The Jews. When I was a little girl, I think about six or eight, I saw a photograph of Jews in the Shoah, behind a barbed wire fence. It was an extraordinary feeling, as I read what had happened; as though I could feel the world actually shift beneath my feet. I didn’t feel sad; just very alive. I thought what a strange and exceptional people they must be to make other humans behave towards them so un­usually. From that day on this was the thing I wanted more than anything — more than money, fame, sex — I wanted to see the Jews, in the flesh. I didn’t expect them to be superhuman; in fact the first time I met a dumb Jew, an ugly Jew, a cruel Jew, that was a lovely thing for me. I had no illusions, I didn’t hero-worship them; I just wanted to walk alongside them, to see that they were real. It’s quite hard to explain. From Shoah to Israel to National Front to Islamism, my life has been defined by their ceaseless struggle to survive. When I finally went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, it was the most perfect day of my life. I stared at every photograph, and afterwards I walked out into the Israeli sun and I thought, “Well, that was it!” I was dazzled — by the past and by the present, come together in this unique, unimpeachable, wonderful country. I would love to be buried there — but not quite yet.