by Kurdo Baksi
It wasn’t the actual travelling that attracted him, though. More relevant was the fact that this way of gathering knowledge would help him to become what he now knew he wanted to be: a journalist. He had already made up his mind to enrol on a course in Stockholm. As if to mark the fact that this signalled a new phase in his life, he changed his first name.
That was when he became Stieg Larsson.
As with so much else in his life, his name change was something he preferred not to talk about, and he never told me exactly why he did it. Perhaps he was afraid that people would find it a bit odd. If there was anything he avoided like the plague, it was seeming to pretend to be somebody special.
Yet again I found myself asking myself the same old question: Who was Stieg?
I think the only answer that holds water is that he was a combination of the people who influenced his life, not least his grandfather Severin, his grandmother Tekla, his mother, Vivianne, his father, Erland, and his partner, Eva. But there was also an element of escapism. He was always aware of the need to keep pushing at the boundaries. He moved from Umeå to Stockholm. Took his typewriter and telescope with him. But he needed to keep pressing on. New goals, new challenges. The letter added to his first name fitted the pattern, because it also hid something. Stieg always kept something hidden, despite the fact that he invariably gave so much to everyone with whom he came into contact.
It suddenly occurs to me that it could well be this ability to hide things that made him unique as a writer of crime fiction. He had so many secrets – perhaps the most extreme example of that is the crime trilogy he wrote at night. Quite a lot of people knew that he was writing, and he also referred frequently to crime novels by other authors, claiming that he could write at least as well as they did. But that is not what I mean. The fact is that he wrote three thumping great novels before getting round to submitting them to a publisher. How common is that? Why did he do it? In so many ways, Stieg was and always will be an enigma. The bottom line is that part of his character was mysterious.
At the same time, few people are as generous in their relationships as Stieg was. He gave, and so many of us were keen to receive what he had to offer. I have no doubt at all how he would have responded to Raymond Carver’s two momentous questions.
Did you get what you wanted from this life?
Yes.
And what did you want?
To be loved.
2
The first conversation
The most stereotyped crime novels generally begin with a telephone call. A chief inspector is woken up in the middle of the night by persistent ringing. Eventually he gropes sleepily for the receiver, checks the clock and is informed that a murder has been committed. He has to stagger out into the freezing-cold winter’s night and make his way to the scene of the crime. The drama can begin.
It was not in the middle of the night that the story of Stieg and me began, but it did start with a telephone call. I still remember exactly when it was: Tuesday, 4 February, 1992. When I reached for the telephone, which was ringing just as persistently as in a sleepy chief inspector’s bedroom, the voice I heard skipped the usual polite preliminaries: “I hope I’m not disturbing you at an inconvenient moment. I have something important to discuss.”
At the time I was a member of the 21 February Committee and was sitting in their newly established headquarters in the Kungsholmen district of Stockholm. The committee’s name referred to a strike that had been called in reaction to the shooting of eleven people in Stockholm by an individual the media had labelled the Laser Man. Hardly a day passed without the newspapers printing long articles about this lunatic who had been wandering around in broad daylight, aiming his laser sights at dark-skinned immigrants. The capital was on tenterhooks for several months, especially since one of the victims, a Swedish-Iranian interpreter, had been shot dead on 8 November, 1991. Another ten immigrants had been seriously wounded, some of their injuries potentially fatal.
It would be no exaggeration to say that during these terrible months Stockholm felt like a city under siege. If not for all its citizens, then certainly for those with dark skins. It was a time many commentators called the most repugnant in recent Swedish history – a period full of menace and political betrayal.
I quickly realized that the caller had no intention of congratulating me on my role as a strike organizer. He continued without pausing: “You have said on the radio and television that if it were not for immigrants, Sweden would grind to a halt. You’re absolutely right. But why is it only immigrants who are allowed to take part in the strike? What you have said excludes the majority of the population. How do you envisage including my solidarity with Swedish immigrants?”
“Er . . .” I began, but was immediately interrupted.
“I was born in Skellefteå of two Swedish parents, but I’ve lived for many years in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, which has a high proportion of immigrant residents. I want to take part in the strike on 21 February, because racism isn’t just an immigrant problem, it’s a problem for Sweden as a whole.”
Obviously, I understood what he was leading up to, but he didn’t allow me to get a word in edgeways before making his own proposal.
“I want you to call a press conference and say that everybody in Sweden, irrespective of the colour of their skin, their gender, their mother tongue, their nationality, their homeland, their sexual orientation or their religion, is welcome to take part in this strike to demonstrate solidarity with immigrant Swedes at 10.00 this coming Friday.”
Only then did he explain who he was. I recognized his name, having been present once or twice when he had delivered an address, usually at some demonstration or other, or at a rally to express solidarity with refugees. Most importantly, I knew he was the author of the pioneering book Extremhögern, an analysis of anti-democratic movements that had been published the previous year. It was a book I had been unable to put down.
Nevertheless I would be lying if I were to claim that I believed for one second that this telephone call was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Before we hung up – I had hardly said a word – he invited me to come and listen to his lecture “The Far Right in Sweden and Europe”, to be delivered that same evening at the Swedish W.E.A. in Stockholm. I spent some considerable time wondering if there were any reasons why I shouldn’t go.
I realized immediately that Stieg had put his finger on something important. Of course it was wrong to exclude anybody from a demonstration intended as an expression of frustration at feeling excluded. But it wasn’t so easy to change such a significant decision – not when you had been voted into the office you held by 128 ethnic, anti-racist and religious associations and intercultural organizations all over Sweden. There were many different opinions to take into consideration. In such circumstances key decisions must be taken by a committee, which in this case comprised thirteen members with views that were often very different.
And time was short. All the leaflets and suchlike had already been ordered from the printer’s and posters had even been sent to all the towns where rallies were to be held. Then had come that urgent telephone call to put the cat among the pigeons. I had no doubt that this Stieg Larsson was absolutely right, however. In a strange way I seemed to have known that all along: the telephone call was simply the catalyst that spurred me to do something about it.
I did what struck me as being the right thing to do: called my contact at Swedish Radio and announced that everybody in Sweden, irrespective of skin colour, gender, mother tongue, nationality, homeland, sexual orientation or religion, was welcome to take part in the demonstration, with the rallying call “Sweden will grind to a halt without immigrants.”
Nine months passed between that telephone call and my first real meeting with Stieg. Not surprisingly, it took place over lunch. We arranged to meet at the modest Vasa restaurant in Odenplan, a mere stone’s throw away from my office in Rehnsgatan.
This was before mobile ph
ones had come into their own, enabling people to ring to say they had been delayed. I sat there wondering where he had got to. I did all the usual things – read a newspaper, thought about what else I had to do that day, made an occasional note in my diary. Then I looked at the clock for what must have been the hundredth time. Still no sign of Stieg. I’m usually pretty tolerant when it comes to people turning up late, but now I was starting to get annoyed. It was nearly an hour after the time we had agreed to meet and I found myself formulating a rather stiff dressing-down. I had better things to do than hang about in a third-rate restaurant all day. Besides, I was hungry. Now it was 2.00; if it hadn’t been for my Kurdish upbringing I would no doubt have ordered food long since. To make matters worse, waiters were hovering around my table, as if they expected me to continue sitting there on my own, then leave without ordering anything. An hour and a quarter late, I thought to myself, smacking the table with my rolled-up newspaper. That’s it. Enough is enough.
Just as I was getting up to leave, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a smiling, self-assured-seeming man wearing round glasses, a grey corduroy jacket, a checked shirt and a yellow polka-dot tie. He approached me at a leisurely pace, running his hand through his light brown hair. The first thing that struck me was that anybody observing this man would never have dreamt that he was over an hour late for an appointment.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he sat down. “I’ve been held up by the usual threats. The police tell me I have to be careful. My way of dealing with this is never to turn up on time. Are you hungry? I only want a cup of coffee.”
We shook hands; he lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
“No problem,” I said with a shrug. “Ever since I was a kid things have always gone wrong for me on Wednesdays. Why should today be any different?”
I was not happy with either my attempt to smooth things over or Stieg’s evasive apology, but I did my best to conceal my irritation. I ordered cod and boiled potatoes, not expecting the food to put me in a better mood.
To begin with, we talked about Svartvitt (Black and White), the anti-racist magazine of which I was editor-in-chief. It had been launched as a not-for-profit venture on 20 October, 1987, the remit being to focus on matters of tolerance that other publications seemed to shy away from. Many critics regarded it as provocative. Stieg praised it to the skies. I liked the calm way in which he talked; his tone was warm and convincing, even if there was also something intriguing about it. At first I thought it was another of his precautionary measures, trying to seem a bit mysterious and elusive, at least when meeting face to face.
We moved on to the topics of the moment – the Laser Man, the way in which the populist protest party New Democracy had wormed its way into the parliament after the 1991 general election, the increasingly anti-immigrant image of the Sweden Democrats, and the incredibly naive reaction of the established parties to the threats to democracy these developments posed.
We must have talked for at least two hours. Ashtrays were changed regularly and rapidly filled by Stieg’s cigarette butts. Despite the fact that we had only just met, it felt as if we had known each other for ages. I thought he was one of the most courageous people I had ever encountered. There was no mistaking his commitment – I had rarely come across anybody more passionately convinced of the democratic ideal and the equality of all human beings.
But at the same time there was something modest about him. I immediately detected a paradox in Stieg Larsson’s make-up, and my suspicions would be confirmed as the years passed. He would go out of his way to find people with whom he could work, but all the while he wanted to dictate the way in which the cooperation functioned. He disliked being in the limelight and doing all the talking, especially on television. This led to friction at times, and when I look back over the years we worked together, this contradiction was nearly always the root cause of our disagreements.
Having said that, the paradox was convincingly trumped by the vehemence he displayed in his fight against racism and neo-Nazism. It is simply impossible to describe how passionate, how fervent, not to say how obsessed he was by this mission. I once described him as a mixture of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama and Pippi Longstocking. I concede that this was perhaps a little crude, but it was a sincere attempt to pin down a man with unique and contradictory character traits of a type one rarely encounters.
Another thing that struck me that first time we sat talking – me waiting for my lunch, Stieg with his cups of coffee and his cigarettes – was how animatedly he gesticulated. He also impressed me with the breadth and depth of his knowledge. Naturally, we were well aware that the precarious position in which Sweden found itself in 1992 was nothing compared with the intolerant, anti-immigrant forces at work in Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Belgium and Italy. We were indisputably living in a Europe beginning to show its claws in a way that made us worry that a catastrophe might be imminent.
You could say that Sweden was emerging from a Sleeping Beauty-like torpor. For years Swedes had been convinced that they were immune from racism – not the unease with regard to everything new and foreign that is sometimes discussed around dinner tables here and there, but the organized antipathy that arranges demonstrations at election meetings and tries to influence decisions made at local, regional and central government level. During our lunch Stieg compared these forces to a virus spreading through Sweden. He maintained that the battle against them needed fighting every day. If one ignored the situation for long enough, it could become an uncontrolled epidemic.
I have often been accused of being a bad listener. People tell me I talk too much. No doubt they are right. But on that occasion I hardly said a word; I sat there entranced by Stieg’s powerful imagery, neat turns of phrase and black humour. Believe it or not, I let him say all he had to say without interruption. Perhaps I was already fascinated by the contradictory nature of what he was saying. In addition to the mixture of team player and solo performer already mentioned, there was also a remarkable combination of stress and inner calm. He spoke both forcefully and calmly about important principles: about how people should never be insulted, about the struggle for women’s rights, about the importance of humane refugee policies. Matters that most people would agree on, even if many would nod in approval but not do very much about ensuring that things changed for the better. Here was a man who would never give up until the goals had been achieved.
Stieg’s duality was a feature of our friendship from the very start. But there was no question at all about where his heart was. During all the years of our friendship I never doubted for one single second that Stieg Larsson was on the side of the weak and vulnerable. He was always prepared to speak up for anybody and everybody incapable of making a case for themselves. And that was not all: he was willing to pay a high price in order to bring about change.
I had realized this long before the sad-looking cod and overcooked potatoes landed on the table with a thud.
*
How can you get to know somebody who hardly ever talks about his private life? That’s something I’ve often thought about. Whenever Stieg entered a room, he automatically became the centre of attention. Despite that, it was impossible to regard him as anything other than unpretentious.
Some people would no doubt maintain that the fact he spoke so little about himself and was always keen to avoid the limelight was due to his northern Swedish origins. He often reminded people that he was, for better or worse, from the far north. He actually said as much the very first time we spoke, during that brief telephone call. He referred to his northern origins and the fact that he had been involved in politics while still clinging to his mother’s apron strings – those two basic facts about Stieg are impossible to ignore.
You may be born a northerner, but being involved in politics is something else entirely. Stieg’s burning interest in politics was aroused as early as 1968, when he was fourteen years old. He was lucky in that his mother, Vivianne, was devoid
of prejudice and loved to indulge in long political discussions. He spent hours talking to her about starvation in Biafra, Soviet aggression or the Vietnam War – much of his passion for justice can doubtless be traced back to conversations with his mother in their kitchen. Contemporaries also attest that Stieg’s mother was a gifted storyteller; perhaps he learned a few tricks from her, who knows?
The 1970s were a politically charged decade, and Stieg was hardly the only fourteen-year-old to protest against the Vietnam War by joining the National Liberation Front. Even at secondary school he contributed polemical articles to newspapers and magazines.
Nevertheless, his political involvement cannot be explained exclusively by the trends of the time or some kind of teenage revolt. It was a built-in part of his character, just like his northern origins.
There are few aspects of my life that cannot be traced back to the fact that I am a Kurd. The inevitability of my being an outsider is obviously associated with my origins. I am closely linked with a people that is either disowned or opposed. This fact is an important part of my make-up and my memories, and it has inevitably formed what interests and drives me.
But the feeling of being an outsider can manifest itself in many different ways. There is no doubt that Stieg also felt that he was excluded. In his case it was due largely to his working-class background, but also to his political sympathies. I think this is why he never went to university and instead built his career on his trade union activities. A characteristic of trade unionists is that they often work full-time during the day in order to earn a living, devoting themselves to the things that really interest them – together with others similarly minded – in their spare time. Perhaps this doesn’t apply to everybody, but it certainly applied to Stieg. He went out of his way to ensure that he always had a secure job, and after an eight-hour working day he would turn his full attention to anti-racist activities.
