Authors: Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Montecore (30 page)
• • •
A sweetish smell of marijuana trickled into the storeroom where your father sat hidden. It was accompanied by growing voices and then the vibrations from your roaring declaration:
“Melinda gets up and declares the meeting open.”
What meeting? reflected your father. What are they actually doing out there?
After Melinda
, it’s Imran’s turn. He gets up, tells about upcoming actions, shows drawings and maps and future strategies of how
blatte
representatives will infiltrate area after area, slowly but surely gain influence, and then force in more
blattar
.
Everyone cheers and applauds and toasts and back-thumps.
After a half hour or so, your father cracked open the door. He heard your now-hoarse voice shouting: “Everyone cheers and applauds and toasts and back-thumps.” Your father collectioned his courage, turned out the door further, and looked out into the studio to see who else you had enticed along into your decadence.
Then Imran turns it over to me
and I’m really just going to give the final speech, that inspiration chat I always give at the end of every meeting, and as usual it’s dead quiet when I begin and as usual I give a speech that revolves around the older generation as cowardly betrayers. I say dads are fucking traitors and damn Uncle Toms and house Negroes and Benedict Arnolds, this goes for all dads, I swear if they were real dads they wouldn’t be gone now because real dads never betray
their children, and real dads lead revolts and don’t care about finances and I end with my fist in the air and the promise that we will
NEVER
be like our parents and I’m standing before a field of raised fists and we solemnly promise and there’s cheering and saluting and roaring and whistling and there’s a choir of one more time one more time and
JONAS JONAS
but I decline and say: That’s enough. For now.
When the meeting is over, we sing the fight song for the coming revolution, promise ourselves
NEVER
to give up no matter what happens, and then the troops turn toward home.
We let out our breath, close the minutes book, toast with near beer, and spill a few drops for dead homiez, a drop for Grandpa, a drop for Jimmy Ranjbar, two drops for Fayola. And soon we’ve built up enough strength for the evening’s real task. It’s a sneak attack and it’s best if we do it ourselves. Even generals must go to battle sometimes.
But Jonas …
NO ONE HAD INVADED THE STUDIO!
There were no “troops.” There was just you and your three lost friends. Melinda, Imran, and Patrik sat on their floor pillows while you gave a long speech in which you sullied your father and waved your hand at an invisible army. Your father crept back to the storeroom, sank whimpering down into a squat, and felt his heart melt at the sight of this pathetic scene.
What had your father observed? Was it this that his son meant by never upgiving his fight? Sitting in a locked, blue-colored, previous pet studio and fantasizing forth a revolution? Had his son questioned his will to fight in order to himself spend his time in the false world of fantasy?
Your father thought: “My son has lost his mental balance. He is crazy. He has been captured in the fog of role-playing.” He remained sitting in the storeroom, with an accelerating desperation and a growing need to pee. Out there you played pumping hip-hop music and howled your shouts where you constantly named each other “ey bro” or “ey
blatte”
as though they were delicious compliments. Then the music was stopped. It turned into noises of bags and your voice, which again, for the third time, compared your father’s existence with that of an “Uncle Tom.”
Then your father experienced a rage that he had not known since his youth. It was a fury that collectioned all the years of degradation, all the years of invisible striving and struggling and providing for his family that was now flushed into the drain by a crazy son who hallucinated forth invisible forms that he called “his army” and cyclically shouted:
“Let’s jet, bros! It’ll be a
blatte
revolution with no mercy! Maximum fat caps up their asses.”
And I remember that
night because the sky is cinematically starry clear and we’ve puffed zut and sipped near beer and as usual I was the evening’s game master, and as usual it was a wild success. We left Dungeons & Dragons a long time ago, now it’s a new time new battles and instead of Miss Super Zulu and MC Mustachio everyone is themselves. Almost. With a little extra strength and increased courage and maximum talent for handling paintbrushes at night. We’re ready for the next task, it’s black sky and autumn night, cold wind in frozen-stiff gloves, paint cans in plastic bags, and just-bought wide brushes.
• • •
The door was locked, your shouts died away, the studio was left in silence. Your father crept out from his hiding place and emptied his bladder in the bathroom with relief. Then he left the dark of the premises and followed your four silhouettes toward the commuter train station. He had gotten an overdose of something. He was pushed over a line. Perhaps it was your repeated insultations that ached him. Perhaps those words turned on his innermost fear? (For certainly it is the truest insultations that ache us the most?)
From the footbridge, Abbas saw how you painted the nocturnally deserted train station with a multitude of light blue words. Quick as rats you wrote idiocies like
BLATTE
4
LIFE
and
FUCK WAR
on the platform floor and the glass panes of the waiting room. Your father thought satirically: “Wow, this will no doubt have a broad political effect.” At the same moment, he noticed his dangling camera around his neck. This was no planned intention. It was just hanging there. And without knowing why he exposed the lens and began to shoot.
Your father followed your steps all night. He saw how you painted your idiotic letters on the white triangles of Sergels Torg, random electrical boxes, the chess squares at Kungsträdgården. He saw how you sullied the statue of Charles
XII
with light blue color and how Patrik wrote
BLATTE POWER
on some nearby steps. He saw how you spelled on the bridge that leads over to Gamla Stan. He saw how you were seconds from being discovered at the palace, how you painted your letters on the antique palace wall, hid the brushes, and half-ran whistling to Slussen when the patrol guard came stamping. Your father’s camera documented everything.
That night we stamp the city
with our words. Melinda, Imran, Patrik, and I. We cover everything in our colors, we leave our mark. I remember the excitement that pounds in my chest, my mouth steamed by the autumn
air, the hoodie’s neck warmth, the smell of paint, paint-sticky brushes, my worn-out right arm, steam breath in the face-shielding scarf.
After a few hours we’re almost done and the paint starts to run out. There’s just one attack point left, absolutely the most risky one. But what do you say, maybe this is enough? Melinda adjusts the comb in her hair and stares at us. She has a little drop of blue paint on her chin, and at that moment she’s the most beautiful in the world because she’s standing there in the yellow streetlight and yelling: If you want to give up, fine, do it, I’m going to keep going.
Of course we keep going. All in a quartet down toward the skinheads’ helicopter platform. The giggling is long gone. Imran’s Adam’s apple goes up and down, Patrik checks over his shoulder, the cans clang, and taxis are watching. Melinda goes first, the bag paint-flecked with light blue, her furiously hopping comb that glitters in the cold tunnel light.
Then keep watch in the dark on the other side and there’s the starry sky and there’s the lapping water and there’s the rocking helicopter platform and traces of the skinheads. Empty beer cans, fluttering Systembolaget bags, racist graffiti. The silhouette of Riddarholmen towers to the right and you can hear music from a distant party. But we are alone. No one there. Melinda’s hissing cry: Go! and with the clumsiest glove fingers pry open dented paint lids; Patrik and I start while Melinda and Imran keep watch in different directions. The water laps and sweat dampens my upper lip when I dip the brush in the soon-empty can and start crossing out all the Nazi signs. Then painting letters that run tearlike over the concrete wall, words that shine sharply and
they will sit there for always and they’re written like in a trance and I barely remember what I write, just words upon words upon words and at this point all the fear disappears because it’s just me and the paint and the eternal feeling of being permanent. And obviously it would be cooler to claim that I was used to doing real tags and didn’t write in a style that Melinda and Imran laughed at and called old lady writing. And obviously it would be cooler if we had fat caps and real spray cans and stood under a starry clear Compton sky and sprayed multicolored graffiti with starry shine and perfect shadowing on our lowriders. But there’s also something beautiful in dirtying the skinheads’ favorite place with big brushes and Grandma’s leftover light blue garage paint.
Soon we change position, a nighttime commuter train passes, electric cables spark. Patrik watches the tunnel, I watch the dock, all clear: Go! I listen for boot stomps and
heil
shouts, I listen for that jumpy sequence of tones that comes from police walkie-talkies and that always makes me think of R2-D2 in
Star Wars
. But I don’t hear anything more than the lapping of the water and distant bass lines from the party. Melinda’s letters shine more clearly than mine,
SCREW KSS!
and Imran writes,
FUCK WAR’S MOTHER!
and then the not really equally badass
BERT = DIRT!
Then suddenly you hear steps. Were they steps? I try to squint myself through the compact darkness. Is it a lost dog owner or a drunk or maybe ten or twelve skinheads who’ve been lying in ambush? Then suddenly I’m blinded by a flash. What the hell was that? yells Melinda and Imran drops the brush and Patrik yells: It’s the train! But everyone realizes that the tracks are
lying silently deserted and Melinda starts to get paranoid, looks toward the dock: Is there someone there or what? And I crouch down, am about to say no when there’s another flash, one flash, two, three: There’s someone taking pictures! and we tear down into the tunnel and we pull our scarves over our faces way too late as an army of hard-soled skinheads pant at our necks and shout racist slogans behind our backs.
We have just come out of the tunnel when the car motor growls itself up behind us. We slow down our steps and try to walk calmly, no one hurries until the world suddenly turns blue and someone’s called the cops and in one second we cut into the alleys of Gamla Stan and it’s forced breaths and shifted motor, walkie-talkie sounds and loudspeaker voices, blinking blue lights and Melinda who shouts: Drop the cans! even though they’re still sitting over at the helicopter platform. We rush through alleys, past a café, cobblestones, into a backyard, catch our breath, watching from the shelter of a rainspout. Waiting them out. Are you with me? Right when we think we’ve made it, in the middle of that laugh that’s always at its biggest when you’ve been close to being caught but succeeded in tricking the pigs at the last second, they’re there again and now there are two cars and we run as a quartet, Imran just a few steps after, hunted by sirens and accelerating sounds, steps echoing between the narrow houses, clattering up until we’re caught in a dead end and it’s a cinematic ending, the loudspeaker voice in the shadows that shouts
STOP!
and we stop, out of breath we stand there caught with blinding blue light in our faces.
• • •
Write me … How did you dare, three thin teenagers (and one gigantically fat), to positionate yourselves at the helicopter platform? Did you not realize the risk? Your father chose to use his flash with intention. To teach you a lesson. And he enjoyed the view of your bodies which suddenly became trembling hares that rushed back into the tunnel of Gamla Stan.
But you must believe me about one thing. It was not your father who called the police. That he corresponded his photographs to the police is another matter. He did it in a haze of revenge. He did it in a betrayed temperament. He did it for
YOUR
future care. He was very careful not to include the photos where you were documented with brushes. Only Patrik, Melinda, and Imran were exposed. And these are three people who are not worth your escort anyway. These are three who should know better than to encourage my son’s confused imagination! If they try to cultivate seeds of outsiderness in my son’s head, this is the price one must pay! (These were your father’s words.)
And this is the last
fall we have left together, because Patrik, Imran, and Melinda’s sentences come down in the spring, and they’re harsher than expected. Maybe because we tried to run. Maybe because they discovered our tracks all the way from the helicopter platform to the palace to the statue to the studio. Maybe because we refused to confess to the very end (despite the paint flecks on shoes, hands, and jacket arms). Maybe because of the series of photos that someone gave to the police—the photos that documented everything from the train platform to the helicopter platform in blurry photos as though from a crying lens. Presumably it was the photo series, because photographs don’t lie, as a judge says and smacks his mouth and fixes his eyes on Melinda,
who’s sitting thin-shouldered on an adult chair and she looks at her sniffling mom and her bodyguarding sisters and her Afro is combed down neatly and her green gold chain is hanging hidden under her Singapore shirt and her hand has an almost-washed-off BFL tattoo and her voice almost disappears in the courtroom when she takes the blame for all my letters without blinking and says: Of course I’m the one who wrote that all racists can fuck their mothers of course I’m the one who wrote
FUCK THE FIVE-O
and of course I’m the one who wrote that weird stuff on the far side that one with the kind of strange writing that I can’t even explain what it means.