Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

“Teenagers,” he said, and smilingly sidewound his head in an attempt to shape sympathy. Your father responsed him in the same way and they smiled each other’s understanding.

Write me … Do you realize now as an adult that you dealt in the logic of racism? That you and the racists exposed the same terminology when you embraced everything blattish and they everything Swedish. But your father was … yes, your father? He was solitary in his solitude. He stood isolated both interiorly and exteriorly.

This turbulent day was not over. After your discussion in the studio, your father lacked all lust for a journey home. He did not have the strength to invade the sphere of the home to find himself trapped there between your grandmother’s accusations of fundamentalism and your accusations of betrayal.

Without inspiration, he spent the long night with his work. He sat parked at the studio table with a carefully locked door and weakly echoing night radio in the background. He sipped a whiskey while he polished up a project for the Swedish domestic ferret society. He inspected photographs of the society’s directors (wearing happy smiles with their beloved ferrets). He tried to focus his thoughts on the task. It went well. In thirty-second phases. Then hounding thoughts invaded his head.

Finally he raised his body from the stool, knocked out the lamps, and wandered his steps toward the commuter rail station. It was a wintry night with that special silence that encapsulates Sweden when the snow lies driven into masses. Your father wound his body into the leather jacket and squinted his eyes to steel his body against the cold. The air roused your father and he had almost regained a little of the former vitality of his steps when from the bush at his side he noticed an aimed red light. He froze his movements like a frightened animal. His head was turned slowly downward.

There on his shoulder … A vibrating red dot of light … Your father’s heart stopped.

With the naïve reaction of a child he attempted to brush the dot away but the light only smiled at his attempt, wandered on from his shoulder to his center, down toward his stomach, hip, thigh, then a hop up to his chest; this blinding laser dot shone against your father’s heart, and your father’s body throbbed with the realization that his life was seconds away from termination.

He just stood there, let himself be searched by the laser beam, and awaited the sound of a shot.

But instead smothered laughter could be heard from the bush, which was suddenly shaken to life, the dot disappeared, and two jokers scampered their steps toward a door. Your father remained standing with the throbbing of his heart, the stickiness of his mouth, and an aching cramp in his head.

But no Laser Man crime, no exploded jaws, punctured stomachs, or paralyzed store owners affect your family more than that night in April ’92 when someone breaks into the studio from the courtyard, breaks the storeroom pane, and climbs in through the window. They wander around in Dads’ studio and break things at random, the copy machine crashes to the floor, binders of negatives are tossed from the bookshelves, posters are torn down. Someone discovers the dog biscuits and starts a dog biscuit war. Someone wants to be worse and poops in a photography magazine that Dads have contributed to, then wipes the poop in long streaks over the white studio walls. Someone wants to be worst of all, discovers the cans of used chemicals, developing fluids, and fixer, and someone unscrews the cork and says that this fucking smells like gas and someone else presents the idea and some third person says of course and they laugh and cheer and collect all the flammable material in the darkroom, crumpled posters, Kadir’s old mattress, the empty boxes, the negative binders, a dried houseplant, some unused wooden frames. Then on with the liquid and a little more, don’t be stingy, there too, more, finally everything is wet and they back toward the door and it’s smothered giggles, someone who has to pee, come on now, dammit, you’ll have to go later, shh, there’s someone out there, are you messing with me? no, shut up now, who’s going to light it, you, no, I will, okay do it then, who’s got the lighter, come on someone has to have a lighter, but hell SOMEONE has to have one, okay, thanks, are you with me, are you ready?

The flames that light up the room meet the poured-out trail of liquid, rush silently blue toward the waiting pile, giggling rush out to the courtyard, smothered laughter, someone who still has to pee, someone who’s looking for a key to their moped, someone who says no one lives upstairs, right?

The next day Moms answer the telephone and stand totally silently for way too long. Moms don’t even have time to explain the details before you have gathered your troops. It’s you, Melinda, Imran, and Patrik who with tense fists and gnashing teeth jump the gates to the commuter train, force yourselves up the escalator, crash through the exit gate so it bursts, stamp your gravel-puffing steps in time through the shopping center, share silent rage when you see the police’s cordon tape from a distance and the black soot marks that have lapped out from the smashed store window.

It’s you who see Dads sitting alone on the edge of the sidewalk, Dads who are mumbling to himself and who have had a blanket placed over him by someone who doesn’t know him and who doesn’t know that Dads always have blankets over his legs and never over his shoulders.

Everything until now was practice but now it’s serious, now they have pushed us too far and your friends pretend not to hear Dads’ mumbling about that you can bet it was vandal blattar who did it, typical immigrants, they hate other immigrants who succeed and …

You say it kindly because not even you are ready to test Dads when they’re this fragile: Why would a gang of blattar write WAR on the wall with poop?

Dads answer: Precisely so that we will suspect the wrong people. They are smart, you know, smarter than you’d think when you see them … or perhaps they were going to write … Varón? Maybe it was South Americans?

You never find out who’s guilty, because the police have more important things to worry about, and when you ask the constable whose name is Nilsson when they are going to put out the nationwide alert and interview neighbors and dust for fingerprints and do composite sketches he laughs as if you were joking. And he must be a racist too, you can tell by looking at him, that he’s been bought off and bribed by WAR, because he’s totally blond and totally freckly and his pants are pulled up too high and he’s totally going high-water, and what else can you expect from someone who shares a name with Pippi’s monkey? Do you say this to him? No, true to form you speak inwardly instead of outwardly. But your friends agree with you, don’t they? They don’t contradict you, anyway.

You walk silently, you follow Dads home to the apartment, Dads’ scarred hands shake and Dads take out his old lucky chestnut and put it back in his pocket again and Dads say words that not even you can interpret, and then on the train home, Dads’ jaw goes up and down, up and down, without the tiniest sound.

After that day, Dads become statues in front of the TV. Dads watch Glamour and TV Shop . Dads start reciting old photography quotes in new versions. Sons are called into the living room to change the channel and to be reminded that Cartier-Bresson certainly was right: You don’t get any points for second place, no points for the second pla … Then Dads lose themselves in the ad for the cleaning product Didi Seven and the quote dangles, severed, in the air.

Dads mix up little brothers and call them the wrong name again and again.