The German Mujahid

MALRICH’S DIARY, OCTOBER 1996

Rachel died six months ago. He was thirty-three. One day, about two years ago, something in his head just snapped and he started tearing around all over the place — France, Algeria, Germany, Austria, Poland, Turkey, Egypt. Between trips, he’d hole up in a corner and read, think and write stuff — and he’d rage. He lost his health. Then his job. Then his mind. Ophélie walked out on him. One night he killed himself. It was this year, 24 April 1996, at about 11 P.M.

I didn’t know about any of this shit. I was a kid, I was seventeen and when that something in his head snapped, I was into all sorts. I didn’t see much of Rachel, I steered clear, he was doing my head in with all his preachifying. I don’t like to say it, I mean, he was my brother, but when someone goes all self-righteous on you like that, it does your head in. He had his life, I had mine. He had this big job with this giant American company, he had the girl, the house, the car, the credit cards, every second of his day accounted for; me, I was zoning round H24 with the dregs of the estate. The H24 Estate is classed SUA-1—Sensitive Urban Area, Category 1. There’s no room to breathe, you stumble out of one fuckup into another. One morning, Ophélie phones me to tell me what’s happened. She’d stopped by the house to check on her ex. “I had this feeling,” she said. Momo — he’s the son of the halal butcher — he lent me his moped and I bombed down there. There were people milling round everywhere — cops, paramedics, neighbours, rubberneckers. Rachel was in the garage sitting on the ground, his back to the wall, legs stretched out, chin on his chest, mouth open. He looked like he was asleep. His face was black with soot. He’d been there all night, bathing in exhaust fumes. He was wearing these creepy striped pajamas I’d never seen before and his hair was all shaved off like a convict or something. It was freaky. I didn’t react, didn’t say anything. I couldn’t take it in. This paramedic says, “Is he your brother?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?” I just shrugged and headed into the sitting room.

Ophélie was in there with Com’Dad — he’s the area police commissioner. She was crying, he was taking notes. When he saw me, he said, “Come here a minute.” He asked me some stuff. I told him I didn’t know anything. This was true — I didn’t see much of Rachel. I had a feeling he was stressed about something, but I just thought, he’s got his shit, I’ve got mine. It sounds pathetic when you put it like that, but that’s life, we’ve got suicides all the time on the estate. When it happens you’re like, What the fuck? You’re bummed for a couple of days and a week later you’ve forgotten all about it. You think, That’s life, and you get on with things. This time, it was my brother, my big brother, I had to get my head around it.

I had no idea what had happened to him, I couldn’t imagine how far he had come, how far I had still to go. I ran through every possibility, I thought about it for days — girl trouble, money trouble, trouble with the cops, an incurable disease, every shitty thing that can go wrong in life — but I never thought of this. Dear God almighty, not this. I don’t think anyone in the world has been through what we’ve been through.

After the funeral, Ophélie took off for Canada, to her cousin Cathy who got married over there to some fur trader who’s rolling in it. She gave me the keys to their house, asked me to look after it. She said, “Let’s just see how things go.” When I asked her why Rachel killed himself, she said, “I don’t know, he never told me anything.” I believed her. I knew just from looking at her standing there shaking that she didn’t know anything, Rachel never told anybody anything.

So there I was all alone in Rachel’s big house, feeling pathetic. I was beating myself up about the fact that I hadn’t been around when Rachel lost it. A whole month I spent going round in circles. I felt like shit and I couldn’t even cry. Raymond, Momo and a couple of other mates came round and hung out with me. They’d swing by in the afternoon, we’d talk about nothing much, knock back a couple of beers. That’s when I got the job with Raymond’s dad, Monsieur Vincent, working in this garage he’s got called Rustbuckets’ Delight. I was making minimum wage plus tips. I could deal with being on my own. The best thing about work is you forget everything else.

A month later Com’Dad phoned me at the garage and said: “I need you to come down the station, I’ve got something for you.” I went down after work. He sat there staring at me for a bit, clicking his tongue, then he opens this drawer, takes out a plastic bag and shoves it across the desk. I pick it up. Inside, there are four battered notebooks. Com’Dad says to me, “It’s your brother’s diary. We don’t need it anymore.” Then he pokes his fat finger right in my face and says: “You should read it. Might knock some sense into you. Your brother was a good guy.” Then he starts talking about this and that, the same stuff he’s always banging on about: the estate, the future, France, the straight and narrow. I listened to him, shifting from one foot to the other. Then he looks up at me and says, “Go on, get out of here!”

As soon as I started reading Rachel’s diary, I felt sick. It was like my insides were burning up. I had to hold my head in my hands just to stop it exploding, I felt like screaming. On every page, I thought, I don’t believe this. Then, when I’d finished, I suddenly felt calm, like I was frozen inside — all I wanted to do was die. I felt ashamed to be alive. A week later, I realised that this whole thing, Rachel’s story, my story, was all about papa’s past, I was going to have to live it for myself, follow the same path, ask myself the same questions, and, where my father and Rachel had failed, I had to try to survive. I felt like this was all too much for me. But I also felt, and I don’t know why, I had to tell the world. I knew it was all ancient history, but still, life doesn’t change and what had happened to us could happen again.

Before I start, I need to tell you some stuff about us. Rachel and me were born back in the bled, in Algeria, in some godforsaken village in the middle of nowhere called Aïn Deb. When I was little, uncle Ali told me it Aïn Deb meant “The Donkey’s Well.” I used to laugh, picturing this donkey standing on its hind legs, rubbing its belly, bravely standing guard over the well.

Our parents were Aïcha and Hans Schiller; maman was Algerian, papa was German. Rachel came to France in 1970 when he was seven. His name was actually Rachid Helmut but people shortened it to Rachel and it stuck. I came here in 1985 when I was eight. I’m Malek Ulrich, and that turned into Malrich and stuck too. We lived with uncle Ali, he’s a good man, he’s got seven kids of his own and a heart the size of a truck. The way he sees it, the more kids around the house, the better. He was from back in the bled too, he’d been friends with papa but he was one of the first people to leave and go to France. He worked every lousy job going and managed to build a life for himself here. He’s a typical chibani—an old soldier — he doesn’t say much. I made his life hell, but he’d never complain, he’d just smile and say, “One day, you’ll be a man.” His own sons disappeared one by one: four of them are dead, illness and work accidents, the other three are out there somewhere, working on building sites in Algeria, the Persian Gulf, Libya, going wherever the work is, chasing after life. You could say they’re missing in action: they never come home, they never write, they never phone. They could be dead for all he knows. Now I’m the only one uncle Ali has left. I never saw my father again. I never went back to Algeria and he never came to France. He didn’t want us going back to the bled, he’d say: “Some day, maybe, we’ll see. . ” Maman came three times for a fortnight and spent the whole time crying. It’s fucked up, we couldn’t even talk to each other. Maman only spoke Berber and we’d be babbling away in whatever random Arabic we picked up on the estate and bits of German cobbled together. Maman never spoke much German and the best we could do was string together what little we remembered, so the three of us would just sit round smiling, saying, Ja, ja, gut, labesse, azul, Ça va? genau, cool, et toi? Rachel went back once, when he came to take me to France. Papa never left the village. It’s weird, but family stuff is always weird, there’s so much you don’t know, you don’t think about. After school, where he studied German out of family loyalty and English because he had to, Rachel went to the Institute of Engineering in Nantes. I didn’t get the chance, I never got past my first year in secondary school. They accused me of breaking into the principal’s office and I got expelled. I made my own way, I hung around the streets, took a couple of courses and a few part-time jobs, did a bit of dealing, went to the mosque, wound up in court. Me and my mates were like fish in a river, sometimes we swam with the current, sometimes against. We got busted all the time, but we were always let off with a caution. We made the most of the fact we were too young to get banged up. I got hauled in front of every youth-offender judge, and in the end everyone forgot about me. I’m not complaining, what’s done is done. It’s fate, mektoub, the old Arabs on the estate call it. Me and my mates would say shit like that all the time: Adversity makes the best teacher, danger makes the man, a man gets his balls by using his fists.

At twenty-five, Rachel got French citizenship. He threw this big fuck-off party. Ophélie and her mother — a hard-core cheerleader for the National Front — had no reason now to put off the wedding. Algerian and German, maybe, but he’s French now and an engineer to boot, they told anyone who asked. Another party. Has to be said, Rachel and Ophélie had been together since they were kids and her mother Wenda had run Rachel out of the house plenty of times; but she saw him grow up to be serious and well-mannered. Besides, she couldn’t really complain, Rachel had blue eyes and blonde hair, Ophélie was the one with dark hair and brown eyes. Rachel had inherited papa’s German genes and Ophélie’s Russian blood did the rest. Their life was like some cheesy music box, all you had to do was wind it up and it played. Half the time I was jealous of them, the other half I wanted to kill them just to put them out of their misery. To keep on good terms, I steered clear. Any time I went round their house, they’d flap around like there was a storm threatening the nest. Ophélie was always two steps ahead of me and she’d go round afterwards to make sure nothing was missing.

After he got his citizenship, Rachel said, “I’m going to sort out your papers too, you can’t go on like this, like a free electron.” I shrugged: “Whatever, do what you like.” So he did. One day he shows up on the estate and gets me to sign some papers and a year later he shows up again and says, “Congratulations, you’re one of us now, your papers have come through.” He said his boss pulled a few strings. He took me to dinner in some big fancy restaurant in Paris near Nation. It wasn’t to celebrate me getting my papers, it was to give me a lecture about all the responsibilities that went with it. So, as soon as I’d had dessert, I was like, “Later,” and I was out of there.

Monsieur Vincent sorted things out for me, he gave me a month’s paid leave. It was pretty good of him really, I’d only ever worked two days here, three days there, and there was a clapped out old wreck I hadn’t even finished working on. He sorted things out with social services too, since they were forking out for the apprenticeship.

I needed to hole up, to be on my own. I’d got to the point where the only way to deal with the world is to go off and hide and wallow in your pain. I read Rachel’s diary over and over. This shit was so huge, so dark, I couldn’t see any way out. Then suddenly, I started writing like a lunatic, me who’s always hated writing. Then I started running round like a headless chicken. What I went through I wouldn’t wish on anyone.