Authors: Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Montecore (9 page)
Certainly Pernilla’s political engagement has found a certain mirroring in me. But sometimes I stare at her coat-wearing friends as they stand, filled with red wine and swaying and babbling their mantra about the repulsiveness of the American imperialism and the threatfulness of capitalism, while at the same time they frizz their beards and persist in constantly asking me about my perspective on the Middle East and my view of Sadat and … My eyes are
filled with contempt. Accompanied by thoughts like: What do these sumptuously bred, monotonous politicizers know about life? Why do they think they have the patent of truth? Why do they regard me with disappointment when I express my disinclination to name Sadat as an abandoner, just because he is seeking the path of compromise? And why do they persist in constantly, constantly pointing out to me the heavenliness of baklava and the deepness of
The
bloody goddamn
Prophet?
I am truly starting to be filled up to here with that book. Why doesn’t anyone want to discuss anything but the Middle East or baklava? Why doesn’t anyone want to discuss Otis Redding? Why can we not, just for tonight, release the chains of politics, ignore the starving children of Africa, and invest our collected economy in sumptuously bubbling punch bowls? And perhaps discuss Otis’s motive for singing “sitting on” in the first verse and then in the last verse “sitting
AT
the dock of the bay”? Why can’t we humans ever satisfy ourselves with the littles of life?
Excuse all of my characters, Kadir. But I have no other friends to share my words with. And to be able to return to the familiar sphere of Arabic is divinely liberating. So far my Swedish knowledge is very limited.
Abbas
7
1.
Translate this in the book: “My body awaits you at Central Station … /Your unique cat.” (It was your father’s tradition to always nickname himself with different titles in the company of different women. With Pernilla he was “the unique cat” or, short and delicious, “Capa.”)
2.
Here your father is probably using metaphorical imagery language. Rather than the sky it was probably his imagination that flashed with explosions. Or what do you think? Write me, Jonas—have you ever been seriously in love? Have you ever experienced the kind of love that wakes you to the sweaty panic of the night with the dream that the life of your beloved has been terminated by the rendezvous with a cancerous disease or a toaster unluckily placed near her bathtub? Have you then calmed your heart bolt, rubbed your eyes, cleared your brain, and sighed your lungs? Have you then discovered her sleeping shadow there beside you in the dark? Have you heard her light snores? Have you returned your head to the pillow, buried your nose in the vicinity of her napely hair ends, nosed her lovely sleep skin, and realized in your mind that nothing,
NOTHING
in life, can measure up to this emotion? If this is not in your experience, you have truly not lived. Ask me, I know. It is this hurricanic love that your father lives in this historic time. Therefore, excuse him his romantic wishy-washing.
3.
Your father is probably referring as follows: Angels as a symbol for heaven = heaven as a symbol for snow = snow as a symbol for the generality of weather = “We could achieve angels!” = Our love could modify everything, including the weather.
As you observe, your father’s letters are deliciously formulated, perfectly adequate for bookly injection. But I wonder one thing: Why does your father not relate the motive for Pernilla’s late arrival at Central Station? Do you know the circumstance that gives the story its truly mythological value? She was actually on the way north for a ski vacation with her parents the same day that your father arrived in Sweden. She planned to stay away for two weeks, but a conflict with your grandmother irritated her to tears. (Your grandmother persisted in saying, “What did I tell you?” because your mother mourned your father’s letterly silence.) Near Uppsala your mother noticed great flaming rashes on her forearms and legs. She used these rashes as a motive for leaving her parents’ car and returning to Stockholm. There she found your father’s scrap of paper and with bolting breast she took a taxi toward Central Station and localized his alcohol-filled body at the cafe. Where did her rash come from? Your mother suspects that, despite her allergy, she happened to intake hazelnuts via a pastry. In the book we could introduce another more adequate nut allergy … Perhaps your mother was allergic to … chestnut jam? (Remember: Everything in life can be woven together; life is a coded pattern, and it is our task to crystallize in bookly form those small details that the people of the plurality let pass unnoticed.)
4.
Do you want to know what your father did? Let me show you … Look, who is that? Do you see him? It is your father sneaking his steps out from Raino’s lab, crossing the street, and invading the stairs where Raino localizes his lodging.
Your father elevates himself toward Raino’s floor, alarms the bell, and is welcomed by Raino’s beer-smelling body in slippers and an undershirt. Your father is delegated the leash and is presented to Raino’s dog, a corpulent figure of the race Golden Fetcher. The dog is nicknamed alternately by Raino as “Dumbo,” “the Whore,” “the Dick,” “the Dumb Fuck,” “Carina,” or “the Cunt” (all names christened after Raino’s ex-wife, who left Raino for a statistician from the tax board). Before your father goes, Raino presents him a knotted plastic bag.
“Here, take this.”
“Sure. But why?”
“You have to have it with you.”
“Okay. But why?”
“If Dumbo presents a poop it must be picked up and transported away in a bag.”
“Hahaha, you are a funny Finnish man with a humor as well formed as your mustache. Bye.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Hahaha!”
“Hey … I am serious.”
“
HAHAHA!
”
“Silence your laughter! You must pick up the poop.”
“Hmm … Is this humorous joke not a joke?”
“No … bye.”
Raino conducted the dog out into the stairway with a well-aimed kick. And there they are standing now, whining golden-haired dog and your masterful father. They sink themselves down toward the spring-frosted ground; they do a quick circle promenade in the park. The dog galumphs around and smells posts; your father observes him suspiciously, with nervous clampings of the bag knot in his pocket. The dog pees sandbox and noses flower bed. Your father hacks his throat. The dog bends his back legs like a Buddha and performs a light brown, very liquidy poop. Your father sighs, looks at his surroundings, bends his back, and with the façade of distaste he scrapes up the poop, which lies gooed onto the asphalt. Then, just as he is standing bent forward like a shoe tyer and feeling the warmth of the excrement, he promises himself a promise:
“
THIS MUST NOT BE IN VAIN!!!
Can one sink any lower? To stand in a foreign country with bent back in order to collect a diarrheic poop prepared by a dog with a name taken from a betraying ex-wife?”
Your father battle-raises his hand with the poop bag over his head and lets his voice echo over the park:
“
NO MORE GAMES! NOW IT IS SERIOUS!!!
”
At that second the sky of grayness is separated into a shining blue hole. The shining promises of the sun peer down at your father. He sees the sky, lowers his arm, and presents the poop bag to the specially marked dog garbage can. His fingers’ emotion of having picked up warm poop after an animal remains long after your father has returned the dog to Raino. It increases his ambition of never giving up his dream.
5.
Here we can inject a separate scene where your father walks the streets of Stockholm with his constantly clicking camera. He captures smoking
raggare
gangs in Kungsträdgården, smiling mounted police, chess-playing pensioners, waving dog owners, spit-shouting Save-the-Trees demonstrators. He documents lost tourists, gleaming king statues, broken telephone booths, symbolic bridges. And of course your father’s favorite motif, collected in your wardrobe by the hundreds: all the snow-covered, pedal-frozen bicycles, which delight your father’s photographic eye with their inherent conflict.
6.
Excuse me, but I just noticed an unparalleled phenomenon on the Eniro Web site: Do you know where Raino’s studio lay localized? Near Regulator Street in Flemingsberg. If you accompany this street to the west it changes its name to Health Street. If you then twist yourself to the right on Katrinebergs Street and continue forward to Mellanbergs Street, and then give way to the right and traverse Nibble Hill … Guess where you’re standing? Chestnut Street! A coincidence, or a sign of fate? Who can separate them? (By the way, do you know how many Chestnut Streets there are in Sweden? Fifty-six! All of these patterns are almost beginning to scare me. To where will this journey be terminated?)
7.
Before we wander further I want to repeat you something vital:
ALL
potential information about Tunisia’s contemporary political situation
MUST
, for reasons you are surely aware of, be excluded from the book. This is a piece of advice that must become your law, Jonas. It is vital, central, and concentrated that we do not in
ANY
way, under
ANY
circumstances, happen to smuggle political views of today’s Tunisia into the book. I presume that I have your understanding about why? You are not solitary in having a Tunisian passport that can cause complications …
Stockholm, July 22, 1978
Greetings, Kadir!
Summer is here! Birds are chirping, lilacs are smelling, and Pernilla has become my official wife! In her cautiously growing stomach she bears my future child! Our collective future is securitized!
We promised each other our eternal promises in a simple ceremony in the courthouse; Pernilla’s two beard-brothers witnessed our joy, but her parents had unfortunately enough been struck by double influenza. This did not dim anyone’s celebration (particularly not mine). Pernilla’s friends cheered our alliance and presented us multitudes of presents: handmade rag rugs, incense burners, Indian shawls, and a darbouka drum. After the ceremony we marched home to the apartment and delighted a quiet evening with salmon pasta and wine.
Pernilla and I are very, very happy and our happy joy is spread to the maximized joy of the general public.
8
After our promised alliance, Pernilla and I were invited to the Swedish authorities to be interviewed about our marriage. We were conducted to different rooms, I with an interpreter, Pernilla without.
We were served coffee by smiling suit wearers and interpellated about our respective habits. What does Pernilla intake for breakfast? How often does she brush her teeth? What time does she usually yield her body to sleep? What color does her potential room robe bear? How was she draped when you met for the first time? Their ambition, of course, was to guarantee that our alliance was not motivated by my hunger for a Swedish residency permit.
When we came out of our rooms, Pernilla’s cheeks bore a lobsterish red color. She called their questions insulting and yelled,
“Eins, zwei, drei, Nazipolizei,”
to the confused receptionist.
Of course the interviews grew an unpleasant emotion in me as well. But on the metro’s way home I reminded her that Sweden happens to be a country that bears a peculiar organizational ambition. And to guarantee itself that marriages are honestly meant is probably not automatically incorrect. Or? Am I wrong? Pernilla did not respond me.
Another thing has been perceived me since my alliance with Pernilla and my first rendezvous with her reluctant parents: An economy is vital in order to receive the respect of the Swedes and leave the pigeonhole of the immigrant. The winner takes it all, as ABBA sings. The winner really does take it all, and the winner will be me, Kadir. This is my secure certainty, and my desire for success is fed by my beautiful-mother’s
manière
of speaking to me like an imbecile and refusing to understand my English. Certainly it is a bit twisted, but
NOT
worse than hers.
My beautiful-mother’s name is Ruth. Her makeup is in deep quantity; she often repeats me that she comes from a noblish history in Denmark with strong Christian values and that she certainly doesn’t oppose immigrants in Sweden just as long as they conduct themselves properly and learn Swedish and do not cement their traditions. Then her cigarette-wrinkly mouth gaps smile and inform me that the evening’s dinner unfortunately contains pork and will that be a problem for “our guests from far away”?
Of course I answer “No,” and Pernilla looks strongly ashamed. My relationship with my beautiful-father, Gösta, is simpler. He is an aged road worker with a beard and a crooked body who has passed a great deal of his life constructing roads and bridges. After a handicapturing accident, he has pensioned his body ahead of time and now runs a store south of Stockholm where he offers a broad quantity of antique signs for sale.
At times I have assisted him with the renovation of his storeroom and our cooperation always takes place in exceptional silence; from his welcoming “Good day” to his farewelling “Good-bye” we
most often share nothing more than gestures and pointings. But it is a silence that is of goodwill and understanding rather than the pressing silence that characterizes Swedish elevators.
In order to secure my future family’s finances, I am also working as a dishwasher at a restaurant on Rådmansgatan. That position is exceedingly short-term, however, because my Swedish premier collection will soon be prepared. It is now called
The Topographic Proof of Stockholm
(as a reference to Atget’s
Les épreuves topographiques de Paris
). I affix to you some photographic samples. Hasn’t my talent flourished since my departure? Which motif is your favorite? Mine is probably the crying girl with the petal in her hair.
During the coming fall I will present my collection to galleries and let them battle for my artistic representation. I only hope that those who are denied my talent do not become too disappointed.
I hope your life portions my life’s fortunate development!