Having made my pilgrimage, and having been so warmly welcomed, I soon felt at peace again. My breathing slowed, each breath now filled with courage, each sigh with noble self-denial. Everyone I met offered me words of comfort that harked back to that ageless, tragic condition of man, the essential humanity without which he would be nothing more than an automaton wandering in the desert, rusting without knowing it: “To God we belong and to Him we return. . We are but dust in the wind. . No one can knows what lies beyond death. . Believe in God, he is the resurrection and the life. . Allah never forsakes his own. .” Here in this sacred atmosphere, in this place where death had passed like a blast of the apocalypse, these phrases resonated oddly with me. Being so far from everything in this devastating but exhilirating emptiness, borne up by this sense of time passing unhurriedly, by these infallible memories, by words which have crossed the centuries, questioning and humanizing the unknowable, fosters a sense of infinite and unshakeable patience, of transcendence. You do not see yourself moving towards this blessed state, but suddenly you are someone else, someone who observes the world serenely, asks no questions, feels no fear. It is wonderful and terrifying at the same time. You spurn life, rise above it, look on it as inconsequential, ephemeral, illusory, even as life — indefatigable, magnificent, eternal — crushes us like grains of sand and sweeps us under the carpet.
I was worried when I read this part of Rachel’s diary. I’ve cut out a lot of stuff and kept the best bits, the rest is the sort of bullshit you hear in the mosque. I’ve had my fill of sermons like that. Back in the day, I was a regular in the basement of Block 17, where the jihadists had a mosque for anyone who wanted to come. You’re hooked before you know it — it only takes three sessions, and there are five prayers a day and you don’t get any days off. This is the sort of stuff they talk about all the time there: “real” life, paradise, djina, they call it, the houris, the Companions of the Prophet, the saints of the Golden Age, God’s perfect system, Brotherhood, then everyone smiles that merciful smile and hugs like veterans of some holy war, thinking hard about Jerusalem—El Qods, they call it. At first, it was cool — me and my mates went because we enjoyed going. Then a bunch of other people showed up with this new imam who was a leader in the AIG — the Armed Islamic Group — and the whole laid-back vibe turned into this terrifying madness and we were all caught in the headlights. Suddenly the only thing anybody talked about was jihad and the martyrs of Islam, about kaffirs and hell and death, about bombs and rivers of blood, about the end of the world, and noble sacrifice, about exterminating the other. Even outside, after we’d been to the mosque, we talked about it all the time. Then, the next time we heard the muezzin, we’d head back down to the basement wearing a black band round our foreheads, bloodthirsty and ready for action. When I got expelled from school, the new imam was delighted. According to him, school was a crime perpetrated by Christian dogs, the mosque was the future. I’d never really had much time for school, but I’d never thought about it like that. The imam said, “I will teach you what Allah expects of you, I will open the gates of paradise for you.” I made my excuses, said I had some training course to do and got the hell out of there. Momo kept going, he was really into all that shit, but when he got to Taliban level, he found out the meaning of pain. When you get to be a Taliban — a student of Islam — leaving is considered desertion. The jihadists caught up with him and beat him to a bloody pulp. He would have died if we hadn’t got him to hospital. We told the doctors he’d been run over by a truck. Momo spent two weeks in there being spoiled by the nurses. The jihadists were planning to finish him off in hospital but they didn’t get round to it and then they ran out of time. It was round about then that Raymond, who’d been going round calling himself Ibn Abou Mossab, asked his father to help get him out of there. Raymond was in deep shit by then, he already had his plane ticket to Afghanistan and the manual for the training camps in Kabul. He was only seventeen, but on his fake papers they’d added ten years and a big beard. After he got his son out, Monsieur Vincent set up a neighbourhood watch committee and that’s when all hell broke loose. They managed to get the mosque in Block 17 closed down for health and safety reasons, but the jihadists just set up again straight away in the back of a Moroccan grocery shop. Com’Dad is in there all the time, he’s big friends with the owner.
In his diary, Rachel says that he came back from Algeria a different man. He mentions taking me to lunch in some posh, boring restaurant. I don’t remember. He says that was when he decided not to tell me about the massacre, about our parents, about his trip to Algeria and all the secrets he dragged back with him, the whole tragedy going on in his head. He probably thought I was too dumb, too insensitive, that’s what he usually thought about me. Or maybe he was worried the whole thing would send me further off the rails. He wrote some nice things about me, the sort of things you say to people who aren’t nice because you know they’ll never really understand.
Poor Malrich. Life hasn’t been easy on you. I feel like I’m to blame, I’ve never really made the effort to get to know you. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’m not saying it was because of school, or my exams, or the four years I spent in Nantes, or working 24/7 for a multinational that only cares about the bottom line, or even life with Ophélie — though you know better than anyone how difficult she can be — or the responsibilities society imposes on everyone. I’ve used every possible excuse I could think of to justify my indifference to you, to poor uncle Ali who opened his home and his heart to us, to his sons whom life chewed up and spat out before they had a chance to find out what any of it meant, to our parents whom I put out of my mind and never gave a second thought. Now I realise that what I thought was intelligent conversation was just pompous preaching, that even as I claimed I was doing things for your own good I was putting you down. The worst thing is, I know you don’t hate me for it. You think I’m a good person, you defend me with the same excuses I used to use: he’s the serious type, he’s studying for his finals, he’s looking for a job, he’s travelling for work, Ophélie is giving him grief, he’s part of a world with its own rules. What’s done is done and there’s no way now to make amends. If I were brave enough, I would go and tell you that I love you, that I’m proud of you. After we left the restaurant, I felt so ashamed, for saying nothing, for being a coward. I’m not looking for another excuse, but I was honestly trying to spare you the pain. Our parents died in terrible circumstances and what I know now, this thing that’s eating away inside me, would have hurt you, in time it would have destroyed you. I decided the best thing was to keep you at arm’s length. Some day, you’ll read this diary and you’ll understand and I know that you’ll forgive me. Time will have done its work.