The German Mujahid

MALRICH’S DIARY, FEBRUARY 1997

It was in August 1995, nearly a year and a half ago, that Rachel wrote to the Algerian minister for Foreign Affairs, and there’s still been no answer — at least not while I was living in Rachel’s house, and I didn’t find any sign of a letter among his books and papers. The fact our parents’ names were changed has been bugging me since the start, like it bugged him. Given what I’ve learned since, it feels like they were buried with numbers tattooed on their forearms. I thought about going back to Rachel’s house and asking the new owners if there’s been any post since I left, then I thought that if the Ministry hadn’t replied over the past sixteen months, they’re hardly likely to send a reply in month seventeen. Maybe the letter got lost, I thought, in Algeria, everything ends up in the hands of the police, but I couldn’t believe they’d treat a ministerial letter the way they’d handle an ordinary letter; diplomatic letters are sent by couriers on special planes. I felt I had to send a follow-up to Rachel’s letter, so I wrote another letter. “To whom it may concern,” like when you write to the police. And while I was at it, I wrote to the French Minister of the Interior about what’s been going on at the estate. It won’t do any good, but like Rachel says, you have to do what you have to do. Here’s what I wrote:

Minister of Foreign Affairs, of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria.

On 16 August 1995, my brother, Rachid Helmut Schiller, sent you a registered letter in which he asked you to rectify the names of our parents, who were murdered on 24 April 1994 by an unidentified armed group. They were buried by the local authorities, my mother under her maiden name and my father under a pseudonym. You have not done so, nor have you bothered to reply to his letter. My brother is now dead and, as the last of the Schiller family, I am writing to you again. I’m guessing that this letter won’t achieve anything, but that’s no reason not to try. Don’t worry, Monsieur le Ministre, after this nobody else will come to bother you. I wouldn’t wish it on you, but if someday, someone tells you your parents have been murdered by persons unknown and buried under the name X, you might begin to understand our grief. For now, you’re the one holding the gun, you don’t have to worry who died, who disappeared, and who suffers in silence.

Yours, insincerely, ashamed of the fact that I am half-Algerian.

This was my second letter:

Monsieur le Ministre,

You, more than anyone in this country, must know what’s going on on the H24 estate. I’m sure our commissioner, Monsieur Lepère, has written to you more than once, because he is committed to his work, he is doing his best, and I know that he feels terrible that there’s nothing he can do. He’s a by-the-book kind of cop, that’s his problem. Jihadists have taken over our estate and are making our lives hell. It’s not an extermination camp yet, but it’s pretty much ein Konzentrationslager, as they said during the Third Reich. Gradually, people are forgetting that they live in France, half an hour from Paris, and we’re finding out that the principles France talks about on the world stage are really just political bullshit. Even so, and in spite of our flaws, they are principles we believe in more than ever. Everything that we as men, as French citizens, refuse to contemplate, the Islamists are more than happy to do and we’re not even allowed to complain because, they tell us, it is the will of Allah, and Allah’s law trumps everything. At the rate things are going — since the adults are too pious to open their eyes and the kids are too innocent to see further than the ends of their noses — the estate H24 will soon be a full-blown Islamic Republic. At that point you’ll have to declare war, just to keep it within its current borders. We won’t fight with you in that war, we’ll emigrate and fight for our own independence.

I’m not expecting you to do anything, I just think that there are some things that have to be done, so I’m writing to you. I expect you’ll reply quickly and comprehensively, that’s one of the things the French civil service is proud of. You’ll tell me how impressed you are by my civic mindedness, and you’ll give me a whole spiel about the steps being taken by you and by the government to restore law and order on the estate. If that’s what you’re planning to say, and I’m pretty sure it is, then don’t bother, I’ve heard it all before.

Yours,

A furious citizen notionally under your jurisdiction but forced to live under Islamic law.