Everything I Don't Remember

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  *

  We had arranged to meet Panther at Skanstull. She was wearing a white jacket and a long turquoise dress with gold patterns and little bells at the hem that made her sound like a miniature cow as she came walking along the platform, waving at us. Around her neck she had a purple scarf worn at an angle like a flight attendant, and we hugged her holding our clinking oblong liquor-store bags and welcomed her home and ten minutes later we were on the train to Bagarmossen.

  The closer we got, the more nervous Samuel was. He ripped up the bag handle and dropped small bits of plastic on the floor of the train. He bit his lip. He hmmed and drummed his hand against the windowpane. At first I thought it was because we were heading out of the city, because sometimes when we wound up at the far end of one Metro line or another, where he didn’t feel at home, I noticed that Samuel, like other inner-city people, acted strange. They looked at the surroundings and commented on them in an impressed tone.

  “Wow, awesome buildings” (about ordinary high-rises).

  “Sweet moped” (if someone whizzed by on a moped).

  “Mmm, it smells amazing” (about the apple smoke drifting out of a regular old hookah bar).

  “Nice, a library!” (as if it were strange that people round here would read books).

  “Wow, it really didn’t take all that long to get out here” (although we had just taken a 250-krona taxi ride).

  But this time there was something else making Samuel nervous. I tried to calm him down by pretending to box him in the stomach, to remind him that no matter what happened, his friends were by his side.

  “Girlz up hoez down, right?”

  Panther nodded.

  “Broz before hoez?”

  The bells on Panther’s dress agreed.

  “But what if it’s her?” Samuel said.

  “What do you mean, ‘her’?”

  “What if it’s her who’s the her who’s the one?”

  Panther looked at me and I shrugged to indicate that he had gone temporarily insane.

  *

  The New Year’s party was in full swing when Samuel walked into the front hall. My body gave a start when it caught sight of him. Within three seconds it decided to become a sweaty dishrag with no spine. I slithered my way out to the hall and hugged him. I felt his hand against my damp back. We smiled at each other, unsure of how well we truly knew each other.

  Samuel introduced me to his two friends.

  “Panther,” said Panther, extending her hand.

  Panther? I thought. Did she say Panther? Behind her was Vandad. Tall as a Christmas tree, broad as a wall, round as a sumo wrestler. Wriggling out of his leather coat made him short of breath. His body kept going, beyond the padded shoulders of his jacket. I put out my hand. We shook. He had a clammy, limp handshake. It was like he was dipping his hand into mine. Then he handed his leather coat to me as if I were in charge of the coat check this evening. I looked him in the eye. Then I dropped the coat on the hall floor and went back to the party. It landed as heavily as a clubbed animal.

  For the rest of the night, I hung out with my friends and Samuel hung out with his. Ylva was celebrating the fact that she was finally single, Tamara was almost finished with her dissertation, Santiago was on crutches after an encounter with ice and Shahin was Shahin. It was crowded, the dance floor got going, people were drinking, people were smoking up. Samuel made a few attempts to talk to me, but it felt wrong, I didn’t recognize him from our phone calls, he was having a hard time focusing, his eyes kept drifting over toward the dance floor.

  “Hello?” I said. “Are you listening?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m just . . . trying to keep track of my friends. Sorry.”

  I don’t know what he was afraid of. His friends were fine on their own. Panther was holding court in the kitchen, she was telling everyone who would listen about the art scene in Berlin, and when no one was listening she kept talking anyway. Vandad was sitting on a barstool in the corner. His glass was constantly in motion, from the bar counter to his mouth, to the box of wine, back to the bar counter, back to his mouth. He was so tall that I didn’t realize he was balding until he sat down.

  *

  The train kept rolling south. When we stood up and got off, Panther said:

  “Wow, great vibe—a little like Neukölln.”

  Samuel agreed and I walked beside them without saying anything. The vibe wasn’t great, or different, it was a perfectly normal area, just like everywhere else, and even though I’d never been there before I knew my way around. There was the grocery, there was the pizzeria, there was the alky bar, there was the hot-dog stand, the square, the park benches where the kids sat sneaking cigarettes and scouting everything out, and the path we would take to get to the party. The only thing that was different was that there was an organic cafe on one corner of the square, there was a party going on in there, a bunch of forty-year-olds all dressed up in their going-out clothes were standing out in the snow and smoking and casting nervous glances at the kids on the square.

  *

  Everyone did the countdown at midnight. TEN-NINE-EIGHT-SEVEN and I felt that obligatory emptiness that everyone feels when the year is about to end, SIX-FIVE-FOUR-THREE, panic about the passage of time, about the seconds ticking away, about how life will soon be over, TWO, I looked around, trying to find Samuel, ONE, he was suddenly standing beside me, HAPPY-NEW-YEAR, shouting and party poppers and horns. Everyone hugged everyone else and in the tumult that followed we kissed.

  *

  The occasional rocket flew through the air, it smelled like gunpowder. Samuel took out his phone and called Laide on the way, maybe he wanted to check if we were supposed to bring anything, or check to see if she was there already. He didn’t get an answer, but he walked the rest of the way with his phone in his hand like a compass. We met two guys who were going to the same party, I heard Samuel talking to them and I noticed that something changed about his voice. He was walking along that path and talking with an accent. He was rolling his “r”s. He asked the guys if they thought there would be any “sexy chicas” at the party.

  The guys replied, “Definitely could be.”

  They didn’t have any accent at all, they just looked at Samuel as if they were wondering why he talked so weird. And why his friend was wearing a dress that sounded like a music box.

  *

  The kiss convinced me. We were together. Our tongues nudged each other, first softly and gently, then more intensely. We fell into each other, we danced a slow jam although it was a fast song, we held each other although everyone was looking, we wanted more, I moved against him, he rasped, I rubbed myself against him, he whimpered. It was ten past midnight, it was a new year, we had met each other, we had found someone who made us feel less halved, a person who wasn’t perfect but we didn’t want perfection, we were tired of perfection, my relationship had been a five-year hunt for perfection and not once had I felt as alive as when I stood there damply at a house party in Bagarmossen.

  “Bro.”

  Vandad’s voice.

  “Ey, Samuel. Panther wants to talk to you.”

  Samuel’s hand tried to wave Vandad off.

  “She says it’s important.”

  We let go of each other, our chests loosened, we awoke from our slumber.

  “What is it?” Samuel said.

  “Just come on.”

  Samuel looked at me.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He disappeared into the kitchen. I stayed put. Santiago limped up to me with a glass and whispered: “What an idiot.”

  To this day I don’t know if he meant Vandad, Samuel, or me.

  *

  It was nine thirty when we got to the New Year’s party. We said hi to people, Samuel introduced us to Laide and I said:

  “Hey, it’s you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, we saw each other at McDonald’s. Summer before last.”

  Laide gave me a suspicious look.

  �
�I moved home this spring. And I don’t eat at McDonald’s.”

  “No, I swear, I never forget a face. We had gone out and then we went to McDonald’s and you were standing in front of us in line.”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “You had two veggie burgers.”

  “I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”

  “I think you’re wrong.”

  Laide shook her head and walked to the living room. Samuel stayed where he was and didn’t seem to know whether or not to follow her.

  “Let’s turn this around,” he said, walking into the party.

  *

  A few days into the new year, Samuel texted to apologize for what had happened at the New Year’s party. Since there were several things to apologize for, I held off on answering.

  *

  Several times during the evening I tried to remind Laide about our encounter at McDonald’s. I mentioned, for example, that she had been wearing a gold owl brooch and she looked at me and said:

  “But I don’t have an owl brooch. Can we drop this now?”

  She shook her head. Samuel gave me a look and flipped his palm to the sky.

  “What?” I whispered. “It’s not my fault there’s something wrong with her memory.”

  *

  In the next text he asked if I was angry. I didn’t answer. Then he asked if he could see me, he wanted to explain what had happened. We decided to meet at a cafe on Kungsholmen. I walked there with a clear plan in mind. I had heard what he and his shady friends did at the New Year’s party, and now I was going to explain to him that we had no future together. I’m not ready for a relationship, I like you but not like that, it’s not you it’s me, and so on, insert cliché of choice and repeat until your vocal cords break.

  *

  Some people have a magical gift. They transform everyone else into idiots. They look at people with eyes that make whatever anyone else says fall dead to the ground. Every joke you utter loses lift and crash-lands. Laide is one of those people. Say someone was standing there at a New Year’s party and he wanted to tell a story, people like Laide appear out of nowhere and find fault, they say: “What do you mean Asians are ‘super good at studying’? How can you say that women are weaker than men—there are plenty of really strong women. And why do you use ‘he’ as a general term? It so happens that it’s the third person for ‘person’ but at the same time it only symbolizes people who have penises, so I prefer to use gender-neutral singular ‘they.’” Do you know how popular someone like that is at parties? Not popular at all. People were talking about New Year’s resolutions and how much time was left before midnight. Laide was talking about how in Sweden there are thirty-six thousand rapes each year. Samuel was listening and trying to appear interested.

  “It’s a low-level war that no one talks about,” Laide said. “It’s so sick that mankind doesn’t do more to combat it when we totally could.”

  I leaned toward her and said, “‘Mankind’ as in ‘humans’ or ‘mankind’ as in ‘people with penises’?”

  It was a joke, I was trying to break the ice. Laide looked at me with eyes full of murder and Samuel tried to defuse the tension by going back to talking about fireworks.

  *

  Samuel was already at the cafe when I got there. Even though I was ten minutes early. I was surprised, I had pictured myself arriving first, having time to prepare, but he was already at a corner table and he looked up and smiled when he saw me.

  “I didn’t want to chance not getting a table,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. You?”

  “I’m a little nervous. But otherwise fine. What do you want?”

  And I thought: Why doesn’t he protect himself? Doesn’t he know what’s about to happen? It’s one thing to be nervous, or to want to come early to get a good table, but who would admit to that? Who says something like that as if it’s perfectly normal? He went up to order and I sat down and when he came back we avoided the New Year’s party. Instead we talked about how there were old French newspapers on the walls in the hallway and he said his dad had saved the paper from the day he was born and he had found it not long ago. It was in a box where his parents had kept mementos, there were locks of hair from his first haircut, the plastic bracelet he had worn in the hospital when he was born, and ten baby fingernail clippings.

  “Ew,” I said. “I hate nostalgia.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s sappy. It tries to go backwards. It’s fake and inauthentic and . . . cowardly.”

  “You know where it comes from etmy . . . ethno . . .”

  “Etamo . . . What the fuck is the word?”

  “Ety . . .”

  “Etymologically.”

  “Right.”

  “Nostalgia. Something about pain, right?”

  “Mmhmm. Like, the pain of never being able to go back.”

  “Sure you can. All you have to do is remember.”

  “I have a terrible memory, though. Maybe that’s why I need the objects.”

  “But you remember who I am?”

  “Barely.”

  Both of us smiled and took a sip of our coffees. An expensively dressed family with little kids was sitting at the table next to ours. The son was like five and he was wearing a beige down vest. Samuel leaned forward and lowered his voice.

  “You know how to make sure someone will remember you?”

  “I guess there are probably several ways. But I guess one good idea is to try to evoke a strong emotion—isn’t that right? That what we remember most are the things we have the strongest feelings about?”

  “Maybe. But there’s an easier way.”

  “Which is?”

  “You should make them associate you with a daily routine.”

  Samuel started telling me about a memory from when he was ten. He was out in the country with his family, they were sitting in a hammock, it was dark, starry, they had been eating chips and he said to a relative, like, an uncle, “There’s something wrong with my teeth because now they’re all full of chips,” and his uncle said, “Oh no, there’s nothing wrong with your teeth, look, I have chips in my teeth too.” And he opened his mouth to show Samuel.

  “Okay?” I said.

  “I thought about it later that night when I was brushing my teeth. And then I thought about it when I brushed my teeth the next morning. And now, fifteen years later, it’s lodged in my memory—I’ll never forget that perfectly unnecessary conversation. And it was the routine that drummed it into me.”

  “So if I want you to remember me forever, I should talk nonstop about tooth-brushing?”

  “Mmhmm. Or try to associate yourself with something else people do every day.”

  “Like drinking coffee?”

  “Exactly. Coffee is good.”

  Samuel looked around.

  “But water’s even better. Just think if I could get you to associate me with drinking water. Then you’d never forget me.”

  “How would you do that?”

  “Like this, maybe?”

  Samuel reached for the water glass on the table before us and poured it on himself. Not quickly, it didn’t splash, but quite slowly, so it formed a gentle waterfall that ran down his hair, nose, chin. You have no idea how much water a glass can hold until someone pours it onto himself. I was convinced he was only going to fake-pour it, like raise it over his head and then stop right before it came out. But no, he poured that whole glass of water on himself. The well-dressed Kungsholmen couples with their pleasant-smelling dogs and well-manicured nails and well-brought-up sons stared at him.

  “Would you like a napkin?”

  “Please.”

  I went to grab a bunch of napkins, he dried himself off, he shook his head side to side to get the water out of his ear.

  “So what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “Did it work? Will you think of me the next time you take a sip of water?”

  “I suppose
we’ll find out.”

  I reached for the other glass of water, closed my eyes, and took a sip. I thought of him, I tried associating the non-taste of water with the person sitting next to me at this cafe. I opened my eyes and was met by his wide smile.

  “What do you think?”

  “There’s a chance I’ll remember you tomorrow.”

  *

  Midnight had passed, the party was lame, Laide’s friends were boring. A mix of perfumed Iranians, short South Americanos, ugly dykes, tattooed university chicks. Only Panther, Samuel, and I were there to fill up our Experience Banks. I was sitting on a barstool in the kitchen when Panther said:

  “This party sucks. But maybe we can do something about it.”

  She patted her breast pocket.

  “I’ll get Samuel,” I said, heading for the dance floor.

  *

  We sat at the cafe until the insides of our cups were covered in brown tree-rings of dried coffee. Mostly we talked about memory, how you remember, why you remember, when you remember. He told me he had a friend with a photographic memory.