Such Good Work

by Johannes Lichtman

  “Please, you go.” Osman motioned Katja ahead.

  “No, no—it’s okay!”

  Osman held his arm forward. “Please, my friend, you go.”

  So Katja stepped to the front of the line and filled her coffee with the embarrassment of someone who knows she’s being watched.

  She walked by me on her way to the back tables.

  “Looks like they like you,” I said.

  She reddened and kept walking. I watched her as she walked away, then became conscious of my watching and looked down.

  When Ali got in line, the boys repeated the same ritual of moving aside. After he’d filled his cup, he came over my way, stirring his coffee with a plastic spoon.

  “They’re very polite,” I said.

  “In Afghan culture, there is a great respect for your elders.” Ali took a sip. “They say it lasts about two months once they get to Europe.”

  Several of the boys had gathered in front of a laminated poster of the Swedish alphabet that Katja had tacked up to the wall. They were holding up their phones to take pictures of the poster.

  “They want a picture so they can practice the alphabet at home,” Ali said.

  “I’ve never had students like this.”

  “They’re so eager to learn.” Ali shook his head. “It makes you grateful for everything you have.”

  Had a white person said this, I would have cringed. But coming from Ali, who was here from Iran under circumstances I wasn’t familiar with, I didn’t know how to judge it.

  * * *

  Osman was sitting at a table with Arash, the jokester with the Russian hat. They were drinking tea and speaking Dari.

  I crouched down at the table and said in English, “How’s it going, guys?”

  They both jumped up and offered me their chairs.

  “No, no—it’s fine. I don’t need a chair.”

  “Please, my friend,” Osman said. “Please.”

  “Thank you, Osman.” I sat down. I wanted to be the adult and guide them through the conversation. But just as in my office hours, I didn’t know how to do this. After a few moments of silence, I said, “How long ago did you arrive in Sweden?”

  “Since four days,” Osman said. “He around the same time. I was in Iran, with my uncle, but it is not good for us there. I walked through Iran. It takes fourteen days. But we can only walk at night. Then Turkey, then Greece, then Macedonia, then Serbia, then Hungary, then Austria, then Germany, then Denmark, and now Sweden.” Osman counted the countries off on his fingers.

  “How long did it take?”

  Osman said something to Arash. Arash said two things in Dari, each with the inflection of a question, then shrugged.

  “Forty-four, forty-five days?” Osman said. “Once we walked for three days without stopping.”

  “You must be tired,” I said stupidly.

  “We are fine.”

  “Welcome to Sweden.”

  “Thank you,” Osman said.

  It was quiet again. I felt the silence as something I had to fix.

  “Is your family still in Afghanistan?” As soon as the words left my mouth, my internal elevator plunged. But it was too late.

  “No,” Osman said. He took a long sip of his milk-whitened tea.

  I sipped my coffee and hoped he would say something else. He did not. I noticed, with surprise, that I was suddenly angry at Osman. Then angry at myself for feeling angry at a child when all he had done was sidestep a thoughtless question that could be uncomfortable for us both.

  Here was the rare conversation in which I actually wanted to hear the answers to my questions—where I wasn’t just asking Where are you from? or How’s work? to be polite. But I wanted to ask questions like a friend, not like a thief. More than anything else, I wanted not to ask about dead family members.

  “Excuse me, my friend?” Osman said. “How do you say, ‘Thank you for the food’?”

  “In Swedish?”

  “Yes. The woman who serves food at the home doesn’t speak English. We don’t know what to say when she gives us food.”

  “You say, ‘Tack för maten.’ ”

  The boys repeated the sounds, bending them into foreign shapes from the backs of their throats. I repeated the sounds back until they blossomed into intelligibility. Then Osman pulled a crumpled sheet of paper and a pen from his jacket, wrote down the sounds in Dari script, and held the paper up so he and Arash could ground the sounds in writing.

  “Tack för maten,” they said.

  “Bra!” I said. “That means ‘good.’ You are bra at Swedish already. You’ll speak the language in no time.”

  Osman smiled in an unguarded way that I wasn’t used to seeing in someone his age. It was the kind of smile that tended to die at puberty. I was so happy to see the smile that I didn’t immediately notice how expertly Osman had guided the conversation back into the realm in which I felt comfortable. It was either conversational aptitude, kindness to me, or pragmatic knowledge that keeping me happy might be good for him.

  “I went to eighth class,” Arash said in surprisingly clear English, adjusting the fur hat on his head. “In Afghanistan.”

  “I can tell. You speak good English.”

  “Yes. I lived alone. My uncle came every week to see me, but I lived alone in a big house. Very big. But the Taliban saw the big house and they came for money. I said, ‘Okay, fine, I have a big house, I have money, okay. I will pay them.’ But then they started coming two times in a week. Three times in a week. Then they came every day. That is when I said, ‘Enough of Afghanistan. I will come to Sweden.’ ”

  As Arash talked, Osman’s eyes widened. It looked as if he wanted to stop Arash—either because Arash was lying or because Osman thought the story would give me the wrong impression—but was worried that saying anything in front of me would hurt them both.

  The Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim wrote a short story about a refugee arguing his case for asylum to an immigration officer in Malmö, in which the narrator says, Everyone staying at the refugee reception center has two stories—the real one and the one for the record. It had occurred to me that the boys might exaggerate their stories, seeing as they were trying to get residence permits, and the more cogently horrible your backstory, the likelier you’d get to stay. But I also thought the boys might exaggerate their stories because everyone exaggerated stories from their past, even if they weren’t trying to get a residence permit. I exaggerated the stories from my American past when I told them to my Swedish classmates, sometimes to impress my listeners, but more often it just happened without my even thinking about it. Maybe it was the leftover good feelings from when I’d seen Osman’s unguarded smile, but listening to Arash, I didn’t care how true his story was. I didn’t care if the boys had walked through the desert for three days straight or three hours straight. I didn’t care whether ISIS had threatened their families, their schools, or their cities. I didn’t care if they had escaped Taliban extortion, al-Qaeda violence, lack of schools, oppression, poverty, or something I hadn’t even considered. Whatever the reason, the boys were here now. And being here now, alone, was difficult enough.

  “I want to go to school here,” said Arash.

  “What would you like to study?” I said.

  Arash looked to Osman, but Osman didn’t understand.

  “I’m asking what subject he’s interested in,” I said to Osman.

  Osman looked confused and said something to Arash. Arash said something back.

  “Yes,” Osman said.

  I couldn’t think of a gesture that would communicate the question. I began to sweat a little. Every silence was a failure on my part.

  “School is very good here,” I said. “You can go to university here for free.”

  Osman nodded, concentrating hard. “You are from Sweden?”

  “I’m from Los Angeles.”

  “Los Angeles?”

  “In America.”

  The boys murmured, impressed.

  “Y
ou are rich?”

  “No.” I laughed, thinking how I’d never made more than $24,000 in a year and was falling ever deeper into student-loan debt. Then I remembered myself and stopped laughing.

  “Do you know movie stars?”

  I didn’t know any movie stars. “Once I met Michael Keaton.”

  The boys looked puzzled.

  “You know, Batman?”

  “Christian Bale?” Arash said.

  “You know Christian Bale?” Osman said.

  “Yes. I know Christian Bale.”

  The boys giggled and talked in Dari.

  “America is good,” Osman said. “I would like to go there.”

  “I hope you will one day.”

  Osman nodded and got a look of concentration. I worried that he thought I was testing him, deciding if he was good enough for America.

  “Do you want to know how to ask where someone is from in Swedish?” I said.

  “Yes,” Osman said. “Thank you.”

  As Osman copied down the Swedish words in Dari characters, I saw a boy walking around by himself, away from the minigroups that had formed, staring down at the floor. He was skinny and handsome. He wore sweatpants and sandals with a crew-necked sweatshirt that was wet around the shoulders, not yet dry from the rain.

  I called him over. “Would you like to learn some Swedish?” I said, brimming with confidence.

  The boy stared at me.

  I asked Osman to translate.

  “No, I understand,” the boy in the sweatshirt said in English.

  “Good. If you want to ask somebody where they are from in Swedish, you say, ‘Varifrån kommer du?’”

  “I do not want to do that right now,” the boy said.

  Osman growled something in Dari.

  “I am sorry,” the boy said. “I can learn Swedish.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to learn it now.”

  “Thank you.” He walked away.

  I watched him crouch down next to the restroom door and pull out his phone. I wanted the sinking feeling inside me to be from tenderness and care, but I suspected it was more embarrassment at my mistake.

  “He is, you know . . .” Osman tapped his head with his index finger. “He wants to live in his phone. But we want to learn.”

  I gave Osman and Arash another Swedish phrase, listened to them practice, and said, “Good! Now I’d like you to teach it to three other boys.”

  Osman and Arash nodded and hurried off to a group of other boys.

  I went to talk to the boy sitting by the restroom.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I said in English, leaning against the wall and lowering my backside to the floor.

  The boy looked up at me.

  “I shouldn’t have been trying to teach you Swedish on your break. Breaks are for relaxing.”

  “I can learn Swedish on my break. I was just thinking about something else and it felt difficult to start learning something new when I was thinking about that.”

  “That makes sense. It’s difficult to switch between thoughts.”

  We were quiet for a moment. The boy ran his thumb over the screen, though the phone was locked.

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “I was thinking about my family. But I would like to learn.”

  “We don’t have to learn Swedish now. You have all the time in the world.” I smiled. “What’s your name?”

  “Aziz.”

  “Jonas.” I offered my hand and Aziz shook it limply. I was about to ask him where his family was, but I caught myself before salting any more wounds. “You were thinking about your family?”

  “Yes. They are in Tehran. My mother and my sister.”

  I nodded, thinking of how to move forward without accidentally asking about someone who might have been killed. “Is your sister older or younger than you?”

  “I am the oldest.” He paused. “Would you like to see a photo of my sister?”

  He unlocked the phone and showed me a picture of a toddler with a blue bow in her hair, sitting on a baby-blue blanket in front of a photographer’s blue backdrop, smiling with her whole face.

  “Her name is Najma. It means ‘star’ in Arabic.”

  “That’s beautiful. You must miss her.”

  “Yes. She needs me.” He tensed up. “But it is not good in Tehran. We left because it is not good. We did not just want to go.”

  “I know,” I said, though I didn’t know at all. But I suspected that you wouldn’t send your son on a three-thousand-mile trip, alone, to a country where he didn’t know anyone, if things were good at home.

  Aziz was looking down again.

  “Your family must be proud of you,” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sure they are. Many people try to make it here. Most don’t make it. And you did it all on your own.” I reached my hand out to his shoulder. “Your mother must be very proud.”

  The moment my hand touched the wet sweatshirt, I realized how inappropriate it was—how likely it was that he didn’t want to be touched by a stranger. I was about to pull the hand away when Aziz looked up and smiled a tired smile. So I left it there for a second.

  “You pronounce it Najma?”

  “Yes, Najma,” he said. “Like a star.”

  * * *

  On the bus ride home, I felt pleasantly worn-out. But I also longed for drugs. I wondered why doing something good—even with the clumsiness of a drunk trying to fit a key in a lock—would make me want to get high.

  “Because everything makes you want to get high,” Duke had said.

  But not everything made me want to get high anymore. I still thought about drugs at least a few times a week. I still longed for them—especially when I was hungover. But there were times when I felt happy or proud or good without explanation. It was strange: feeling good without knowing where the good feeling had come from or when it would end.

  AT THE SECOND LANGUAGE CAFÉ, Aziz looked like a different person. He wore a rain jacket and boots and wasn’t soaked at the shoulders. He called out, “Jonas, my friend!,” before I could even think of the appropriate greeting.

  He reached out and shook my hand in several elaborate steps. “I heard that you are American!”

  Which explained the handshake. “I am. But not too American, so don’t worry. Did you get a new jacket?”

  “This? No, I simply misunderstood Torsten last time! I thought we were just going downstairs, but then we walked ten minutes in the rain! But now I am ready for the Swedish weather. Tell me, did you see the American Music Awards last night?”

  “Were those yesterday?”

  “Jonas! I thought you were American!”

  “I’m a failure. Did you see them?”

  “I read about them on the internet.”

  “Who won?”

  “Taylor Swift. I like Taylor Swift.”

  “Me, too. She seems like she’s a nice person.”

  “Very nice! And Justin Bieber won.”

  “I’m not a big fan of Justin Bieber.”

  “I am also not a big fan of Justin Bieber. And One Direction won. But do you say direction or direction? The second way is British, right? You would say it the first way, because you are American?”

  “That’s right. You’re very good at English.”

  “Thank you.”

  It was a strange kind of small talk—normally empty calories that today felt substantive.

  “How is your sister, Najma?”

  “You remembered! Very good, Jonas. She is well. I Skyped with her on Tuesday. She is already bigger than I remembered.”

  Ali whistled that it was time to start.

  “I’ll talk to you afterward,” I said, and we performed another long handshake.

  * * *

  After the first Language Café, I had asked Ali to teach me to say, “Hello. My name is Jonas. I’m from Los Angeles. That is all the Dari I can speak.” He had repeated the words until I got them
right, and I had copied them into a notebook I kept in my pocket. Now, as the boys assembled in a semicircle readying for the day’s directions, Ali suggested that I offer my Dari/Farsi introduction as the welcome speech. “The boys have probably never seen a white person speak Farsi before. It’ll be fun for them.”

  I felt a surge of pride. But there was a wrinkle in the plan.

  As we soon learned, a new group of boys had arrived from Syria who spoke Arabic, not Dari. Muhammad, a volunteer who had come to Malmö from Syria two years earlier, jumped up to translate for the Arabic group.

  I stepped forward and said in Dari, “Hello. My name is Jonas. I’m from Los Angeles. That is all the Dari I can speak.”

  The Dari speakers applauded—Aziz whistled—and I took a joking bow.

  “What did he say?” Muhammad asked Ali in English.

  “He said that his name is Jonas and that he is from Los Angeles and that he doesn’t speak Dari,” Ali yelled back in English.

  Muhammad translated into Arabic that my name was Jonas and that I was from Los Angeles and that I didn’t speak Dari. When Muhammad stopped, scattered, confused applause came from the Arabic-speaking boys. But I still felt pride.

  “Welcome to the Language Café! We’re so glad you came,” I said in English. Then I waited for the simultaneous translations to finish.

  * * *

  “How is it at the home?” I asked Aziz at fika break.

  “It’s good. We eat. We go to the Central Station to use the Wi-Fi. We sleep. Then we do it again.”

  “That sounds hard.”

  “It is a little hard to wait. I want to start school.” He paused. “Do you know when we will start school?”

  “I don’t know. I think you start school when you get moved to your more permanent home.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know exactly. But I think it takes a month or two.”

  “Oh.” Aziz looked down. “I went to school at home.”

  “I can tell. You speak very good English.”

  “Thank you. I went to ninth class. But then, Daesh—you know Daesh? ISIS?”

  “Yes.”