Show our shared weekends where we afflict hippie festivals on Långholmen. All your mother’s friends, softly smiling Swedish women with Indian bands in their hair and bells around their arms, hibernated hippies with white sheepskin vests and well-worn pipes. CLICK! We sit on tangled blankets, delight steaming thermos coffee, nostalgizing the humanism of the seventies and listening to protest-singing guitar men. CLICK! We intake bean porridges that are offered in trade for feeding Africa’s famine children. CLICK! I realize that my Swedish courting status is differentiated from Tabarka’s by complimenting a woman’s hair flower and collecting a resounding ear smack. SLAP! CLICK!
One Saturday I invest a hypermodern purple suit with imposing shoulder pads and deep double-breasting. CLICK! One Sunday we stroll gravel paths out to the Museum of Modern Art of Skeppsholmen. CLICK! Your father clicks his camera all the time while you in your rough orange coverall collect leaves and want to start a war with me, your “favowite uncle, Kadiw.” CLICK!
At the Museum of Modern Art we inspect a gigantic and very popular retrospective exhibition of the celebrated Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm. Then write:
“My father notes Strömholm’s photographs as standardized and unimpressive. Still, is it perhaps this visit which will influence so much of my father’s future? Why? Read on and you will receive knowledge!!!”
(This is a so-called planting in order to feed the readers’ curiosity.)
Here we will die away the musical medley and normalize the form.
It was afternoon and we had parked our bodies in the café at the Central Station of Stockholm. Your mother was home with the twins and you shared our company, munched sweets, and played on the floor under our table. Your father ignored your sounds, drank his coffee, and partook my cigarettes.
“Hadn’t you terminated that habit?” I interpellated.
“In principle,” said your father and borrowed my lighter.
Then careful calculations with budgets and forms, floor plans, brochures from photo companies, and sketches of alternative studio names were presented from his bag. Your father seemed to have spent many months in hidden preparation.
Even long before your grandfather’s death he had telephoned numberous banks with the ambition of getting economic assistance. For several years in a row he had sought but been refused the Work Stipend, Travel Stipend, and Project Stipend from the Swedish Art Grants Committee. Frequent were the authorities who refused his inquiry about assistance in order to begin his career.
“It has been very complicated to receive trust as foreign-born in this country,” said your father, looking at his thick bundle of papers. “Likewise to localize a location that is not suddenly rented when they hear my foreign accent. But now all of that is behind us.”
No experiences seemed to have grown your father’s frustration. Instead he exposed me to the contract for your grandfather’s store, where the landlord had detailed in a particular handwritten paragraph that we were NOT allowed to start a pizzeria or a mosque or a café or any other enterprise that could attract an “undesirable clientele.”
“Kadir, my happiness to have you here is very well formed. Nothing can compete with two collaborating friends. And one can never be successful if one works for someone else. By the way, have I related you about Refaat? That magic man who—”
I interrupted him, sighing.
“Hmm … let me think. Not more than perhaps every time we have discussed the details for my visit on the telephone.”
Your father did not notice my ironic tone.
“Refaat! One of Sweden’s richest men! He started with two empty hands! Now he bears a close relationship to the Volvo master Gyllenhammar! Despite his millions, Refaat still lives in his ordinary Million Program apartment. Just like … Who do you think?”
“Uh … you?”
“Exactly! Me and Refaat! The exact same. He is the premier Arab who has succeeded in finding his success in this oblong country. And do you know what was acted a few weeks ago?”
“No.”
“Refaat was electored to Sweden’s most excellent badge of honor.”
“The Nobel Prize?”
“No.”
“The position of Swedish prime minister?”
“No.”
“The position as master of IKEA?”
“No.”
“The position of ABBA singer?”
“Are you pulling on my leg?”
And in that second, I finally recognized your young father. The father who exploded his rage at the Greek photographer. The father who never chose the drama of falseness, who burned the heat of life and would never be able to graze the thought of giving up a lifelong artistic dream to photograph for finances. His eyes burning black, eyelashes vibrating, his jaws scraping each other.
“Respond me, Kadir. Are you pulling on my leg?!”
You were woken from your games and periscoped your head up from the floor.
“No, no. Forgive my excuse. What has Refaat been electored to?”
Your father slowly transformed his rage to a smile.
“Swede of the Year!!! You must admit what an illuminated success it is! An Egyptian as Swede of the Year! A Brazilian German as queen! This country is unparalleled to me!”
I masqueraded forth my surprise and praised the luck of Refaat. Your father happily creaked his back against the equivalent of the chair.
“Well … there is luck and there is luck. It is not about luck. This country offers all potential possibilities. For those who do not choose the road of laziness, Sweden is a country of a thousand free paths, just pick a path! Together we will now pass the coming time by renovating the store.”
“How large will my economic compensation be? Besides the finances I have loaned you?”
“Hmm … it will be atmospherically large measured in Tunisian standards. Much wider than at Hôtel Majestique.”
“And how great is the salary in Swedish standards?”
“There it is … what the Swedes call lagom. Not too large, not too small. Exactly lagom. What do you think?”
“Okay. Let us vow our promises and pray for your studio’s prompt success. I would be very sad by being forced to return without the economy you have promised me.”
“Our success is no doubt already our fact. I want to remind you of one thing, however: I will NEVER bend my artistic ambition. With this studio I will have free hands to support my family in order to then simultaneously maximize my artisticness. Understood?”
“Yes. Why are you detailing me this?”
Your father did not respond me. His concentration had been broken by some Arabs who parked themselves at our neighbor table. Your father nodded them grimly. When their bodies levitated toward the counter to invest coffee your father turned to me and sighed them audibly, side-shaking his head.
“Observe them, Kadir. I call them Aristocats … Look at that one … Mustafa. A real loafer. He didn’t invest his own coffee! He just took a cup and paid for a refill. It is people like that who infect their bad reputation to the rest of us Arabs. They will never succeed in Sweden. NEVER! I, on the other hand, have perfect chances.”
“How so?”
“Thanks to my wife I have succeeded in transforming my mentality so that it has become almost entirely Swedish. Some one hundred Swedish rules are now my routine.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, it is complicated to remember them all. But let me try. I stand to the right on escalators. I brush my teeth evening and morning. I offtake my shoes before I invade apartments. I use the seat belt even when I sit in backseats of cars. I will soon begin to understand the logic that retired relatives should be isolated in so-called nursing houses.”
“And what else?”
“I express triple thanks each time I invest a newspaper. I never haggle in stores. I can discuss weather and wind for hours with the precision of a meteorologist. Each time I am about to greet my neighbors I restrain myself into silence by thinking of t
he proverb ‘A Swede is silent.’ ”
“And what else?”
“If I dine at a restaurant, I make sure that the woman pays her share of the bill. Those times when I imbibe alcohol, I do not stop before unconsciousness is near to me. I never expose anger if an alcoholic Swede on the metro happens to insult me.”
“What do you mean, ‘happens to insult’?”
Your father hacked his throat.
“It happens very seldom.”
“But what do they express?”
“Only in the case of exception has someone perhaps whispered names like nigger. Or damn Turk.”
Then he neared his empty coffee cup to his lips and pretended to drink.
“Praise my congratulations,” I said, and did not let the irony shine too strongly.
“But! There is also another vitality that separates me from the Aristocats,” your father continued with recovered hope. “I will never accept the ambition of living at the expense of welfare. The laziness that colors so many other immigrants will never infect me! Instead my studio will offer expanded support and long-term economic security. Let us now discuss the title!”
Your father presented me his name sketches and smacked his mouth happily. While I observed the competing studio names, I noticed a sorrowful emotion in my chest. Where did it come from? Perhaps it was based on the insight that something had succeeded in modifying your father. Something indicated his transformed mentality; perhaps it was his condescending method toward his countrymen, perhaps it was his brilliant smile when he found a five-crown coin on the café floor. Perhaps it was the whisper that your father, despite his guarantees, would find it difficult to combine his artistic ambitions with economic maximization? My certainty is unsecured.
The next day we initialized the renovation of your father’s building. We gradually transformed the store from a forgotten sign shop in a suburb south of Stockholm to a professional photographic studio with an added vernissage room. Though still in a suburb south of Stockholm.
We cleaned out the meticulously filled storerooms, where your grandfather seemed to have saved all of everything in an infernally historical chaos. That Gösta must have been a true collector. In his stockroom were not only the antique signs, which we soon sold on to a connoisseur.
There was also Gösta’s collection of Ping-Pong paddles (18 of them), water towers for antique train lines (7), scrapped refrigerators (5), milk white firemen’s helmets (4), aquariums (3), crutches (3.5), old world maps (some twenty rolls). There was his collection of bottle caps from that kind of antique soda that was called “small beer” (3 bags!) as well as his not particularly well formed collection of stuffed scorpions (1). Your grandfather must have had a very complicated relationship with cleaning and throwing away … Fortunately enough, we did not partake this nostalgic disposition.
After emptying the rooms, we tore out shelves and filled wall holes with stiffening cream. The shabby yellow wall color was disguised behind a neutral white. We invested a complete photo lab with chemicals and copying machines via used advertisements. We invested lamps, furniture from IKEA, cord extenders, fabrics as back walls, and reflecting mirrors, as well as quantities of props (plastic fruit, candelabras, humorous crowns). The ring-spotted marble of the windowsills was hidden with pots, and the spiderweb cracks of the window panes were camouflaged with flowering curtains delegated from your grandmother.
In the stairs down from the courtyard, we taped posters from your father’s bathroom lab. There was Capa’s desperate soldier on D-Day, Avedon’s shaky, sweat-splashing Louis Armstrong, Eisenstaedt’s sailor who is celebrating peace with an unknown woman’s kiss, as well as Yousuf Karsh’s classic portrait of Einstein. The main room became the studio’s combined atelier and vernissage room. The inner room was transformed to a black-colored darkroom with insulated light barriers, wires on the ceiling, special-colored bathtubs for different chemicals, clothespins, and, like the dot that transforms a stick to an i, the orange lightbulb.
Because your mother had pointed out your apartment’s present crowdedness with cyclical repetition, I was offered lodging farthest back in the store’s special storeroom. There I partook my home with a mattress as well as many quantities of material, film canisters, developing fluids, and fixative drums, as well as the carton in which your father hid his secret whiskey bottles (your mother opposed all forms of daily routine drinking). As a stimulant your father delegated me your black-and-white fourteen-inch TV. Pretty soon I could visualize the room more as a temporary home and less as a suffocating, cramped, windowless cave.
Are you impatiently anticipating your return in the story? Do not worry. Now it is time. During the coming months, two exterior happenings were acted that presented a strong influence on your father’s future: Number one was initiated when Björn Gillberg published his article that auctioned that Refaat El-Sayed’s doctoral degree was not complete.
Refaat was apparently not the doctor of chemistry he presented himself as. The consequence? The Swedish journalists attacked Refaat, punctured his reputation, and his career fell in time with Fermenta’s share prices. The Volvo relationship was broken and Refaat was fired, indicted, erased, pulverized. Your father read the newspapers’ headlines with rising dismay, side-shook his head, and mumbled:
“It can’t be true, it can’t be true, they can’t do this, they can’t.”
But they could. Do you remember this?
Of course you remember, and there’s Dads, who are sitting in the kitchen, and its green wallpaper and big black table crack that’s perfect for hiding tiny things like grains of rice and Playmobil pistols. There are Dads’ feet with holey socks and you can hear Dads’ dark voices and this must be the first memory of Kadir because Dads have a friend visiting and at first you think it’s someone from Aristocats but then you understand that it’s one of Dads’ oldest friends from Jendouba, who has jeans with patched knees and a squeaky leather vest. He’s given you Pez candy and pinched your cheek kindly and you remember his voice when he comforts Dads and says, Inshallah lebes, Refaat will survive, Refaat always survives. And Dads say: Of course, Refaat always survives, but why are they doing this, why, he’s given a billion, a billion! And then Moms’ sleepy slipper feet that shuffle in from the bedroom and they ask for help hanging up cloth diapers to dry and then Dads, who answer that they actually have other things to think about right now.
And as they say: A tragicness often comes in stereo. Our renovation of the studio was almost finalized when projectiles from an unknown pistol penetrated the praised prime minister Olof Palme’s chest. Sweden fell into a national sorrow and it took several days before your ragged mother got back a glimmer of joie de vivre. Not even your muddleheaded memory could have forgotten that day, right?
Of course you remember that too, but it’s a strange memory because it’s as close as you can get to a collective experience because you are doing exactly what everyone else is probably doing that Saturday morning. You crawl out of bed and even though you’re almost grown up you happen to be carrying the stuffed seal you call Snorre with you, and Moms and Dads are sleeping and you sneak toward the TV and stand on tiptoe to press the button to check exactly what time Good Morning Sweden is going to show cartoons. But instead of the schedule text there’s a fuzzy picture and a blocked-off police picture and you spell your way through the text easily but the pronunciation is still hard because your tongue just rolls itself. It says that Good Morning Sweden is canceled because of … and you read it again and again so that you don’t make a mistake … the muwdew of the pwime minithter Olooof Paalme! and you yell loudly toward the bedroom and Moms grunt in reply and you yell again that Palme has been murdered and you’re so happy and proud because you were the very first to find the news and you smile toward Moms’ horror and you are just about to say it again when Moms’ wailing sounds cut the apartment in two and little brothers wake up screaming and Dads wake up screaming and everything is chaos and in the middle of it all is you, who finally under
stand and who try to comfort Moms by letting Snorre nose her streaming tears. You climb up on the sofa and get down the framed picture of Palme and Moms hold the frame to her breast and rock back and forth and Dads comfort and you comfort while little brothers just scream and scream.
No name had yet been fixated on your father’s future studio. But I strongly remember the spring evening when your father’s brain was sparkled with the name idea. It went like this: Palme had been dead for a few weeks and your mother had recovered her failing strength. A visit down to your overfull cellar had presented your father with a gigantic amount of photos that he wanted to present in his new display window. Now we were sitting and resting in the fumes of the paint with aching shoulders and tired backs. I polished my nails free from color while your father paged through his large collection of photos. He bathed in negative cards and photographs; with a magnifying glass on his eye he examined hundreds of photos. Then he said:
“Avedon is really correct in his citation. Pictures have a reality that people lack. It is through my photographs that I know people.”
I never knew what I should answer to such citations. So I kept quiet and shined my nails. Your father continued.
“The question is which studio name will tempt Swedes the most. I mean … I will never compromise about my talent. But the name of the studio must be safe and simultaneously tempting. It should feel curious but also experienced …”
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