Montecore

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  After refueling and candy buying you go back to nervously waiting Grandpa; you sit in front and are on police lookout while Bob Marley clunks himself out of the speakers and careless drivers roar-brake and taxis honk and bus drivers blink their headlights. Because Moms persist in driving at speeds that make the Toyota’s glove box open and sometimes Moms happen to signal left turns by turning on the windshield driers instead of the blinkers, and all the road signs are mostly like recommendations, and sometimes you drive one way for several blocks and sometimes you back out onto major roads and Moms just smile at shaking fists and honk back with a little melody. Then Moms continue to tell you about the order of power in the world. Everything in life is politics and nothing is a coincidence and that is why we will never fill up at Shell because they support apartheid in South Africa. To choose a party is politics and to choose gas is politics and to choose friends is politics and … Candy? you ask. Yes, even choosing candy is politics. Here, give me the bag and I’ll show you … You reluctantly hand over the bag of candy. If all this is the Western world’s money, then this raspberry boat is the poor world’s money. Do you understand? Injustice is everywhere; everything is power structures and nothing that we see in this corrupt society is real. Everything is imperialism’s damned attempts to keep us quiet. TV is opium for the people and your father is a bit of a dreamer, but you can never let yourself be fooled. And you quickly take back the bag of candy and say: But what about Dallath? Because you watch that series together every Saturday. And Moms explain that Dallas is like a terrible warning about how the system of capitalism distorts people’s brains. And besides, that Bobby is a real hunk, Moms add, and laugh their bubbly laughs while you skid up onto the E4 highway.

  Soon the police car rumbles up in the rearview mirror and it shines its sirens and Moms swear behind smiling lips because they have just played the zigzag game between the centerline dashes or considered doing a U-turn on the highway. And as usual you do the routine where you play sick and whimper while Moms slow down, roll down the window, and: Excuse me, Officer, my son doesn’t feel well and of course you may see my driver’s license. Moms look through their entire gigantic handbag a second time and it rustles and jingles, but too bad. I must have forgotten my billfold at home. Again. And then the smile that melts all policemen in all parts of the world, and the policeman clears his throat and looks toward his colleague in the car and says: All right, but try to keep on the correct side of the centerline in the future.

  And Moms promise and wish him a good afternoon and dump the handbag back over onto you. And you remember how weird it seems that the police always fall for the trick because even before Moms have rolled up the window they shout SUCKER! and gas away from the scene of the crime in second gear. Also, Moms’ handbags are a little like Noah’s ark because there are at least two copies of everything in there: billfolds of soft Indian leather, Band-Aid packages, loose change and old SL tickets, house keys and fliers from demonstrations, nail scissors and nail clippers, packets of tissues and rolled-up extra socks, old Läkerol lozenges, and a few bags of green tea in a plastic bag. But the only thing that isn’t there is a driver’s license, because it was confiscated by that class-traitor policeman two summers ago.

  Then you’re back at Grandma and Grandpa’s and Grandpa is swearing because the antenna is bent and the choke has been pulled out all day and Moms are swearing about Grandpa having the energy to care about something so worldly and then you take the commuter train home to the apartment to wait for Dads.

  It’s Sunday evening and Moms are freshly showered and have gone from robe to clothes instead of to the nightgown with Chinese embroidery. The apartment is newly cleaned, with newly smoothed newspapers as a shoe mat and newly lit fancy incense on the special dish in the kitchen and a filled fruit basket, and Moms with evening perfume. At eight o’clock it’s Cosby and you ask Moms: Is this capitalist propaganda too? And Moms smile and say: Not too much. So you keep watching while the clock ticks in the kitchen. You’re waiting for Dads, who have been home in Tunisia to bury Grandpa. But Dads are late and while Moms start to call Arlanda to check the delays, you crawl down on the floor and growl the noise of superstrong jet engines. It’s the old apartment from below; the scratched coffee-table legs and the parquet squares on the floor which are the perfect pattern for car races in angular figure eights with garage spots in the secret underground tunnels of the rag rug. It’s one gummy Ferrari against another and they are different colors and they’re sitting ready at the starting line and belching their motors. It’s the red Ferrari against the black one, and of course the black one is theirs, the bad guys’, U.S.A.–sponsored and capitalistic and full of Shell gas. And the red one is yours, the good guys’, righteously communistic, halal from the headlights to the trunk, full of Arabian gas and Arabian horsepower. Fatima’s hand is hanging from the rearview mirror and a keffiyeh is flapping from the radio antenna. Tires that vroom, mirrored visors that are flipped down, leather gloves grip the wheel and you’re sitting ready in the red Ferrari and looking at the girl who’s waving her long-nailed manicure hands from the cage where she’s sitting locked up over the crocodile pool. Now everything is up to you, either you win the race or we colonize new territory and she becomes crocodile food, laughs the bad guys’ boss, who is called Ray Gun, where he’s sitting high up on a throne with a spiked hand that’s petting a black red-eyed cat and she’s waving and crying and blowing you kisses and you are just about to imitate Dads’ thumbs-up sign when the starting flag is waved and it starts, the audience crowd roars, gas pedals floored, and the bad guy takes the lead! Max speed through the first curve, the wheels roar on, Marlboro ads quaver in gas fumes, the draft blows off audience toupees, curves are taken on two wheels and you ease up, the speedometer that laps itself, spinning around and around like a propeller, the red car nears the black car and on the third lap you’re neck and neck and you’re leading, no he is, no you, no him, and the audience screams itself hoarse and choruses your name and then you push the extra-turbo-booster and swish by him and you see him in the rearview mirror, the size of an ant, waving angrily, and it’s you alone on the last lap and there’s the finish and there’s the referee and there’s the checkered flag waving, and do you make it? Of course you do, first to the finish and then victory lap and wave to the crowd’s cheers, let the girl out of the cage, foam her in champagne, be introduced to her equally beautiful twin sister, and then into the car with them to glide on to new adventures.

  Uppuppupp, yell Moms when you try to put the Ferraris back into the candy bowl. Not a chance, you eat those up now. You look down at the worn-out Ferraris, dusty after the race around the parquet floor, with crooked grills and scratched hoods and strands of hair around the wheels, not at all as good as the other candy, which lies shiny and ready to go in the candy bowl. You’re just about to protest and explain that your cars are used and in the next round you have to be able to upgrade when you hear the elevator noise and Moms give a start. A shadow passes the balcony walkway. But no Dads.

  Moms wring their hands and look anxiously at the clock. Moms get up from the chair, make a round of the kitchen, and come back with an apple, which no one eats. Dads have disappeared.

  Then, just as you’re trying to smuggle the Ferraris to the flowerpot, you hear the creak of the elevator doors and the walkway door clunks and Moms meet your gaze the second before Dads stomp in through the double doors with snow crisps on their boots and their berets at an angle. HELLO, YOU DAMN FOOLS! Dads’ faces are browner than usual; their teeth are shining white and their mustaches are back and they prickle you during the hug while Moms stand blurry in the background. Dads are home! Dads smell like newly tested airport perfumes and tax-free drinks, a little like wet wipes and a lot like travel sweat. As usual, Dads have gotten stuck at customs but as usual everything made it through, the new leather ottoman and the refill of olive oil and the new brik ingredients. And a candy refill for your Mickey Mouse Pez, of course. Dads say hi from Grandma and sa
y that the funeral “went bravissimo.” Then Dads look down on you where you’re Velcroing yourself to their legs. With slightly anxious eyes Dads ask: And how is my Mowgli? You answer, “Jutht fine,” and Dads tousle your home-trimmed bowl cut and say that you have done well, having responsibility for the family all by yourself.

  Then Moms clear their throats and say something that is not “welcome home” at all. And their French voices are unusually strong and sharp and there’s a word that you don’t really recognize. Enceinte? Twins? Dads freeze their movements in the hall dimness, stop in the middle of their duffel coat removal, and let their mouths make the sound like when you create suction with the hose to clean Grandpa’s aquarium. Dads stand with their berets on, snow on their duffel shoulders, and the new newspaper has gravelly shoe prints. What are Moms saying? You don’t care. Because Dads are home and you press your face harder against the duffel pocket and smell the prickly wool smell and you think that no matter what Moms say it doesn’t matter because Dads are home and that’s all that means anything because Dads are the world’s biggest heroes and Dads are everything and Dads will never be like other dads.12

  And you remember the coming weeks that spring, when kitchen doors are often closed and you hear French voices mostly as vibrations and it’s Moms’ light ones and Dads’ deep ones and then silence and then Moms’ light ones and then silence again. It’s dinners when Dads have no appetite and sit in their workrooms instead of eating. Dads who lift a stool and move the copy machine, rolling out drawings of possible studio locations and writing in numbers on the calculator. Dads who wrinkle their foreheads and hmm their voices. While Moms remain sitting at the dinner table with their hands on their stomachs and don’t answer when you ask if you may leave the table. You can tell something is going on, but you don’t know what. Soon you run back and forth between the lab and the kitchen with your Mickey Mouse Pez sticking up out of your pocket. Dethewt? Want dethewt? Dads mumble numbers and Moms sigh and no one answers. You and Mickey go into the living room instead and Mickey asks: Dessert? And you answer: Yes, please, with pronunciation exactly as good as regular people’s, bend Mickey’s head back, and feed out a raspberry-flavored rectangle candy. Mickey smiles and says: By the way, fuck all the day care idiots, just fuck their teasing and laughing because you have a special way of talking! Fuck everyone who laughed when you said that your mom was going to start her education to be a wedge-turd nurse soon. And most of all, fuck that speech therapist! And Mickey shouts his swearwords with the exact same girl voice as on the Disney hour and it sounds so funny that you laugh out loud and you push his head back again and feed out a new rectangle candy. Because this is the same spring that you visit the speech therapist for the first time, Dads, Moms, and you. The speech therapist sits there behind her tall desk and folds her hands like a priest and says with concern that your delayed speech development is presumably due to a linguistically confused home environment and Moms and Dads hold each other’s hands and look quickly at each other; no one says anything. Except for your newly filled Mickey Mouse Pez, who hops angrily out of your jeans pocket, pogos himself onto the shiny speech therapist desk, bends himself backward, and starts to pepper the speech therapist with rectangle candies. The sound is machine-gunny and the projectiles bounce and the speech therapist tries to take cover behind her briefcase but it’s useless because pieces of candy block her eyes and explode her ears and when she’s lying there dead in the corner with running blood from her nose Mickey Mouse laughs scornfully and you say: Well done, Mickey! And you do repeated give-me-fives until you look up and discover three pairs of concerned grown-up eyes looking at you. And the speech therapist asks if Moms and Dads have noticed anything else … special? You and Mickey don’t care because it’s you against the world, you against the day care idiots, you against speech therapists and dark rooms and closet phantoms and the lady who whispered nigger lover to Moms that day at Skansen when Dads were photographing his first Swedish National Day. Besides, Dads have explained that the speech therapist was a typical Swede. A real racist.13

  It’s your family against the world, that’s what you think as you’re sitting on the living room floor. Then you’re interrupted by parents’ magic timing, because you hear Dads, who are opening the lab door, and Moms, who at the same time are leaving the undishwashed kitchen, and their steps are hurrying themselves to each other and then they meet in the middle of the hall floor and they kiss each other the way they only do when they think you’re can’t see and they promise each other’s forgiveness and Dads stand on tiptoe in order to be tall enough and you turn red and don’t want to see but you peek anyway. Then they come into the living room and their bodies stretch all the way to the ceiling and their eyes shine like satellites when they tell you that, sure enough, you’re going to be a big brother soon and not just any old big brother but the big brother of two future twins! And you become almost entirely honestly happy and Mickey whispers congratulations from your jeans pocket and you celebrate with yet another rectangular raspberry candy and hope that not too much is going to change.

  The Dynamic Duo. Three words that fill you with so many memories that you can barely write them down.

  Of course it’s Dads who come up with the idea. Moms’ stomachs are growing and spring is getting closer to summer and Current Photography is presenting a new competition. Last year it was “the Summer Picture” and a few years before that “the Thousand-Crown Picture,” but this year we invite you, our dear readers, professionals as well as amateurs, to take part in “the Sweden Picture.” Dads explain that no theme could be more suited for him. I will do what Robert Frank succeeded at in the fifties, come in from the outside and capture a country in photos! Frank’s book became the classic The Americans, and my collection will be called The Swedes. Or maybe … Svenskarna, say Dads, and put the just-polished camera into the special case.

  This is the spring when you become an adult, the spring when Dads explain that now the time for games and fantasies is over. For both of us. Leave the Mickey Mouse Pez at home. Now we’re going to start the Dynamic Duo! Okay? Like Batman and that guy, what is that little guy in the tights called? Robin, right, Robin. I’m Superman and you’re Superboy. I’m Obi Ken Wanobi and you’re that guy Luke. Understood?

  Your salute is so eager that your temple is sore, but Dads don’t notice. Dads are too busy planning motifs for his future collection. Everything that is Swedish will be documented, and Dads write long lists and mutter: Now we have to work really hard to save money for our very own family studio. Is that understood, soldier?

  And you answer: Aye aye, Captain! and do a more controlled salute and Dads look down at you and smile. If we just help each other, we’ll win at least first, second, and third prize, I can feel it. That money will go a long way.

  The Dynamic Duo is launched and you take your place as redeemable-bottle hunter, film-canister opener, tripod placer. And idea spouter for motifs, of course. The whole spring it’s being woken up on early weekend mornings, Moms who are still sleeping when Dads come into your room and whisper: Up, my son, the Dynamic Duo calls! And dad waking is always a hundred times easier than day care waking because now it’s family duty calling and not elephant songs or childish plastic mosaics or fights with Gabriel. Now it’s early weekend mornings of quick breakfast without waking Moms and then choose plastic bags from under the sink and break sticks of the right stiffness for poking from the rowanberry tree in the yard.

  On the way to Tanto park, Dads plan motifs. How does one capture the soul of the Swedish people in the best way? What is suédi en maximum? While you’re looking for redeemable bottles in the first garbage can down by the day care, Dads polish the camera lens with the special soft towel and crack their knuckles, one by one. Dads are getting ready. And before you get down to business you always say: Now it’s time … and with one voice you switch to Swedish and yell: … to get with the picture! Because that’s one of Dads’ favorite expressions because it is both a pun and has such sym
bolic photographic content.

  Then Dads position themselves right next to flagless flagpoles, shoot right up into cloudy gray skies, and shout: What is more Swedish than that?

  Then Dads point the camera at lost gloves arranged on wooden stair railings and say: What is more Swedish than that?

  Then Dads shoot two community garden plots with tarpaulin-covered ground and padlocked gates and say: What is more Swedish than that?

  Then Dads shoot the stump of road where there are three one-way signs in forty meters and say: What is more Swedish than that?

  Then Dads get down on his knees in front of some red-and-green lumpy wino puke, click the camera, and cry: What is more Swedish than that?

  While Dads document motifs, you fill the bags with so many bottles that the handles get totally sticky and you leave a trail of drops of brown liquid behind you.

  On the way home you discuss which other motifs would be suitable for the photo collection. And you suggest midsummer celebrations and Disney on Christmas Eve and Lucia processions, and Dads say: Too typical. And you suggest blue-and-yellow flags and snuff and those ugly Graninge boots, and Dads say: Too typical. And you say Skansen, travel trailers, and Fjällräven backpacks and Dads say: Too typical! It has to be subtle and obvious simultaneously. No damn Dala horses … like for example … Dads think. Levels! Levels are the most Swedish instrument in the world. Everything in Sweden must be just right, not too much and not too little! And if you deviate the tiniest bit the air bubble slides away and everything gets crooked. Levels, I’m going to photograph levels en masse! say Dads and put the camera back in its case.

  While waiting for the elevator, Dads mumble with a voice that is barely a throat clearing: Thanks for the help. And you grow to a height of about four or five meters and have to bend over triple to fit in the elevator and you promise yourself to almost never again eat childish Pez candies.