*
A taxi stopped and Samuel vaulted out of the front seat. He was wearing his work clothes, but his hair was going every which way, it looked like he had slept in the taxi.
“What happened?”
“No idea.”
“Is everyone out?”
“Think so.”
“Yes, everyone is out,” Nihad said again, although she didn’t sound as sure this time. Then we heard the voice. Someone was screaming, it sounded like it was coming from the attic, the women gathered their children close, some of the children were crying, Zainab and Maysa counted the children again and again as if they couldn’t believe that everyone was really there. Samuel looked at me with wild eyes.
“Are you ready?”
*
I’m ashamed that I didn’t figure it out, the thought didn’t even occur to me. Sure, there was a smell as we drove here and I could see that she was limping, of course, but she’d been limping for a long time. I thought that the rustling noise was from her adult diaper. We had to hold her down in the chair and make her take off her shoe to see what was wrong. It was hard to tell toenail, flesh, and pus apart. The worst was her big toenail, which had grown out and then in again in an arc, it looked like the yellowed talon of a bird. The plastic bags she had wrapped around her foot fell to the floor with a wet sound.
“How long have you been walking around like this?” the doctor asked.
Grandma didn’t answer.
“We have to do something about this,” said the doctor.
*
We ran up the gravel path, Samuel first, me behind him. We took the stone steps up to the upper entrance, the door was open, smoke was rushing out, we could feel the heat even from the terrace, we heard sirens in the distance.
“We can’t,” I said. “It’s too hot.”
Samuel looked at me and smiled.
“Experience Bank?”
He tore off his jacket, held it up to his face, took a deep breath, and threw himself into the smoke. His back vanished. I counted to three, then I buried my nose in my elbow and followed him.
*
When they roll her out of the examination room her foot is wrapped in a white bandage. They used an electric saw to cut off her toenails and the nurse pushing the wheelchair says that she’s extremely lucky that the infection hadn’t spread.
“Thanks for your help,” I say.
“Let’s go eat lunch,” says Grandma.
*
The fire roared at us to turn back, it laughed at us as we tried to go up the stairs, I kept close to the wall because I saw Samuel do so. We made it to the second floor and it felt cooler there, we searched the office, the children’s room, and the bedroom. No one there. But the wardrobe in the bedroom was open and there, among the shards from the broken window, lay a boy, he looked about fifteen, he had splinters of glass in his downy mustache, and his face was gray. Samuel looked at me, I shrugged. I had never seen him before. We lifted him up. He didn’t weigh a thing. Samuel took his legs, I got his upper body. We headed for the stairs but the air was hotter now, the stairs creaked as we tried to walk down them, when I brushed against the metal railing it felt like the hair on my forearms caught fire. We fell headlong down the last few steps, we lay in a pile on the hall floor, the whole parlor was in flames, I could see the fire consuming the piano, the paintings, the parquet, the rug. It popped and crackled and I mustered my last bit of strength to crawl toward the sunlight, I dragged the boy’s body behind me, his head came over the doorstep, Samuel came behind him on all fours. He was coughing himself blue, he had black streaks of soot on his face.
“Hold on a second.”
He turned around and crawled into the heat. I reached for him, but I didn’t have the strength to hold him back.
*
We sit in the hospital cafeteria and wait for our food. We’re surrounded by exhausted patriarchs, trembling elderly people, children with the tops of their snowsuits knotted around their waists, hospital employees absorbed in evening papers, taxi drivers talking on cell phones, and then there’s Grandma, sitting at our table and observing everyone and everything. She leans forward and asks if we are in Sweden.
“Yes, we’re in Sweden.”
“You’d never believe it.”
I don’t say anything, I don’t want to go there, not now. Our food is ready, I go get it, Grandma is ready with her fork and smiles when I put down the tray, salmon quiche and a slice of lemon for her, a chicken wrap for me. The receipt tells me that it is twenty-seven minutes past one on the fifth of April, two thousand twelve.
*
Samuel couldn’t have been gone for more than thirty seconds. But it felt like a lifetime. At last I saw his crawling body. He fell forward and gasped for air, a pink porcelain bowl with gold details fell out of his jacket.
“I couldn’t find the lid,” he croaked.
*
We’re still in the cafeteria. Grandma looks at her food. She hasn’t touched it.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I ask.
She is sitting there with her fork at the ready, looking at the food like it’s a crossword puzzle. At last she reaches for the lemon slice and swallows it whole.
“I’m full now.”
“Do you want coffee?” I ask.
“Please. Half a cup. Black, said the homeowner to the painter, and regretted it. And I think we deserve something sweet after a day like this. Check and see if they have raspberry boats.”
She takes out her wallet and hands me yet another bill. The receipt tells me that it is fourteen minutes past two when I come back with the coffee and sweets.
“Look, Grandma. Chocolate macaroons. Who was it that used to bring macaroons when he came to visit you?”
Grandma sips her coffee and ignores the question.
“What was his name again? The man you bought the house from? K something?”
Grandma turns to gaze at the people walking by in the corridor. She makes a comment about each person, just loud enough so they can hear.
“My, that’s a yellow skirt. Well, I suppose it takes all kinds. Don’t you think she’s freezing? Is that how you’re supposed to look these days? Is that sort of metal jewelry really modern? Well, I suppose that’s one way to do it!” (This last was about a woman who was talking loudly on a cell phone that was secured in place by her veil.)
Then Grandma’s head falls forward and she dozes off.
*
The first fire truck had a hard time getting up the gravel drive. It stopped halfway up and the firemen put on their helmets and unspooled their hoses. They entered the house without taking any notice of us. Only later, once the fire was under control and the ambulance crew had seen to the boy did two firemen approach us.
“Where are the heroes?” they said, shaking their heads. “Or should we say, the idiots?”
But they said it in an impressed way that still made us feel like heroes. Samuel’s hair was kinkier than usual. We were leaning against one of the stone pillars down by the street and watching as the firemen put out the last pockets of fire.
“Is it done for?” he asked one of the firemen.
“That depends on your definition. But it’s safe to say it will be a while before you can celebrate Christmas here.”
The ambulance crew said that the boy up in the attic was going to make it and when they asked what his name was everyone looked at each other in confusion. No one recognized him. Neither Nihad, Maysa, nor Zainab could remember ever seeing him in the house.
“Was it Rojda’s son?” Nihad asked.
“Who was Rojda?” asked Maysa.
“He must have come on his own,” said Zainab. “Otherwise we would have noticed him.”
Maysa and Zainab had found temporary housing. Nihad would go home to her ex-husband. I looked at Samuel. The flames had been extinguished, the yard stank, the bushes were full of black soot and fluffy foam. Half the parlor area had been destroyed. Several of the nearby trees had burned down. I
thought that Samuel would be absolutely crushed. In just a short time he had lost his girlfriend and his grandma’s house. But there was a peculiar look on his face. It was almost like he was smiling.
*
Suddenly she snorts and wakes up, her eyes are wide open and she’s flailing her hands.
“No no no no. There will be none of that. How many times do I have to tell you? Let me go, let me go, I don’t want to, do you hear me, I don’t want to, let me out of here.”
People are looking up from their phones, the security guards over by the information desk take a few steps in our direction. I meet their gazes, I try to calm her down, I take the photos out of the plastic bag, graduation parties, family reunions, weddings, funerals. I remind her where we are, I say my name, I say her name, I say Mom’s name, I say her sons’ names. When she finally calms down, she says:
“I want to go home now.”
*
The day after the fire, Samuel’s phone rang nonstop. After he put it on silent, the apartment kept buzzing with vibrations.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Guess,” said Samuel.
But I didn’t have to guess, because soon the answer was standing in our stairwell. Samuel’s mom rang the doorbell and banged on the door and when I opened it she walked straight in without removing her red down coat with the logo of the preschool where she worked.
Before I could respond she had walked into Samuel’s room and started chewing him out for making her worry needlessly. I stayed in the hall; her voice, which was usually shy and gentle as a whisper, had taken on a new harshness. She said that the police had investigated what they were calling “the crime scene.”
“And apparently there were signs of a break-in,” she said. “It seems that someone, or several someones, got into Mom’s house and were living there. And according to the neighbors it’s been going on for quite some time. Do you know anything about this, Samuel? It’s very, very important that you answer me honestly.”
Silence. If Samuel said anything in reply I didn’t hear what it was. Samuel’s mom went on.
“They say it’s going to cost around a million kronor to restore the house—that is, not renovate it, just to clean it up enough to sell it. I don’t know where we’re going to get that kind of money from, I suppose we’ll have to try to take out another loan on the house. If that’s even possible. Svante might have some money saved up, but Kjell is Kjell . . .”
Without knowing how Kjell was, I understood that these were her two brothers. Samuel walked into the kitchen, and his mom followed.
“What’s going to happen, my God, what are we supposed to do?”
As Samuel’s mom spoke, she walked around and around our apartment, sometimes she stopped to fold a T-shirt that was hanging on a chair or to throw away an apple core that had fallen onto the kitchen floor. She did it without thinking, like a robot who had been performing certain motions for so many years that it couldn’t stop.
“We just have to cross our fingers that the homeowners’ insurance will cover something like this, do you think it will? Does this count as a break-in or something else?”
Samuel shrugged.
“If anyone from the insurance company calls it’s very important to make it clear that you didn’t know anything about this. Because you didn’t, right, Samuel? Tell me you didn’t know anything about what was going on at Grandma’s house?”
And I watched as Samuel—who usually couldn’t lie without scratching his earlobe while he picked at his upper lip—looked his mom in the eye.
“I had no idea whatsoever.”
They looked at each other. Mother and son. For a long time. And it was like his mom understood something her son couldn’t put into words. She nodded. Samuel nodded. Then she left, and Samuel said:
“Money, money, money, that’s all anyone thinks about.”
The coin doesn’t fall far from the vault, I thought.
*
We are sitting in the car. According to the parking receipt, the time is three minutes past three.
“Drive me home,” Grandma says.
“Your house is still there, just as you left it.”
“Please drive me home. That’s all I want.”
I start the engine and drive out of the parking lot.
“Are we going home now?”
“Mmhmm. Home to the home,” I say, putting on the Lars Roos CD. As we drive onto the highway I reach for the plastic bag in the back seat and take out the pink candy bowl that is sometimes an antique and sometimes a project I made in school.
“Thanks,” she says, petting the bowl like a cat. “Where’s the lid?”
“You can have that next time.”
Grandma looks out the car window. A darkening sky, the faint silhouettes of a few birds.
“You have to understand that I don’t like it at the home. The windows are far too small. The bathroom is too close to the hall. The kitchen is an unpleasant color. The balcony makes me dizzy. But still, the worst thing of all is the bed. It’s far too soft. I can hardly sleep in it.”
“But Grandma,” I say. “You brought the bed from home. It’s the same bed you used back in your house, isn’t it?”
“It’s still too soft.”
*
I told Samuel that there was a soul club night at East. DJ Taro was playing at Reisen. Tony Zoulias was spinning at Spy. Or should we swing by the pool in Bredäng? Go up to the top of Kaknäs Tower? Do something, anything? But Samuel didn’t want to. He had a sore throat. He had to get up early. He didn’t have any money. Instead of doing things he went to see his grandma at the dementia home. It was like the loss of the house reminded him that she existed.
“Is she happy there?” I asked.
“She hates it. More than ever. But she puts so much energy into hating it that I almost think it’s good for her.”
His grandma spent her days writing long, muddled letters to the editor in which the main idea was that she should be allowed to move back home and that her driver’s license ought to be restored immediately and that school policy needed to be rewritten. Samuel sat beside her, agreeing with her monologues about how everything was wrong with immigration policy and the school system and the EU. Only when she dissed his dad did Samuel contradict her, and that in itself was strange, because the things she said about his dad (that he had betrayed them, that he ought to be there for his children, that no real man deserts his family) were things Samuel had said to me any number of times. But his grandma always added, “that’s what happens when you marry a Muslim,” and Samuel couldn’t get on board with that because his dad was the least Muslim man he had ever met.
*
Out on the highway, Grandma asks how things are going with Vandad.
“Don’t you mean Laide? Laide is fine. She says hello.”
“And how is Vandad?”
“He’s fine too.”
We approach the city, we don’t say anything for a few minutes. Then Grandma turns to me and asks how things are with Vandad. I say that he’s still fine. On the way into town, Grandma suddenly needs to pee. We stop at “Korv and Go” in Årsta, park the car, Grandma uses their bathroom, we pay five kronor and I stick the receipt in the car door. It’s twenty-seven minutes past three and I have less than an hour left to live.
“Now where are we going?” Grandma asks.
“We have to go back now,” I say.
“Home?”
“Home. To the home.”
“What a shame.”
“Mmhmm.”
“But do you know what?”
“No.”
“We can do this tomorrow too, can’t we?”
“Mmhmm.”
“And the day after?”
“Mmhmm.”
“And do you know who will drive next time? Me.”
“No.”
“Oh yes. If I can only get the chance to take that test, why, I’ll show them what’s what. Easy as pie, said the baker to the baker’s so
n.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why did the baker say ‘easy as pie’ to his son?”
“How should I know? That’s just something we said when we were little.”
“More and more of them keep turning up.”
“What do?”
“Those expressions.”
“The older I get, the more I remember. That’s just one of the advantages of aging.”
She smiles, there are so many folds in her eyelids that she has to squint to see. As we approach the Liljeholmen bridge I pass three cars on the left.
“Now that’s more like it,” says Grandma.
*
Then there was some liar who thought it was important to tell Samuel about the fuss in Laide’s stairwell. This person changed two tiny shoves into an aggressive robbery. This person said that it was Laide’s sister who was attacked, not Laide. Samuel came into my room and asked, his jaw tight, if I knew anything about this. I said no. Samuel asked again. I explained that rumors were lies. I said that I had gone there to talk to Laide and then she pretended not to recognize me and then she attacked me, biting and kicking, and all I did was give her two fairly puny shoves.
“It’s not my fault she tripped down the stairs.”
Samuel just looked at me. Then he went to his room and started packing his things into moving boxes.
“I just wanted to talk to her,” I said.
He didn’t respond.
“She started it.”
Samuel went to the bathroom to get his toothbrush.
“I don’t know what you heard—but it really wasn’t anything serious.”
Samuel said he’d heard other things as well, like that I had exaggerated my rent to get him to pay more (untrue). And that I had started extorting money from people in the house (also not entirely true).
“Who told you that?” I said.
“Laide was fucking right,” Samuel mumbled. “You can’t trust anyone.”
When he wanted to leave, I stood in his way. He looked at me. The light in his eyes had gone out. I stepped aside. We parted. Not as enemies, but not as best friends either.
*
I speed up, cross the bridge, and zoom up to the home. All the parking spots are full, so I drive up to the entrance and help Grandma out of the passenger seat.
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