Authors: Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Montecore (31 page)
Dads stand strong.
I barely remember the final scene. I think it’s blurry Moms who unscrew the padlock on Dads’
mémoire
, Dads who have returned to Sweden, Dads who are back to being a gate guard, notice has been given on the studio, and Dads are sleeping on the sofa while waiting for the divorce to go through. What else do I remember? Moms’ gasping sounds? Moms’ short moans?
Moms are standing there with the envelope, and it’s overstuffed with negatives and out falls proof of things Dads have stubbornly denied. Do you believe it yourself? That I was unfaithful? Or that I would follow my own son and then try to get his friends arrested? Never!
But the negatives are lying there, and some of them depict faceless bodies and others depict an opposite world of nighttime colors where my blue panther back is painting a train platform. Melinda and Imran are painting Sergels Torg, Patrik writes
BLATTE POWER
on some steps, and all four silhouettes are standing in a row and coloring the wall of the Swedish palace.
Moms display their perpetual uprightness. Moms don’t let in the tiniest compromise. Little brothers are sent down to the cellar to get Dads’ suitcases, Moms get the orange kitchen scissors and start packing.
When Dads come home from SL that night, the bags are ready in the halls, filled with ties, socks, underwear, shirts, pants, and T-shirts—all carefully punctured with at least one or two scissor holes.
And I remember how Dads just stand there in the hall in his SL jacket with the evening paper in his right hand and his beret at an angle. Dads looks at Moms and looks at sons and at first he seems to think it’s all a joke because he laughs nervously. You can’t be this angry about a little white lie and some mistakes? Who hasn’t done things they regret? Dads untie shoes and Moms roar with a mirror-cracking voice and little brothers start to cry and Dads try to explain, try to find excuses, try to say I did it for the good of our son and those women were a long time ago and meant nothing. But Moms’ tears are as heavy as surprise rain on picnics on sand dunes and her cheeks as tight as when she saw Bert Karlsson give the victory sign and Dads try to say sorry in a bunch of different languages and layer French declarations of love on Arabic nicknames on Swedish forgive me’s but Moms won’t let herself be calmed in any language and when Dads try to touch Moms’ cheek she steps to the side and shoves him toward the door and her cheeks are so red that her forehead shines white and Dads suddenly change voices and say: I refuse. You don’t refuse at all. Dads look at me and I at him, our eyes meet, we stare at each other’s pupils but I don’t give up, not this time, because nothing ever comes between Moms and sons.
Finally Dads tie his shoes, pick up the suitcases, and walk toward the balcony walkway. Little brothers are crying even louder and Velcroing themselves to Dads’ legs and Dads are biting lower lip and Moms are crouching with her hands like pitchforks in her hair. I wave Dads’ farewell with words that I will never forget and that I want to but can’t include in the book.
Oh? You may certainly exclude things, but your father may not? Here shall be injected exactly what you said because this is a vital phrase for your long silence. You yelled your father’s adieu with the words:
• • •
When your father returned from Sweden I barely recognized his exterior. His hair was silvered and in certain places his hairstyle resembled a cue ball. His eye bags were swollen and he was limping from a foot sprain he happened to get in the airport bar of the layover in Frankfurt.
“Well, how did your reunion with your family happen?” I wondered with concern.
“Oh, it happened well. My wife was sorry and wanted to have me back as a spouse. And my son and I are the best of friends.”
“So … what are you doing here again?”
Your father compressed his lips.
“Aren’t you going to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“But another time?”
“Another time.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
Your father settled himself permanently in Tabarka. He took over Achraf’s old atelier, modernized it, and offered tourists the chance to be photographed with their heads stuck into Arabic milieu scenery. There was the desert scene where one became a dromedary driver, the harem scene where one became a fat sultan, the Kaaba scene where one became a Muslim on a pilgrimage.
Abbas bore a constant longing for his family, for the delicious tap water of Sweden, for bridges’ views in sun layings, for the summery odor of lilacs. But to live isolated in that country where he gave his all was to him impossible. He had transformed his name, he had curved his tongue to perfection the Swedish language. He had even named his son Jonas instead of Younes! What more could be expected? For all that, Sweden was the country where he was still seen as a constant outsider.
I must admit that during the following years he still considered your betrayal the most devastating. Late at night when we shared our company over a whiskey he would say this about you:
“What right does that snake have to say that I have betrayed my roots? What does that confused damn idiot know about roots? What does he know about fighting? He spends his constant time in the phase of confusion. Because what else could one call a person who is born in Sweden of a Swedish mother and still spends his time in the company of idiotic immigrants, eagerly proclaiming the fight against racists as his goal? What else can one call a person who, with intention, has an accent in the language he himself was raised with? My son is a sad figure who lacks culture. He is not Swedish, he is not Tunisian, he is
NOTHING
. He is a constant cavity who varies himself by his context like a full-fledged chameleon.”
(Excuse me, Jonas, but I must write you your father’s true words.) I responsed:
“But … aren’t you too?”
“Yes! But for me it is a proud prestige. I am a free cosmopolitan! But for my son this is a shame.”
During the following years I did my diplomat. I tried to convince your entirely too proud father not to stifle his relation with his sons. Call them! Correspond them your begun but never terminated letter! Your father only refused my propositions. His pride blockaded him. And so you know: I was the one who indicated to your father that he should send those postcards to your little brothers in the fall of 1997. It was my fault. Sorry! I thought it might be good if your father let out a bit of furious steam and therefore we formulated the text of the cards in an alcoholic intoxication. Your father already regretted this the next day. But as usual his prestige blockaded him from telephoning you with an apology.
And you remember that day
because soon it’s double little brothers’ birthdays and you’ve started high school and you come home from school at lunch and it’s you and your school friend Homan who are going to watch last night’s
Yo! MTV Raps
and your home is his so you kick off your shoes in the hall and Homan rewinds the video while you look through the mail. The absolute worst is your second-long joy when you see the postcards and the motifs from Tabarka and the Tunisian stamps, the joy of seeing Dads’ classically beautiful handwriting with the specially bent numerals in the zip code. And although you have the feeling you’re going to regret it, you read the text on the two postcards that have been sent to your two little brothers and although you know it’s going to leave traces that will never be rubbed out you read the phrases, which are exactly identical on both postcards:
Everyone in the entire world has betrayed me. Except you two
.
And you remember that Dads even specify “you
two,” and you don’t crumple the postcards into balls and you don’t swear out loud but Homan notices and he understands without questions because his dad is a betrayer too because his dad has started hitting his wife in fear of her new colleagues and in frustration about never getting to go on job interviews and now he’s working as a popcorn seller at the Röda Kvarn theater and Homan understands exactly why sometimes you can get tear eyes and back shivers just from seeing other dads with their sons in the subway or why you always get goose-bump skin when Treach in Naughty by Nature raps: I was one who never had and always mad, never knew my dad muthafuck the fag. Homan gets the rage that you can feel for a country that’s stolen your dad.
The years passed, the tourism expanded, your father lived very isolated with his business and his Sweden memories. In 1998 we made the relation of an American tourist by the name of Alex Baldwin (that was actually his name, almost like the famous Hollywood actor). Together we partook the majority of drinks in hotel bars before Alex said that he had many relations in the erotic branch in the U.S.A. He said that pornography was always looking for new markets and the only thing not represented was the Arab world.
“Do you want to assist me in the creation of local Arab erotic photos? It would collect you serious finances.”
Alex paused to see how your father received his idea.
“Or perhaps you have religious protests against—”
“No worries,” I interrupted. “No traditional backpacks weight our backs. Right, Abbas? But you must be able to find Arab women in the U.S.A. who are ready to eroticize themselves before the camera? Why not just use props and actors and photograph women in
veils in Los Angeles or Beverly Hills? Why take the roundabout way in doing it here?”
Alex smiled my naïveté.
“Of course we can use actors, of course we can maximize our attempts to falsify an Arab atmosphere in a studio in L.A. And even now there are many such photo series. But our customers are not the crowd of routine. Our customers are the creamy crops, very particular with a great hunger for authenticity. Our customer will detect a false fez or an American studio immediately. But this, things like this can’t be simulated!”
Alex aimed his index finger at the cracked plastic globe of the button that controlled the hotel bar’s ceiling light.
“Do you understand? Besides, erotica is a branch that sways in rhythm with politics. Soon after the Gulf War we noticed how the demand for Arab pornography grew among our customers. The future looks very positive.”
“Just one thing,” said your father. “It is very important to me that our photos do not violate anyone. I only want to photograph erotically and not pornographically. I still have a broad talent that must not be abused. We must carry on the torch from photographers like Weston, Kertész, and Bill Brandt!”
“Of course,” responsed Alex. “Who are these three?”
“This trio made the naked photograph respectable.”
“Trust me,” Alex calmed, and delegated us his business card.
I must admit that Abbas collaborated with Alex for a few following years. I assisted him. Together we contracted Tunisian studentettes and prostitutes, who, in exchange for expanded finances, sexualized themselves before the camera. Initially he photographed only solitary sexy women who, clad in veils, widened their legs, pouted their lips, and tempted the camera with hints of the delight. But in connection with the expansion of the global world net I convinced your father to expand into photographing women who also sexualized themselves with men in front of the camera.
I had an obvious motive: The conflicts between the Western world and the Arab world increased the demand for our photos exponentially. Every oil conflict, terror attack, or Gulf invasion fed the hunger for photos where veiled women were sexualized. Your father finally gave in and the public success was total. Our first success was the humoristically erotic
Aladdin and His Magic Tramp
. Then
Lawrence of Hoe-rabia
and
Casablanca the
XXX
Version
arrived. A very popular series, particularly in France, presented principals who had their one-eyes sucked to ecstasy by veiled students who wanted to levitate their grades
(Principal’s Office, Fail in Veil, Parts 1–6)
. Another combined the soldier format with Muslim food erotica
(Dessert Storm—Feeding the Soldiers)
.
Our photos found a well-built success in both the U.S.A. and Europe. Almost all of our series found their specific customers and only a few made fiascos (the unfortunately named photo series
Saddam and Gonorrhea
, for example, only had a very limited distribution, except in an extremely selective circle of customers). Soon we created our own photo heroes who returned in repeated series. Our first female heroine was called Miss Honey Milk Sheik—the female nympho. She was a Muslim oil-well proprietress who happily let herself be bound and sexualized in triangular holes at the same time by white men she found at abandoned gas stations. The American success became rocketish and the woman we collaborated with was soon invited to Miami for solo scenes with erotic giants like Peter North. We replaced her with a male hero where we borrowed the format from the comic Rowan Atkinson. Instead of Mr. Bean we created Mr. Bedouin, a very humoristic man who constantly happens to localize himself in hilariously sexual situations. He rents a hotel room and is welcomed extra generously by the proprietress’s twin daughters
(Too Cool for School)
. He gets lost and is welcomed extra generously in an oasis by seven sex-starved Saudi aerobics instructors
(1,000 and One Tights)
.
Soon we noticed that particularly popular were the photo series
where we let men penetrate veiled women in an acted situation of coercion. The man was preferably as white as possible. The woman was preferably forced to sexualization, the veil preferably ripped in two, and the penetration preferably happened according to the pattern: orally, vaginally, anally, and then back to orally. The man could, for example, play a soldier who invaded an erotically steaming hamam or a business director who called in a veiled employee to his office room. The scenario did not seem central; the vital thing was that the woman’s veil would be ripped off, that her hair would be exposed, and that the white portion of the man would be planted in the woman’s face.
I was responsible for all the practicalities while your father photographed our series with that sort of creeping indifference that had colored him since his Sweden move. His finances flowered, but still he was so far from happy. It was
NOT
the ambiguity of morals that disturbed him. Memorize that all women who acted in our photos chose this entirely solitarily. For every slurped spunk and penetrated anus they were compensated very generously. And what does one have for legitimacy to question a woman’s right to her own body? Your father is an enlightened Western man who would never fall into the trap of naïveté-declaring those models with whom he collaborated.
