Over and over I ask myself the same question: where in all of this is Papa – the man I knew, the man who married Maman, the Cheikh of Aïn Deb, the man everyone loved and respected, Uncle Ali’s oldest, closest friend? Because he did exist, the father we spent all those years missing, he had two healthy sons, Rachel the brainy one and me who was never much cop at anything, but I’m smart enough to know right from wrong. Am I supposed to believe the man I called Papa and the SS officer are as bad as each other? How is it possible to blame one and honour the other, to hate the killer he was – a man I never knew – and love the father, the victim he is now, a victim of the same terrorists who are gunning for us? Did my father pay for his crimes? What about us, are we paying because we are his sons? Is this fate, mektoub, is it a curse? I commend these words to you. /Engrave them on your hearts /When you are in your house, when you walk on your way, /When you go to bed, when you rise. /Repeat them to your children. /Or may your house crumble, /Disease render you powerless, /Your offspring avert their faces from you. That’s what Primo Levi says, the children are doomed from the start because parents never tell their children about their crimes, if parents told their children everything it would be like killing them in the womb. This Primo Levi guy is crazy. I refuse to believe that God is more evil than man, that children are doomed to their fate.