I doubled back, went and joined the tourists. They don’t know anything, don’t suspect anything, they don’t care about history, about anything, they’re here for the sun and the Kodak moments. Being with them is relaxing, even if they look impossibly pretentious posing for photographs next to the Great Pyramid as though it were an old friend. The pyramid is ageless. How many years have they lived, how many years do they have left before they’re six feet under? Why, when they leave their own country, do tourists suddenly forget they are human, mortal? Thinking about Kodak moments, I remembered I had a photo in my pocket, the photograph of Papa next to the Pyramid of Cheops that I’d found in his suitcase in our house in Aïn Deb that vast and lonely night. Suddenly I was seized by that same frenzy, searching for the roots of evil, staring at the photo of Papa dressed like a gentleman from the Belle Époque posing with two English ladies next to the pyramid. In those days, you needed to be rich and somewhat reckless to be a tourist, travel was the hobby of the idle rich accustomed to cruises, to vacations. I don’t know when the photo was taken, probably while Farouk was still on the throne – between 1945, when Papa arrived in Egypt and 1952 when Farouk was toppled in favour of General Mohamed Naguib. Probably the summer of 1946 or ’47. A year later, tensions in the Middle East were running so high after the 1948 Palestinian War that it put an end to tourism in Egypt for years. The ladies in the picture, their extravagant outfits, seem suited to the period of the monarchy. I can’t imagine Papa dressing up in a white suit and pith helmet in the time of the colonels. Nasser considered revolutionary austerity a great virtue and imposed it on everyone. I can imagine life during the monarchy, the sumptuous embassy banquets, the palatial boats, the great mansions of the pashas and the vizirs, the horse rides through the vast demesnes of the Effendi, the cultural visits to the great museum in Cairo, the elegant cruises down the Nile stopping at archaeological sites from Karnak to Aswan, the solitary trips gentlemen made to the hammams, the secret harems, the opium dens. No one evokes this atmosphere, placid and refined, cynical and strained, as powerfully as Agatha Christie, the queen of civilised crime. Papa would have effortlessly fitted into this life, he was educated, spoke several languages and, unlike many German officers, he was extremely cultured, he was handsome, well-dressed and, above all, he had extensive experience with death, something which gives the cynical machinations required of polite society a tragic, pitiless, fascinating depth. He would have effortlessly dazzled the ladies and their powerful patrons – something of an advantage for a spy in the service of the king – or any other power. I’m thinking of the Soviet spies who undoubtedly probably discovered Papa’s Nazi background and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Israel, after all, was nearby, it would be easy to ship him a trunk full of Jewish ashes and daub a yellow star on the door of Hans Schiller, SS officer.