Hansson was out of his element, and in pretty rough shape. It was just after midnight, and Ayanna was no mere pickup, but a stranger he’d decided to pour his heart out to. He was committing hara-kiri, in the corner of a bar near the port in Lamu’s historic district.
“What should I have done?” He slapped his forehead, running his hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration, repeating the phrase over and over again: “What should I have done?” A drunken, sniffling monologue. “It’s over.” Obviously, he had betrayed someone. But why had he chosen to escape to Lamu Island, Grip wondered.
“Ask about Khalid Delmar,” Grip texted back to Ayanna.
A half hour later, another short video arrived of Hansson, who was now so drunk that he leaned against the wall behind him or propped both elbows on the table, whenever he really wanted to say something. “We get thirty thousand dollars for each one. Take them out of the fucking desert, send them back home to Mom in the suburbs. He’s good, he’s good, he gets them home. But me, shit, what a fucking mess I made.” His saliva spattered. He lifted his glass halfway and put it down again. “See, I’ve got a passport, but now I can’t go anywhere.” Hansson looked lustfully at Ayanna and continued to stare for a while.
“Where do you live, anyway?”
Ayanna had rented a bungalow. If someone asked, she said she was on Lamu to buy something bigger. She dressed up and met with real estate brokers. There was an insane amount of money in a very small place, and still too many who only pretended to be multimillionaires—but the local brokers knew who actually owned what and what kind of money lay behind it. They loved to butter up potential customers with gossip, as long as they promised to keep it to themselves. So Ayanna browsed the fancy brochures, and, amid the chitchat about floor plans, collected the pieces she’d been entrusted with, until a complete picture took shape.
Soon it became clear that Khalid Delmar owned a big sand-colored house not far from the harbor. Newly built, it had walls and terraces designed by an architect playing off the forms of a desert fort. Even in Lamu, various people knew Delmar as the Jew. Grip looked at the pictures Ayanna took from the outside; it wasn’t his two-bedroom apartment in Kungsholmen that showed the profits from Delmar and Hansson’s business deals.
Ayanna rented a place not far from the house where Hansson had apparently taken refuge, and she ran into him, as if by chance, again at the bar that evening. She’d sat with him, until nonstop drinking turned his words to mush. Ayanna had declined to go home with him, but the next afternoon, she knocked on the door of the desert fort.
Probably, he didn’t remember much from the night before, but he let her in. He felt that all mankind was about to turn its back on him.
A face bloated from his hangover, and a thousand-mile stare. They made a little small talk, mostly Ayanna killing the silence before the pressure of Hansson’s inner Armageddon began building again. Ayanna didn’t question the confused world that Fredrik Hansson had started to describe. She wasn’t trying to connect the dots, only to send back unfiltered information to Grip.
Khalid Delmar and Fredrik Hansson, two very different lives intertwined in the same Swedish suburb. Fredrik Hansson gave Ayanna every detail.
46
Khalid Delmar came to Sweden in the early ’90s, after the situation in Somalia went to hell. His father had owned a grocery store in Jowhar that was looted, little by little, until nothing remained. With the future increasingly bleak, the family left Somalia—his parents, his brother, and himself. Their escape was awful but in no way unique. They shared their thirst, their fear, and the experience of being ruthlessly exploited with millions of others. They were a very small part of the mass of dust-covered flesh and blood that had for decades been moving up and out of the Horn of Africa, but one detail of their flight stood out from the rest. Nine-year-old Khalid, terrified of the sea, threw such a tantrum that the smuggler refused to let them onto his boat. As a result, the family was stuck in a makeshift refugee camp for weeks on end. There, his older brother got sick and died. His father never forgave Khalid for being difficult, and the father’s contempt eventually led to the surviving son’s good luck.
They ended up in Tensta, a crowded immigrant neighborhood in Stockholm. Entering school, Khalid became the only one in the family who learned Swedish. His father never really settled into their new country—with its high-rise apartments, its trees, and its endless social welfare paperwork—and he spent much of the next two decades in an echoing room they called a café, along with others who, like him, were reduced to nothing. He smoked and cultivated his disgust for what he saw around him.
From early on, he felt his son had become too Swedish; he even tried to beat that knowledge into him. Khalid helped his mother fill out the paperwork, but he told his father that a real man did this himself. Finally, given Khalid’s disrespect, and his father’s sense that his son had lost all Somali ways, his father saw no alternative but to ship him off to relatives far out in the Somali countryside. This would teach him a lesson, and then he would understand. He’d be dumped there, not just over the summer but forever.
His mother refused to go along with the plan. The rift between the parents that became obvious that day went beyond this incident alone. It was the mother’s relatives who’d made it possible to escape, using their money. They’d never asked to be paid back, but the father’s pride had been pawned forever. It was her family in Sweden who’d given her a job, and they’d also offered one to her husband. But he would never put on rubber gloves and go to work cleaning for others, not after having had employees of his own. So he kept on sitting and smoking, now supported by his wife. The father didn’t want his son to watch his inexorable downward spiral, and this was no doubt another reason why the father wanted him sent away.
But his mother wanted something else; she didn’t even ask, just presented his father with a fait accompli. It was the summer between seventh and eighth grade, and instead of getting sent down to Somalia, Khalid moved to Bromma. Not to a mansion, just to a small row house on the corner—but still, it was Bromma. His uncle lived there with his family. The uncle knew exactly what was possible and what was not, in this country populated by white people in their apple orchards. One thing he learned was that when you clean up other people’s dirt, neither your unpronounceable name nor your skin color matters, so he started his own company. Another thing he realized was that if you wanted your kids to go to a good school, you had to have the right address, and then no one could refuse. That meant Bromma, and the admission ticket his own children had was now also available to Khalid. His mother visited occasionally; his father, he never saw again.
Now his uncle was in charge. He was the one who earned the money, and he said that money bought respect. Khalid soon realized that he too wanted money and respect, but he also wanted something else. He wanted to be an insider—and he had it easy, incredibly easy, in school. In Tensta, it wasn’t hard to impress people, but that got him nowhere. In Bromma, he could play in a whole different league. A couple of his teachers went from exaggerated responses of “Hey, nice job!” when he did well on tests, to actually taking him seriously. They encouraged him and invited him places. And Khalid was 100 percent in; he wanted to become so completely assimilated that he and those who saw him could look beyond his being black. Not that it would be denied, it could never be. He was still and forever Somali, but he wanted to be able to express himself like everyone else, and be seen as one of them. If an exam requested two synonyms for apathy, he wouldn’t hesitate to give three: indifference, dispassion, and unconcern.
Khalid was still a teenager, and he hadn’t yet discovered the term glass ceiling, in all its crudeness. His high school class was completely white, and he was as much a curiosity as a part of it. His uncle didn’t mind his Swedish ways, and accepted everything as long as his nephew brought home good grades. He had only two rules for Khalid: (1) party, but don’t come home if you can’t walk straight on our street; and (2) if you make out wi
th a Swedish girl, never do it where other Swedes can see. He obeyed only one, and never threw up where his uncle could see, after they’d emptied the wine bottles stolen from the parents of his friends. It went well, he was full of energy, he partied in the apple orchards and radiated self-confidence in panel discussions at school. An irresistible Mr. Diversity for the headmaster to parade, when otherwise there would have been too many white faces on the stage. Khalid wasn’t totally blind to the game, but still he played it with enthusiasm, and reaped the benefits. They would get him inside.
Despite his successes, only one kid ever got past Khalid Delmar’s own door. He and Fredrik Hansson had met in a high school class. Fredrik was an afterthought, but his mother hadn’t remarried until he was in high school. There was something sad about her plunging necklines, and although his stepfather had cash, the new kid in the house never really meant much. Fredrik Hansson was the one who always got the cool new gadget—a year too late. And he hated that. The two didn’t understand it then, but Delmar and Hansson were vulnerable in the same way: don’t ask questions about our backgrounds, and don’t ask to come over to our houses.
And the real sticking point was money. Getting some. For Hansson, it meant fighting for what he didn’t have, and for Delmar, money meant getting as far as possible from everything his father represented. Hansson was tough; Delmar was smart. When they came together, everything clicked. Hansson brought girls to Delmar, and in return, Delmar never cracked jokes about his mom. One knew black people, and the other white. Hansson had his eye on what people wanted in the suburbs, and Delmar knew where to get it in the projects. Not drugs—there were others working that side, willing to take the risk. Delmar and Hansson focused on the next level, making contacts and ensuring that goods and services flowed smoothly from A to B. They arranged the right DJs for parties and got the hottest young rappers to perform at improvised gigs, so that those hosting got street cred, if that was what they wanted, and the lines stretched all the way down the block, and those who sold alcohol and small items in Ziploc bags got more handshakes hiding rolled-up twenty-dollar bills.
Delmar always dressed in white, and Hansson fed the myth that he always carried a knife. Some people began to call Delmar “the Jew”—straight-up nastiness, based on his love of money. No matter how anyone twisted and turned it, there was always some way, some reason, for him to take a percentage. Together, they skimmed off the cream, and it was other people’s parents who got the phone calls from the police, about someone selling weed at the parties they’d organized. There were no incidents with blue lights for either Hansson or the Jew, and nothing in the police files. These were good years, instructive years.
Soon, it was time for them to decide on a future. Hansson had little ambition and no head for books, but when he put on a uniform, everything fell into place. He went on a mission right after basic training and wanted to become an officer, but naturally they found out that he had trouble with authority and following orders. So there would be no officer training school at Karlberg for Hansson. But the military always struggled to find fresh meat for their missions, people who’d actually do the work in the desert or on muddy roads: move, dig, patrol. And handle logistics. This was second nature: getting things done, getting systems in place, managing the fucking impossible Lebanese, Kurds, or Nigerians. He’d learned a hundred times more from what he’d arranged in Sweden between Bromma, Hagsätra, and Tensta. Hansson was cut out for the job and soon could choose among the missions he wanted or didn’t want. He could come and go. Six months out, then back to Stockholm to live life and take care of business. His childhood friends kept doing their thing when he came home to visit, while Delmar moved ahead with his own plans. He studied law at the University of Stockholm, his uncle smiling wide every time he said those words. His mother was more of a proud skeptic, gently asking every time she saw him why he couldn’t switch his major and become a doctor.
He worked hard, learned the lingo, and was encouraged to get a law degree. Never in his life had he dreamed of working at a law firm. In one of those offices in the city, where his fellow students got part-time jobs because they knew the right people. They told him about the offices on Strandvägen: sky-high ceilings, oil paintings on the walls, and sixty-five-hour weeks. As if that was what he wanted, when it was really about earning money and respect, and being an insider. During his last year, Delmar exchanged his permanent resident status for Swedish citizenship and stepped out into the world with flawless qualifications. He’d built his résumé, had everything in place, had done everything he should, dressed and moved with the restrained confidence of someone who knew the value of education and humbly wanted to learn more. That was the man who came to the interviews. But that was not the man they saw. It wasn’t about his coffee-colored skin, which was offset by all other boxes he’d checked and his academic honors. Senior partners in the firm had long since decided that someone like him would only be an asset.
There was something else, some slight nuance. After thirty applicants had been whittled down to two, Delmar found himself defeated by the fact that he’d moved to Bromma a few years too late. There was something about his intonation, something he could never shake. He had the words, every single one; he could write the briefs, the opinions, the summaries, anything, and no one would have had a clue. Nothing of the Somali from Tensta showed through. But when he spoke exactly the same words—a foreign accent, that they could handle, it could even be exotic. But when they heard wrong-side-of-the-tracks, they got nervous. It had to do with values; they feared that he didn’t share the opinions that never are spoken about.
So the bright future Khalid had imagined turned into something else. He spent a year on this Via Dolorosa, going from firm to firm, a lengthy execution every time. What hurt most was that they always put him through several rounds of interviews, nodding approvingly, giving him a fraternal pat on the back. But then when it came time to make the decision, which was never explained, he was never better than runner-up. It was never really close; he was a world away.
He sank and for the first time understood his father’s shame. He not only understood but felt in himself the rise of bitterness. But unlike his father, he took the job his uncle offered. His mother cleaned offices for Swiftclean at night, and Khalid did their paperwork during the day, meeting and getting to know many new Somalis. Some he could use in his services as the Jew, while others were good to keep in his back pocket, just in case—people who told him things, and who kept their eyes open.
A cousin was getting married in Mogadishu, and his uncle took him along so he’d get a chance to relax and recharge. When his uncle went home to Sweden, Khalid decided to stay on another month. But he didn’t so much relax as start things moving. At that time, Mogadishu was like a never-ending Stalingrad, with endless wars between Al-Shabaab and whichever country’s troops had been lured into the trap of being stationed there.
For most people, it was just background noise while real life consisted of other, far more pressing feuds. In an old office building near where he lived, a family ran a simple construction company: naturally, given the circumstances, cement and plaster were in high demand. Another family insisted that the building was theirs, and they wanted the company out, or at least paying rent. In Somalia, there was no longer an official archive: the deeds and titles had been burned, or scattered to the winds during the looting. Claims of ownership were based on thin air. And whenever a feud spread beyond families to involve entire clans, it was hard to find a mediator who could be seen as neutral. There weren’t many elders left, and people no longer had the same confidence in them. The construction company feud was on the brink of turning violent, when somebody told somebody that somewhere in the neighborhood, there was a lawyer.
Delmar was brought in to find a solution. Although at first they didn’t know whether to trust him, both parties realized that the alternative was an outcome that neither would find acceptable. Hours of glaring with crossed arms followed, but now th
ere were negotiations, not just escalating threats. Sometimes, a Western approach to justice had its appeal. Eventually the suspicious looks stopped, and instead they began to imagine possibilities. Finally there was a handshake, and a sum of money changed hands. Ownership, access rights, contract law: the sale of plaster and cement could continue, compensation had been paid, and soon there were rumors around town about what had been achieved.
He’d found his calling, and he opened an office. It was very simple: all he needed was a phone. His specialty was mediation—arbitration where laws no longer existed—and he took a percentage for himself. The Jew was back. The demand was endless; it was like being the only pharmacy with antibiotics during a leprosy epidemic.
That is how Khalid Delmar and Fredrik Hansson moved more and more of their lives down to Africa. Hansson had already been there, wearing a United Nations beret, and he’d thrived, so he already knew he did well with Africans. He did mission after mission, while Delmar untied knots in Mogadishu. Whenever they had time, they lived the good life in Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa. Of course, there was also a practical advantage to having Hansson in Africa. Everything Delmar earned from his business was paid in cash, and soon this meant major amounts, and the lack of a banking system was causing problems. He didn’t want to keep the money in Somalia, he wanted access to it in Sweden. The money was legitimate, but it wasn’t easy to convert bills stuffed in bags in Mogadishu into a number in a Swedish bank account. The problem wasn’t so much moving money around within Africa, which wasn’t hard; the problem was getting it off the continent. He’d been able to use the informal networks, Al-Barakat banks, and others. But Delmar didn’t want other Somalis to know about the sums he was moving—which could make him vulnerable. The advantage to Hansson’s being in Africa was that, with his military logistics connections, Delmar got his very own transport service in and out. Regardless of where he was living, he’d managed to maintain this link between Africa and Sweden for nearly ten years.
After the Monsoon Page 28