Mohamed came over, put his arm around my shoulder and led me back to the village like you’d lead a blind man. He didn’t speak French, so he thought I had been lashing out at Allah. Over and over he said, in a reproachful tone, ‘It is mektoub, Malek, it is fate, we must accept it.’ At that moment I wanted to kill him too. I pushed him away and said, ‘Mektoub? mektoub? . . . So Allah made you this way, so spineless and weak that when people come to slit your throats like sheep you do nothing?’ As soon as I’d said it, I felt ashamed. That day in the airport, special agents had treated us like dogs, like camp prisoners, we’d been terrified, starving, numb with cold, soaked to the skin, they’d taken our suitcases, our papers, our identities, gassed us with exhaust fumes and left us in the dark, in the filthy hangar, without a word, without a look, and not one of us had done a thing, we hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t demanded that our rights be read to us before we let them take us away. We were all thinking this is how things are, there’s nothing we can do. And we all watched, silent, relieved, when the others were loaded back onto the truck and driven off into the unknown. ‘It’s not mektoub, Mimed,’ I said, gasping for breath, ‘it’s us, we’re the problem.’

I needed to be alone. Alone forever.

I went back to my parents’ house. My house now – I am the last of the Schillers. It smelled of mould and neglect. I aired the rooms and lit a fire in the fireplace. Then I changed my clothes, put on my white burnous, sat in Maman’s chair and wrote down the first thing that came into my head.