Do you want to know what your father’s camera registered? Everything. Absolutely everything. The beauty in his photographic rolls prophetizes his future success. There are smiling restaurant owners, winners of fishing contests, cliff-diving young boys. There are hundreds of photos of birds’ silhouettes in the laying of the sun. There are British tourists numbed in the hashish intoxication of the beach. There I am, your father’s best friend. With the mouth-gap cigarette, squinting eyes against the light, beige army shirt, in the company of two sauce-red, big-smiling Germans. Or with my newfound poker partners who shared my company when your father photoed. And there is, of course, his self-produced personal portrait, in black-and-white blurriness with the grown-out curls, the meticulous, melancholy Otis look, his outfit the shabby European standard—V-shaped pants, tight white T-shirt, and softly smooth leather sandals.
Sometimes your father made solitary nocturnal expeditions up to Kroumirie Mountain to document the splash of mountain rivers, the water fetching of farm wives, the morning dawn of mosque minarets, and the waving arms of wheat fields. He came home to the paillote in the dawning light with lips grinning gladly and newly invested bread under his arm.
Here it is proposed that we inject some photo taken with your father’s first camera. What do you think about the scanned picture that is corresponded you here? It visualizes your father and me in a hotel room belonging to a very overweight Belgian touristette. The sharpness quality is not ideal but certainly the nostalgia value is adequate for publication?
Daily life continues with fluctuating seasons and years; Bourguiba is electered for permanent lifetime to be president, Tabarka’s tourist industry grows steadily in similarity to your father’s photo collection. The whole time he has the ambition of saving his economy and crossing Tunisia’s borders for an international photographic career.
A doubting reader might shout: “Then why doesn’t he go abroad? Why does he remain in Tabarka if his enticement to the outside world is so well formed?”
This will be the book’s response:
“Dear reader. You must NOT believe that my father was of the sort that the Germans dub ‘Hähnchen’ or the Brits call ‘chicken boy’ or the Swedes put to sound as ‘hare.’ To define these years as lost or unproductive would be a lie that is not true. Certainly my father’s words about the future may have overstepped the number of ready-to-print photos. Certainly he invested broad economy in umbrella drinks and presents to miscellaneous touristettes. Certainly he consumed frequent daily beers in Kadir’s company and sometimes slouched his evenings in the vapors of hashish. But I auction with stately tongue: Who did not do thus in his days of youth? I must also call attention to my father’s planning talent! With the single-mindedness of the German and the taste for organization of the Swede, my father initiated mental preparations which would realize his international photographer career.
“Most important was language; Abbas was his own professor and his impressive dressage of the world’s tongues was … impressive. Still today he makes a habit of spreading the citation ‘What is language if not the picklocks’ locks to the keys of doors where the souls of different people live (or rest)?’
“While some fellow countrymen confused themselves further in the muddle that we can call political fundamentalism, Abbas anointed many a dinar and hour to touristic phrase-book compositions invested from Tabarka’s bookstore. With guidebooks for different countries his tongue perfectioned vital photo phrases in English, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. With the cowboy’s confident hat lift he practiced, ‘Hey, nice beautiful girl, how are you, do you want to please be a supermodel?’ With the Spaniard’s bullfighting smile he lisped, ‘¿Dónde está el museo de arte?’ With the Italian’s straight-backed stiff tongue he expressed, ‘Aspetti! Può parlare piu lentamente, per favore?’ And in front of the mirror he bounced his hand against the tennis racket of his imagination and asked himself, ‘Tennis willst Du spielen?’ The perfection of French was of course already my father’s private property.
“With control of the languages Abbas also expanded his broadness to investments in French fashion magazines. It was here where, in 1976, he was blinded by a photograph of a very attractive Brazilian. Her name was spelled Silvia and the article summarized how she had recently advertised her alliance of love with the king of Sweden. Did this influence Abbas’s future? Perhaps. But probably not. More vital was probably the biography dedicated to his idol Robert Capa, which Abbas read again and again. Capa, the master photographer with the velvet gaze, who documented everything from the Spanish Civil War to D-Day, who enjoyed Hemingway’s close friendship and Ingrid Bergman’s close love …
Let me present:
My father!
“A symbol for the globally modern meeting place where East crosses West, where Jesus crosses Muhammad, where redemption is a rendezvous in symbolic manly form, a little like the Lionel Richie of race and music!”
Hmm … I hope you do not perceive this section as on the quarrely side? With consideration for what happens later it is vital that the reader understand those dreams that burned your father’s breast when he was young.
The next scene welcomes the reader to the end of the summer of 1976. It is the year that the whole world suns itself in KC and the Sunshine Band, the year that terrorist groups like the PFLP, the Carlos group, and the Baader-Meinhof group fear-fill the world with hijackings, kidnappings, and bombings. The year that both your father and I have begun to grow our youthfully squared bodies to a certain bartender corpulence. But our mentalities are still constant. Neither religion, politics, nor tradition stops us from celebrating nights in the bonfire shine of beaches with soft touristettes in bikinis. Waves wash, someone’s guitar clinks “Lay, Lady, Lay,” a pipe is passed around, and discussions of harmony consider life’s shortness, the West’s stress, and the Orient’s beneficial mystique. This was a repeated subject that the tourists wanted to round up, and we chorused along with them. Even if your father had begun to grow his irritation about everyone’s constant focus on the vital difference between our world and theirs.
Suddenly I see your father, orangely fire-lit on the other side of the bonfire with the star frame of the night. His eyes, which normally usually seek the touristette with the night’s largest bosom, have suddenly relinquished their looking-around quality. Instead he is sitting with his back stretched like a hyena and his eyes magnetized to a group of women at the outer edge of the group. I remember distinctly his moistened lips and his swallowing throat. Then he advances his body, step by step, nearer and nearer the women, whose voices speak a language that to me sounds like singing in the tones dutty-dutty-dutty-dutt.
The special thing about this episode is that it is suddenly as though your father’s courting quality is kidnapped. When he is about to act his “poetically wounded Casanova with horizon gaze” he happens to break a wineglass and almost gets shards in his foot. In the stumble of the sidestep he places his hand on a burning fire log, and when his body finally achieves balance and advances toward the giggling women, they all turn down a swig from his wine bottle. And your father?
The quality courter just stands there, with soft jeans rolled up and the wind softly blowing his curls. His hands seem to be two too many, his foot digs in the sand, his teeth bite his upper lip and …
Then she FINALLY turns up her eyes. The one who until just now has dealt with your father as transparence. Her … the Swede who kidnapped your father’s eyes.
Let time freeze and waves cease. Let the long shadows be immobilized and the crackle of the fire stiffen. Their gazes meet. Let everything rest in total silence and then …
Then?
Then BANG she presents her hand. Your father stands lost like a missing mitten when she takes the initiative and her hand is soft like white sand but strong like harrisa and her eyes don’t yield and she says her last name and she doesn’t smile at all and he reflects that she must be the first of all of them who doesn’t mirror my courting smile.
And he holds her hand and he smells her lavender odor and it SWOOSHES itself into his brain and the ground begins to vibrate under him, his brain is hazed, the clouds gather, the night sky is crackled with lightning and suddenly a hundred meteors fall from the sky and suddenly the horizon’s fish boats shoot artificial distress lights and sunken choirs of angels sing SYMPHONIC SONGS and organs play at BOOMING VOLUME and STRAY DOGS HOWL and THE AIR LOSES OXYGEN and VOLCANOES ERUPT and UMBRELLA DRINKS CRASH FROM BARS and ACHRAF’S PENCIL BREAKS AGAINST A NEGATIVE and SOMEWHERE IN AN UNDERGROUND RESEARCH ROOM THERE IS A RICHTER SCALE MEASURER THAT RISES AND RISES AND RISES UNTIL THE MERCURY EXPLODES ITS CHAMBER AND SPRAYS ITSELF OUT LIKE OIL AND BLACKENS THE RESEARCHERS’ WHITE COATS, THE HISTORICAL FAX MACHINES, AND THE ANTIQUE GREEN-TEXTED COMPUTER MONITORS!!!
(N.B.: None of this happens in reality! This is metaphorical symbolism for your father’s strong emotions during the rendezvous with your mother.)
How is their discussion begun? Who remembers? Who cares? Perhaps your father unluckily tries to compliment her similarity to Queen Silvia? Perhaps he says something comical about Sweden’s cold climate? Something about polar bears, penguins, Björn Borg, or ABBA?
I have no knowledge. All I know is that it takes some fifteen minutes before she releases her skepticism. Slowly her responding words grow to more than one at a time. Slowly your future mother begins to smile her first smiles. Slowly your father recovers his courting routine. He pronounces his humoristic stories. He presents his finger-cracking trick. He blows his burn injury covertly.
The whole time my brain is entertaining with the thought: This is special, this is the first time that Abbas seems to be lightninged with the incomparable infection that we call true love!
I was correct. Late at night your father crashed into the paillote with the brownness of his eyes burning with desire.
“Her name is Bergman! Her name is Pernilla BERGMAN!”
Again and again his tongue mantraed this bizarre name: “Bergman … Pernilla Bergman! She is a stewardess from Sweden! Bergman! Like Ingrid! Have your ears ever heard a more delicious name?”
As though he had been waiting his entire life for this very Swedish stewardess with this strange name. As though the memory of all the other European women who had betrayed his heart upon returning home had been forgotten forever.
I praised my congratulations and added:
“Is she related to Ingrid?”
“No, of course not. I asked the same thing. Bergman is a very frequent name in Sweden. Would you like to hear about the symbolism of the name? Do you know what Bergman means in Swedish?”
“You are welcome to explain.”
“The man from the mountain!”
“Really?”
“Compare it with my name … Khemiri!!! It is almost the same! The man from Kroumirie!”
Confronted with your father’s naïve euphoria, I was filled with something that, bizarrely enough, can be likened to jalousie. Instead of congratulating him or correcting his invented symbolism, I said:
“So you were hungry for a little vanilla tonight?”
Your father quieted sharply and focused me with pointed eye-blackness.
“Excuse me?” he cried. “What did you pronounce? Did you besmirch my newfound relationship with Pernilla with an expression like ‘vanilla’? Repeat if you dare!”
“Sorry, sorry! Excuse my excuse!”
Your father lowered his right arm, paused it by his waist, and then erected it to an amicable handshake.
“Forgive me, Kadir. I don’t know … it’s just that … this is something special … I have never experienced something like this before.”
Before we fell asleep your father whispered:
“Kadir … by the way … do you know which country manufactures the notorious Hasselblad cameras?”
“Let me guess …”
“Precisely … Sweden. It was she who informed me of this when I told of my photographic dream.”
Several minutes of silence followed.
“Psst … Kadir … are you sleeping?”
“Not yet.”
“Did you see her sandals?”
“No …”
“They were enormously excellent. Of a light blue color.”
“Mm …”
Silence. Wave whoosh. Cricket song. On the way to sleep. Until:
“Hey … do you know what she said?”
“That she was tired and needed her sleep before the coming workday?”
“Ha ha, very funny. No … she said that in Swedish one expresses the surprising power of passion with a photographic phrase.”
Silence.
“Don’t you want to know which?”
“What?”
“Don’t you want to know which phrase illustrates the flash of love in Swedish?”
“Of course.”
“One says, ‘It just clicked.’ She told me. In Swedish it sounded something like this: De saya bahra klik. Isn’t it beautiful? What a sign from fate, right?”
He continued like this all night. While my wakefulness alternated between dozing and sleep, I heard your father rave sporadic words about Pernilla’s comic encounter with some actor on the approach to Tunisia. There were words about her planned nursing education and homages to her political solidarity. He talked about her satirical humor, downy earlobes, the odor of her sun skin, the odor of her lavender soap. Her throat softly patterned by translucent blue veins, her light blue sandals, her jumpy Swedish French pronouncing, her compromise-free fury when he had happened to attract the eye of another woman …
And … of course … his eternally parroted …
“Honestly speaking. Have you ever seen a woman’s smile that can compare to hers? Honestly? Pernilla will be my Ingrid and I will be her Capa.”
I did not response. I had a little trouble understanding how your father could be so fascinated by this twiggy, elongated woman with unglamorous makeup, nonexistent bosom, and obvious snub nose.
That night, then, was their premier rendezvous and the events of the following days I do not know for certain. I worked with overcast spirits at the hotel while the newfound pair of lovers passed all waking hours in company. Sometimes I saw them in some hotel bar, your mother’s agitated voice discussing some political injustice while your father sat as though magnetized by the shine of her eyes. Sometimes I saw their amorous silhouettes wander beach edges at a distance, your father as straight-backed as a major in an attempt as desperate as it was pointless to measure up to your mother’s one hundred and eighty centimeters. At the beach parties they bore each other’s constant nearness; their hands were never separated. And one night I happened to hear how your father named his parents as Faizal and Cherifa, living in Jendouba. I commented on nothing.
Night after night for three weeks your father invaded the paillote with the same imbecilic dawn cry:
“Her name is Bergman! Pernilla Bergman!”
How far they went sexually is unknown to my knowledge. But before their farewell they exchanged addresses and promised the promises of a future relationship.
Thus it is here that everything begins. Which will end with plane trips and moves and love and matrimony and conflicts and three confused mix sons and perpetual misunderstandings and terminal tragic silence between a son and a father.
During the coming period, Abbas placed all his wakefulness on two things: the occupation of a lab worker and the letter correspondence with Pernilla. He declared self-composed love poems to the sea instead of to German touristettes. He was TOTALLY sexually solitary (which of course supplied an increased sexual plurality for me). While I rose in the gradation of the kitchen from washer of plates to washer of glasses to preparateur of simple bar menus, your father began to serve his pictures to local papers. Soon his name was spread; he was hired to document weddings and invited to photograph before-and-after photos in a hairdresser’s salon. Abbas climbed his first steps on the steep staircase that would become his photographic career. It was
as though his love for your mother motivated him to finally find a focus. Simultaneously I spent more and more time with my poker partners and planned for the upcoming establishment of my own hotel.
While waiting for new letters from Sweden, Abbas developed magical double-exposed photos in which your mother’s silhouette encountered groves or cork oaks or dramatic mountaintops. He sat sighing toward these photos for hours. Then he corresponded them in envelopes to Sweden with specially written love poems or applied them to the wall in the paillote.
Then in September 1977, your mother’s longed letter of invitation arrived. Abbas was free to journey. What happened? Did he telephone her and travel directly—euphoric from the chance? Did he immediately bid farewell to the photo lab and whiz up over the Mediterranean? No, instead something happened which I cannot explicate.
Your father made himself transparent.
First he passed a week with a quiet, overcast mood. Then he was just gone. A notation in the paillote expressed a simple wish: “Bear no worry. I will return soon.”
I trusted your father and waited calm. Hours became days. No one heard from him. Achraf from the laboratory afflicted us in a rage and I could only shrug my shoulders and questioningly tell the truth: that I knew nothing about Abbas’s disappearance.
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