On 16 August 1995, my brother, Rachid Helmut Schiller, sent you a registered letter in which he asked you to rectify the names of our parents, who were murdered on 24 April 1994 by an unidentified armed group. They were buried by the local authorities, my mother under her maiden name and my father under a pseudonym. You have not done so, nor have you bothered to reply to his letter. My brother is now dead and, as the last of the Schiller family, I am writing to you again. I’m guessing that this letter won’t achieve anything, but that’s no reason not to try. Don’t worry, Monsieur le Ministre, after this nobody else will bother you. I wouldn’t wish that on you, but if, someday, someone tells you your parents have been murdered by persons unknown and buried under the name X, you might begin to understand our grief. For now, you’re the one holding the gun, you don’t have to worry who died, who disappeared and who suffers in silence.

Yours, insincerely, ashamed of the fact that I am half-Algerian.

This was my second letter:

Monsieur le Ministre,

You, more than anyone in this country, must know what’s going on on the H24 estate. I’m sure our commissioner, Monsieur Lepère, has written to you more than once, because he is committed to his work, he is doing his best, and I know that he feels terrible that there’s nothing he can do. He’s a by-the-book kind of cop, that’s his problem. Jihadists have taken over our estate and are making our lives hell. It’s not an extermination camp yet, but it’s pretty much ein Konzentrationslager, as they said during the Third Reich. Gradually, people are forgetting that they live in France, half an hour from Paris, and we’re finding out that the principles France talks about on the world stage are really just political bullshit. Even so, and in spite of our flaws, they are principles we believe in more than ever. Everything that we as men, as French citizens, refuse to contemplate, the Islamists are more than happy to do and we’re not even allowed to complain because, they tell us, it is the will of Allah, and Allah’s law trumps everything. At the rate things are going – since the adults are too pious to open their eyes and the kids are too innocent to see further than the ends of their noses – the H24 estate will soon be a full-blown Islamic Republic. At that point you’ll have to declare war, just to keep it within its current borders. We won’t fight with you in that war, we’ll emigrate and fight for our own independence.