handsome, well-dressed and, above all, he had extensive experience with death, something which gives the cynical machinations required of polite society a tragic, pitiless, fascinating depth. He would have effortlessly dazzled the ladies and their powerful patrons — something of an advantage for a spy in the service of the king — or any other power. I’m thinking of the Soviet spies who undoubtedly discovered papa’s Nazi background and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Israel, after all, was nearby, it would be easy to ship him a trunk full of Jewish ashes and daub a yellow star on the door of Hans Schiller, SS officer.

Since I have decided to slip into papa’s thoughts, retrace his footsteps, I think it’s only right that I should live it up here too. We’ll see what happens. I don’t have much money, but Egypt is dirt poor and, in the souk, the few dollars I do have will buy me a lot of the insipid pleasures tourists crave. I went back to the tour group and — whipped into a whirl of excitement and enthusiasm by our guide — we sped through Cairo by day and Cairo by night, raced through the museum, ignored local customs, raided the souks, pissed in the Nile, strolled the great boulevards, sat chattering noisily at a table outside one of the mythic cafés that once made Cairo famous, back in the days of Egyptian cinema, of great divas and fabulous international archaeological expeditions. The lustre had faded somewhat, but we made the best of it, we embraced poverty though we were only slumming it, drank syrupy mint tea rather than champagne, took ramshackle buses rather than barouches and limousines, walked in the sweltering sun rather than in the shade of parasols, and prattled endlessly about the Cyclopean mysteries of the pharaohs. Then we headed for Giza where, like every other tourist, I decided I’d like to have my photo taken next to the Great Pyramid. But the photograph I wanted had to be special, I wanted to be surrounded by a bevy of elderly English ladies. I looked around and found a group of plump, rosy-cheeked English women, their arms bare, and among them — miracle of miracles — one who was lean and angular as flint, wrapped in a prickly shawl, a dead ringer for the formidable Victoria. Now all I needed to was to secure their cooperation. The old dears were only too happy to oblige. I borrowed a pith helmet from a Dutch tourist, hired one of the professional photographers, positioned the ladies as in the original picture, gave them a sidelong smile and shouted, “Maestro! Do your worst!” Five minutes later I had a print, a perfect copy of the original — if you ignore the fact that I looked gaunt as a camp prisoner. On the back of the photograph, I wrote: “Helmut Schiller, son of Hans Schiller, Giza, 11 April 1996.” Half a century separates the two photographs; that and six million dead gone up in smoke.

In the end, I felt pleased with myself. I had stopped at nothing in my search for the truth. There’s nothing now for me to do in Cairo. Or anywhere else. I’m going back to Paris, I have an appointment to keep. From here, it can only lead to the end. My parents died on 14 April 1994, that was the day Hans Schiller finally eluded the justice of men. But for the man that I am to go on believing in the little time he has left, it is essential that there be some particle of good in us. I am not thinking about the God Particle, that doesn’t interest me. If God has failed here on earth, how can he expect to succeed in heaven? I will see to it that justice is done, I am better placed than He.