Boualem Sansal - The German Mujahid

“I don’t think you heard me, imam, I don’t need you!”

“Grief and anger have clouded your mind, but go. . Si Omar is here, he will watch over you, guide you. . ”

“Is that a threat?”

“Only Allah can punish, my son, we are but his instruments.”

I was about to get up and leave, but I changed my mind.

“Tell me, imam, if you had power over the earth, where would you begin the genocide?”

“What do you mean by that question?”

“There have been a lot of genocides throughout history, what would our genocide be?”

“You have been reading evil sinful books. We have our own books, as you shall see, they will tell you that the only genocides have been waged against Muslim peoples.”

“All the more reason. . Who would we kill to even the score?”

“Islam brings peace, my son, not war. When we come to power, people will be happy to convert to Islam.”

“And those who refuse?”

“Those who reject Allah, Allah will reject, there is no place for such a man on His earth or in His paradise.”

“We’ll kill them?”

“Allah will decide their fate.”

“But he rejects them!”

“He will punish them without mercy.”

“Will he command us to kill every last one of them?”

“We will do as he commands us.”

“You see, that’s my problem: how do you go about killing six million kaffirs quickly, before they wake up and fight back?”

“You’re talking foolishness, my son.”

“You’re the imam. As a believer I have the right to ask you any question I like.”

“Indeed you have, but I have told you, when Allah confers power on us, He shall tell us what we should do and how we should do it. As I said, we are instruments of His will.”

“Can I make a suggestion?”

“One does not make suggestions to Allah!”

“To his representatives, then, so they can pass it on.”

“I’m listening.”

“They way I see it, you round the kaffirs all up into camps surrounded by electric fences, you gas all the useless ones straight off, the rest of them, you divide into groups based on their skills and their gender, and you work them till they drop dead. Anyone who disobeys, you gas them. What do you think?”

“I think you’re dreaming.”

“I’m not dreaming, it’s been done before.”

“The methods you suggest are barbaric, Allah commands that we kill the infidels according to Muslim rite.”

“You don’t get the point, imam, killing six million infidels isn’t like burning some girl like Nadia, or slitting the throats of forty villagers in Aïn Deb. Half-arsed methods just won’t work, it takes productivity. When you’ve worked it out, let me know, I’ll drop by. Salam.”

“Allah has cursed you, son of a dog.”

“Yeah, well fuck you, and you too, Emir! You want genocide? Well bring it on! Me and my mates, we’ll be only too happy to roast some Nazi jihadist fuckers, and we’ll invite all the kids on the estate to the barbecue.”

“You’re asking for trouble. . ”

“And you’re getting it.”

Now that war has been declared, I have to do the hard bit: tell my mates everything. They’ll hate me, reject me, they’ll go ballistic, but truth is truth, it should be known. I’ll take it in stages, I suffered from finding it all out at once. I’ll tell them who my father was, what he did, then later, when they’re ready, I’ll tell them about the Nazi killing machine, I’ll lend them Rachel’s books, explain that papa never told us anything, that that’s why Rachel killed himself. And if they ask me, “What about you, what are you going to do?” I’ll tell them, “Tell the truth, all over the world. After that, we’ll see.”

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.