Everything I Don't Remember

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  “Tell him thanks again,” said Nihad. “Tell him my son is coming the day after tomorrow.”

  On the way back to the train, Samuel said he was jealous that I was so good at Arabic. He said that his dad had always been more eager for him to learn French.

  “Why was that?” I wondered.

  “He didn’t want me to end up in bad company.”

  *

  The rest of that spring just kept going. Time passed so slowly, the way it only does when nothing’s going on, and yet, when I think back on that spring, it feels like it was over in a second. Maybe it’s always like that, and periods that seem long as you’re living them become short in your memory, and vice versa.

  *

  Sometimes Samuel suggested I come over to his place. But I was only there a few times. I never liked the way things felt at Vandad’s. The apartment was dark and impregnated with smoke, Vandad slouched around in sweatpants, drinking ghetto wine from a box and sitting in front of the computer playing war games. I think he was on something, because only someone who was on drugs could live like that without going crazy.

  When I asked Samuel what Vandad did for work, I received contradictory answers. Sometimes he was a mover, pretty often he was “between jobs.” One time, Samuel said I didn’t have to worry because Vandad had always been able to take care of himself.

  “He has a thousand ways to support himself,” said Samuel.

  “Name one.”

  Samuel said that when Vandad was younger he used to go around Östermalm on the lookout for dogs that were waiting on a leash outside fancy hair salons. He would loosen the leash, take the dog home, and then go back to the same neighborhood a week or so later and put up posters that said he had found a runaway dog. The owners would call, grateful as anything. When they wanted to give him a reward, he would say no at first, and then he would take the money.

  “That’s sick,” I said.

  “Why? No one got hurt. The Östermalmers were just reminded of how much they loved their dogs.”

  I shook my head to show I didn’t want to talk about Vandad anymore. It wasn’t him I was worried about, it was Samuel. Vandad used him. He let Samuel pay for everything. And I didn’t get what he saw in Vandad. When I asked why they were friends, Samuel mumbled something about how Vandad “had his back” and that he could “relax and be himself” with him. Every time he said it, it felt like he was criticizing me.

  *

  One day I was called in to help a computer company move offices in Kista. The guy who hired us was the sort of customer who had an uneasy conscience because Blomberg’s prices were so low. He helped us with the dolly and lifted boxes down from the platform, even though he was some middle-management type with a pale-blue shirt that quickly showed dark rings of sweat under his arms. When we were done he invited us to have coffee in their new conference room. Everyone helped themselves to the fancy coffee and the pastries and I stood there in the bright room thinking that places like that needed employees too.

  *

  I waited for Samuel by the bus stop and as usual I felt that warm pressure across my chest when I saw him. He looked at me and smiled and even though we kissed, even though he embraced me, even though he whispered in my ear how much he had missed me, I still had the feeling that he was disappointed when he saw me. As if, on the bus ride from Örnsberg to Bagarmossen, he had imagined that I was younger and more beautiful than I actually was. As if, deep down, he wanted me to be someone else.

  *

  Before we left the conference room, I went up to the middle-management guy and told him that I was putting the finishing touches to the plot of a science-fiction strategy game.

  “I see,” said the guy, and he sounded like he was really interested.

  I tried to transform myself into Samuel. I started summarizing the plot of the game the way Samuel would have done. I walked around the conference room, using both hands to make gestures. I explained that the game starts in the future, and the weird thing is that everything is about the same as it is now. Sure, the climate is different and gasoline has run out and countries that had been islands are now underwater museums that you can visit in family-friendly submarines. But people are the same. They cut their nose hairs when no one is looking, they burp when no one is listening. Instead of moving companies, post offices, and airlines, every country has teleporting facilities where you can send yourself and your belongings to foreign places. One day, Genghis Khan shows up in one of those portals. It’s the young version of the Khan, a guy who has had a taste of wealth but doesn’t live in excess. He walks around wearing gerbil skins and survives week-long raids on the steppe by tapping his horse’s blood. The idea of the game is to try to help the Khan take over the world. You have to build up an army of robots and try to outmaneuver other warlords with futuristic weapons like DNA-seeking phosphorus missiles and viral drones. My coworkers had set down their cups. The middle-management guy nodded.

  “We primarily work with web-based credit operations,” he said.

  He signed the hours-worked contract and wished me good luck. He didn’t hand me his business card. He didn’t ask if I could come in for a meeting later that week.

  *

  We walked past Konsum on the way home. Samuel picked up milk, ketchup, noodles, cottage cheese, chicken sausage that was like forty percent meat, macaroni, and a bag of oranges on sale. I walked behind him and filled our cart with organic apples, organic lemons, a Tetra Pak of crushed tomatoes, organic black beans, fresh thyme, gluten-free crispbread, and unsweetened soy milk. When the cashier started scanning our groceries at the register, I saw Samuel watching the prices that flickered across the screen.

  “Yikes,” Samuel said when the cashier read the total.

  I took out my card and paid. As usual. We crossed the square, we turned left on my street.

  “Thanks for the groceries,” he said.

  “No problem.”

  “Damn, they were expensive.”

  We kept walking. I felt like I needed to justify myself somehow, but I wasn’t sure against what.

  “I think it’s important to be careful about what you consume.”

  “By buying organic lemons?”

  I think he was trying to sound sarcastic. It sort of worked.

  “Yes. Or. It’s a way for me to say: my goal isn’t to maximize my profits. There are things I value more than the three extra kronor it costs to buy organic lemons.”

  “Nine.”

  “Nine what?”

  “The organic lemons cost nine kronor more than the regular ones.”

  “So? Isn’t that worth it?”

  “Yes, but. It’s just . . . you have to have a certain level of income to be able to be so globally conscious.”

  “And we do have that level of income. Both of us. Don’t we?”

  “Not me.”

  “What do you mean? You earn a good salary, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but. Quite a bit of it goes on rent,” Samuel murmured.

  We stepped into my stairwell.

  “What? Don’t you split the rent equally?”

  “Yes, we’re supposed to. But things have been a little tight for Vandad lately. So I’ve been paying it.”

  “All of it?”

  “Mmhmm. And for some of the food, too. And some other stuff.”

  “So what does he pay for?”

  “Oh, it will all even out in the long run. It’s nothing to get worked up about.”

  “But how much are you paying per month?”

  Samuel told me how much the rent was. My jaw dropped.

  “You know he’s gouging you, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no chance in hell that apartment costs that much.”

  “It’s a rental. The building’s pretty new.”

  “He’s taking your money and using it for something else. I guarantee it. There’s your explanation for why he stopped working.”

  *

  Yes. O
kay. I admit it. I missed Samuel. I mean, I didn’t miss him as in I thought that our friendship was done for or that someone else was taking over my place in his life. I missed him because he did something to me. And when he wasn’t there it was harder for me to be who I was when I was with him, and even though I tried, even though I sometimes went around town and sat at Spicy House and pretended he was there, it didn’t work the same way as when he was with me. Something happened between us that made me— I don’t know. Strike that. Strike all of that. What I’m trying to say is that when I missed Samuel it was harder not to think of other people who didn’t exist and when I did it was harder to sleep and when I wasn’t sleeping I had to try to find other ways to fall asleep and when that didn’t work I had a harder time doing a good job at the moving company and when I started a shift by falling asleep in the moving truck I got fewer hours and everything turned into a downward spiral that was difficult to get out of.

  *

  We arrived home to my kitchen. I cooked, he set the table and filled a carafe with water and squeezed lemons. Once we sat down he asked how the week ahead was looking for me. I told him I had a meeting on Wednesday with Maysa, a client who had been living undocumented with four children for three years.

  “I’m going to accompany her to a legal consultation.”

  “Do you get paid for that?”

  “What do you think?”

  We ate our food, we drank our lemon water.

  “What, are you angry because I’m asking if you get paid?”

  “I’m not angry. It’s just a stupid question.”

  “Am I supposed to go around being careful not to ask stupid questions? How am I supposed to know—maybe she’s a rich undocumented person who can afford to pay her interpreter?”

  “Stop.”

  We ate in silence.

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” he said.

  “What would that be?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Maysa would like to move into the house too.”

  He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, as if it didn’t take any sacrifice at all on his part to give Nihad, Zainab, and Maysa the security they needed. And I looked at him and thought: If it was so easy for him to help someone, how could he live with not doing more?

  *

  In late spring, Samuel suggested we go down and visit Panther in Berlin. He said he needed to “get away for a bit” and asked if I wanted to come.

  “I’d love to,” I said.

  “But you’ll have to find some way to pay for the trip on your own,” said Samuel. “I can’t keep supporting you.”

  He spoke to me in a new, hard voice. I wondered where the old Samuel had gone. But I wasn’t upset, I thought it was natural since he had spent so much money on romantic presents and dinners for Laide. I knew her style. She was the sort of feminist who talked herself hoarse about how everything had to be one hundred percent fair but then complained to her friends if her guy didn’t have enough cash to treat her when they went out. Or let me put it this way. If the guy didn’t pay he was a church mouse, and if he did pay he was a pig who thought he owned his girlfriend. But since it’s better to be a pig than a church mouse, Samuel had no choice but to pay for all their dinners and museum visits and the romantic weekends I assumed they were pursuing while I sat at home alone in the apartment.

  *

  In mid-April, we stopped by the house to make sure that everyone was happy. The children were playing in the parlor, they had lined up their toy animals on the piano. They were taking turns rocking in the rocking chair, and the ping-pong table in the basement was strewn with markers, chalk, and clay. It was great to see how at home they all felt. Even if Zainab whispered that Maysa’s kids weren’t particularly well-mannered and Maysa thought Zainab’s children ate like they had worms.

  “Where’s Nihad?” Samuel asked.

  “She hasn’t slept here for several nights,” said Zainab, and I translated for Samuel, but I was forced to add a couple words so he would get that Zainab sounded pretty scornful and not very worried.

  “This is so awesome,” Samuel said as we walked down the gravel hill. “Grandma lived here for how many years, and now I don’t even think of it as her house anymore. It’s like my memories have been replaced by new ones.”

  He sounded oddly relieved.

  *

  What kind of idiot claimed I was “gouging” Samuel on rent? Was it Laide? Don’t believe everything you hear. She has no idea how expensive my rent was. She doesn’t know how hard I fought to be given more hours. I never wanted to live on Samuel’s money. I did everything I could to make my own. Every time Samuel came home from Laide’s and told me I really had to “start pulling my weight,” I thought: Yeah, but we had a loyalty pact and we were supposed to split everything and I’m trying to pull as much of my own weight as I can but shit, there seems to be a shortage of ways to pull out there, I’m frantically searching for more ways. As a last resort, so I would be able to afford rent and food and the trip to Berlin, I contacted Hamza.

  *

  We ate at the cafe on the main street. We sat in the sunshine, on the outdoor seating, it smelled like freshly mown grass. Samuel asked about my teenage years and I told him about my Kafé 44 days, my involvement with the syndicalists, my first boyfriend, who was ten years older than me and spent two years in prison after the Gothenburg riots but currently works as a guidance counselor in Sätra. I told him about the demonstrations we organized on May Day, the Reclaim the Streets years, the fights with skinheads in the nineties, the anti-Nazi demonstrations in Salem. I told him about the time several hundred of us gathered outside the Iranian embassy in support of the Green Movement and the police used pepper spray and some of us got bitten by dogs and others were injured by the sharp points of the fence and when they called for a doctor like fifty people raised their hands. I said that sometimes I miss that fervor, the feeling that it really was possible to bring about change. Samuel nodded and looked like he understood.

  *

  Hamza sounded happy to hear my voice.

  “Did you finally crawl out of your pussy shell?” was his friendly greeting when I asked how things were.

  “Since when does a pussy have a shell?” I asked.

  “It’s a figure of speech,” Hamza said. “What do you want?”

  “Got anything for me?”

  “What do you mean, got anything?”

  “You know. A round? A job?”

  “Do you think the world stands still while you’re sleeping? Hell no. The world keeps turning. Money changes hands. People are replaced.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I need money.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’m serious. I have to get my hands on some cash. Fast.”

  “You want a loan?”

  I didn’t say anything. Hamza laughed and his tone changed.

  “It’s no problem,” he said. “I’ll drop by. I’ll give you the friends and family interest rate. Do you still live in the same place?”

  He hung up before I could say thanks.

  *

  The sun was going down, the cafe was about to close, we were still sitting in the outdoor seating. I told him about when we blockaded a police escort that was supposed to transport a family who had been threatened with deportation away from the detention unit in Märsta. We arrived around four in the morning, we had brought Thermoses and ridiculously fancy pastries because one of us had a second job at a posh cafe in Östermalm. Saffron croissants and truffle biscuits and piping hot, quickly cooling herbal tea. We held out in the winter cold for six hours. By the end we had no feeling in our toes, it hurt to breathe through our nostrils, we had ice crystals in our eyelashes. But we stood there and felt like we were making a difference. Every time a car approached we linked our arms tight together, we were a human chain that would never be broken. Then a police car approached us, the window rolled down, the police lady in
the passenger seat told us that the family was already at Arlanda airport, they had taken them out the back way, the family was already on the plane, they were already up in the air, and she said it with a tiny smile that made us explode, fancy pastries rained down on their windshield and the police officers just looked at each other, shook their heads, and turned on the wipers. We made our way to the railway station in Märsta and after a while we found out that the passengers on the plane had revolted, they saw the family’s tears and the upset mom who begged for compassion and they refused to put on their seatbelts, the plane couldn’t take off, the family was removed from the plane and taken back to Märsta and that created a tiny gap: hope that we would be able to make a difference.

  “Then what happened?” Samuel asked.

  “They appealed.”

  “And were they allowed to stay?”

  “No. They were sent home.”

  *

  Hamza rang my doorbell and when I answered I noticed his foot sliding through the gap.

  “Sorry,” he said, pulling his foot back. “Old habit.”

  He had brought with him a mountain of a person who had to duck to walk through the door. When we said hello his voice was as high as a little boy’s.

  “Is it okay if I use your bathroom?” he asked.

  “Be my guest,” I said, pointing him in the right direction.

  All the while I hoped that he wouldn’t sit on the toilet because he looked like a person who could break porcelain just by sitting on it.

  “How is he?” I asked Hamza, who was wiggling an envelope out of his inner pocket.

  “Okay. Not like you, of course. But perfectly fine. He’s learning. The only problem is he has a ridiculously tiny bladder. It’s hard to make the right impression on people when you come over to demand your money back and then you have to ask to use their bathroom.”

  We smiled at each other. I asked if there was something I had to sign. We smiled even more. Both of us knew that there are some things you don’t write down. I gave him my word that I would pay it back. He gave me his word that the interest wouldn’t be any higher than usual. Then the giant with the baby voice returned from the bathroom and thanked me for letting him use it.