Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

In the next scene it’s the winter of 1964. The peaks of Kroumirie Mountain glitter snow and your father has lived at Cherifa’s house for two years. Two years of total muteness. Two years without the tiniest whisper.

On that wintry day everyone sat shivering in the dining hall; we intook our food and blew warm air in our hands. I remember how your father suddenly levitated and marched toward Cherifa’s kitchen, even though this was very illegal. I saw from a distance how he hacked his fourteen-year-old throat, unstuck his tongue, and … spoke!

“Um … may I have seconds, please? I am not full.”

His voice was perfectly normal, with the exception of a very wide hoarseness. Cherifa’s mouth circled itself and flapped up and down like a disbeliefed fish.

“Excuse me. May I have a little more food?” your father repeated, with his voice’s volume turned up even more.

“If you do not give me seconds I might relate certain rumors … No one hears more stories than the one people think are mute, if you understand what I mean. You probably do not want Faizal to find out about …”

At this point your father’s voice was reduced to an inaudible whisper. Cherifa’s confusion was so great that she actually (for the first time in the history of the world) granted a foodwise refill. After that day, your father was even more favorited by Cherifa (and even more despised by Faizal).

Why did your father’s tonguely effectiveness suddenly return? No idea. Sometimes life persists in not following those patterns that are bookishly adequate. In the book we will do our best to formulate an obvious motive for your father’s cured tongue in order to avoid confusing the reader. What do you say we have your father march into a forest, pass under a chestnut tree, take a chestnut to the head, and then cry, “OW!” Then you can have him say: “Oh, a chestnut, how symbolic that this should cure my muteness.” Or you could have him be afflicted by a magical dream sequence in which his future is depicted in a modern Joyce-esque stream of consciousness: “Ow-ow-there-I-am-going-to-have-to-court-a-Swedish-stewardess-and-there-I-am-going-to-dine-with-Jurgen-Habermas-and-there-I-will-give-an-acceptance-speech-for-a-photography-prize-at-the-Canadian-embassy-in-Egypt! I-should-probably-force-my-tongue-to-be-cured!” Choose the direction of the path yourself.

With the gift of speech, your father’s and my friendship grew to an unshakeable foundation. I never asked about his motive for muteness; instead I wanted to know everything about his parents and his history. And your father shaped it for me with a voice that was his and words that suddenly came flooding out like the blood from the elevator in The Shining . He spoke about his father, Moussa, and described him as a wealthy Algerian who lived his life in international airspace and wore sumptuous silk pajamas at night.

“My father, oh, my father!” he cried, until he had attracted everyone’s attention (except for half-deaf Amine’s). With our ears listening eagerly, he told about his father’s career as a chemical water purifier. Soon your grandfather’s picture was mirrored throughout the whole world and he had sufficient finances to invest in frequent candy factories and jukebox stores.

“Then he met my mother at a symphonic concert in Monaco. She is one of the world’s most beautiful models, born with Algerian parents in Miami Beach in America. Now she’s an actress and good friends with Grace Kelly and Humphrey Bogart. By the way, have you seen this?”

With his pride shining, your father presented the worn photograph he always carried with him. He said that the man who sat, black-suited, at the table in fine European company was his father, Moussa. On his right side sat the celebrated film star Paul Newman, and on his left was the water-waved rock singer Elvis.

“And by the way …,” he added after having examined the photo in detail. “Do not be upset by the nose-investigating bodyguard in the background.”

We were all very impressed by your father’s stories. Our eyes shone in stereo when we cried, “Tell more! More!”

The consequence was an expanded stimulus of the buzzing dragon we call imagination. Your father continued:

“My father, Moussa, also has frequent golds in the world weight-lifting championships and has worked as a tamer of tigers. He has four Pontiac V8s; two black, the rest red. Now he lives in a luxurious district of Paris where the lawn mowers look like small cars and weekends are spent on golf or at the racetrack. All colors of women swim his swimming pool topless and oil their shoulders with costly coconut-smelling cream. Why was I relocated here? After my mother’s unlucky death in a car accident, my father’s intention to teach me the hard school of poverty grew. But soon … anytime, maybe tomorrow or next week, his body will arrive to fetch me to the abundance of freedom in France. In the harmony of commonality we will afflict cinemas and meet film stars and practice windsurfing and test his large collection of luxury cruisers. If you want you can come along …”

I observed your father and asked (with a certain newly wakened suspiciousness):

“And how has he arrived at this success?”

Your father folded the picture carefully, returned it to his pocket, and said:

“My father is a triplicate of talent: water purifier, Casanova, and cosmopolitan!”

Why did his tongue cultivate such a great many glissades of truth? I don’t know. However, we can see two interesting tendencies:

1. Everything in your father’s life that had political blackness was filtered out. Politics were, for him, a swamp that had already drowned too many in his vicinity. Not until late in life would your father change his relationship with politics. Perhaps too late.

2. Certainly we all realized that your father’s words were not totally correct. But still we were hypnotized and stimulated. Is it not bizarre how the words of imagination can rumble forth a certain comfort? And is that not reality’s reason for the existence of superfluousities like horoscopes, psychologists, and authors?

Before I terminate this collection of data about your father’s childhood, I want to detail something important: If you are still hesitating about the geniality of this project, I want to emphasize that NO economy is vital for my assistance. Do not let your Swedish stinginess limit our book’s future! All I ask in exchange for corresponding you my collected data about your father is that our book’s honesty should be maximally spiced. This guarantee is vital to me, because false rumors swarm your father’s life. THE TRUTH and nothing but THE TRUTH must be our lighthouse in the shaping of a literary master opus. Can this promise be cast me in steel? In that case I promise to correspond you the reality of truth about your father’s background. It will shock and horrify, not to mention stimulate and erect, both you and our future readers.

Dearest greetings!

Thank your effectively delivered answer! To read your positive response to my bookly idea warmed my humor (despite your sloppy grammar and the lack of capital letters after periods). Is “wzup dawg” a frequently used greeting in today’s Sweden? In any case, I am extremely happy about our found relationship. To be messaged by you feels almost like being messaged by your father, and this anesthetizes the anxiety that constantly pounds my soul. You still have not obtained any sign of life from him? Last night I dreamed that he had been put to death by a stray machete in a Brazilian smack town. I awoke bathing in perspiration and I devoutly hope that the dream was only a dream …

I present great understanding that you “can’t guarantee anything” and that at the moment you are “sooooo not pumped” (sic!) about thinking about the writing of book number two. That is exactly why it is fortunate that I can assist you. More difficult to understand is your volcanic hate toward your publishing house. Why so angry that Norstedts presented your novel as “the first novel written in authentic Rinkeby Swedish?” Isn’t that probably just their method for increasing interest before reviews? Terminate immediately your naming of them as “Whorestedts.” And no, “bourgeois Swedelow idiots” is not an adequate name, either. Return your youthful rage to the deposit box that we call self-control! Is this the avalanchesque wrath that your poor father was subjected to during your adolescence? It cannot have been mild to be your father.