Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

Forgive me if this letter is confused. My happiness is indescribable. My position as a dishwasher will soon be paused in order to be a house dad! Pernilla will initiate her education to be a nurse and I will pass all free time with my firstborn son. I will mash own-made purées and delight the exclusive Swedish parental leave. I will proudly push my stroller through bird-tweeting parks. And furthermore, I have smoked my absolute last cigarette! It was a piece of cake to terminate that unnecessarily expensive habit.

My happiness is indescribable. My wife is as dear to me as usual. The only conflict we have is about finances. Since my son’s birth, she has with subtle indications pointed out the importance that I begin to perfection my Swedish. She has presented me with multitudes of forms from the teaching institute and repeated the mantra that Swedish in Sweden is a very vital knowledge. She has pointed out that I have now passed a long time here and only achieved a position as a part-timely dishwasher and working-for-free studio assistant.

We have decided the following: If my next photographic collection does not result in more interest, my tongue will dedicate night and day to perfectioning Swedish. Swedish is a complicated language, but extremely delicious with a hoppy tone that resembles the melodic song of small birds. My happiness is indescribable, by the way!

Abbas

PS: Do not feel unease about your finances; the loan will soon be returned. You do not need to correspond me more reminders about the development of the interest. 10

The first memory is from day care, and you’re lying hidden in the pillow room after having fought with someone, probably that jerk Gabriel. You have shuddery breathing from crying and you’re waiting for Dads and plugging in your invisibility shield and thinking about the difference between various parents. Normal parents are like Gabriel’s, dim gray shadows with brown coats and creaky voices who tiredly pick up their children and disappear out into the fog. But Dads eclipse the sun in a bright Djurgård scarf; Dads, who will soon come roaring with laughter into the pillow room with a beret on, who will start a tickle attack and pretend to take pictures of you with fingers and thumbs made into a rectangle. Dads charm pretend-angry day care ladies and use their shoulders to carry you all the way home. And normal parents have reading glasses, and they yawn and watch Eurovision and Tipsextra soccer matches on TV. While Dads subscribe to Current Photography , where the classic photos are so beautiful that Dads sometimes stop short in the middle of their homage speeches and tear their eyes. And normal parents work normal jobs and fantasize about normal charter vacations and normal Volvos. But Dads dream about changing ART forever, and every time they say “art” they say it in French and pronounce it with an a that’s elongated times four. L’aaaaaaart . Dads always talk about new plans for how they will follow in the great photographers’ footsteps. Dads have namely switched homelands in order to spread their photographic talent in foreign lands, just like the Roberts Capa and Frank and Philippe Halsman and Yousuf Karsh. ALL great photographers work in exile, shout Dads and give more example names than you can remember. Because normal parents have normal heroes like soccer players or politicians or the comedians in Monty Python. But the idols that Dads have have changed the history of photography. And not just photography, Dads shout. Because photography is art and art is seeing and seeing is the world! And not just history, because history is the future and the future is history, and you remember what Cartier-Bresson said about our relation to history, right? We erase the past but it returns as burps. You remember, right? And of course you remember and you nod proudly because normal parents don’t know any photographer quotes and when they go to the city they melt into the masses and when they crack their knuckles it sounds like quieter than when you break tiny toothpicks in airless Star Wars space. But when Dads go to the city people turn their heads out of joint and when Dads crack their fingers the noise is the ultimate hugest cracking sound, like if you break dry twigs or drive a monster truck into a mountain bunker and then close the door like on a safety deposit box and then slowly start to pull the hand brake. CLICK CLICK CLICK so that it thunders in your ears. And just then you hear Dads’ voice out in the hall and you know who it is because the voice shouts: Hello, you damn fools! And right after that it always gets a little quiet because the day care ladies never know how to answer.

The second memory comes from the time when Dads had just started driving subways and sitting at the gates and waking up sleeping drunk men at last stops. It’s the time when Dads stamp tickets and guide German tourists out of the labyrinthine platform at Kungsträdgården. It’s Dads who find left-behind evening papers and rattle their gigantic bunches of keys where the solution to everything is found, where the L key opens the door to the driver’s compartment between the cars when the train is too full and the square key opens the door on the escalator when hooligans have pushed the emergency stop. Dads unlock, make the escalator go, and return the grateful smiles of baby-carriage parents.

It’s the time when Dads let you skip day care even though of course they understand that you’re faking being sick to avoid hanging out with Gabriel and the others. As soon as Moms have disappeared running to the bus with their marmalade toast half eaten and the kisses on their cheeks half pecked, you fly up out of your bed and give a thumbs-up to Dads in the kitchen. Then you go to work together and Dads introduce you proudly to the others in the lunchroom: Voici mon fils and partner. Stefan with the horse-racing coupons and Jeffrey who drinks coffee from a plastic bottle are there, and Aziz, who is half Dads’ size and has a big Afro and always wants to talk pop artists you haven’t heard of. Then you go down to the trains and you hold Dads’ rough hands and Dads say that everyone else at SL is a complete loser, they’ll never get out of here, they’re content to just drive trains back and forth, they are the “generality of commonness,” Dads say and look proud about having mixed a little proper Swedish into the French-Arabic.

Dads let you open the side door to the cockpit with the L key, and soon you’re riding at the very front through endless tunnels, and sometimes, only sometimes, you get to call the name of the station over the loudspeaker system. And Dads always choose stations with both r and s in the name because then the effect is extra funny for both of you. “Next thtation Wopthten! All pathengew exit the twain, pleathe!” And Dads just have time to release the microphone button before you fall together in a laugh attack and you remember the dark and the shadows and the quiet swishing of the lights, and no matter how much you laugh, Dads never lose control of the double-connected hand accelerator.

It’s Dads in the blue polyester suit and the cap with the silver SL logo on the front. Dads who carefully save tip money. Dads who have stopped marketing their collections for fake-smiling gallery owners. Dads say: “As long as one goes via the establishment one is never free; one must stand solitary in order to be able to transform one’s future. That is why I am going to start my own studio. I am tired of being dependent on others and now it is up to your father to realize his dream and … oops, now we’re getting close, are you ready?”

And you let yourself be lifted up onto the stool by the shadow-silhouetty bending microphone with segmented metal stripes like a steel worm, and when Dads give the sign you call out, “Next thtation Öthtew-malmthtowy.”