Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

And you remember the coming weeks that spring, when kitchen doors are often closed and you hear French voices mostly as vibrations and it’s Moms’ light ones and Dads’ deep ones and then silence and then Moms’ light ones and then silence again. It’s dinners when Dads have no appetite and sit in their workrooms instead of eating. Dads who lift a stool and move the copy machine, rolling out drawings of possible studio locations and writing in numbers on the calculator. Dads who wrinkle their foreheads and hmm their voices. While Moms remain sitting at the dinner table with their hands on their stomachs and don’t answer when you ask if you may leave the table. You can tell something is going on, but you don’t know what. Soon you run back and forth between the lab and the kitchen with your Mickey Mouse Pez sticking up out of your pocket. Dethewt? Want dethewt? Dads mumble numbers and Moms sigh and no one answers. You and Mickey go into the living room instead and Mickey asks: Dessert? And you answer: Yes, please, with pronunciation exactly as good as regular people’s, bend Mickey’s head back, and feed out a raspberry-flavored rectangle candy. Mickey smiles and says: By the way, fuck all the day care idiots, just fuck their teasing and laughing because you have a special way of talking! Fuck everyone who laughed when you said that your mom was going to start her education to be a wedge-turd nurse soon. And most of all, fuck that speech therapist! And Mickey shouts his swearwords with the exact same girl voice as on the Disney hour and it sounds so funny that you laugh out loud and you push his head back again and feed out a new rectangle candy. Because this is the same spring that you visit the speech therapist for the first time, Dads, Moms, and you. The speech therapist sits there behind her tall desk and folds her hands like a priest and says with concern that your delayed speech development is presumably due to a linguistically confused home environment and Moms and Dads hold each other’s hands and look quickly at each other; no one says anything. Except for your newly filled Mickey Mouse Pez, who hops angrily out of your jeans pocket, pogos himself onto the shiny speech therapist desk, bends himself backward, and starts to pepper the speech therapist with rectangle candies. The sound is machine-gunny and the projectiles bounce and the speech therapist tries to take cover behind her briefcase but it’s useless because pieces of candy block her eyes and explode her ears and when she’s lying there dead in the corner with running blood from her nose Mickey Mouse laughs scornfully and you say: Well done, Mickey! And you do repeated give-me-fives until you look up and discover three pairs of concerned grown-up eyes looking at you. And the speech therapist asks if Moms and Dads have noticed anything else … special? You and Mickey don’t care because it’s you against the world, you against the day care idiots, you against speech therapists and dark rooms and closet phantoms and the lady who whispered nigger lover to Moms that day at Skansen when Dads were photographing his first Swedish National Day. Besides, Dads have explained that the speech therapist was a typical Swede. A real racist. 13

It’s your family against the world, that’s what you think as you’re sitting on the living room floor. Then you’re interrupted by parents’ magic timing, because you hear Dads, who are opening the lab door, and Moms, who at the same time are leaving the undishwashed kitchen, and their steps are hurrying themselves to each other and then they meet in the middle of the hall floor and they kiss each other the way they only do when they think you’re can’t see and they promise each other’s forgiveness and Dads stand on tiptoe in order to be tall enough and you turn red and don’t want to see but you peek anyway. Then they come into the living room and their bodies stretch all the way to the ceiling and their eyes shine like satellites when they tell you that, sure enough, you’re going to be a big brother soon and not just any old big brother but the big brother of two future twins! And you become almost entirely honestly happy and Mickey whispers congratulations from your jeans pocket and you celebrate with yet another rectangular raspberry candy and hope that not too much is going to change.

The Dynamic Duo. Three words that fill you with so many memories that you can barely write them down.

Of course it’s Dads who come up with the idea. Moms’ stomachs are growing and spring is getting closer to summer and Current Photography is presenting a new competition. Last year it was “the Summer Picture” and a few years before that “the Thousand-Crown Picture,” but this year we invite you, our dear readers, professionals as well as amateurs, to take part in “the Sweden Picture.” Dads explain that no theme could be more suited for him. I will do what Robert Frank succeeded at in the fifties, come in from the outside and capture a country in photos! Frank’s book became the classic The Americans , and my collection will be called The Swedes . Or maybe … Svenskarna , say Dads, and put the just-polished camera into the special case.

This is the spring when you become an adult, the spring when Dads explain that now the time for games and fantasies is over. For both of us. Leave the Mickey Mouse Pez at home. Now we’re going to start the Dynamic Duo! Okay? Like Batman and that guy, what is that little guy in the tights called? Robin, right, Robin. I’m Superman and you’re Superboy. I’m Obi Ken Wanobi and you’re that guy Luke. Understood?

Your salute is so eager that your temple is sore, but Dads don’t notice. Dads are too busy planning motifs for his future collection. Everything that is Swedish will be documented, and Dads write long lists and mutter: Now we have to work really hard to save money for our very own family studio. Is that understood, soldier?

And you answer: Aye aye, Captain! and do a more controlled salute and Dads look down at you and smile. If we just help each other, we’ll win at least first, second, and third prize, I can feel it. That money will go a long way.

The Dynamic Duo is launched and you take your place as redeemable-bottle hunter, film-canister opener, tripod placer. And idea spouter for motifs, of course. The whole spring it’s being woken up on early weekend mornings, Moms who are still sleeping when Dads come into your room and whisper: Up, my son, the Dynamic Duo calls! And dad waking is always a hundred times easier than day care waking because now it’s family duty calling and not elephant songs or childish plastic mosaics or fights with Gabriel. Now it’s early weekend mornings of quick breakfast without waking Moms and then choose plastic bags from under the sink and break sticks of the right stiffness for poking from the rowanberry tree in the yard.

On the way to Tanto park, Dads plan motifs. How does one capture the soul of the Swedish people in the best way? What is suédi en maximum ? While you’re looking for redeemable bottles in the first garbage can down by the day care, Dads polish the camera lens with the special soft towel and crack their knuckles, one by one. Dads are getting ready. And before you get down to business you always say: Now it’s time … and with one voice you switch to Swedish and yell: … to get with the picture! Because that’s one of Dads’ favorite expressions because it is both a pun and has such symbolic photographic content.

Then Dads position themselves right next to flagless flagpoles, shoot right up into cloudy gray skies, and shout: What is more Swedish than that?

Then Dads point the camera at lost gloves arranged on wooden stair railings and say: What is more Swedish than that?

Then Dads shoot two community garden plots with tarpaulin-covered ground and padlocked gates and say: What is more Swedish than that?