Montecore

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  Your friends look at you and you can’t explain where the yelling voice came from, you just know that you have suddenly gone from a regular person to something much bigger, you’re a U.N. diplomat, you are Malcolm and Gandhi combined, you are Palme reborn. Then come the laughs and they crack up and poke you in the ribs and Imran says: Wzup, Prophet! and Patrik says: Total Martin Luther King! But they do it with complete love and the best respect and Imran and Melinda make peace and they both say sorry and when you say goodbye in the dusk you feel like something has grown on the inside.

  And now, afterward, when you’re writing these words in a poorly lit hotel room in Gothenburg after a reading at Högsbo library, you have trouble remembering why Dads always had to be defended and Moms always made dirty. Maybe because Dads’ positions were way too precarious to be tested.

  Or maybe because your Dads were your eternal heroes who will never become anything else ?

  Write me … You may certainly formulate yourself freely, but … the Swedish in the above sections seems me more unpolished than in the previous parts. Is this your intention or your carelessness?

  At the parallel time I realized that your father’s position was more demanding than he wanted to admit. He feared that Sweden’s coming recession would threaten his studio. At the same time, he noticed how Swedes still observed him with the glances of suspicion. Despite his success they weighed him in a constant ambition of predicting his actions. He was still threatened by the smothering net of prejudices and in sympathy for all of this I forgave him the belated payment of my loaned economy. Oh, how tragically transparent are all those people in our lives who do not cement our prejudices!

  I promised myself never to become one who does not forgive mistakes that people implement in their weak moments. Like a godlike reward for my amnesty, the poker cards began to stimulate me again; soon I had won back my debt, then I expanded it to a considerable profit and one evening I returned home with a capital that was adequate for investing the lot where since the days of my youth I had projected my hotel!

  It’s the nineties and fall when the gaze of the world is aimed at Iraq for the alliance invasion. Soon you gonna start high school and it’s the time when you start reading the paper seriously and on CNN the war looks like in a film with trailers and American narrator voices and exact sights that hit exact targets and no innocents who die. On the front page of Dagens Nyheter is the photo of the aircraft carrier with the airplanes’ burning turbo motors and arrows show the simplicity of the attack and everything is static and blood-free, about like in Top Gun. You sense that something is wrong and try to talk to Dads.

  But Dads have closed himself in the studio and only come out on weekends with a crooked back and red eyes and a constant tension headache. Dads have gotten a different smell and become mute and refuse to talk about the Gulf War. Something has happened in Tunisia that’s made Dads have to take Treo tablets until the metal tubes fill their own glass bowl in the kitchen and Moms watch anxiously from the outside.

  Instead you talk with friends and in the evenings you start to hang out in the city and most often it’s you, Melinda, and Imran, because Patrik is starting to have problems coming into town because his parents have become worried about the change in his clothing style and his new vocabulary.

  It’s you with the downy mustache that’s sometimes enough for you to buy near beer at 7-Eleven, the black synthetic jacket with the blue panther print on the back and worn-down Ewing shoes. It’s Melinda with a grown-out Afro and a special comb in imitation ebony, give-blood T-shirts from her mom’s job, and heavy, dragging LA Gear sneakers with double laces, black and white. It’s Imran with a shiny polyester shirt, red-striped bandanna, and black-and-white flannel shirt buttoned with one button at the top. Everyone’s jeans are supermega-extra loose with too-big waists, perfect for highest-kick contests and secretly placed brännboll bat. All of you have drawn tattoos between your thumb and index finger and around your necks are just-bought bling-bling chains, which look like shining gold at first, but after the first shower slowly but surely start to change color to green rust.

  Together you sit on the backs of benches or at the twenty-four-hour McDonald’s and talk about all of those subjects that at that time meant more than anything. Is Dr. Dre really a real doctor? Is Paula Abdul really an Arab (as you stubbornly maintain)? Where exactly is Compton? Does Madonna have to have specially pointed boobs for them to work in that cone bra? Where do you get the cheapest fake ID? What’s up after school? Is it true that you get crazy drunk if you put sugar in beer? What’s the best practice for balling once it’s time? (Imran: I mean, I’ve heard, but I haven’t tried it myself, but apparently you can take an orange and make a hole in it and then boil it and then you can stick in your cock and it’s supposed to like feel totally like punani but remember like I said I haven’t tried it. You: You’d have to find a fucking huge orange. Both, with roaring voices: Yeah, really, huge-ass, super gigantic. Melinda: You are fucking insane. You: Maybe a melon would be better.)

  Sometimes you get into politics and you agree that there’s something fishy about the pictures from the Gulf War and you keep talking Sweden and Melinda says she saw skinheads again at Slussen and Imran says a Swediot-alcoholic spit on the windshield and yelled Muslim whore when his mom dropped his sister off at handball practice last week. And you think about his beautiful steel-banged sister and say: Shouldn’t there be an organization that unites all blattar that makes it obvious that blattar must never fight with each other but should fight the system instead? And they nod and agree and while you’re finding unity Dads seem to be splitting in half.

  Dads sit quiet at the dinner table while Moms try to tempt out Dads from before with wine and appetizers and her weekend face with makeup. You try to tell about basketball games where you ruled poor Swedelows and when it doesn’t work you tell about how Patrik made a scene when his shop teacher read his middle name wrong and called him Jörgen instead of Jorge. Do you know what he did then? He just bent his head back at the exact right angle and yelled: Orale vato loco! but he did it with just the right Spanish pronunciation and … Moms listen and little brothers listen but not Dads and then it doesn’t feel particularly interesting to keep telling.

  Dads’ eyes have lost their glow and Dads are starting to look like shells and Dads seem emptied of color.

  Except that time when the news is telling about Saddam’s Scud missiles at Israel and then Dads suddenly get up from the easy chair so the blanket flutters to the ground and yell: How can ALL Arab leaders be such damned merry idiots? And Dads’ cheeks glow and his fists shake and your eyes meet.

  It’s the nineties and dark news bills warn of coming recession and headlines shriek about mass immigration of refugees and it’s Iraqis and Yugoslavians and Somalis by the thousands and more thousands who are invading our beautiful country and robbing our travel trailers and raping our women. Soon the new party New Democracy is launched, the mass media latches on, and there are articles and public meetings and stacked crates. It’s that guy Bouvin who maintains that Swedish aid is causing a catastrophe by helping African children survive (because they should actually be eaten up by wild animals). It’s Bert Karlsson who says that ninety percent of all crimes against the elderly are committed by Gypsies and wishes that Bengt Westerberg’s daughter would be infected with HIV by a refugee. It’s Ian Wachtmeister with the fisherman’s hat and hawk nose who shouts about “full speed ahead” and thinks all refugees should be tested for AIDS and no mosques should be allowed in Sweden and the Swediots laugh and the public meetings are a success and Dads?

  Dads sit quietly.

  And you remember the papers that form stacks in your room and you start to clip headlines about firebombs in refugee camps and assaults by racists and you read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and listen to Public Enemy while the attacks on immigrants wander from the news bills to headlines to articles to notices and the police call them “schoolboy pranks” and Dads?

  Da
ds sit quietly.

  The only thing that rouses Dads’ second-long engagement is the immigration question. But not in the right way. Because Dads start to call the immigrants “them” and Dads say: After all, there are getting to be a few too many immigrants here in Sweden and Dads say: After all, there are still many who don’t act as they should. I can understand the Swedes, because there weren’t any problems like this in the eighties. And lots of immigrants are lazy idiots who just sit around and live on welfare and tightly hold on to their traditions.

  And one time when you’re sitting in front of Rapport, Dads suddenly yell that one actually MUST crap down on EVERYONE who commits a crime and refuses to learn Swedish! And you say crack down and Dads say crack? and you say crack and Dads become quiet again.

  Here your father’s sleep begins to become more and more sporadic. The nights become him a constant wake, a constant flow of historical pictures hover his interior and threaten his mental balance. He lies hour after hour, bathing in perspiration beside your peacefully sleeping mother. He observes her exterior. He tries to calm himself by stroking the softness of her forearm. He reflects whether the actions of his life were actually correct. Had he acted right to place his body in a country where he was not invited? Had he acted right to in addition place his sons in this context? Unlike you, he found no security in simple answers.

  And you remember the headlines that scream recession and the crown falls and the politicians panic and Dads don’t say anything, but whisper: Just when the studio has been stabilized the economy is going to crash, life is really typical. And by the way … Why do you continue to be with those … What are their names? Melinda and that fat Indian? Why are you never with other friends? Ordinary friends?

  And you actually don’t understand what Dads mean, you just point out for the thousandth time that Imran is actually Baloch and not Indian.

  Up until one day when you’ve eaten dinner and you’ve told about your plans to start an antiracist organization and it’s probably going to be called BFL, Blatte for Life, and Moms think it’s a great idea and little brothers ask if they can be in it too, and Dads?

  Dads sit quietly.

  Until dinner is eaten up and Moms do the dishes and close kitchen cupboards with the angry sounds, little brothers are playing with Dino-Riders in the living room, and Dads scratch themselves on their continuously growing guts and say with flaky wine lips and stifled burps: Hey … by the way. Why do you only hang out with immigrants? Niggers, Indians, and damn South Americans … Why no Swedish friends? Are you racist? Be careful of hanging out with the wrong people. Swedes are better. Immigrants just use you and use you and then, when you need them most, they stab you in the back.

  And you must have heard wrong because the enemy is out there and the enemy has boots and shaved skulls, the enemy is New Democracy and White Aryan Resistance, Keep Sweden Swedish and Ultima Thule, SL inspectors and Sweden Democrats, red beach Volvos, Securitas guards, and the riot police in Norrmalm who beat up Fayola’s boyfriend for no reason. The enemy is Shell and American imperialists and Per Ahlmark and settlers and the CIA and Mossad. But the enemy can’t be in your own family because then things are probably going to be more mixed-up than expected.

  NB: Your father is NOT the enemy. He is only a man who is trying to guarantee the success of his children in a tradition-heavy country! He is a solitary modern cosmopolitan in a barbaric society. For this is the truth about the country we call Sweden, civilized on the surface but barbaric in the structure of thought. But he did NOT dare relate you this. He feared that you would be strengthened even more in your outsiderness thoughts. For the same motive he chose not to relate his family when his studio began to be attacked …

  One Monday morning in the late summer of 1991 your father came to the studio and was met by black words that had been sprayed and trickle-dried on his store window. There were phrases like WHITE REVOLUTION—NO MERCY, GOOD BLATTE = DEAD BLATTE, and DEATH TO COMMUSM! (It actually said that.)

  Not only your father’s studio had been attacked, but also the video store, the Chinese restaurant, and the completely innocent, Swedish-owned floral shop. A professional firm was engaged to glisten the panes. Everyone promised each other to keep better supervision of suspected individuals. Then Abbas closed his studio early and went home. Without informing his family of the attack.

  Then comes August 2, 1991, and the student David Gebremariam is shot on the Tropp Path in Stockholm and there’s already talk of a red light the next day and the papers dub the perpetrator Laser Man. Soon afterward Moms and Dads sit in pale TV light and watch election results and precisely what Moms joked about turns out to be exact reality. The conservatives take over and New Democracy enters the Parliament and they have the balance of power and a tear runs from the Palme picture on the wall and Refaat sighs in prison and Mansour still hasn’t gotten his dissertation approved and Aziz is still working at SL and has sold his record collection with eighties hits and Sweden is changing and your nightly dreams get worse and once when you wake up you’ve sleepwalked out into the hallway and are met by Dads, who look at you as though you were a ghost. You are led back to bed and Dads sit beside you until you fall asleep again and it’s not until the day after that you ask yourself what Dads were doing up and dressed in the middle of the night.

  Your father remembers that night well. It was a few days after attack number two on the studio. This time it was only Abbas’ store window and the Chinese restaurant’s that had been dirtied with political slogans. In addition, the photo studio’s keyhole had been prepared with chewing gum and in front of the door stood a pink ice-cream clown statue which smilingly waved Abbas’ arrival. Someone had stolen it from the pizzeria kiosk and it was not until your father had gotten all the way there that he understood its meaning. It was escorted by a wastebasket and the text that was spelled out of the smiling clown mouth was the usual: “Keep Sweden CLEAN.” A text that still today can be seen on thousands of wastebaskets outside of thousands of kiosks (but which for your father bears a constantly modified content).

  In the following time, your father’s sleep was more and more sporadic. He was plagued by hazy childhood memories. He mourned the political loss of his parents. He was grieved by the growing political turbulence in Algeria. Instead of tumbling his perspiring body in the bed, he began to take nightly walks. It was on the way out for one such walk that he met your sleepwalking form. You gesticulated wildly with half-open eyes and auctioned that you wanted two lawyers immediately. Your father transported you back to your room and waited by your delirious side until you fell asleep. Then he patted your cheek and levitated toward the stairwell.

  Then it’s October and two new attacks and first it’s Shahram Khosravi, who is shot in the jaw, and then it’s Dimitrios Karamalegos, who is shot in the stomach, and both are blattar and people are talking about a red light again like on a laser sight and people are starting to whisper that the Laser Man is a racist who is at large in the city and you and your friends join together and you feel how you grow in Dads’ silence, how your contours become sharper, how something is growing in you that won’t be able to be stopped.

  During the same time, you go around town with Melinda and Imran and the security guards at Mega do their routine lookout and they follow your steps closely and smile when you walk toward the cashier to pay for the cassette tapes. You leave swearing and say that this is the last time we’ll go to Whoremega. Then past Åhléns and there it’s the same lookout gazes from a different security company and when you pass the CD register, constantly pursued, the alarm goes off and time stands still and everyone stares and the guards come running and you think: Shit, maybe I took something? There’s lineup for inspection and then: Shut up when you try to explain that it must be the cassette from Mega that set off the alarm. Then in a line to the special square room, stares and index fingers and someone who snickers and an old Swediot man’s serves-them-right laugh. There’s waiting and more careful inspecting and then instead
of apology the girl guard who says: All right, you can go now. You’re already presenting the plan for counteraction at the outer doors near the subway where warm wind is blowing and double mirrors turn you into infinitely many.

  Two days later you’re back at Åhléns. You, Melinda, Imran, who invade the department store with shouts and maximum blatte accents. You yell: Hey, bro, whazzup! to alarmed perfume fags, you mack on scared student interns, you play mini-basketball in the sports department, and try on ladies’ coats in the clothing department. You fuck up signs and mess up folds and Melinda waves to the uniform guards who swallow nervously. The undercover tries to play invisible and it works pretty well up until Imran goes up and pinches his behind and introduces himself as Don Corleone. The alert is at the highest blatte level and you stay until you get the sign and then you sail back down the escalator and the guards escort you all the way out to Sergels Torg. Everyone lets out their breath. And of course no one has seen Patrik, who’s been hanging out in skinny Levi’s 501 jeans, borrowed glasses, and his stepdad’s sailing shoes farther away in the same department. Of course no one has seen his homemade alarm-deactivating magnet, no one has seen his growing Peak Performance backpack. And it takes maybe a half hour for them to notice all the empty shelves where there had recently been Champion shirts, NBA shorts, and piles of genuine Raiders caps.