Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

What was once an embarrassing pet studio is now something much, much bigger.

Write me … Do you realize now how comical it was that you, in your ambition to minimize your Swedishness, started to attribute such a crucial weight to the value of ethnicity? Because what is more “Swediotic” than to attach people to their ethnicities? Who does this better than Swedes? And who becomes a better pet of racists than people who accept the existence of an us and a them? Who is more toothlessly harmless than the “blatte” who accepts his existence as the “blatte”? At the time of writing I realize that “comical” should sooner be replaced by “tragic” (the boundary between them seems grayer and grayer to me).

Your father landed at Arlanda in November 1993. For the first time in his life he succeeded in passing the passport check WITHOUT attracting the looks of suspiciousness! For your father, this was a sign in a good direction. Once at Centralen, he parked himself at his antique café of habit in order to enjoy a little nostalgia. The interior of the café had been renovated, a great many types of coffee were now offered, complete with matching ciabattas and pasta salads. Smoking was strictly illegal and none of the old Aristocats were visible. Your father interpellated the waitresses if they knew news about Mansour or Mustafa or maybe Aziz. They all side-shook their heads.

Before your father dared to seek your mother’s excuse for his absence, he wanted to examine the status of his studio. He wandered his steps to the commuter train, passed the barriers, and remembered his old work position at SL. On the way out of the city he nostalgized all the days you shared in the cockpit of the metro, all the weekends in Tanto, all the hours in the little bathroom lab. The train swished him farther out over the bridge with a fantastic view of Stockholm’s autumnal loveliness, glittering half-frozen water, red-hissing leaf forests, and a multitude of small garden houses. The view calmed a little of the nervousness that rumbled his insides.

From a distance, Abbas noticed that the sign for his studio was abducted. He unlocked the door and gazed into the darkness. In encountering the studio’s new color, your father recoiled and fanned his hand in front of his nose as though the sight were a painful scent. The state of the studio was not at all like before. Certainly it was half renovated from the fire. But instead of classic white, the wall color had become light blue! The walls were decorated with illustrations of people like Malcolm X and an assortment of hip-hop Negroes. (One was that Ice T or Ice Cube or Ice Man or Ice Cream? Your father does not recall.) The floor was filled with pillows and blankets, well-filled ashtrays, and dried apple skeletons. On a table lay worn books by names unknown to your father, like Malek Alloula and Patrick Chamoiseau.

All the ruins from your father’s business had been localized in the storeroom. The traces of the fire were also still evident there. As usual, you had renovated on the surface but not managed the whole way. Your father paged through his antique material and was hypnotized by his old photographs. There was everything in a mixed mess, smoke-damaged pet photos, heat-bubbled negatives of your little brothers disguised as Batman and Superman, burned-black pictures from the dog days of the Stockholm Exhibition, yellowed motifs of your mother’s goddessish silhouette exposed to a romantic sun laying. All this life that was now reduced to slowly fading memories. Your father may have teared his eyes. Hours may have passed. Suddenly a key was heard in the door. Someone invaded the studio.

Your father carefully glanced out from the storeroom and first saw only a shadow. Then an erected person in a black-and-white keffiyeh, frequent facial pimples, shaved skull, and an army jacket materialized. He stood out in the studio and hacked his throat, making notes on a pad while at the same time thoughtfully picking his nose with his thumb. It was you.

BFL has called a general meetingat Headquarters and I come first because I am the self-appointed General of the Fight (code name: I-on Carry-on a.k.a. Dow Jonas a.k.a. the Head Khmer). I’m the one with the key, I’m the founder of the network. I’m the one who’s written all the regulations and decided on the super-secret knock. Soon Imran comes, then Melinda, and last Patrik. BFL’S innermost circle, the central quad. We’re the ones who start every meeting by updating the map of Sweden where pins mark WAR organizations and KSS centers and towns where New Democracy got too many votes. We’re the ones who put up new enemy photos on the bulletin board, write battle manifestos, and write up outlines for the future.

Then we sit on the floor, roll a spliff, and plan the evening’s meeting and the night’s action. Only sometimes do we send Patrik out to scout for suspicious security police cars on the street. Melinda lights up and the spliff is passed around. The green does its thing, our chests get that calming chirpy feeling, and the air clouds. We wait for the others, what time did we say? Eight, but you start to hear the knock combinations on the studio door fifteen minutes early.

Here they come, everyone who’s dedicated their lives to the Fight. Polyester sisters, basketball brothers, shining siblings, million-generationers. First the Melinda sisters, waddling down the stairs, and then Imran’s whole basketball team, and then Hanin, who’s the leader of the Malmö force, and Chia, who’s in charge of the youth troops. Then some of the Aristocats’ kids, Elif and Daphne, Kai and Mine. Then Mohamed from your grade, who has promised to dismantle the drivel of the integration debate.

Your father heard knocks, loud voices, the door which was opened and closed again and again. He carefully closed the door to the storeroom so he wouldn’t be discovered.

Then comes a big gangwho all got the five-to-eight train: the journalists all together, Oivvio and Lawen, Devrim and Vanja. There’s Shang waving — she’s responsible for the laws — and there’s Emma and Farnaz being welcomed — they’re going to expand the theater — and there’s Pontikis, who’s going to take over the film industry. There’s Ernesto, who’s going to infiltrate the Ministry for Foreign Affairs along with Davor and Julius in data support. Macki controls the offensive on the business school, while Reena storms the political science department. There’s hugging and greeting and Wzup Moses how’s it going with the director post at the Royal Institute of Technology? and Kifhalek Karim! with his sights set on becoming a professor of philosophy. And there’s Nadia, the future director of Swedish Television, and there’s Zvonko, soon to be editor in chief of Dagens Nyheter . And there’s Cengiz and Goran and Mustafa and Golbarg and Ksenia and Behnaz and him and her and them and you and us …

Finally everyone’s sitting in a group on the crowded floor, the air warm and the windows steamed over. Melinda gets up and declares the meeting open. She summarizes the results of the latest actions, and everything is a success and letter bombs have been sent to neo-Nazis and nighttime visits have been made to the skinhead who assaulted the Kurd in Lerum, pinioned him, and left him in the flaming vegetable shop. The Swedish commander in chief will soon regret that he dismissed Carl Gustaf Belmadani as a chauffeur for the minister of defense for the explicit reason that he was dark and had a strange name (last name, that is). Skara Sommarland is being boycotted for having a racist owner. The paper Expressen is being boycotted for the news bills where they wrote: “What the Swedish people think of immigrants: Drive them out!” The racist town of Sjöbo is besieged. Vivianne Franzén is put under constant surveillance.