Jonas Khemiri - Everything I Don’t Remember

*

Panther calms down and comes back. She says that later that same day, at four or five in the afternoon, a stranger called from Samuel’s phone. He said that there had been an accident, he said that it probably wasn’t that serious, he had worked in Cambodia and had seen things that were considerably worse. But I called Vandad anyway, I told him what had happened and I thought that if it was serious someone would contact me. When I didn’t hear anything I assumed that everything was fine. I went out that night, a few drinks at Möbel-Olfe and then a party in a courtyard near Görlitzer Bahnhof.

*

Okay. I realize we don’t have “all the time in the world.” And of course I can “fast-forward to Laide and Samuel’s next encounter.” As long as you agree that everything I’ve told you up to now plays an important role in what happens later on. The rest of the year flies by. Panther moves to Berlin to concentrate on her career in art. Samuel and I go from being acquaintances to being friends to moving in together. By day he works at the Migration Board and I stack moving boxes in fifteen-footers. On the weekends we do all those things Samuel gets it into his head we have to do so as not to miss out on life. And I tag along; I never say no. Even if there are times when his ideas make me want to shake my head and ask why. Why take an airport bus to Arlanda and back to watch planes landing and eat dinner at a buffet place that according to Samuel’s cousin is “every pilot’s best-kept secret”? Why swing by the shooting range in Årsta to check out the recoil in a Glock? Why buy a used Sega Genesis online to see if NBA Jam is still as fun as it was when we were little? I don’t know. Samuel doesn’t either. But we do it all anyway and we share everything equally and if one of us is low on cash the other one pays and when Samuel finds out that his sublet won’t be renewed the obvious choice is for him to move in with me. I help him with the move, get him free boxes from work and borrow a cargo van. He takes the living room, I keep the bedroom. Once Samuel says that he’s never had a friendship that was so “wonderfully undemanding” and I’m not a hundred percent sure what he means but I nod and agree.

Sometimes when I walk into the bathroom in the morning and see his toothbrush beside mine I think that we have grown awfully close in an awfully short amount of time. That this closeness is— Delete that. Delete all of that. Just write that the rest of the year is like a stroboscopic slideshow of rumbling basslines, clinking glasses, nods at people we don’t know but recognize, sticky dance floors, rubber coat-check tags in my back pocket, steamy smoke-machine smell, cigarette butts in overflowing toilets, cigarette packs smushed into empty glasses, conversations in front of speakers where the only way to make yourself heard is to cup the listener’s ear. Then home in a taxi with ears ringing and waking up the next day with wrists full of stamps and pockets full of crumpled bills and forgotten beer tickets and sweaty gum and involuntarily stolen lighters and brown flakes of tobacco and receipts from places you hardly remember being at. But then you remember, of course, and smile at the memory. In short: it was a happy time. Maybe the happiest of my life.

*

Panther sighs and shakes her head. It hurts to think about this. The next day was a Friday. I was standing at the market in Kreuzberg, I was just about to buy two artichokes, I had them in a thin blue plastic bag, I had my change purse out, my phone rang, I answered. Vandad told me, he just said it and then he hung up. I know I collapsed, I remember that the guy selling vegetables seemed to think at first that I was trying to steal the artichokes, then he realized what was up and he ran out and stood near me so no one would accidentally step on me, it was crowded, the cobblestone street was full of vegetable bits and black water, there was a sound, it wasn’t crying, it was an animal, a mewling primeval animal, I squatted there, I don’t know how long, the vegetable seller stood there waiting for me to get up, he borrowed a bottle of water from a colleague, he handed it to me, I took it but couldn’t drink, shoes and unshaven shins walked by me, two German guys with guitars were talking loudly about pineapple tomatoes which were apparently like regular tomatoes but in the shape of a pineapple, they tasted the same as other tomatoes but the shape was totally different, and one guy said “then what’s the point of them” and the other answered something I didn’t hear because they had walked past me, they were already gone, after a while I could get up, the man with the artichokes wanted to give them to me but I paid, I didn’t want anything for free, I took the plastic bag and walked home, fifteen minutes later I realized I was going in the wrong direction, I turned around and walked home, I had bought artichokes, the sun was shining, German guys were talking about pineapple tomatoes, a truck was unloading lamps and dressers outside a furniture store, beer was glittering in plastic glasses at an outdoor restaurant, it was a nice day, people were happy, bikes wobbled by, taxis honked, cats meowed, the city was alive, but Samuel was dead.

Did you come straight from the airport? Was it hard to find? You’ve lived in Paris, right? This neighborhood was probably pretty different back then. These days it’s super quiet. Or almost super quiet. But it’s lucky you didn’t come last Tuesday because the RER drivers and Air Traffic Control went on strike. I thought we could sit in here, will that work, sound-wise? Do you want tea or coffee? Milk? Hot or iced? Foam or no foam? Why don’t you tell me a little more about what you want to know while I get it ready?

*

Then came the autumn when Laide and Samuel met for real. And that’s probably what some people (like you, for example) would call the beginning of the story. And others (like me, for example) would call the beginning of the end.

*

Should I just start talking? Okay. But I’m going to trust that you’ll turn what I say into something that works as a text. I mean, like, take out when I say like “like” and “um,” because I know how spoken language looks when it’s written down word for word, it’s totally bizarre, you seem like an idiot and I don’t want to seem like an idiot, I want to seem like me.

*

In the spring of two thousand ten, I noticed that Samuel was changing. At first it was little things. Like when we did a toast together, more and more often he would say:

“To love.”

Even though both of us were single. He talked about Panther more and more often, he was annoyed that she wouldn’t answer his emails, he said we should go down to Berlin and visit her.

“We were as close as you can be without being together, and now suddenly she’s gone.”

But every time I wanted to book a trip, he put it off.

*

I moved home to Sweden in the spring of two thousand ten. I had gone back and forth like fifty times. Weekend visits, friends’ wedding, Dad’s sixtieth birthday. All the trips were the same. When I was little I loved to fly. Mom used to sit next to me and say that I was steering the plane, that it was up to me to take care of all the technology. When we backed out of the gate I was the one who did it by twisting the knob that held up the tray, and when we started the engines I was the one who gave them fuel by pushing on the recline button and to take off I had to push the recline button and turn the tray knob at exactly the same time. Then the plane would get up to cruising speed and then we could turn on the autopilot and retract the landing gear by turning the tray knob and pushing on the recline button.