• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

My father was melancholic and powerful, silent and warlike, a chess player, unfathomable, clearheaded and skeptical, solitary and independent. For him secrecy was not only an intellectual experience but also—I’m convinced of this today—a way of being and living.

He had another peculiarity, unusual for a man who, in conventional terms, would not be thought of as an intellectual, which was his strange, almost superstitious relationship with the words of everyday language. There were those he used and handled very delicately, with infinite caution, as you would move a chess piece. Then there were those addressed to him that had the power (we didn’t always know which ones, we never knew exactly why; they were ordinary words belonging to everyday life) to catapult him into sudden rages, cold but dreadful, as if they’d reached some obscure place in him and set fire to it.

A scrap of mystery, blown down by a distant storm.

A biographical enigma, resisting any explanation.

And that way he had of dismissing other people’s idle chatter with phrases like “as futile as if you’d said nothing,” “like ghosts,” “a waste of breath …”

He died on my birthday, which, when I think about it, seems part of a plan.

He bequeathed me this taste for and practice of secrecy, which I sometimes take too far.

He passed on to me this fear of words and of their terrifying power, as well as—naturally—a love of them.

He left me this dream I have at times of writing in a dead language, which would discourage any risk of confidences, being addressed directly to the dead.

But I have already said too much. He would have hated that.

*Ayaan Hirsi Ali (born 1969) is a Dutch intellectual, feminist activist, writer, and politician. Her screenplay for Theo van Gogh’s movie Submission led to death threats. After van Gogh’s assassination in 2004, she lived in seclusion under the protection of Dutch authorities. She now lives in the United States.

*Georges Bataille (1897–1962): highly influential French author and intellectual who developed the concept of base materialism.

†Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghan rebel and anti-Soviet resistance leader, considered a moderate, who was assassinated two days before September 11, 2001.

*Romain Gary (French author) and Fernando Pessoa (Portuguese author). Both were remarkable for their use of pseudonyms as alter egos, or, to use Pessoa’s term, “heteronyms,” suggesting that these personae took on a life of their own. In his letter of June 30, Lévy describes how Gary’s identity was ultimately engulfed by his “creation,” Paul Pavlowitch. Pavlowitch was Gary’s cousin, who posed as Émile Ajar, Gary’s alter ego.

February 20, 2008

Dear Bernard-Henri,

Several times over the past weeks I have thought about the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Thought about it in precisely these terms: I asked myself what I would have done in her place.

Some years ago, I remember enormously appreciating the letter Philippe Sollers wrote (and later published) to Taslima Nasrin*—you see, I don’t just see flaws in good old Philippe … His message might be summed up: Flee. Don’t play their game; don’t allow yourself to succumb to the temptation of heroism. Liberty has no need of martyrs.

But, that said, in concrete terms, flee to where? To be brutally honest, I don’t believe that the French police could effectively ensure Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s safety. It is not easy to prevent a public figure from being assassinated—especially when the assassins are prepared to risk their own lives and would not balk at taking a few dozen other victims with them. The Israelis are well trained—and even they fail sometimes. The English have a certain practical experience. But the French police? To be honest, I have my doubts.

The vast majority of immigrants of Muslim origin in Western Europe are peaceable people. The corollary is that in any country with a large Muslim community, the chances are good that you can enlist enough thugs to mount a serious assassination attempt