But that’s not what this was really about. I looked at them contemptuously. To me Turkey is a country which, though technically neutral, colluded in the Holocaust. They signed a pact of friendship with the Third Reich, they had a close relationship with the Axis powers and they offered Nazi officers an escape route. In the history of their own country, they have a genocide of their own, one which is all the more terrible since they have the gall not to admit to it. Why don’t they follow the example of the Germans whose crime is the most heinous ever committed? But who am I to cast the first stone, sitting here driving myself mad, wondering why my father never acknowledged his crimes?

I used to love Turkey, the country is beautiful, the air is fresh and clean. The multinational I used to work for has an assembly plant here in partnership with some big Turkish conglomerate. I used to come here all the time. There’s not much I don’t know about Turkish food, or the underhand deals they’re so fond of, perched as they are between two stools – two divans, I should say – between West and East, and being so secretive they end up winning on all counts. I never could stand the way they were secular in the morning and mysterious at night, when we were always completely cut-and-dry, utterly transparent. Tomorrow, I’m taking the plane to Cairo. The air might not be as fresh, but, from what I’ve seen from my numerous business trips there, the people have both feet in the same camp.