My God, who will tell me who my father is?
I left Frankfurt am Main just as I had arrived, no different from when I came back from Uelzen and from the godforsaken hole near Strasbourg where my friend, my partner Adolph—his father’s son—lived. I had to keep going. To follow this path to its conclusion. To the end.
RACHEL’S DIARY, 16 AUGUST 1995
If anything is truly futile, it is this: I wrote to the Algerian minister for Foreign Affairs. I know he will never actually get the letter, it will be intercepted and shredded long before it reaches him, or forwarded to the secret police who will use it as they see fit, just as the accompanying note “for whatever purpose it may serve” suggests. But I thought it needed to be done so I did it. When the time comes, I’ll consult a lawyer about how to pursue the matter. And in that too, I’ll go to the end.
Minister,
On 24 April 1994, at about 11 P.M., my parents, together with thirty-six neighbours, men, women and children, were savagely murdered in the village of Aïn Deb, in the province of Sétif by an unidentified armed group. According to the French news reports, citing those from Algerian television, this unidentified group is unquestionably a group of Islamist terrorists known to the Algerian police force. I expect that you are familiar with the tragedy in question — the matter has certainly been raised with you. Foreign observers and human rights organisation have undoubtedly discussed the incident with you, they may even have called for explanations.
On the list of victims drawn up by the Ministry of the Interior, and sent by your offices to the Algerian embassy in Paris, my father and mother are listed under names that do not correspond to those in the official records. My mother is listed by her maiden name, Aïcha Majdali, my father by a pseudonym, Hassan Hans, known as Si Mourad. I enclose herewith, copies of the official Identity Cards on which, as you will see, my father’s name is given as Hans Schiller and my mother as Aïcha Schiller, née Majdali, both Algerian citizens. It would seem to me to be entirely usual that the citizens of a country should be born and die under their official names, and that it is by these names that all official information pertaining to them should be published. In this, I do not think that Algerian law differs markedly from the laws in force elsewhere in the world.
Therefore, I would be indebted to you if you would instruct the appropriate department to amend the list of victims to reflect my parents’ actual names, and forward an official copy to me. Failing which, I will be forced to consider my parents as missing and take all necessary measures to locate them, specifically to lodge a legal action with all relevant Algerian, French and German authorities, and with the International Court of Justice. You will understand that I am within my rights to wonder whether the Algerian government is involved in their murder, and that the official list is proof of that involvement, or at least evidence that it has something to hide concerning my parents. Should you decide that correcting the list is impossible, I would be grateful if you could inform me of your reasons. I can understand that force of circumstance may prevail.
I would like to take this opportunity to ask what progress has been made in the search to find and arrest the perpetrators of this heinous crime and bring them to justice. Fifteen months have now elapsed, and, to date, no information on the progress of the investigation has been offered to the public or to the relatives of the victims. If need be, I am prepared to take legal action to compel your answer and to prove that you are involved in an attempt to suppress the truth.
Yours most sincerely.
It’s too late. I’ve already posted the letter, but when I reread it now, I feel ashamed — it’s conciliatory. Because I was writing to a minister, I stupidly adopted the attitude of the petitioner — unassuming, patient, a good citizen aware that the Bonzen have so many demands on their time, so many requests, so many official commitments. I find it humiliating that victims are always forced to ask, to plead, to wait. It’s intolerable.
When the time comes to send a reminder, I’ll express myself as a victim should: demand, insist, refuse to tolerate evasion, preempt equivocation. These people are there to serve us, not the reverse.
MALRICH’S DIARY, 15 DECEMBER 1996
It’s a miracle I made it to Aïn Deb. My God this has been some adventure. As soon as we came down the steps of the plane at Houari Boumédienne International Airport, Algiers, all the passengers — men, women and children — were rounded up herded into the middle of the runway where we waited for more than an hour as driving rain and freezing wind whipped at us. The men were coughing, some of the older, weaker ones collapsed, the babies were crying, their mothers pleading with them to be quiet, desperately trying to comfort them. There was a lot of whispering. We were soaked to the skin. It’s one thing to read about it, to hear about it, you have to picture two hundred people with all their luggage, utterly terrified, standing on the tarmac in weather like this watched over by a mob of guards invisible in their oilskins. An hour later, a black car pulled up carrying four cops in dark green raincoats and dark glasses.
Doors slamming, bang, bang, bang, bang, they all got out. Special agents. Something was obviously about to happen, these guys were completely terrifying. The leader put up his collar, pushed his sunglasses back off his forehead and began to circle us silently, slowly, very slowly, staring intently at each of us in turn, though we had no idea why. He’d say to someone, “You, stand over there. . and you. . and you. . You, step forward. . and you. . you go over and stand with them. . You there, stop trying to hide, get out here.” He glowered at the women too, to one he said, “Take off your glasses!” to another woman, “Pull up your hood!” to an old man who’d fallen down, he barked, “Get up!” Just his voice had me shitting bricks; it was flat, unemotional, colder than you could possibly imagine. Obviously no one had ever dared to disobey this guy — he could be at home in bed or sitting behind a desk and all over the country people would meekly obey him. When I think that Com’Dad has to argue his case, then take it before a judge, I realise that there’s something not right with the system in Algeria. Or maybe the system in France. I was the sixteenth to be pulled out of the line. He looked at me, never blinking and said dismissively: “You, over there with the rest of them.” After me, he picked out five more. Mostly young guys. The rest of the passengers were led to a stunted little building with a huge sign on the front saying in three languages: Hall d’Arrivée. Bienvenue en Algérie. Arrivals Hall. Welcome to Algeria. And something in Arabic, which I can’t read or write. Our fellow travellers had already forgotten our shared nightmare — not one of them turned to say goodbye or to pity us, they were smiling, pushing and jostling to get away as quickly as possible. They were lucky. Some time later, when the water was up to our ankles, a covered military truck screeched to a halt in front of us. The head guy gave some order and the special agents told us to hand over our passports, our tickets, our hand luggage and get into the truck. I couldn’t believe it, I was shaking I was so scared, it looked like we were going to be deported. Back in France I’d never been scared of the cops, actually I got a buzz out of winding them up, watching them try to work out how to play things. Now, I was paralysed, I couldn’t think, it felt like I would never move again even if they suddenly said it was a joke and we were all on candid camera. Then the truck started up and zoomed towards this place that looked like it was an old cargo hold. Huge rusting hangars separated by paths a hundred metres wide, stuff lying around everywhere, loose concrete slabs, an armoured car parked under a water tower and everywhere you looked sandbagged army posts, each manned by two soldiers hugging a machine gun. Not another living soul. Nobody seemed to breathe, all you could hear was the howl of the wind, the hammering of the rain, a shriek of rusted metal that set your teeth on edge. Just the feel of the place had me squirming. The driver turned the truck into one of the hangars and slammed on the brakes, which squealed like scalded cats. He kept his foot to the floor, revving the engine hard for a long time, then cut the ignition. The hangar almost exploded with the sudden terrible silence that dropped on it like a bomb. A silence like that can turn your bowels to water. I’d never have believed that silence sound could be so deafening. It’s insane, it’s like saying someone is alive and dead at the same time. And that’s what we were, more dead than alive. Some of them were hacking like they were about to cough up their lungs, others were grey and pasty, my eyes were watery with acid tears. I wondered for a minute if the driver was trying to exterminate us with the exhaust fumes, but since he was in the hangar with us, I figured he probably wasn’t, he was just getting the oil out of his engine. I mean, no one would be stupid enough to gas themselves, flammable gasses stink so badly you can smell them a mile off, it’s not like roses. A Sonderkommando who forgets to get out of the gas chamber in time doesn’t last too long. The hangar was so big and so ramshackle that it would have taken thirty trucks a whole week to eliminate us, as Rachel would put it. By then we’d have died of starvation. Or madness. I thought about poor Rachel, this was how he died, his lungs dried up, his heart bruised, his body broken. Alone in his garage. More alone than anyone in the world. After that, everything happened quickly. We were ordered to get out, the truck drove off and the door of the hangar slammed shut with the boom of an atomic bomb. They left us in the dark without a word, without a look. At first everyone panicked, but we could hear nothing except the wind shaking the hangar and the rain gushing in waterfalls from the roof, but then we calmed down and huddled together in a corner to keep warm. A couple of people started smoking furiously like this was their first cigarette of the day, or their last. An hour later we were half dead from cold, from hunger, from thirst. And this was just the beginning.