Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

Dads’ eyes have lost their glow and Dads are starting to look like shells and Dads seem emptied of color.

Except that time when the news is telling about Saddam’s Scud missiles at Israel and then Dads suddenly get up from the easy chair so the blanket flutters to the ground and yell: How can ALL Arab leaders be such damned merry idiots? And Dads’ cheeks glow and his fists shake and your eyes meet.

It’s the nineties and dark news bills warn of coming recession and headlines shriek about mass immigration of refugees and it’s Iraqis and Yugoslavians and Somalis by the thousands and more thousands who are invading our beautiful country and robbing our travel trailers and raping our women. Soon the new party New Democracy is launched, the mass media latches on, and there are articles and public meetings and stacked crates. It’s that guy Bouvin who maintains that Swedish aid is causing a catastrophe by helping African children survive (because they should actually be eaten up by wild animals). It’s Bert Karlsson who says that ninety percent of all crimes against the elderly are committed by Gypsies and wishes that Bengt Westerberg’s daughter would be infected with HIV by a refugee. It’s Ian Wachtmeister with the fisherman’s hat and hawk nose who shouts about “full speed ahead” and thinks all refugees should be tested for AIDS and no mosques should be allowed in Sweden and the Swediots laugh and the public meetings are a success and Dads?

Dads sit quietly.

And you remember the papers that form stacks in your room and you start to clip headlines about firebombs in refugee camps and assaults by racists and you read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and listen to Public Enemy while the attacks on immigrants wander from the news bills to headlines to articles to notices and the police call them “schoolboy pranks” and Dads?

Dads sit quietly.

The only thing that rouses Dads’ second-long engagement is the immigration question. But not in the right way. Because Dads start to call the immigrants “them” and Dads say: After all, there are getting to be a few too many immigrants here in Sweden and Dads say: After all, there are still many who don’t act as they should. I can understand the Swedes, because there weren’t any problems like this in the eighties. And lots of immigrants are lazy idiots who just sit around and live on welfare and tightly hold on to their traditions.

And one time when you’re sitting in front of Rapport , Dads suddenly yell that one actually MUST crap down on EVERYONE who commits a crime and refuses to learn Swedish! And you say crack down and Dads say crack? and you say crack and Dads become quiet again.

Here your father’s sleep begins to become more and more sporadic. The nights become him a constant wake, a constant flow of historical pictures hover his interior and threaten his mental balance. He lies hour after hour, bathing in perspiration beside your peacefully sleeping mother. He observes her exterior. He tries to calm himself by stroking the softness of her forearm. He reflects whether the actions of his life were actually correct. Had he acted right to place his body in a country where he was not invited? Had he acted right to in addition place his sons in this context? Unlike you, he found no security in simple answers.

And you remember the headlines thatscream recession and the crown falls and the politicians panic and Dads don’t say anything, but whisper: Just when the studio has been stabilized the economy is going to crash, life is really typical. And by the way … Why do you continue to be with those … What are their names? Melinda and that fat Indian? Why are you never with other friends? Ordinary friends?

And you actually don’t understand what Dads mean, you just point out for the thousandth time that Imran is actually Baloch and not Indian.

Up until one day when you’ve eaten dinner and you’ve told about your plans to start an antiracist organization and it’s probably going to be called BFL, Blatte for Life, and Moms think it’s a great idea and little brothers ask if they can be in it too, and Dads?

Dads sit quietly.

Until dinner is eaten up and Moms do the dishes and close kitchen cupboards with the angry sounds, little brothers are playing with Dino-Riders in the living room, and Dads scratch themselves on their continuously growing guts and say with flaky wine lips and stifled burps: Hey … by the way. Why do you only hang out with immigrants? Niggers, Indians, and damn South Americans … Why no Swedish friends? Are you racist? Be careful of hanging out with the wrong people. Swedes are better. Immigrants just use you and use you and then, when you need them most, they stab you in the back.

And you must have heard wrong because the enemy is out there and the enemy has boots and shaved skulls, the enemy is New Democracy and White Aryan Resistance, Keep Sweden Swedish and Ultima Thule, SL inspectors and Sweden Democrats, red beach Volvos, Securitas guards, and the riot police in Norrmalm who beat up Fayola’s boyfriend for no reason. The enemy is Shell and American imperialists and Per Ahlmark and settlers and the CIA and Mossad. But the enemy can’t be in your own family because then things are probably going to be more mixed-up than expected.

NB: Your father is NOT the enemy. He is only a man who is trying to guarantee the success of his children in a tradition-heavy country! He is a solitary modern cosmopolitan in a barbaric society. For this is the truth about the country we call Sweden, civilized on the surface but barbaric in the structure of thought. But he did NOT dare relate you this. He feared that you would be strengthened even more in your outsiderness thoughts. For the same motive he chose not to relate his family when his studio began to be attacked …

One Monday morning in the late summer of 1991 your father came to the studio and was met by black words that had been sprayed and trickle-dried on his store window. There were phrases like WHITE REVOLUTION — NO MERCY, GOOD BLATTE = DEAD BLATTE, and DEATH TO COMMUSM! (It actually said that.)

Not only your father’s studio had been attacked, but also the video store, the Chinese restaurant, and the completely innocent, Swedish-owned floral shop. A professional firm was engaged to glisten the panes. Everyone promised each other to keep better supervision of suspected individuals. Then Abbas closed his studio early and went home. Without informing his family of the attack.

Then comes August 2, 1991, and the student David Gebremariam is shot on the Tropp Path in Stockholm and there’s already talk of a red light the next day and the papers dub the perpetrator Laser Man. Soon afterward Moms and Dads sit in pale TV light and watch election results and precisely what Moms joked about turns out to be exact reality. The conservatives take over and New Democracy enters the Parliament and they have the balance of power and a tear runs from the Palme picture on the wall and Refaat sighs in prison and Mansour still hasn’t gotten his dissertation approved and Aziz is still working at SL and has sold his record collection with eighties hits and Sweden is changing and your nightly dreams get worse and once when you wake up you’ve sleepwalked out into the hallway and are met by Dads, who look at you as though you were a ghost. You are led back to bed and Dads sit beside you until you fall asleep again and it’s not until the day after that you ask yourself what Dads were doing up and dressed in the middle of the night.

Your father remembers that night well. It was a few days after attack number two on the studio. This time it was only Abbas’ store window and the Chinese restaurant’s that had been dirtied with political slogans. In addition, the photo studio’s keyhole had been prepared with chewing gum and in front of the door stood a pink ice-cream clown statue which smilingly waved Abbas’ arrival. Someone had stolen it from the pizzeria kiosk and it was not until your father had gotten all the way there that he understood its meaning. It was escorted by a wastebasket and the text that was spelled out of the smiling clown mouth was the usual: “Keep Sweden CLEAN.” A text that still today can be seen on thousands of wastebaskets outside of thousands of kiosks (but which for your father bears a constantly modified content).