I thought that these struggles, made newly mine upon his death, would have been enough to justify, and serve as bond for, my life on this new continent—Europe—that was now my own. But, no. The very smallest thing drew their suspicions. They remade me as they wished. They gave me a father, a religion, and a way of life. And a Name. “Muslim”—a name without end. I had a way out. I was given the Name. Ever watchful, confused, I fled in front of them.
I KNEW ABOUT THE NAME from the age of ten. It was late, and, as usual, I wanted to watch television. But it was forbidden for many reasons, and so it was in secret, at night, that I gave myself over to it, to its images and its voices. The film Night and Fog said, “There were nine million men and women killed. Killed because they were …” Here, in this country. For the first time I realized the extent of the horror. For me, it wasn’t just Germany but France, where I was living, as well. I thought about what this place was, and I listened, and I understood that in the vast expanse of Europe, some people took others and led them to the slaughterhouse and, here, where I was living, they took others and led them to their deaths, and behind this I heard one phrase, “We don’t want them, we don’t want others, not them …”
They had just one Name. One Name. And no one suspected the evil inside them, no one bore witness to this evil, the thing that they were referring to when they said, “We don’t want them, we don’t want others, not him, not her, not them.” And this always brought to mind the scenes of trains leaving for Poland.
“The most wretched of the excuses that intellectuals have come up with for executioners—and in the last decade they have not been idle in finding them—is that it was an error in the victim’s thinking that led them to being murdered.”1
In that, there was one phrase that struck me. One phrase that I seized upon in order to live, “it was an error in the victim’s thinking that led them to being murdered.” Since then, I’ve been wary. I’ve been wary of the pack and its lies. And when the pack begins to hunt men again, when it’s you they debase and degrade, then you have to flee. Flee the pack and its preoccupations. So I left.
I wanted only one thing. That I would have time. I found time. I knew that I would never go back. I would have liked the life that others spoke of. But it was denied me. I came from nowhere. Neither fish nor fowl—but from nowhere, anyhow. I’m nothing special. A thing who came here, never got what she wanted, but who lived on. So I left, I wanted to live elsewhere, and to hold up my humble head with dignity. I wanted a life. Another life. They wouldn’t be able to hunt me down, if I was alone. And I found that life. It lasted only several years. Then they found me again. They stopped me. They questioned me. And my identity was again at stake. “What are you doing here?” they asked. “Where’re you from?” “A country where I couldn’t remain.”
Since then, I’ve been waiting in this camp.
—
HOW HAVE I LIVED these past days? Everyone wants me, everyone condemns me. “Are you one of theirs?” “No.” “Are you one of ours?” “No.” Then you’re a Muslim!
Those who used this Name against me have got what they wanted. From the age of ten, I knew what the Name meant. And when Muslim is used, as it often is, as though in order to eradicate an odor, I feel like I have a tooth infection. This way of talking, I tell myself, is like a toothless man who longs for dentures. It’s a bad way of thinking, and it’s in bad faith. He thinks that if he can have my skin, his smile will return. A little patching up, and everything will be all right. He’ll have his old nasty attitude, and his mouth will be like new. Until then, he still has the infection. I’m the source of the evil. I can exist as “Muslim.” But the toothless man wouldn’t have that. He refused to give me that life. You’re Muslim. That’s your Name. He knows how he had made this word, and why he insists on calling me that. And, if need be, he’ll dig up my father’s grave. He’ll say to me, “He knew he was a dead man.” How many times have countries, under the guise of important principles, played this game? They name, they denounce, kill, and destroy. They kill, they destroy, and they leave. Contempt, violence, lies. Murder, forgetting, and the future. Who can believe in miracles any longer? In promises?
When you’ve seen a people subjugated, you don’t return to the scene. It’s like a murder without an alibi, a farce. The body is already cold on the floor, and the actors are without roles. The curtain is drawn. It’s over. And I have to live with this unhappiness. It may be that others live what I’m living. I’m not what they say I am, and yet they call me what they want. More than anything, I know how hate lies hidden in the Name they have given me. It leads to murder. This Name that I inherited, that I can’t avoid, but that makes me a murderer, they try to simplify it again and again. But why? We’ve done away with the sacred. We misprize rituals. Now we kill God. For what purpose, if by the overwhelming noise of fury, we’ve destroyed the memory of our last voiceless hymn?
I became “Muslim.” I couldn’t get rid of it. From the mire of the capitalist world, the muddy oil flats, came the merchants of death, the Manipulators of the planet. Men with faces like pit bulls, whose machinery perverts and enrages, met men in black balaclavas full of their own violence and stupidity. They made me their prey. These two types want me dead. Just me, dead. The death of my world to profit them. They destroyed what had been my world. And I couldn’t protect it. They made a suit to fit me into. They call me “Muslim.” They call me this over and over again. I’m their hostage, their witness to the revenge they enacted always in my Name. And because I’m the enemy for one, and the witness for the other, I’m tortured, mistreated, scorned, and maligned. How can I walk confidently through the world now? I never had the life I should have had. I left Europe. But where on earth, other than the desert, would still have welcomed me?
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