Authors: Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Montecore (18 page)
The journalists.
The publishing people.
The art critics.
The queen.
The most important ones seemed to be conspicuous in their absence.
Here follows a section that we can call “Studio Silvia awaits success.” We wait patiently for the attention of journalists. We observe newspapers in hope of praising reviews, we correspond yet another series of invitations to art critics. The result? A monumental silence.
Three weeks after the opening ceremony, your father received a
letter from the Swedish palace. The envelope bore the king’s official seal and the queen’s typed “thanked for the congratulations.” Your father framed the letter behind glass and placed it in the display window, to the right of the photograph that sparked his brain with the idea for the studio’s name.
My official task at Studio Silvia was soon transformed. From photo assistant and makeup-responsible to coffee maker, backgammon player, and general waiter.
Your father tried to putter parallelly with a new artistic collection, but he had difficulty finding inspiration. He noticed that time was limited, that he had invested his wife’s patrimony in an uncertain photographic studio. The future suddenly seemed to glide uncertainly like a water slide.
In the summer of 1986, your day care was annulled to save economy. Instead you spent your time down in the studio in our company. Do you remember those summery days? Do you remember how your child arms helped us spread leaflets in the newly built shopping center, where many retail spaces still stood unrented? Do you remember how we let you sneak into the nursing home and nail leaflets onto the bulletin board? You worked very effectively, although your age was that of a child. And although your father perhaps did not pronounce it in your presence, he was very proud of you. Very, very proud.
Do you remember how we partook our lunches? How we assisted your father when he apart-took his camera? How we began to roar rude Arabic insultations after the customers who invaded the studio, encountered your father’s welcome greeting, and then for some bizarre reason returned out to the courtyard with a regretting exterior? And do you remember how you often imitated your father when he nervously drummed his fingers against the perpetually silent booking telephone; you drummed your small fingers in the exact same rhythm and your father lost his train of thought, silenced the drum, and regarded you, a copy of himself
when young, the same suspect imagination, the same speech-related problems. He lovingly patted your cheek. But the telephone continued its silent rest.
And you remember the silence
, the ticking of the kitchen clock, the gaze from the blown-up Silvia portrait, the framed letter, and Dads, who drum their fingers, the sun which moves over the courtyard and filters through the curtains, and Dads’ friends, who drink coffee and billow cigs and play backgammon, joke about cheating at dice, and sometimes borrow the bathroom, and once Kadir, who wants to fix the washer in the dripping faucet, the faucet that’s bothered Dads for several weeks but that now they want to keep.
The economic success for Studio Silvia bided its time like a patient meter maid. Your father said:
“Do not worry, Kadir. This is a premier phase. Swedes bear a certain initial suspiciousness, particularly toward us Swedes who do not bear a Swedish appearance. But soon, anytime, our business will take off. In just a few weeks they will realize my artistic talent. Soon there will be lines and guest lists in order to access my photographic services.”
“What shall we do until then?”
“We wait.”
And you remember the waiting
and the faucet dripping which continues and Kadir, who again offers to fix it: It’s simple, it can be done in a few minutes, but Dads don’t want to, Dads refuse to let him repair the faucet: I
want to keep the dripping! shout Dads suddenly with a slightly too loud voice and you remember that in particular but don’t really understand why. It’s the summer of 1986 and the studio is empty of customers and you’re starting to hang around the neighboring courtyards, starting to explore the shopping center, starting to chat with the drunks and becoming friends with the dry cleaner. And then sometime in the middle of the summer you catch sight of Melinda. And the first time you see each other you both just watch suspiciously from a distance and the second time Melinda shows you her homemade Super Mario belt and the third time you play Indian tiger tamers with extra-long whips and specially made tranquilizer darts. And doesn’t someone get angry at you because of that very game? You don’t remember. But you remember that Melinda soon becomes your first real best friend because Melinda is just like you. Melinda gets why you can think imagination games are fun even though you’ve begun elementary school and Melinda also has a bunch of imaginary friends who really exist but can’t necessarily be seen by regular adults. Melinda agrees that you can play Super Mario Bros. even if you don’t have that new TV game called Nintendo and she just gets mad that time when you suggest that instead of being Mario she should be the princess who must be rescued.
And we waited. With the ambition of patience we let the hours tick on while waiting for the assault of customers. To pass the time your father and I started to layer our backgammon games with nostalgic discussions. While you found your friendship with the neighborhood children, your father portioned his memories
of his father and the lostness he felt from having been abandoned. I also remember how he very poetically related his longing for his father despite that this father had never been his actual knowledge.
“Is this not bizarre, Kadir? That my soul feels perpetually hollowed. It has only become worse since I became a father. I thought the consequence would be diagonally opposite. How can a hollowness arise even though what I miss has never been experienced me? How can an emptiness cause pain? And how can one cure the pain that is caused by an emptiness?”
“I do not know. Have you tried exchanging these thoughts with your wife?”
“It does not work. I can’t. I do not know why. She still believes that Cherifa and Faizal are my real parents. And she knows nothing about the loan I owe you …”
Here we were interrupted by your storming income. With sweaty forehead, bare chest, and a long whip made of a string you whistled down the stairs and took shelter behind your father. A second later the door was opened by the master of the nearby flower shop. Furiously he sought after “the Turks who chased his grandmother’s cat with darts.” Your father hid your body effectively and pointed out that anyone who likened his son with a Turk would be afflicted with rumbling fists, understood? The flower master mumbled that “this neighborhood is really going downhill.” He excited the studio and you crawled, smiling, from your hiding place.
“Where were we?” I coaxed. But your father did not want to continue. He signaled in your direction and made me understand that this was
NOT
intended for your ears. Your father varied the subject:
“Anyway: I am very glad to have your company here in Sweden, Kadir. But I have to reveal you one thing. I have no possibility of returning your economy. Unfortunately. Not right now.”
“That pains me to hear.”
“It pains me to admit.”
“But my salary?”
“I will outpay your salary, I promise you that. With a certain delay. This studio’s success has perhaps not become as I had hoped. But I want to present you an offer: If you agree to postpone the repayment of the loan, I will offer you a golden exchange.”
“What? Free passport photos?” I sighed.
“No, much better. The possibility to learn the foundations of Swedish!”
“How can that benefit me?”
“Well, imagine. Swedish is a Germanic language with many international loan words. If only you know Swedish you will soon know German and Dutch and after that almost English.”
“So?”
“If you want to cultivate a future as a hotel owner you
MUST
learn many languages, particularly Swedish. Then you can return to Tabarka with perfect prerequisites for hotelish success. By the time I repay you my debt you can open the doors for your own hotel that tempts Nordic tourists. And Nordic touristettes. What do you say?”
“Well … I would probably rather choose to obtain my promised economy.”
Your father presented a face that looked so miserable that I immediately regretted my words.
“I lack that possibility, Kadir. Unfortunately. However, I can teach you the foundations of Swedish. This will further your future. And mine. Pernilla is frustrated that my static Swedish is never glistened to gold. And Swedish is the only language that works in Sweden. No other country I have afflicted has tied a greater worth to the perfection of language.”
“But … which other countries have you actually afflicted? Besides Tunisia?”
“Many upon many.”
“Which ones?”
“For example, Pernilla’s relatives in Denmark last summer. What do you say?”
“Okay,” I sighed.
Accompanied by the summer’s transformation into fall, your father and I begin to repeat Swedish personal pronouns, the intensifying of adjectives, and the mystery of prepositions. We memorize how all Swedish words referring to people and animals are noted with the indefinite form
“en,”
with the exception of
“ett barn,”
a child. We tame our tongues to the mystery of Swedish pronunciation, where there is a big difference between
u
and
y
. Migratory birds leave Sweden, green leaves become firishly red, the ground is frosted, the sandbox sand stiffens, and Stockholm loses its delicious odors. All while we note that some call Swedish “the language of twenty-nine letters” or “the language of breathing,” because
h
gives an actual exhalation instead of the muteness of French, and the inhaling sound with suck-formed lips indicates an affirmative response.
I want to describe what occurred with the following words underlined in a different form of text:
Swedish filled me. Expanded me. It harmonized every bodily particle.
Where did this emotion come from? Perhaps from your father. It was he who passionately spoke of the Swedish language. It was he who led my process, who delegated me his antique handouts from
Swedish for Immigrants
, who praised my encouragement and honored my storming progress. Sometimes he mumbled:
“You learn very easily, Kadir, very easily,” and this seemed to
fill him with a big dose of happiness (spiced with a shade of jalousie).
I said to your father:
“My conviction was first that you just wanted to teach me Swedish in order to postpone the payment of economy. But now it feels like I have waited my whole life to get to speak this language. It is as though my tongue is made for this. Not Arabic. Not even French. Swedishness is my destiny and my studies go as quickly as a dancing feather in hurricane winds. Don’t they? Is the learning equally simple for you?”
Your father hmmed forth his response to this question. This last part may surprise you but I must admit it: Sometimes I was given the emotion that your father learned more slowly than I. That something in his experiences blocked his learning.
The studio continued its empty echo during the fall. Your father’s invested photo equipment glistened almost unused, the telephone waited in silence, spiders wove webs in the darkroom. The studio’s photographic activity lay quietly in hibernation, and not even your mother’s friends left their beloved Södermalm to support the studio despite their eagerly expressed curiosity for what they called “the colorful, multicultural suburb.” I never really understood the meaning of this expression. The neighborhood in the vicinity of the studio was not particularly separated from the neighborhood in Hornstull where you localized your lodgings. The same rectangular box houses, the same brown house colors. The same brightly shining mailboxes, the same Konsum grocery, the same Apoteket sign. The same red-nosed alcoholics who sat mumbling on the benches outside Systembolaget. The same Assyrians who started the same pizzerias with the same clever Italian names. Sometimes I noticed that people from Södermalm truly enjoyed pointing out every crucial difference between “the suburbs” and “downtown.” Sometimes I thought that the situation was similar to when tourists in Tabarka enjoyed pointing out
the crucial difference between “the mystique of the Orient” and “the stress and pressure of the Western world.” And sometimes I was heaped, like your father, to frustration by people’s constant ambition of focusing on differences between people. Where does this infection come from? Can your memories of that fall offer any response?
Then comes the fall
, with the usual fall routines, and there are no more weekend picnics at Trekanten and no more demonstrations and Moms stop mourning for Palme and Dads stop mourning for Refaat. Moms start working as nurses and Dads leave little brothers at day care every morning before the studio. You start second grade and conduct yourself excellently and become one of the best in the class and come home with a special diploma that time when the elementary school has a competition with times table work sheets.
At the same time it’s a split time because the others at school aren’t like you because most of them have cars and brand-name clothes and their own video games and cable TV and fancy country cottages and Christmas lists that are pages long. And sometime maybe you say that by the way you have cable TV now too and then someone asks what your favorite channel is and you think and think because you know that there’s some cool channel that plays music videos all day long and just before it’s too late you remember the name and say it proudly: My favorite is that music channel where they play very much disco. Yeah, you know, Disco-Very. And they look at you and laugh and you don’t realize your mistake until much later.
Then it’s safer to go out to the studio in the afternoons,
share a snack with Dads and Kadir, and hang out with Melinda in the courtyard. You have just started to say “want to hang out” instead of “want to play.” But then you still see each other every day and play play play. No one else understands life like Melinda because Melinda has the world’s yellowest Pumas and a fluorescent gummy smile and a hairstyle that’s the school’s flattest flattop. And one time Melinda tells you that some sixth-graders set their milk glasses on her hair and told her to balance them over to the counter and she did it but then she ran home to the courtyard and rushed into the hall crying (fake tears of course) and a second later her sisters came rushing out of their rooms, the Melinda sisters who were already notorious in the area because there were four of them and they were gigantic in size and they all looked the same, with dimple thighs like logs and powerful biceps and stonewashed suspender jeans. They fought like no one else and it was total uproar when all the Melinda sisters tried to get their shoes on first and they raced to the school at full speed and Olayinka still had her hairbrush in her hand and Adeola rolled up her sleeves as they ran and Fayola, who was the quietest and had the best grades, ran farthest back and mostly came along to stop the others. The Melinda sisters invaded the cafeteria and went from table to table with the question: Was it you? Was it you? Was it you? And when they finally reached the right table with the right gulping sixth-graders came the question: Was it you? And the answer: Who did what? And that was all the Melinda sisters needed to hear and Monifa kneed groins and Olayinka punched and Adeola gobbed spit and Fayola tried to calm them down and pull them back but then some sixth-grader said something
about bananas behind her broad back and then the roles switched and Fayola became the one who was winding up and Adeola got in the middle and tried to stop it.
You’re sitting wide-eyed in the swing next to Melinda’s. What happened then? Then the janitor and the beefy shop teacher came and the fight was stopped and the sixth-graders cried and said: They’re totally damned crazy! And the Melinda sisters went as one body out of the cafeteria and someone happened to frisk a jacket and someone happened to overturn a hall table and Melinda was right behind them and you remember that when Melinda has finished telling she smiles in that way you only smile when you see your family succeed.
On the way home you think about how you don’t have a sister army, you don’t have any relatives who can come to your rescue, you don’t have uncles who play records at the Afro-pop club at Sankt Eriksplan, you only have Dads and Moms and a worn-out Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser that lost its dispensing power a long time ago. And little brothers of course, little brothers who are growing quickly; the nights are less screechy, but shopping is extra heavy, with milk at bulk price and canned food three for ten crowns. And soon you’ll be buying juice without pulp and then a few months later just juice concentrate and then just juice on the weekends and then only on Sunday mornings, no more than one glass per brother. And soon, written clearly on the shopping list: “Cornflakes—Eldorado,
NOT
Kellogg’s.” The finances are starting to waver and Dads spend more and more time in the studio and sometimes Moms say with her opposite-loaded voice:
It’s lucky there are two of us contributing to the household money, isn’t it, dear? And another time, a little later that same fall with the same reverse voice: What would we do without your dad’s brilliant sense of economics?
And in the same second you write the word “economics” and then the question mark you remember that it must be this fall that Dads formulate their new strategy for the studio’s survival.
When do Dads present the idea? You don’t remember, maybe you’re sitting in the studio in the company of Kadir and a quietly silent customer phone? Maybe it’s the same day that Mansour has visited and shown you that article where the
Svenska Dagbladet
journalist Erik Lidén wrote that Refaat was certainly unique in Swedish industry because he “with his Arab origin has a totally different view of truth and life than regular Swedes.” Yes, presumably it’s that day, when Mansour has put on his glasses and left the studio in a heavy fog of smoke and Kadir is sitting silently and Dads mumble: This country is very bizarre to me, first you’re an Arab and then you’re Swede of the Year and then you’re an Arab again.
You take the commuter train home together and Dads sit silently. Then over dinner Dads look at Moms and say: I have made up my mind. No more not-Swedish. You are right. Starting now we will
ONLY
speak Swedish. Both here and in the studio. The twins will not be confused by the multitude of languages! No more French, no more Arabic. I must make my Swedish seriously impeccable in order to guarantee my studio’s continued survival!
Moms who applaud and you who protest and Dads
who suddenly pretend not to understand either Arabic or French objections. Swedish, my son. Now we speaks Swedish!
