Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

Then comes the fall, with the usual fall routines, and there are no more weekend picnics at Trekanten and no more demonstrations and Moms stop mourning for Palme and Dads stop mourning for Refaat. Moms start working as nurses and Dads leave little brothers at day care every morning before the studio. You start second grade and conduct yourself excellently and become one of the best in the class and come home with a special diploma that time when the elementary school has a competition with times table work sheets.

At the same time it’s a split time because the others at school aren’t like you because most of them have cars and brand-name clothes and their own video games and cable TV and fancy country cottages and Christmas lists that are pages long. And sometime maybe you say that by the way you have cable TV now too and then someone asks what your favorite channel is and you think and think because you know that there’s some cool channel that plays music videos all day long and just before it’s too late you remember the name and say it proudly: My favorite is that music channel where they play very much disco. Yeah, you know, Disco-Very. And they look at you and laugh and you don’t realize your mistake until much later.

Then it’s safer to go out to the studio in the afternoons, share a snack with Dads and Kadir, and hang out with Melinda in the courtyard. You have just started to say “want to hang out” instead of “want to play.” But then you still see each other every day and play play play. No one else understands life like Melinda because Melinda has the world’s yellowest Pumas and a fluorescent gummy smile and a hairstyle that’s the school’s flattest flattop. And one time Melinda tells you that some sixth-graders set their milk glasses on her hair and told her to balance them over to the counter and she did it but then she ran home to the courtyard and rushed into the hall crying (fake tears of course) and a second later her sisters came rushing out of their rooms, the Melinda sisters who were already notorious in the area because there were four of them and they were gigantic in size and they all looked the same, with dimple thighs like logs and powerful biceps and stonewashed suspender jeans. They fought like no one else and it was total uproar when all the Melinda sisters tried to get their shoes on first and they raced to the school at full speed and Olayinka still had her hairbrush in her hand and Adeola rolled up her sleeves as they ran and Fayola, who was the quietest and had the best grades, ran farthest back and mostly came along to stop the others. The Melinda sisters invaded the cafeteria and went from table to table with the question: Was it you? Was it you? Was it you? And when they finally reached the right table with the right gulping sixth-graders came the question: Was it you? And the answer: Who did what? And that was all the Melinda sisters needed to hear and Monifa kneed groins and Olayinka punched and Adeola gobbed spit and Fayola tried to calm them down and pull them back but then some sixth-grader said something about bananas behind her broad back and then the roles switched and Fayola became the one who was winding up and Adeola got in the middle and tried to stop it.

You’re sitting wide-eyed in the swing next to Melinda’s. What happened then? Then the janitor and the beefy shop teacher came and the fight was stopped and the sixth-graders cried and said: They’re totally damned crazy! And the Melinda sisters went as one body out of the cafeteria and someone happened to frisk a jacket and someone happened to overturn a hall table and Melinda was right behind them and you remember that when Melinda has finished telling she smiles in that way you only smile when you see your family succeed.

On the way home you think about how you don’t have a sister army, you don’t have any relatives who can come to your rescue, you don’t have uncles who play records at the Afro-pop club at Sankt Eriksplan, you only have Dads and Moms and a worn-out Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser that lost its dispensing power a long time ago. And little brothers of course, little brothers who are growing quickly; the nights are less screechy, but shopping is extra heavy, with milk at bulk price and canned food three for ten crowns. And soon you’ll be buying juice without pulp and then a few months later just juice concentrate and then just juice on the weekends and then only on Sunday mornings, no more than one glass per brother. And soon, written clearly on the shopping list: “Cornflakes — Eldorado, NOT Kellogg’s.” The finances are starting to waver and Dads spend more and more time in the studio and sometimes Moms say with her opposite-loaded voice: It’s lucky there are two of us contributing to the household money, isn’t it, dear? And another time, a little later that same fall with the same reverse voice: What would we do without your dad’s brilliant sense of economics?

And in the same second you write the word “economics” and then the question mark you remember that it must be this fall that Dads formulate their new strategy for the studio’s survival.

When do Dads present the idea? You don’t remember, maybe you’re sitting in the studio in the company of Kadir and a quietly silent customer phone? Maybe it’s the same day that Mansour has visited and shown you that article where the Svenska Dagbladet journalist Erik Lidén wrote that Refaat was certainly unique in Swedish industry because he “with his Arab origin has a totally different view of truth and life than regular Swedes.” Yes, presumably it’s that day, when Mansour has put on his glasses and left the studio in a heavy fog of smoke and Kadir is sitting silently and Dads mumble: This country is very bizarre to me, first you’re an Arab and then you’re Swede of the Year and then you’re an Arab again.

You take the commuter train home together and Dads sit silently. Then over dinner Dads look at Moms and say: I have made up my mind. No more not-Swedish. You are right. Starting now we will ONLY speak Swedish. Both here and in the studio. The twins will not be confused by the multitude of languages! No more French, no more Arabic. I must make my Swedish seriously impeccable in order to guarantee my studio’s continued survival!

Moms who applaud and you who protest and Dads who suddenly pretend not to understand either Arabic or French objections. Swedish, my son. Now we speaks Swedish!

Dads change languages.

Dads shrink a little.

I am resuming the rudder of the narrative in order to describe the next phase in our Swedish learning. It was acted in early spring 1987. Your mother had pointed out that perhaps it was not ingenious that your father taught me Swedish (and I him). She noted the likeness to the myth of “the blind leading the blind” and recommended us to cultivate the assistance of an outsider. Who did we select? Exactly. You.

Your father interrupted you in your games in the courtyard, called you in to the studio, and pronounced his desire:

“We need your assistance. Instead of spending your time with childish friends you shall be our guide into the Swedish language. Daccurdo ?”

Your father explained that we were in need of explicit linguistic rules that define the structure of Swedish and you nodded your head and had a very difficult time concealing your glowing pride. The next day we initiated our lessons. When you reached the studio, which was empty as usual, you had prepared certain notes and together we parked ourselves at a table with the ambition of illuminating the dark cave that we can call the Swedish language.

During the following months you did your best to act grown-up and assist the formulating of our rules of grammar. Here you can write in the memories that detail for the reader that it was thanks to your father and Kadir that you were infected with the ambition of an author.