I thought about my parents, whose names had been stripped from them, who were buried under names that were politically convenient. Did it matter? I don’t know. Rachel seemed to think it was important, to me it seems secondary. The name on Maman’s grave is her maiden name, Aïcha Majdali as if she died unmarried, childless, an unclean woman nobody wanted. My father’s grave reads Hassan Hans, known as Si Mourad, no surname, only his first name and the name he used in the maquis, like he was a bastard who never knew his father. I don’t know what to think, that’s how the story was written. To everyone in Aïn Deb, Hassan Hans, known as Si Mourad, is the name of the cheïkh, the mujahid, the man with the big heart, the chahid, and to them Aïcha is the daughter of her father, the honoured Cheikh Majdali. I think they would have felt intimidated, awkward before a grave marked Hans Schiller, the way people are when they’re faced with something they don’t understand. Questions still go round and round in my head: did the Algerian authorities know about Papa’s past? They had to know back when he was in the maquis, and even after independence, but that was a long time ago. I’m sure the young Bonzen these days don’t know shit, they were brought up in a culture of lies, taught the discipline of forgetting. In a system like this there are only certainties, and if you don’t have any, then vague outdated regulations will do just as well. To them, Aïn Deb is the German’s village, and the German is Hassan Hans, known as Si Mourad. What about the people of Aïn Deb? Did they know about Papa’s past? Did they hide it? Papa lived with them for more than thirty years, did he never tell them anything, did they never ask questions, did they have some sort of unspoken agreement never to mention it? These are good people to whom hospitality is a sacred duty. When a man knocks at your door, you ask for nothing but put yourself at his service, and if he wants to settle there, you marry him off to the most eligible girl and treat him as one of your own. Have people in Aïn Deb even heard of the Nazi extermination of the Jews? Or are they completely ignorant, like I was, knowing only whatever the imam sees fit to tell them. And what about him, that parrot up there in his minaret, how much does he know? I’m guessing that the Algerian government doesn’t teach this stuff in schools, the kids might get upset, they might start feeling sorry for the Jews, they might start to realise some other truths. I’m guessing they teach kids to hate the Jews, to keep their minds closed. I remember back when I was in the FLN Youth – the FLNJugend Rachel calls them – they talked about the Jews all the time, the instructors could hardly open their mouths without saying Lihoudi – dirty Jew – then spit on the ground and recite the ritual for cleansing the mouth: ‘May Allah curse him and wipe him from the face of the earth.’ But I suppose things have changed, these days it’s all sugar-coated. These days Algeria is a member of the UN, so they probably have to abide by certain rules even if they don’t agree with them – something Bonzen are pretty good at. They keep the country locked up like a vault, and it’s always the same reason: the poorer, the angrier and the more racist you keep the people, the easier they are to manage. Rachel wrote: ‘You can’t commit atrocities with enlightened people, you need hatred, blindness and a knee-jerk xenophobia. In the beginning, all states are shaped by madmen and murderers. They kill the good people, drive out the heroes, lock up the people and proclaim themselves liberators.’ In the end, I’d think may be no one knows. Some day, when peace comes, I’ll come back to Aïn Deb with Aunt Sakina and I’ll tell the true story of Hans Schiller to Mohamed, the shoemaker’s son, and get him to tell everyone else in the village. He can explain it better than I could. If I told them, they’d go mad, they wouldn’t believe me, they’d argue, they’d curse me, but truth is truth, it has to be told. At least in the minds of the children it will take root.