Everything I Don't Remember

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  *

  My theory is that Samuel had waited so long that in the end he was ready for it to happen, no matter where, no matter who with. And when it happened, it happened later that same year, when the summer was over. The trees had started to turn red and the sidewalks were getting slippery. The place was no Italian vegetable market, no flashy conference dining room. The place was the parking lot outside the Migration Board’s offices in Hallonbergen.

  *

  Then I arrived and everything shifted. My sister was standing there at Cityterminalen. Around her: Ylva, Santiago, Shahin, Tamara, and several friends from interpreter school, plus a few people from my syndicalist years whose names I don’t want to use. They had made a laughably ugly banner that said WELCOME HOME LAIDE! (with glitter around my name) and they had put on party hats. Shahin had brought her saxophone, but since she had forgotten the mouthpiece it just hung around her neck, all shiny. They caught sight of me and everyone rushed up and screamed and clapped their hands and there were group hugs and pictures and I was so overwhelmed that I hardly knew what was going on, you can tell in the pictures from that day, I don’t even look happy, my mouth is just open like a fish and I’m looking around in confusion, as if I have just found out that the world is one big set and my friends are actors. Only afterwards, once we were in the car on the way home, did it start to sink in that my sister had organized all of this for me. She was sitting in front of me in the passenger seat and checking her phone as if nothing much had happened, as if she put together this sort of surprise once a week.

  “I did thank you, right?” I asked.

  “You stood there without saying a thing for five minutes.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  She reached her hand back over her seat and I took it.

  *

  This is more or less the way Samuel described it to me when he came home from work and ran into the kitchen with his shoes still on:

  “Oh my fucking holy shit I mean whooooaaaa I think I met her or I mean I don’t know but shit I mean shit it was so fucking I don’t know oh my God I mean shit I phew hold on a second I’ll tell you hold on I just have to calm down a little but holy shit I mean holy shit!!!”

  I looked at him, waiting for him to utter a complete sentence. Or at least a third of a sentence.

  *

  We arrived home at my old apartment, five years had gone by, first a French student from Tours who was doing a Ph.D. in biology had rented it, then a Senegalese couple, and most recently a Hungarian family with two children. Five years and so many people ought to have changed the smell of the apartment. But as I stood there in the hall, breathing and looking at myself in the hall mirror, it was like no time had passed.

  *

  After about half an hour the story of what had happened came out. Samuel had gone to work. Same as always. He took the red line to T-Centralen. Got on the escalator, the moving walkway, the escalator. Transferred to the blue line toward Akalla. Got off. Walked by Hallonbergen Centrum, wondered whether he should buy a lunch now or go with the Thai takeout. Settled on Thai. He walked toward his building. He swiped his access card. He sat in his ergonomic chair. He glanced through his cases, he contacted a few embassies, he booked a few trips, he wrote a few reports. None of what he was doing demanded his concentration. His thoughts wandered freely and presumably he was thinking what he usually did at work: here I am with my degree in political science, sorting papers like a mailman and booking trips like a secretary and writing reports like a report-writer. Or maybe he was thinking about something else.

  *

  When I left Sweden I was pretty new as an interpreter. I had my degree and I’d been working for one and a half years when I received my special-project assignment in Brussels, which soon turned into a permanent position. For five years I sat at meetings that lasted an eternity, I translated phrases like trade-barrier speculation clause or EU subsidy reform supplements from French to Swedish; from English to French. Only when I went to restaurants did I get to use my Arabic. I knew more than I wanted to about the UN convention on maritime law, ocean-sonics studies in international waters, and the precarious situation of the bluefin tuna. Back in Stockholm, I had no trouble finding a job. Everyone wanted a licensed interpreter with my experience. But I felt like I wanted to do something different. Something that really affected people’s lives.

  The girl at the agency said I would have no problem at all finding work as a phone interpreter.

  “All you have to decide is whether you want to take daytime or nighttime calls.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, we have a lot of different clients. But in general, the nighttime calls tend to be a bit more emotionally demanding. There are more calls from the police and the emergency room at night. And during the day, there are calls from the Social Security Agency and the Employment Agency.”

  I said I would get back to her with which type of calls I wanted. I went into the city and bought a new phone that I would use for work and then I called up the interpreter agency again.

  “Here’s my new number, and by the way: I’d be happy to take calls both day and night.”

  She laughed like she thought I was joking.

  “When are you going to sleep?”

  “It’s no big deal. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

  *

  It was a perfectly normal day. To avoid small talk with his colleagues, Samuel took a late lunch. He left the office at one. He walked out into the bright autumn sun. He sat in the biting wind down at the Thai place, which was a small food cart with colorful lanterns in the parking lot behind the Migration Board building. He bought the daily special for sixty-five kronor, he thought of the friend who had ordered scampi at the Thai stand at Zinkensdamm and found a syringe in his food, he made sure his food was syringe-free, ate it up, looked at the bare trees swaying in the wind. Perhaps he was thinking that time passed slowly even when he was on break.

  *

  When I told my friends from interpreter school that I was going to go with nighttime calls, I was advised to prepare myself.

  “Study body parts and medical terms,” said one friend.

  “Brush up on your weapons,” said another.

  “But you can hold off on different dialects,” said a third. “That will come later on, once you’ve been working for a while. That’s the hardest part.”

  I followed their advice. I studied body parts and made sure I knew how to say norovirus and rheumatism, fly-kick and head-butt. I freshened up on the nuances that differentiate cudgels, pokers, and clubs.

  “Some calls can be really hard,” said one friend.

  I nodded and thought I understood what she meant.

  *

  After a little more than an hour, Samuel walked back to the office, that big chunk of concrete that looked like a parking garage. Activists had left stickers on the stairs; they said things like LEO, age 8, taken away in the night by police and sent to Iraq. Migration Board: as usual, everything went smoothly or ALL DEPORTATION MUST STOP. The stickers were half ripped off, but it was still possible to read the black text, tattooed on the concrete like a shadow.

  *

  I had been working for a month when I had my first call with Nihad. It was eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning, the police officer introduced himself and said he was calling from the emergency rape clinic at Södra hospital.

  “I’m sitting here with a woman who needs your assistance as an interpreter.”

  And I remember thinking, didn’t he need it as much as she did?

  The woman introduced herself, her voice was quiet and dogged, I started translating her story from Arabic to Swedish. She said that she was twenty-nine years old, she had started talking with a guy at the bar, they met at Golden Hits on Kungsgatan, they sang karaoke together, first “Winds of Change” and then a Brian Ferry song she didn’t remember the name of. Then he added her on Facebook, he called himself Bill, they started a
relationship, they went out a few times, he bought her dinner, twice she slept at his place but nothing happened. He was nice, he took care of her, when they went on dates he always paid, he said he had contacts that could help her get a permanent residence permit.

  The policeman’s voice: So she’s here without authorization?

  Me: Do you have a residency permit?

  Nihad: No. Or, I’m here on my husband’s permit.

  Me: No. Or. She’s here on her husband’s permit.

  Nihad: But my husband and I are separated.

  The policeman: Okay. She knows I’m a police officer, right?

  He said it like he was trying to make a joke.

  *

  Samuel approached the entrance to the Migration Board office. Something was going on. The security guards, who normally stood on the inside and kept an eye on the people taking queue numbers, were standing out in the parking lot. A young woman was holding back an older woman. The older woman was wearing a veil, she was waving her fist and screaming something in Arabic. The young woman translated it into Swedish. Samuel walked by. He heard their voices. They were shouting that this was a scandal, a violation of rights, a disgrace. They would go to the media, there would be consequences, major consequences. One of the guards waved her hand as though she wanted to shoo away an annoying wasp. The other guard looked like he had a toothache.

  “Is this what you call a democracy?” the women shouted.

  Samuel looked at the younger woman. He stopped. He realized that she was beautiful. Or, in Samuel’s own words later that night:

  “I mean bro, bro— I like can’t sit down when I think about her. I swear, she wasn’t just beautiful, she was the foxiest fox, she was foxier than the Fox River, she was Beyoncé times a hundred, we’re talking Janet Jackson before the plastic surgery, we’re talking that girl from 21 Jump Street, the big sister on Cosby, Hilary from Fresh Prince but with brains, she was so beautiful that I DIED—I saw her and I wanted to melt, you know what I mean, I wanted to go up to her and lap up the sweat from her shoes, I mean for serious, what is it Biggie says in that song? She was so beautiful I was ready to suck her dad’s dick, you know?”

  I felt strange, it was like nausea, I think it was Samuel’s story about the syringe in the Thai food.

  “Then what did you do?” I asked.

  “I. Uh. First I walked past her and into the office. Then I turned around and went back out. I walked up to them, said hi in Arabic, and asked what had happened.”

  *

  Nihad continued her story. The day before yesterday, the guy who called himself Bill came to her place without warning, he was just there in a car outside, and he called her phone and asked if he could come up.

  The policeman: So she had given him her phone number?

  Me: He wants to know if you had given him your phone number.

  Her: Yes.

  Me: Yes.

  When she said it wasn’t a good time for him to come up, he left the car and came up anyway.

  “He stood in the stairwell, he had flowers with him, two different colors of tulips, he wouldn’t give up, it smelled like he had been drinking, I asked how he was going to drive home, he said he wasn’t going to drive home. Finally I let him in, I didn’t know what to do, he was talking so loudly, I didn’t want the neighbors to notice, he came in without taking off his shoes, he walked around in the apartment I was living in temporarily, and he acted like he lived there, he sat on the sofa, put his feet up on the table, asked if I had any food in the house, and when I said I wanted him to leave he refused, I lied and said I was expecting someone and he said I was cheating, that I was waiting for another man, he started using ugly words, he asked if it was a black man who was coming, he said it several times, ‘is it a black man who’s going to fuck you with his big black cock, is that what you want, to be plowed by a big black cock,’ and when he said those things I realized he was touching himself, he was sitting there in my borrowed apartment, on my borrowed sofa, touching himself, and then I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a frying pan, I don’t know why I didn’t grab a knife, I said he had to leave or else I would call my ex-husband, and he said, ‘So call him, call that blackhead, what do you think he can do, what do you think will happen if I report him for threatening me? What do you think will happen if I say he came over and assaulted me?’

  “While he said that he took something from the pocket of his jacket, at first I thought it was a gold ring, for a brief moment I thought he was going to propose to me, get down on his knee and break into a smile and say that it had all been a joke. But it wasn’t a gold ring, it was brass knuckles, he slipped them on and hit himself above his eyebrow, it was so strange, I just stood there with the frying pan in my hand and he sat there on the sofa in his jacket, bleeding from the eyebrow, blood running into his eyes and into his mouth, he smiled when he saw how scared I was, he asked what I was going to do now, now that I had already hurt him, now that there was proof I was unstable. ‘What do you think the courts will have to say about your chances of staying here if it comes out that you assault upstanding citizens for no reason?’ He was still smiling, his teeth were red, it was dripping on the sofa, I lowered the frying pan. At first I didn’t put up a fight, he lifted me toward the bed, I let him do it, I couldn’t feel my body, he took off my clothes and forced himself into me, it was difficult, it hurt, I looked away, there was the window, the knickknacks, the curtains I had bought just because my son liked the tree pattern.”

  The policeman’s voice: Her son?

  Me: Do you have kids?

  Her: One son. But he’s with my husband. He has a better life there.

  *

  Samuel wrote down the woman’s case number, went inside, and looked it up on the computer. A few minutes later he was back in the parking lot.

  “I think it’s her salary that’s the problem. In the application it says she will only earn thirteen thousand kronor per month.”

  “But I’m the one who helped her,” Laide said without waiting for her client to respond. “We were told that thirteen thousand was the minimum.”

  “According to the rules, that’s too little if you write that you work full time.” Samuel lowered his voice and looked around. “Perhaps Zainab here can work a little less from now on? For example, if she could consider writing that she works at eighty percent for the same salary, there is a very good chance that her application will go through.”

  He said it in that slow way you say things when you want it to be clear that what you want to say is different from what you’re actually saying. Laide looked at him and smiled.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  They kept standing there in the parking lot. None of them quite knew how to end things.

  “Was there anything else?” Laide asked.

  “No.”

  The client thanked Samuel, Samuel thanked the interpreter, everyone shook hands and said goodbye and instead of asking all those questions he’d been hoping to get into (who are you, where do you live, where are you from, what’s your favorite tea, what’s your personal definition of love, when will we meet again and what is your phone number) Samuel swiped his access card and took the elevator back up to his office.

  *

  Nihad continued:

  “The frying pan was nearby, I could have reached it but I didn’t, I could have bitten off his tongue, but I didn’t do that either, I let him start, when it didn’t work he swore and said cruel things about my body, he said it was too disgusting, that I was too fat, that no one would ever want me. Then he propped himself above me and touched himself until he came, most of it landed on him, only a little got on me, he told me to lick it up but I couldn’t reach it with my tongue, then he grabbed my tongue and yanked it, then he kissed me, then he said I was too disgusting to touch, then he left, he walked toward his car, I kept lying there, I heard the elevator as it went down to street level, I heard the beep from his car, the engine when he turned the key,
then it idled for a minute or two and then he drove off, he was gone, I kept lying there.”

  *

  The office was exactly as Samuel had left it before lunch. The copy-machine smell. The whiteboard. The desk. The plastic plants. The pale gray computer screen with stickers left behind by the person who worked there before him. And Samuel. Who suddenly, there in his office, felt as natural as a bear on a skateboard. He had a hard time sitting still, he was sweating, he felt like the walls were closing in on him, he wanted to get away, get out, move on. Finally he opened the case again, he saw that the contact person-slash-interpreter was named Laide. He entered her number into his phone.

  *

  Silence for a few seconds, then the policeman’s voice:

  “Can you ask her to clarify if the act was consummated?”

  “She says it was not consummated.”

  “Can you ask her to describe in what way she resisted?”

  “She says she was too afraid to resist.”

  “Why didn’t she come in right away?”

  “She was scared.”

  “Can you explain to her that I am more than willing to make a report? I definitely think we should report it. But can you tell her there is a risk that this case will not proceed?”

  “Do it yourself.”

  “You’re the interpreter.”

  “But she can understand you.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think she understands me as well as you do.”

  “I don’t think I understand you.”

  “Please, this is not a judgment on my part. I’m not a lawyer, and you’re not a lawyer, and she’s not a lawyer, right? So I’m sure we can agree that it’s up to the lawyers to determine what happened here, can’t we?”

  Nihad’s voice: “What did he say?”

  Me: “That it’s going to be difficult.”

  Her voice: “But I know where he lives, I have his address, although I think he gave me a fake name.”

  Me: “I understand that, but I’m not sure if he understands that.”

  Her: “His blood is still on the sofa.”