‘Yeah, well fuck you, and you too, Emir! You want genocide? Well bring it on! Me and my mates, we’ll be only too happy to roast some Nazi jihadist fuckers, and we’ll invite all the kids on the estate to the barbecue.’

‘You’re asking for trouble . . .’

‘And you’re getting it.’

Now that war has been declared, I have to do the hard bit: tell my mates everything. They’ll hate me, reject me, they’ll go ballistic, but truth is truth, it should be known. I’ll take it in stages, I suffered from finding it all out at once. I’ll tell them who my father was, what he did, then later, when they’re ready I’ll tell them about the Nazi killing machine, I’ll lend them Rachel’s books, explain that Papa never told us anything, that that’s why Rachel killed himself. And if they ask me, ‘What about you, what are you going to do?’ I’ll tell them, ‘Tell the truth, all over the world. After that, we’ll see.’

Malrich’s Diary - February 1997

Malrich’s Diary

February 1997

It was in August 1995, nearly a year and a half ago, that Rachel wrote to the Algerian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and there’s still been no answer – at least not while I was living in Rachel’s house, and I didn’t find any sign of a letter among his books and papers. The fact our parents’ names were changed has been bugging me since the start like it bugged him. Given what I’ve learned since, it feels like they were buried with numbers tattooed on their forearms. I thought about going back to Rachel’s house and asking the new owners if there’s been any post since I left, then I thought that if the Ministry hadn’t replied for the past sixteen months, they’re hardly likely to send a reply in month 17. Maybe the letter got lost, I thought, in Algeria, everything ends up in the hands of the police, but I couldn’t believe they’d treat a ministerial letter the way they’d handle an ordinary letter; diplomatic letters are sent by couriers on special planes. I felt I had to send a follow-up to Rachel’s letter, so I wrote another letter. ‘To whom it may concern’, like when you write to the police. And while I was at it, I wrote to the French Minister of the Interior about what’s been going on on the estate. It won’t do any good, but like Rachel says, you have to do what you have to do. Here’s what I wrote:

Minister of Foreign Affairs, of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria.