Montecore

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  Your biding friend,

  Kadir

  PS: The global world net just informed me that Jean-Marc Bouju has received the World Press Photo of the Year! Can you keep a very secret secrecy? Jean-Marc Bouju is one of your father’s anonymous aliases! Your father shot the photograph in question in March 2003 in an American prison camp near the Iraqi Najaf. Have you seen the photo? It is painfully arresting. An Iraqi prisoner sits with bent back on the ground, draped in a white coverall behind curled thorny wire. His head is confined in a black plastic hood. In his embrace he has his crying son. The anonymous man is enclosing his son, resting his hand on his forehead; the plastic hood is gleaming in the sunshine. The photo constantly moves me to tears. And now as I am writing you these phrases the tears are coming back. Just the thought of the father and the son makes everything blurry, the keys, the letters, the computer screen. I miss your father so terribly much. I hope and pray that he soon will return from where he is now. But perhaps it is too late.

  Initiate section four as follows:

  “Let us be honest. Studio Silvia’s first year of life attracted only a minority of customers. My father’s talent sprinkled some passport photos and a local shoe-factory owner’s advertisements. Sometimes he was engaged by immigrants who had met Swedish women and were now lured into marriages. In order to convince the ever stricter Swedish authorities of their honest intentions, Abbas was commissioned to create historic nostalgia photos from vacations and family gatherings and everyday balcony dinners that had not had time to exist. Abbas documented charter-trip love and New Year’s kisses and picnic smiles, always with a virtuoso camera talent that heaped the photos’ authenticity. In New Year’s pictures one could see sparklers, wine-flecked tablecloths, and a blurry couple in love who showed typical red eyes and sufficiently puffy pale faces. The sandy beach photos were accompanied by umbrella drinks, coolers, and fictive grains of sand in the camera. As the finishing touch my father ordained that the Swedes’ shoulders and noses should be greased with ketchup mixed with milk (which resulted in the stinging red shiningness that characterizes Swedes on charter vacations).

  “But these commissions filled neither my father’s photographic talent nor his wallet. The lucrative photo commissions still lay beyond my father’s horizon. What to do? Abbas realized that he must formulate a new strategy in order to reach success … here is how it happened …”

  In the next scene, your father wanders his sorrowful steps away from his studio. It is a slushy day in the twilight of the eighties. He notices that the neighborhood around Studio Silvia is beginning to be modified, step by step. More and more of the neighboring buildings’ balconies present shining white satellite-dish ears, which listen in satellitish TV waves from around the world. Children of frequent colors play in the sandboxes. The local tobacco shop where before one could purchase classic pipes and expanded cigarette paraphernalia in polished wood has been replaced by a video rental with a separate corner for horse gambling. Instead of the classic hairdresser salon that was decorated with gliding-around spiral advertising, antique sensational magazines, and brown-and-white photographs, there is now a modern salon with orange-sponged walls and an English title. The pharmacy has disappeared. The post office has disappeared. In place of the paint store a Chinese restaurant has opened its door with “Super Lunch Asian Buffet” for fifty-five crowns.

  Your father’s massive steps wander farther toward the commuter train station. On the square, the Swedish alcoholics have received the company of a group of older men with rosaries and an Indian family who sell neon-colored sweat suits and sequined tops.

  Your father waves to one of the denim-vest-draped alcoholics and thinks: “Håkan is still here, in any case; not everything is modified.” Abbas’ smile is reduced when he discovers the multitude of posters that have been pasted on the pillars above the escalator to the train station. They say, “Do YOU want YOUR children to face MECCA?” and, “Out with the RIFFRAFF,” and, “Stop the MASS RAPES, stop the MASS IMMIGRATION,” and there are even more slogans, which your father blocks out of his brain and refuses to let himself read.

  While waiting for the train into the city, your father catches sight of you. Instead of being in school and doing your lessons you are playing with some friends over by the abandoned commuter rail tracks. At first you’re standing solitarily and discussing loudly with yourself while at the same time scratching yourself frenetically on the stomach and back. Just when you have shouted: “I need a hit!” up pops that skinny Negro girl. With suspicious shoulder glances she delivers you … a stick. You pay her with some leaves, strike a few blows on your own arm, and then place the stick against your arm bend. Then you slowly doze off while your friend inventories your pockets. Then you fly up, laughing, and you switch your roles.

  Sighing over his son’s bizarreness, Abbas transports himself into the city. He aimlessly wanders all the streets, which he knows as well as his pockets. Kungsgatan. Up Drottninggatan. Down Odengatan. But his mood is still as cloudy as the gray clouds that roll the sky. His best friend has traveled home. The success of his career far away. The rent for the studio stings his wallet. The family’s economy threatened. A son with bizarre habits who risks being infected by the virus of being an outsider.

  Suddenly, at Sveavägen’s intersection with Odengatan, he is roused out of his lethargy by a loud shout:

  “Abbas!”

  It is your father’s antique companion Raino, who, smiling, waves his hand. Raino’s hairstyle is neatly trimmed, the walrus mustache shaved smooth, the signs of alcoholism reduced. The two photographers greet each other amiably and exchange each other’s résumés while Raino’s leashed dog noses your father’s hands. In his humorous choppy Finland Swedish, Raino asks about your father’s career. Your father tells about his studio and Raino says:

  “I conkratchulate you! What is your specialty?”

  “I photograph everything!” Abbas smiles.

  “Putt … you must specialize yourself. You can’t photokraph EFFRYTHING. Either you are an artist or you photokraph foot. Either you to ats or shoot tocumentaries. Fint your specialty and then work to pecome pest at it.”

  “How is it going with your career?” Abbas interpellates, in order to change the angle of the discussion.

  Raino details that he has recently reached his success; he has just presented some of his food photographs at a Scan Foods–sponsored exhibition that is touring Europe and in addition he is in love with a twenty-three-years-younger meditation instructor. He notes life as euphoric and their sex life as heavenly. Then he is interrupted by your father, who congratulates him but says that he is suddenly in a big, big hurry, excuses himself, and withdraws in toward the City Library. He stands there in the entry, recovering his breath with his gaze out toward all the gray. Heaped with that bizarrely maximized sorrowfulness that is installed after a rendezvous with an antique acquaintance who is unexpectedly euphoric.

  Your father decides to invade the library. He steers his steps toward section four. The smell is wet umbrellas, book pages, bearded stamp men, and female students’ perfume. Abbas parks himself near the photographic section. He pages photographic opuses and tries to feed his inspiration. He reads about photographic giants who also confronted hurdles in the dawns of their careers. Cartier-Bresson. Karsh. Halsman. Before he goes, he returns, of course, to the biography dedicated to his biggest hero of all: Robert Capa.

  Your father pages all the photographic motifs he knows by and with his heart. The soldier in the Spanish Civil War who has been captured in the middle of dying. The siege of Bilbao. The eleven photos from D-Day that weren’t ruined by that poor shaky-handed lab assistant.

  Abbas sighs his lungs. His vitality is trickling out of him. He thinks of the sixty-one photographs from the invasion of Normandy, lost forever. He visualizes the poor lab assistant. He thinks: Some are created for great achievements and others are not. Perhaps I am one of the latter?

  Then his eye is captured by a name: “Endr
e Ernö Friedmann.” Abbas reads the name again. Friedmann, born 1913 in Hungary’s Budapest. As a povertous Jewish refugee he crossed borders, localized himself in Paris, and tried to start a career as a photographer. He met the disinterest of silence from picture buyers and the establishment. What became his response? In the hour of desperation he formulated a new name, a more adequate name, a name that contained his true ideal.

  Which name did he formulate?

  Exactly.

  Robert Capa!

  Prepare your surprise when I write you that Robert Capa has never existed! Capa is in reality the result of the myth that Friedmann created. The name referred to the director Frank Capra and soon Parisian tongues began to whisper about this mythical Capa, transparent and difficult to meet, presumably American in origin, few equal in his beauty and with impressive photographic talent. Capa’s photos began to sell, his success grew, Friedmann fed the myth with anecdotes and rumors up until he exchanged his official name and identity. Friedmann was transformed to Capa, fantasy became reality, and Capa said: It was like being born again, without hurting anyone.

  The idea flashes your father unexpectedly, like a flash of lightning. Hmm, that metaphor was not sufficiently excellent. Let me try again: The idea flashes your father unexpectedly, like a very, very energetic lightbulb. (Then let a real lightbulb dazzle both the air above your father’s head and the librarians who hush your father’s mumbling.) Abbas suddenly stands up, the chair falls backward, and the library’s silence is broken by the words:

  “Of course Capa’s strategy will be mine! My Arabic name must be MODIFIED!” (ied … ied … ied … echoes section four).

  Back in the chair, your father begins to fantasize forth adequate artist names. Should he perhaps inventory the American photographer George MacDonald? Or the Italian photographer Ferdinando Verderi? Or should he perhaps present his work under the name Papanastasopoulou Chrysovalanti? A homosexual Greek photographer who documented genuine Arabic culture in Jendouba with borrowed fezzes? The ideas storm your father’s brain until he stands up again and auctions:

  “No … my photographic alias shall be spelled … Krister Holmström Abbas Khemiri! And my specialty will be … DOG PHOTOGRAPHY!!!”

  (“SHHH” is heard from steel-gazed librarians.)

  The idea of transforming his name came from Capa. But where did the idea of taking photos of dogs come from? Can we blame Raino? Or perhaps your linguistic rules? In any case, it is not your father who excites the library. Instead it is Krister Holmström Abbas Khemiri, the dog photographer, who in the nocturnal darkness of the afternoon glides down the staircase and wanders his happy steps toward the metro. A strange light follows his steps, and his thoughts whisper: “A name is much more than a name …”

  Just days later your father has fabricated a new studio sign and begun to paste the light poles of the dog parks with fringed advertisements: “Are you looking for a photographer to take pictures of your beloved darling dog? Call Krister Holmström Abbas Khemiri! Cheap animal photographs by an internationally famous animal photographer!!!”

  Was your father’s new name a coincidence? Of course he knew of Christer Strömholm, world-celebrated photographer and receiver of the Hasselblad Prize. But with the voice of honesty I inform you: Your father did NOT have the ambition of parasiting upon Christer’s customers and reputation. Rather, he wanted to maximize the distance between himself and those prejudices that degraded Swedish Arabs. Therefore he selectioned a name that he considered attractive, professional, and well known. (In the book, you can inject a verbose insultation of the other Christer’s obnoxious lawyer, Hallerstedt, who initially pursued your father with threats of a summons.)

  So … now it is up to you to continue the story. Do not rouse my disappointment. I launch the following chapters:

  Your father’s success

  More details of your father’s success

  Your growing confusion

  The happy summer of 1989

  Abbas’ departure from his friends

  YOUR FATHER’S SUCCESS

  And you remember when Dads fix the new studio sign that says “PET PHOTOGRAPHER KRISTER HOLMSTRÖM” in big letters and “Abbas Khemiri” with small cursive ones underneath. And soon Dads’ customer phone begins to ring. Dads book a black terrier on the twelfth and a Great Dane on the fourteenth and the weekend after next a dachshund society that’s having a competition in Södertälje. Dads start to fill the calendar with appointments and no longer have time for games of backgammon, discussions of language, or photography quotes.

  The Dynamic Duo is split up, and it’s lucky that there is Melinda. Every afternoon that spring you meet either in the shopping center near the candy shop or down by the abandoned tracks. You play train robbers and Indiana Jones or Super Mario Bros. or drug addicts and dealers. And sometimes, when you are in the mood for sports, you do your self-invented septathlon (run around the courtyard, springy-horse rodeo, small park-bike throwing, one-hundred-meter park-bench hurdle, standing long jump from the swings, shopping cart rally through the shopping center, senior citizen relay tag).

  Everything is total bliss until Melinda tells you that the Indians who sell synthetic clothes on the square have a son who is “pretty cute.” You both sneak off to spy and of course you point out that the son is about the ugliest person you’ve ever seen because he has an underbite and glasses and is the fattest in the world, with dorkily big baggy jeans. Besides, downy mustaches like that are really ugly, Melinda, don’t you think? But Melinda keeps spying and doesn’t answer. Then you switch to spying on the fatty’s sister because she is actually also VERY CUTE (and you say it out loud so Melinda will stop staring at the fat Indian). The little sister has her hair in hard-as-steel slanting bangs and is blowing shiny pink Hubba Bubba bubbles and returning your looks with total nonchalance. But it is obvious, of course, that she wants you.

  One day the fat Indian comes over and gives Melinda a salty sucker and another time he asks if you want to listen to his Walkman while he’s helping his parents close up, and of course you say yes and with one hand each you hold tight to the yellow waterproof Sony player and together you push the soft play button and together you are shot up into space by NWA’s album Straight Outta Compton, the world’s best album by the world’s best group.

  Since that day the fat Indian is one of you. And pretty soon you stop calling him the fat Indian and start calling him his real name, Imran. And pretty soon you get that he isn’t Indian at all, he’s Baloch, which is about like Arab or Iranian only better (according to Imran). And soon after that you actually start to like him as a real friend, because you realize that he and Melinda are by no means going to fall in love and leave you alone, because Imran succeeds in saying all the things Melinda has heard for her whole life and therefore hates more than anything else. (“At first when I saw you I thought you were a guy. Were you born here? Do you get even darker when you sunbathe? Why are you so skinny and your sisters so fat? Shit, you’re strong. For a girl, I mean.”) And Melinda just sighs and makes it into a fun thing to smash Imran to pieces in your own septathlon. You’re the judge and you do your best to be impartial and not smile on the outside when Melinda outplays Imran in event after event.

  Maybe it’s because Imran wants to play something where he knows the rules beforehand that he suggests on a rainy Saturday that you play Dungeons & Dragons. Role-playing? Isn’t that for huge nerds? But Imran says that it’s pretty much like playing but more grown-up. And maybe you don’t dare? Maybe you’re chicken? Of course not. You’re voted game master and soon you’re under way.

  While real customers with real pets start to ask their way through the shopping center to find the pet photographer Krister Holmström, you hang out by the deserted commuter train area. Melinda and Imran each build a character while you prepare adventures, draw maps, and plant treasures in dragon-guarded bunkers. In reality the adventure should be placed in historic time and in reality one can choose between being a knight or a m
agician or maybe an elf. But Melinda says that if she’s going to play she wants to be called Miss Super Zulu Sister and be a monster-strong medicine woman from black Africa who has a poisonous Afro pick in her hair and an AK-47 hidden between her breasts and a bunch of medicinal brews that grant maximum magical skill. And in that case Imran wants to be MC Mustachio, a Baloch super hip-hop prophet from Compton who has a sharpened Raiders cap, magic Air Force Ones, and battery-powered nunchucks. His mustache is also super long and can be used both to box enemies and to caress girls. You let them stretch the rules and soon you’re under way.

  While Dads finds a home in the studio, you find a home in the role-playing. Nothing can beat the feeling of being the master of everything. You invent adventures that make Imran and Melinda sweat, roar, cry, and once, when MC Mustachio loses a battle against a CIA-trained giant amoeba, Imran takes his dice and chucks them away over the tracks, almost all the way to the platform, where regular people discover you and wonder what you’re really up to.

  During the summer, Dads’s customer phone keeps ringing. Dads’s calendar goes from totally empty to three shoots a week to the time when Dads has to say no to a commission for the first time, because of lack of time. Soon all of Dads’s hours are dedicated to work. At breakfast Dads sits with magnified eyes and checks contact sheets. In the morning there are shoots and at twilight, the darkroom. Dads shoots a retired general in uniform with his German shepherd, a smiling lady in strawberry shorts with two Rhodesian ridgebacks, a wheelchair guy’s Labrador. While you sit out by the train tracks and toss dice and fight against amphetamine-junkie elves.