Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

Why “walks” instead of walks? What are you suggesting? Detail like this instead:

“That my father might have had parallel mistresses is of course an unthinkable thought, like that the sun might wake in the west or that Benny Hill might be uncomical.”

Hmm … this formulation would have piled me with pride in the beginning of our book. Now it just piles me with sorrow. Abduct it if you wish.

The Laser Manis still sitting with his laser sight ready in movie theater balconies, huddling in front car seats, hidden behind light poles. There he is, you see? … No, there! Always behind you and to the side and sometimes it actually feels like you’re going crazy. On January 22, the student Erik Bongcam is shot in the cheek and the day after the bus driver Charles Dhlakama is shot in the stomach and right after that the economist Abdisalam Farah is shot in the back of the head and the civil engineer Ali Ali and SHNEYA LASERMAN?! EVERYONE knows it’s a conspiracy, it’s going around the city that it isn’t one laser man but a gang of laser men, a group of racist combat soldiers who have banded together with the Security Service and the Norrmalm riot squad and the fucking Silvia whore in order to make all blattar super paranoid and make them leave Sweden. Dads sits quietly and it’s you, Melinda, Imran, and Patrik against the world, you against them, or fuck YOU, it’s WE, WE who wander through life and together are exceptions, WE who together refuse their rules and eat their pigeonholes, WE explode their categorizations because we aren’t Swediots or immigrants, we are the perpetually unplaceable. Our dads come from Chile and our moms are Swedish Moderate politicians and we are born and raised in villas in Täby. Our parents are chemistry experts from Nigeria and we have four sisters who are the world’s most immense bodyguards and our dads send fancy silk blouses from Singapore. We are born in Pakistan, we have steel-rimmed glasses and red-checked bandannas and dream of being the first in the world to rap in Balochi. We have Tunisian dads and Swedish-Danish moms and we are neither totally suédis nor totally arabis but some other thing, some third thing, and the insight about not having a simple collective grows us into creating our own pigeonhole, a new collective without borders, without history, a creolized circle where everything is blended and mixed and hybridized. We are the reminder that their days are numbered. We are the ones who take your disgusting language and turn it around. We are the ones who will never accept a language that’s designed to screen us out (and which moreover calls the most beautiful part of the breast a wart yard ). We are the ones who jet instead of leaving, we own instead of triumphing, we bang instead of making love, we say five-o when you say police, we shine while you rust, we soar while you land in the marsh, we sit on the back of benches and spit seas onto squares of sidewalk while you sit where you’re supposed to and sigh, we’re the ones who get that it’s actually called an assist in basketball and that mecca has nothing to do with bingo and that a fine cat has nice boudies and definitely no fur or pedigree. We are the future! and it’s Melinda who says this last bit and she smiles her glittering gummy smile and you remember her silhouette there in the dusk on the basketball court with her tangled Afro and her worn comb and it’s so cold that you’re playing with cutoff mittens and it’s right after her sister Fayola has died of cancer, she was twenty-two and Melinda rarely talks about her but even cancer is Sweden’s fault and more and more often Melinda says things that Fayola said to her and mostly it’s quotes by Frantz Fanon and it doesn’t matter that you don’t know who that is, it doesn’t matter that Melinda just repeats Fayola’s words, it doesn’t matter that you pronounce Frantz Fanon as though he were a Norrlander and Aimé Césaire as though he were an antique Caesar.

Nothing matters more than that you’re building symbiosis and instead of dads who are willing to fight you have each other.

January 28, 1992: The hot dog stand owner Isa Aybar. Five bullets, one to the head, two in the right, and one in the left arm. The Laser Man continues to shoot blattar while Sjöbo politicians smile and the Norrmalm police take it easy and the politicians enjoy silence and skinheads celebrate through the night with cheers and heil s at the helicopter platform.

January 30: Hasan Zatara. One bullet to the head at Hägersten and you’ve all bought candy at his kiosk and Zatara loses the ability to speak and is paralyzed and the spring wanders on in constant terror and constant suspense.

Finally there are certain parents who choose the Fight. Some take a stand and roar their rage when Friggebo and Bildt want to join hands and sing “We Shall Overcome” in Rinkeby. Some arrange demonstrations and lead torchlight processions and organize national immigrant strikes. Some make their last names invisible in the phone book and say to their children: Study whatever you want as long as you can do it abroad because this whore country isn’t going to want to have us here in ten years, study medicine, study economics, then we’ll get out of here, start a big business in Great Britain, and laugh at our memories of this uncultured land of barbarians.

And then there are Dads. Who continue to smile kindly at Swedish masters who want their Pekingeses photographed. Who refuse to be a part of the blatte fight. Who just look at you with sadly cowardly eyes when you do your best to rouse their engagement.

“Do your best to rouse their engagement?” Allow me a capital laugh for a whole line:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

You did not attempt to rouse your father’s engagement. Your mission was to shatter his pride. Do you remember, for example, the February day when you came downmarching into the studio with your lousy loser friends? It was a tragic parade. First you: jeans adequate for five legs, a Mercedes star around your neck on a chain, and on your upper body an illegitimately obtained Champion shirt. Then Melinda with her microphonishly large hair and her billowing sweatpants suit, which reduced her body to the size of a blackhead. And Imran last, fat as a Japanese sumo, draped like a hip-hop tent with matching colors. All of you had the same caps with the gangster sign of the LA Raiders.

Without any respect for the customer who hired your father’s talent, you auctioned with a loud voice that your father immediately, from this second forward, should annul his work for “Swediot customers.” Your father excused himself toward the customer and sighed forth his response.

“And why would I do that?”

“Haven’t you heard? There is an immigrant strike! All immigrants are stopping work today.”

“I am NOT an immigrant! Why does everyone name me an immigrant? How long should I migrate? I am Swedish. I have passed half my life here …”

“It doesn’t matter. The strike is going to show Sweden.”

“Show what?”

“I mean like that there’s a whole lot of immigrants who like … work. I mean … Why should you work for the slave owners? Why should you let yourself be exploited by Swediotic racists?”

(Here your confused friends shouted out their support in the form of bellowing hip-hop sounds: “Yo, yeah, word up, cowabunga!”)

“I do not let myself be exploited!” shouted your father with screwed-up volume. “I only try to live my life in peace and kindness. Why does no one let me do this? Why do you persist in inflicting your behaviors on me? Just let me live!”

With force, your father conducted you and your sad friends out to the sidewalk. Then he locked the door and returned, sighing, to photographing the Chihuahua, whose master wanted it to be formed in an egg carton because the dog’s name was Eggy. The customer commented the incident with a single word: