Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

You go up to the CD section and you get to pick three discs, anything you want, and you take Eric B. & Rakim’s Paid in Full and Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Eazy-E’s solo album and when you’re standing there in line Dads inspect the discs and ask: Why are you just listening to black music? Huh? Why are you just listening to a bunch of yo yo nigga bitch? Do you want to be black?

And you answer: Isn’t Otis black?

Dads sigh. Otis is a totally different matter. Otis is love and soul and the pain of the heart. Not a bunch of bitch this and nigga that. 21

On the way down the escalator you try to find your way back to the good mood. What do you want for a Christmas present, Dad?

Me? I don’t want a Christmas present. I am content with my sons’ love. And maybe a … Prada tie.

But you’re Muslim, you joke, and Dads continue the joke just like you used to do. I will say what Zola said: You cannot say that you have seen anything until you have photographed it … and in that moment, when you’re laughing there on the escalator, everything feels a little like before again and you remember that you think that Dads’ temper is like a mogul course.

You hop off the escalator on the second floor and Dads lead the way into the clothing department. From a distance you can already see salesmen who scan you with eagle eyes. They notice your arrival. They watch your movements. They look from the bottom up at Dads’ rolled-up green corduroy pants and brown leather jacket and dirty Djurgården scarf. They swallow their perfumed throats, walk to the register, and lift the telephone. Soon you see the guard who’s rushing his steps to get there. Then he stops, meets the eyes of the salescunt, which reflect him on to you. And what do you do?

Dads do not let themselves be bothered. Dads slide his fingers along suit hangers, check the expensive interfacing and the hidden inseams. While the salesmen circle like sharks and the guard nervously fingers his walkie-talkie, Dads point with gleaming eyes at the monograms on the Eton shirts and the underseam on the Clark shoes.

Sometimes a salesman comes up and folds shirts right beside you and sometimes they block the way and say, Oops! as though they hadn’t seen you. Sometimes they take out a spray bottle and start polishing mirrors but of course the mirror is directed at just the right angle for them to be able to watch your every move.

But Dads don’t notice anything. Dads are entirely too busy. Dads just say: No thanks, when the next salesman glides up and loud-voices out his: May I possibly … help you with something? Dads cruise on, feeling the quality of Armani jeans, holding the Prada tie up to check the color, and demonstrating the Boss coat with wrist buttons that can really be unbuttoned, just like tailor-made ones from London. And Dads don’t let himself be provoked even when the guard is tired of waiting and stands right in front of you and sort of stares daggers. Dads just keep checking price tags with hmm sounds and running fabric qualities between their fingers.

Come on, let’s go, you whisper between your teeth and drag Dads toward escalators.

And it’s then, when you turn around and see the guard whore smile at the salescunt, that you feel the hate. That rage you’ve never felt before, the hate that links store racism to red beach Volvos to Dads’ mood swings, the hate that turns everything red and that beats exactly in time with NWA’s “Fuck tha Police.” One second later the rage has rushed you up the down escalators, back to the salescunt where he’s standing and play-flirting with the guard, and then you give a hellish roar and throw fists at store bosses and crash salesmen faces with the tie display and rub luxury shirts in guards’ faces, you shout: Fuck tha police coming straight from the underground a young blatte got it bad cause I’m brown, you feed them combinations and box them into unconsciousness, you are a hurricane, you are their worst nightmare, you are the maximal reach of skinny arms, you are quick feet that smash coatracks to shards, you are the overturner of dressing rooms who knocks down walls like dominoes and half-naked rich Swedes in brand-name underwear howl and the storeroom explodes and the fire alarm goes off and the sprinkler water destroys silk ties forever. You don’t stop before Dads come hurrying, grab hold of your arm, and rush you down the escalator. It’s the end of the eighties; something is happening but you’re not really sure what. 22

15. Congratulations that you have succeeded in attaching yourself to the reality of truth. But I still propose that you suppress these memories from Tunis. Remember: We are MAXIMIZING the mysticness of the story, NOT degrading it.

16. What is bubbling? Do you have gases in your stomach? Here you can properly introduce a little more information about your father’s success. You can tell how he expands from only photographing dogs to shooting all sorts of pets: cats, cockatoos, snakes, aquarium fish. He photographs rabbits and walking sticks. And one day he is tasked by the popular youth magazine Okay to afflict Ben Marlene, the singer in the celebrated pop group Trance Dance, to document him with his three purebred Dalmatians. (Your father later sold this photo again to a photo agency for an elegant price.)

17. Hmm … The reader will probably realize here that those few times you were locked in the darkroom were your father’s method of getting you accustomed to your fear. It was nothing your father took pleasure in doing. Perhaps he regrets this as well. It will be perfect that we contrast the dark of the darkroom with your memories of the delicious summer of 1989. Because you remember that last happy summer, right? When your father had succeeded in his career, your parents’ love was rediscovered, and the sun shone like in orange juice ads? I know that your father often remembers that summer with the painful smile of nostalgia.

18. Here your phrases are excluding the reality of truth. Because do you know what your father did when you had fallen asleep? He sat isolated alone by your crackling fire while your mother tried to discuss him. Then he suddenly levitated himself, left the cabin, and set off on a solitary expedition in your grandmother’s Toyota. For two hours he spied streets and all-night kiosks in the ambition of seeing a red Volvo with racist inhabitants that he would bomb with kicks and box to historic time. Why did he not tell this to you? Perhaps because his greatest fear was that the infection of outsiderness would infect you.

19. What do you mean by these phrases? Do you not realize that your father sacrifized everything for the economy of his family! It was for YOUR sake, of course!

20. I suggest the more veracious “is impressively muscular and virilely hairy from top to toe.”

21. Why did your father say these angry words about Negro music? I believe it can be explained by his expanded irritation with other immigrants. He was frustrated by immigrants’ incapacity to abandon their traditions and feared that lazy immigrants would limit his sons’ future chances. He was ached by the growing number of veiled women. He was alarmed about Sweden’s modification. And most of all he was irritated by the growing number of Negroes. Eritreans and Somalians steadily increased their numbers, they echoed their unabashed laughs on the metro, they lazyboned themselves at suburban cafés, they repeated their songs of complaint about the racism of Sweden. BUT: Note carefully that your father was never racist (despite your accusations). Write: “My father did NOT think that Negroes are less worthy than other races. As you know, my father loves Otis Redding! My father is convinced that all races bear an identical worth. This is true independent of their talent for rhythm and dance, their athletic capacity, their hunger for bananas, or their laziness. That a certain race might resemble monkeys does NOT give the consequence that they should be treated like monkeys.”