Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

I have also followed the latest episodes in Tunisia’s tragic fate from a distance. Did you participate in the general strike also? My eyes have read the letters of the journals, but my brain refuses to realize the magnitude. Fifty to two hundred dead? Thousands arrested? Do not let yourself be lost in the cul-de-sac of politics!

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.