As you’ve seen in the previous chapters things have got a whole lot worse these past few months. Ever since Nadia was touched by the emir on the orders of the imam, and Cyclops and Flicha showed up with their new Kapos, this isn’t my estate any more. They’ve already turned it into a concentration camp, we’re dying slowly but surely, we lock ourselves in, they keep files on us, watch our every move, constantly harangue us about the rules of the Lager, what we should wear, how long our hair should be, how we should behave, the things we shouldn’t do, there are daily rallies, a general mobilisation on Fridays, the sermons, the trials, the punishments and, in the end, you’re signed up to the death Kommandos and shipped off to the camps in Afghanistan. All we need now are some gas chambers and a few Kremas and we can start the mass extermination. And no sign of a Righteous Person on the horizon. Rachel doesn’t explain it, but I’ve found out that Righteous Persons were non-Jews who risked their lives hiding Jews from the Gestapo and the police. He had a file about them and another one about Righteous Persons who were German, who were at the heart of the Machine and used their money, their intelligence and their courage to save thousands of innocent people. Some of them are famous and respected: Oskar Schindler, Albert Battel and others. Why couldn’t you have done that, Papa? Rachel would still be alive and we would be the sons of a Righteous Man. Rachel says that the Holocaust is a historical aberration, that humanity would never allow such a thing to happen again. Rachel was educated, he was knowledgeable, he knew what he was talking about, but I think he forgot that people only realise what’s going on after it’s happened. One minute before his death, he’s alive, but a second later, there are shocked people grieving for him. Aunt Sakina liked to say, ‘The difference between yesterday and tomorrow is today, because we don’t know how it will end.’ And Monsieur Vincent, who’s a real stickler for tightening wheel nuts, used to look over our shoulders, cross his fingers and say, So far, so good, if the wheel nut shears, we’ll all know about it.’ And Rachel also forgot that humanity is always failing, it never learns, it’s too much hassle. Everyone on the estate knows that it’s too late. The Islamists are already here, they’re settled and here we are, bound hand and foot, caught in the trap. If they don’t exterminate us, they’ll stop us from living. Worse still, they’ll turn us into our own guards, deferential to the emir, merciless to each other. We’ll be Kapos.