Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

The day’s secondary happy incident met me with the evening news. While Pernilla fell the twins to sleep, I parked my tired, pounding head in front of the news program Rapport . There it was reported that Refaat El-Sayed was electored to Swede of the Year! That Egyptian man whom I detailed you about in the previous letter, right? This expanded my happiness to new volumes. Everything is possible! One must truly be the chef of one’s own happiness! Just like Refaat, one must be ready to risk to achieve success. The roads are open for those with super-rugged diligence!

I am writing you now to present an offer. Are you tempted to afflict Sweden to assist me in renovating my studio? I promise you a prompt repayment of my borrowed economy as well as a well-formed salary as my assistant. What do you say? Can you remain six months? Or one year?

My hope is for your prompt acceptance and our prompt reunion. For what is the happiness of a reunion in comparison to those other water stations that exist in the marathon we call life? Very delicious!

Abbas

I remember how I already nodded my head with the decision of affirmation during the reading of your father’s letter. The experience of the journey tempted me at least as much as the economy.

In January of 1986 I terminated my occupation of Hôtel Majestique and flew toward the northmost of north: Arlanda, Stockholm. My memory is photographically clear to me. Everything is memorized. The passport inspection, the well-founded customs inspection, the rosily red-haired policeman who tested my shaving cream and carefully smelled of its odor (and very seriously welcomed me to Sweden and returned my packing, unaware that his close smelling had rewarded him with a very humorous white nose). The icy wait for the bus, the conductor’s friendly “hello hello,” the journey through the deserted forest, the spruces, the shadows, the Welcome to Stockholm sign. Then the ghostly empty streets, parked cars blanketed in snow, nightly dark even though it was five o’clock in the afternoon. Then the sound when my forehead crashed the plastic window of the bus at the first view of your waiting family.

There you all stood! My antique best friend, Abbas! With a pale front, black-hooded half coat, corduroy pants, and a modernly colored scarf. In his arms your double brothers, two blanket-hidden baby sausages with matching hats. Your mother at his side: Pernilla, that young, shining beauty on the beach in Tabarka. Now slightly more trivial with an out-of-date blue hippie shawl and elephantically wide jeans.

My hands banged the bus window, my tongue roared happiness, my steps stamped out onto the sidewalk, my arms hugged your father, my lips cheek-kissed your mother, and it was everyone’s voice at the same time with Arabic mixed with French. Did your trip go well? and How are you all? and What has happened since last time? Oh, they’re so cute, and Gootchie-gootchie-goo, and your father repeated my welcome and your mother, who smiled politely, and your father, who suddenly yelled: But where is your baggage? and then rush into the bus again to manage to tow out my suitcase just before the bus started. Then standing there laughing on the sidewalk again, hugs and cheek kisses, your brothers’ newly wakened screams, and your father’s glittering glad eyes.

“And where is your oldest son?” I interpellated.

Before your father had time to respond I followed his turned head and focused you. You sat with crouched legs in the shadow of the terminal and poked your fingers deep into a sewer grate. You had pleated jeans and a glowing red hat, your nose glittered the snot of transparence, and your cheeks presented long streaks of tears. I heard how you seemed to be speaking with someone down in the sewer hole and my first thought was actually this: “Wow, I wonder which of his thin parents has inheritaged him this expanded corpulence.” (Pardon me, Jonas.)

“He’s a little sulky,” your mother explained in French.

“He’s a little spoiled,” your father added in Arabic.

“What did you say?” your mother interpellated.

“That our son is a little tired,” said your father.

“Where is the car?” I asked in French.

“We don’t have a car,” responsed your mother. “The metro will transport us home to the apartment.”

“The car is being repaired,” your father said in Arabic.

“What did you say?” your mother interpellated.

“That I love you,” your father responsed. “Welcome, Kadir. It is a great happiness to me to see you. Now we’ll just pacify my prima donna of a son and then we can go.”

My arrival soon replaced your melancholy with shyness. On the metro’s way home you clung your mother’s legs and hid your face in shadow. On instruction I had invested Pez candy for you and this present identified me as your immediate favorite. The entire metro’s way home you munched Pez squares and said, “Thank, Kadiw. Shukwan , Kadiw,” over and over again.

You memorize this, right? That you still, in this seven-year-old phase, lacked the capacity to express those letters which are so vital in all languages, r and s? Although you happily passed your free time in the world of books and although you wandered smoothly from French to Arabic to Swedish, you had this serious speech impediment, which roused your father’s irritation more and more often. But generally your relationship was very fine. I was impressioned that you were your father’s while the twins became more your mother’s.

Now comes the scene that we can call “Kadir’s initiation to Sweden.” Together your family and I delight everything that Stockholm’s wintery spring has to offer in 1986.

Let us here change the tone of the book and present this sequence in the musical form of the medley (with your father’s photographing clicking sound as a steady beat-drum).

Stockholm, oh Stockholm! CLICK! Show how we transport ourselves into the city and wander wharfs and superficially iced lakes. CLICK! Your proud father with your little brothers in the terry cloth double stroller and his frequently fired camera. CLICK! You with the demand of crying for ice cream despite the cold and your mother with attempts to guidance of historical rarities. She constantly ignores churches and castles and points me instead the Battle of the Elms. CLICK! And the block of the Mullvaden occupation. CLICK! And there is the street where the police once attacked her brother’s friend with biting dogs. CLICK! CLICK! I who wander alongside with my gaze hungry for erotic Swedish women and my teeth aching after the surprise of a cool apple.

Show our shared weekends where we afflict hippie festivals on Långholmen. All your mother’s friends, softly smiling Swedish women with Indian bands in their hair and bells around their arms, hibernated hippies with white sheepskin vests and well-worn pipes. CLICK! We sit on tangled blankets, delight steaming thermos coffee, nostalgizing the humanism of the seventies and listening to protest-singing guitar men. CLICK! We intake bean porridges that are offered in trade for feeding Africa’s famine children. CLICK! I realize that my Swedish courting status is differentiated from Tabarka’s by complimenting a woman’s hair flower and collecting a resounding ear smack. SLAP! CLICK!

One Saturday I invest a hypermodern purple suit with imposing shoulder pads and deep double-breasting. CLICK! One Sunday we stroll gravel paths out to the Museum of Modern Art of Skeppsholmen. CLICK! Your father clicks his camera all the time while you in your rough orange coverall collect leaves and want to start a war with me, your “favowite uncle, Kadiw.” CLICK!

At the Museum of Modern Art we inspect a gigantic and very popular retrospective exhibition of the celebrated Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm. Then write: