Jonas Khemiri - Montecore - The Silence of the Tiger

“Of course,” responsed Alex. “Who are these three?”

“This trio made the naked photograph respectable.”

“Trust me,” Alex calmed, and delegated us his business card.

I must admit that Abbas collaborated with Alex for a few following years. I assisted him. Together we contracted Tunisian studentettes and prostitutes, who, in exchange for expanded finances, sexualized themselves before the camera. Initially he photographed only solitary sexy women who, clad in veils, widened their legs, pouted their lips, and tempted the camera with hints of the delight. But in connection with the expansion of the global world net I convinced your father to expand into photographing women who also sexualized themselves with men in front of the camera.

I had an obvious motive: The conflicts between the Western world and the Arab world increased the demand for our photos exponentially. Every oil conflict, terror attack, or Gulf invasion fed the hunger for photos where veiled women were sexualized. Your father finally gave in and the public success was total. Our first success was the humoristically erotic Aladdin and His Magic Tramp . Then Lawrence of Hoe-rabia and Casablanca the XXX Version arrived. A very popular series, particularly in France, presented principals who had their one-eyes sucked to ecstasy by veiled students who wanted to levitate their grades (Principal’s Office, Fail in Veil, Parts 1–6) . Another combined the soldier format with Muslim food erotica (Dessert Storm — Feeding the Soldiers) .

Our photos found a well-built success in both the U.S.A. and Europe. Almost all of our series found their specific customers and only a few made fiascos (the unfortunately named photo series Saddam and Gonorrhea , for example, only had a very limited distribution, except in an extremely selective circle of customers). Soon we created our own photo heroes who returned in repeated series. Our first female heroine was called Miss Honey Milk Sheik — the female nympho. She was a Muslim oil-well proprietress who happily let herself be bound and sexualized in triangular holes at the same time by white men she found at abandoned gas stations. The American success became rocketish and the woman we collaborated with was soon invited to Miami for solo scenes with erotic giants like Peter North. We replaced her with a male hero where we borrowed the format from the comic Rowan Atkinson. Instead of Mr. Bean we created Mr. Bedouin, a very humoristic man who constantly happens to localize himself in hilariously sexual situations. He rents a hotel room and is welcomed extra generously by the proprietress’s twin daughters (Too Cool for School) . He gets lost and is welcomed extra generously in an oasis by seven sex-starved Saudi aerobics instructors (1,000 and One Tights) .

Soon we noticed that particularly popular were the photo series where we let men penetrate veiled women in an acted situation of coercion. The man was preferably as white as possible. The woman was preferably forced to sexualization, the veil preferably ripped in two, and the penetration preferably happened according to the pattern: orally, vaginally, anally, and then back to orally. The man could, for example, play a soldier who invaded an erotically steaming hamam or a business director who called in a veiled employee to his office room. The scenario did not seem central; the vital thing was that the woman’s veil would be ripped off, that her hair would be exposed, and that the white portion of the man would be planted in the woman’s face.

I was responsible for all the practicalities while your father photographed our series with that sort of creeping indifference that had colored him since his Sweden move. His finances flowered, but still he was so far from happy. It was NOT the ambiguity of morals that disturbed him. Memorize that all women who acted in our photos chose this entirely solitarily. For every slurped spunk and penetrated anus they were compensated very generously. And what does one have for legitimacy to question a woman’s right to her own body? Your father is an enlightened Western man who would never fall into the trap of naïveté-declaring those models with whom he collaborated.

Consequently it was not morals that darkened his humor. Instead it was his bizarre position. His whole life he had fought to get an excess of economy to delight his family. He had washed dishes and picked up dog poop and driven metros and photographed pets. And now when his economy had finally flowered, he had no family to portion it with. He regretted much in his life and soon started to be disgusted with wasting his photographic talent on unessential things.

In the year 2000 came the magic day when your father could repay me my loan with expanded interest. Even though he was now free, his humor seemed far from sunshine. I said:

“Praise my congratulations, now we are finally square! What will you do now?”

“I do not know. But I am going to stop photographing erotica. I have economy enough.”

While I prepared the final dedication of my own hotel, your father wanted to collection his memories into a summarizing biography. Just like his idols Capa and Frank, Cartier-Bresson and Avedon, your father longed to have his life and work documented. In the book, his favorite photos were to be blended with texts that explained his actions to his lost family. For frequent hours he sat in his room with the pencil frenetically bitten to splinters between his teeth.

“How is your biography going?” I sometimes interpellated.

“Very badly,” responsed your father. “It is very difficult to bring order to my life. All of my memories are mixed helter-skelter and I cannot even sense how I should initiate my history.”

“Perhaps we can help each other? Perhaps you can tell your life to me in order to cure your writer’s cramp?”

And your father began to tell. And he told and told and told. The words filled the morning office and the afternoon casse-croûte stand and the beach walk at dusk. He talked and talked with an openheartedness that I had NEVER seen in your father either before or after. In the company of the night we transported our bodies up on my brand-new hotel roof. Just as in our youth we shared the enjoyment of hashish, we stared the starry sky’s pulsating nearness while your father distributed word cascades. Words about his Algerian home village, chestnuts, the TV star Magnus Härenstam, and the sunshine in the Stockholm archipelago were blended in bizarre disorder. His words never wanted to stop; they followed me into my bedroom despite my demonstrative yawns, they followed me through the bathroom door when I brushed my teeth, they could even be heard when I turned off the lamp for falling asleep. It was as though everything your father had not told to anyone finally must be emptied out.

The next day at breakfast he continued to repeat about his disappeared father blah blah blah and his kind mother blah blah blah and the art of photography blah blah blah. Monstrously full of his constant, self-centered word waves, I cut him off.

“Just one thing … How can you know that your mother was telling the truth about that Moussa? Couldn’t she have made it up?”

Your father was frustrated:

“That is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard, why would she …”

“Perhaps because she … had happened to sexualize herself with someone else? Someone improper? Like for example a neighbor farmer?”

“What do you mean … That Rachid would have … But he would probably have said when we met in …”

Your father opened his mouth, again and again, but just like when he was little no sound was heard. He disappeared and returned a few minutes later with the photograph where he had captured Rachid’s exterior.