Montecore

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  19. What do you mean by these phrases? Do you not realize that your father sacrifized everything for the economy of his family! It was for YOUR sake, of course!

  20. I suggest the more veracious “is impressively muscular and virilely hairy from top to toe.”

  21. Why did your father say these angry words about Negro music? I believe it can be explained by his expanded irritation with other immigrants. He was frustrated by immigrants’ incapacity to abandon their traditions and feared that lazy immigrants would limit his sons’ future chances. He was ached by the growing number of veiled women. He was alarmed about Sweden’s modification. And most of all he was irritated by the growing number of Negroes. Eritreans and Somalians steadily increased their numbers, they echoed their unabashed laughs on the metro, they lazyboned themselves at suburban cafés, they repeated their songs of complaint about the racism of Sweden. BUT: Note carefully that your father was never racist (despite your accusations). Write: “My father did NOT think that Negroes are less worthy than other races. As you know, my father loves Otis Redding! My father is convinced that all races bear an identical worth. This is true independent of their talent for rhythm and dance, their athletic capacity, their hunger for bananas, or their laziness. That a certain race might resemble monkeys does NOT give the consequence that they should be treated like monkeys.”

  22. Write me, Jonas. Why are you relating this return to the clothing department? This is a lie! I know for certain fact that all you did was show your erected tongue and your stretched-up middle finger to the guard. And he did not even see you! Who are you trying to dupe? And why? This does not prophesize well …

  PART FIVE

  Dearest greetings!

  Are you reading this in a sitting position? Good. For euphoric news comes from having been presented to me: Your father is alive and in excellent vigor!!! Two hours ago I received an e-letter where he excused his expanded silence with that during the past time he has prepared an anonymous project that will most likely securitize his position in the exclusive photographic bureau Magnum! I congratulated him heartily for not being murdered. Right now he is apparently back in New York after some very stinging weeks in Rwanda, where he has documented the trail of genocide. Among other things, he wrote about a woman whose pregnancy was terminated in the seventh month by two soldiers who gambled about the sex of her child; they knifed up her stomach, defined the sex, and left her to die in the puddle of blood. Your father is gathering his strength in his roof loft and trying to decide if his next target should be the landless Brazilians or the Untouchable Indians.

  He terminated with the note that there are many times when, despite his great success, he misses his wife and his children. Is that not a bizarre coincidence? I have, in accordance with your directives, not informed him of our relation. Perhaps you can still try to telephone him? Even if you seem certain in your declaration to “fucking never make the first move,” I inject you the number to his Tunisian portable telephone. It works globally: +216-********. In case you change your mind. Nine years of silence between a father and a son is really rather nine years too long. And regardless of whether you capture him at a peace conference or in an intellectual tête-à-tête with Tariq Ali, I promise that a call from you would grow his gladness to hurricanish strength.

  Now to your delivered text. I realize that you do your extreme to extract literary talent from yourself. You are learning. But are still not totally stable. Carefully inspect my affixed footnotes for a complete survey of those times that you injected too-large glides of truth. Why have you named the document Montecore, by the way? Perhaps you have spelled wrong? Do you want to refer to the manticore, the lion monster from your role-playing? Or is Monte Corps intended, as in the army of the mountain? Or Monte-coeur, as in the heart of the mountain? Calm my confusion.

  Are you now ready to terminate the book? Is your stomach fluttered by as many butterflies as mine? It is time to form the turbulent time that we can call Sweden’s nineties. I am letting you bear the relay rod of the narrative and inviting to you to formulate yourself freely. On the condition that in this section you allow my commentary to compete on the same level as you do, somewhat in the form of a duel. En garde, monsieur! Let us try together to understand how the conflict between father and son grows to the radioactive explosion that motivates your modern silence.

  Your affirmative friend,

  Kadir

  The first thing you remember is the basketball court in Melinda’s courtyard, just three gates and a pedestrian bridge from the studio, the basketball court with two shred-netted baskets where you start hanging out every day after school, you, Melinda, and Imran. And sometimes Patrik, mostly because it’s cool to have someone along who always has money for candy and is always worst at twenty-one. Because in his entire life, Patrik has only ever played badminton and the recorder and his basketball clothes still have just-bought folds and his jump shot is a huge joke and once in the beginning he said: Nice triple-timer! when Melinda made a killer layup. But of course he can still hang out with you, because you’re no haters and everyone have to learn sometime.

  Now the time is different because spring is starting to seem like summer and Patrik has learned how to trash-talk the mothers of opponents and replaced his upper-class i with a believable Spanish accent where h is pronounced ch and s is pronounced th. Sometimes you’re interrupted by some Swedelows in matching club jerseys who try to test you and they have a real leather ball that’s marked KFUM SÖDER and it’s three against three against one basket and you play center and Melinda is guard and Imran is power forward while Patrik warm the bench and twirl a towel in the air and roar WOO! every time you make a steal. Together you own the basket and it’s three-pointers and blocks and alley hoops and three poor Swedelows who are sent home with sweaty tails between their legs. Then lying on your backs on the sun-warmed asphalt, with a ball each for a pillow, celebrating the victory with water from Melinda’s cola bottle with a faint diluted soda taste that never disappears while the sun trickles itself down through the squares of the fence.

  Sometimes you talk Dads and then Imran say his dad were a world-famous clothing designer in Pakistani Baluchistan. But then we move here and Dad couldn’t get a loan to start his own brand so that why he had to do imports with synthetic tops from China and that the only reason he sells those damn sequin skirts because in Pakistan his name world-famous like as famous as Kenzo and Gucci and that Prada.

  And Patrik says: My dad was an anarchist journalist who fled Chile and met Mom at Konsum when they both were reaching for the same leek and Dad was super slick and just like: If you want the leek you’ll have to take me too. He and Mom fell totally in love but then she apply at like a hundred jobs at Swedish newspapers and of course she barely got interview and so she ditch Sweden and now he has own business that ships soap on the Atlantic and he’s totally loaded and live in Chile on a huge lot with a white luxury house with a veranda and servants and a new wife and like three or four lovers who are models with tiny g-strings who can only dream of getting to live on his ranch and hang out by his pool. They all “please please let us come dance at your barbeque parties.” And my dad all “maybe, I have kind of a lot of bitches at this particular party …”

  There’s a little pause as Melinda gets ready and starts telling her parents are educated chemists who came to Sweden on research grants from Nigeria with two minimal Melinda sisters in their baggage. Soon they stay in Sweden because they loved the calm and the security and soon Mom get a job and here, have you seen this? Out of her wallet Melinda wriggles a photo that shows her parents standing in a lab with smiles so white their lab coats seem dirty, they look like total angels with gigantic Afros and shoes with pimp heels. Then the rest of the sisters were born and I came last and Dad wanted to stay but couldn’t get a job even though he looked everywhere and spoke good Swedish and fluent French and perfect English and a little Portuguese. Then finally he get a job as a truck driver for some book warehouse in Söde
rtälje but then he get tired of his coworkers because they were huge racists and put notes on his locker with copies from animal books with pictures of baboons and the first time it happen it don’t bother Dad, you know, he’s a chill guy, he never would snitch too soon. But then it happen again and again and every time he come back from lunch there new monkey pictures on his fucking locker and there were gorillas and chimpanzees and one time some goddamn fucking panda and one day he just say bye to the job and bye to Sweden and now he traveling around the world as a medical machine engineer and right now he at Singapore and we still keep in touch and last week he send a top-class black top of the finest silk. After school I swear I going to leave racist Sweden too and move. Where to? asks Imran. Melinda smiles that smile that only she has. To the castle that Dad built in Nigeria, on my mother’s grave I swear it looks like the palace Eddie Murphy’s dad have in Coming to America. There’s elephants and tigers and gazelles and a bunch of fountains and rose flowers on the floor and we can just hang around our entire lives and never come back to fucking whore Sweden …

  Can you get your thing cleaned by the maids, you know like in the movie? asks Imran. Your royal penis is clean, doesn’t that scene rock?

  Melinda sighs: Honestly, how old are you?

  It gets a little quiet. The asphalt warms backs and the water bottle is passed around. It’s your turn. Wow, I mean, my dad … And you want to say that Dads are not at all some weak-ass animal photographer who take pictures of poodles. Dads are no old beach flirt who invented a Swede name as an alias to attract customers. Nonono, Dads are also super-educated like all other blatte dads. Dads also collect job application letters and thanks-for-your-interest letters in piles … Dads also have a totally political past and have sat in a concentration camp under Franco and been a huge threat to Pinochet and dissed Idi Amin on the radio plus pissed on the ayatollah on live TV. Dads also read secret books at night and teach you about the revolution and plan demonstrations for a free Cuba and a free Palestine and a free Chechnya and a free Iraq and a free Kurdistan. Dads collect cash in piles to start his own radio station and an intellectual bookstore and have torture scars and torture nightmares and a huge amount of hidden treasures in deposit boxes in countries we can’t return to … Wow, I mean, my dad …

  And you try, you say: My dad is a photographer but not just any photographer because he is super close friends with world-famous Frenchmen named Cartier and Bresson and also he’s pretty tight with a guy named Capa and … You lose your place and say: But right now he mostly photographs pets. Everyone lies quiet, the spring sun trickles its light, and someone clears their throat.

  Then Imran says his dad still has a bunch of factories with his name on them in Pakistan and Patrik says around his dad’s ranch there are certain bushes with cocaine: you can pick as much as you want and everyone gets to snort it for free at his parties. Melinda says her dad has bushes like that too and everyone nods and it gets a little more quiet before you go back to discussing the game. Seriously, bro, my block was cleaner than yours, and did you see how I screened him and did you see how I went backdoor and I swear if he hadn’t been there I would have dunked 360 two hands.

  Sometime in the dawn of the nineties I telephoned your father’s studio as usual to inquire my finances. Your father’s voice responsed my ring and the words were exchanged as follows:

  YOUR FATHER (in Swedish): Hello-this-is-Krister-you-have-the-animal-I-have-the-camera.

  ME (in Arabic): It is Kadir.

  YOUR FATHER (in Swedish): Hello?

  ME (in Arabic): Stop being silly. I know it is you, Abbas, I can hear your voice!

  YOUR FATHER (in Swedish): Hello? Is someone there? This is Krister Holmström, can I be of assistance?

  ME (in Arabic): Arrest this idiotic spectacle, it is me, Kadir, your only and most antique friend!

  YOUR FATHER (in Swedish): Oh, so strange, still a foreign language that I do not control!

  ME (screaming): Hello, you damned betrayer, stop playing me as your father played you!

  YOUR FATHER (whispering): Sorry, Kadir, it was a humoristic joke that unfortunately lacked humor. Excuse me.

  I excused your father and we smoothed our conflict. Abbas began to summarize his latest happenings. He successively filled his voice with more and more bubbly happiness, a little like a well-chilled Dom Pérignon in a silver bucket.

  “I have succeeded!” he auctioned. “My studio has reached establishment and many assignments are frequent to me!”

  The telephone trembled with your father’s euphoria.

  “Which assignments are offered you?” I interpellated.

  “Can you imagine? My success is here. Soon we will probably be able to relocalize our address to the inner-city Östermalm, my children will be able to play with the children of fully Swedish journalists and politicians! My three sons will be like the generality of regular Swedes! No outsiderness will ever infect their souls! They will excel their mentalities and play tennis and practice piano and bear tidy collar shirts and be diplomaed with the highest grades and drape themselves in custom-tailored Boss suits.”

  “And which assignments are offered you?”

  “Many different ones. Mostly artistic fashion jobs and celebrity photographing and a great quantity of similar assignments. And sometimes pet portraits.”

  “Praise my golden congratulations!”

  “Your voice does not sound honestly happy.”

  “It is.”

  “No.”

  “Hmm … Perhaps it is explained by that your life is modified while mine stamps static holes in the same place as usual. I have encountered a VERY serious poker tragedy. I MUST obtain my loaned finances. Otherwise there could be trouble.”

  Your father stopped smacking his mouth with pleasurement and spiced his voice with a new solemn tone, which I did not recognize.

  “Dear Kadir. I have guaranteed you your economy. Soon. But you cannot just blame your staticness on me! Do not follow the mistakes of other Arabs. Do as I did! Advance your position to the maximum instead of accusing the context.”

  “But …”

  “Look at me … I have installed my own photographic studio. Thanks to my two striving hands.”

  “But …”

  “If your ambition is to start a hotel you must wander new steps on the steep escalator that we can call your career! Understood?”

  “In that case you must guarantee me the same faithfulness that I offered YOU, for God’s sake!!! If you do not return home with my finances soon you will be sorry!!!”

  I realized that the use of discussing with your father was less (like subtraction) and parked my telephone with a crashing sound on its holder.

  And you remember another time and it’s the same spring sun and the same basketball court, the same friends and the same passed-around cola bottle that still has the faint soda taste. And Imran starts the contest by saying: By the way I have Melinda’s mom over this morning and it was nice because she swallowed my sperm like yogurt because she was crazy hungry, bro. And Patrik who right away wants to show that he’s learned the game says: Sure but your mom was at my house last weekend and she was so fat I swear she couldn’t get out of the apartment if you didn’t tempt her with a huge Snickers and oil the door frame. And Melinda says: But both your moms are so fat they’re as wide as they are tall! And you say: Tuskut because ALL your moms are so fat they have their own area codes! and Imran says: Shut up, whores, because your moms are so fat I swear they have the equator for waist measurements! and you say: Bitch, your mom’s so ugly I swear every time I see her I think of like a huge … butt-ugly … mutant!

  And then it’s quiet for a few seconds before they roar their laughter and: WOOO! you lost, bro, just admit you’re out!

  And they continue the contest according to classic tradition. Patrik says Melinda’s mom is so dumb she got fired from giving blow jobs and Melinda says Imran’s mom is so ugly she should live in the zoo and Imran says Patrik’s mom’s teeth are yello
wer than butter and Melinda says Patrik’s mom’s teeth look like a chessboard and Patrik shows both his palms and gives up. Imran can smell the scent of victory and yells Melinda’s mom is so fat she lost her watch in her fat rolls when he was finger-fucking her yesterday and Melinda fumbles, Melinda is going downhill, Melinda is counted out … Melinda has a brain fart and happens to say something about Imran’s dad selling polyester Indian whore clothes.

  Suddenly Imran stands up and his eyes are lasers behind his glasses and in one second the atmosphere has changed from joking to absolute seriousness. Melinda flies up reflexively because fighting while sitting is impossible and there are religion insults like Muslim cunt and idiot Catholic and I spit on your Muhammad and fuck your pope and then fucking Somali lesbian whore and fucking ugly cunt Indian and you and Patrik get between them and try to stop it but Imran’s glasses are already off and Melinda’s guard is already up and there’s the first shove and there’s the next coming back and you yell calm down calm down but they still both have threat stares and their breathing is like breathless divers’ and they’re just about to start winding up when you hear yourself yell: QUIT IT! WE’RE BROS DAMMIT!

  And your voice echoes between the box houses and some birds fly from trees and both Melinda and Imran stop short as you raise your voice and afterward like this you’re a little uncertain what was actually said but you remember that all those things you started to think but maybe didn’t formulate all the way suddenly spray out and you roar enemies are enemies and friends are family and brothers are bros and sisters are siblings and we have to stand strong and not let ourselves be separated because there are more and more racists and fucking skinheads hang out at the helicopter platform and the Nazis own the city every November 30 and it’s us against them, don’t you get it!? It’s white against black, it’s Swediots against blattar and I swear any blatte that fight with another blatte, he worse than the biggest Bert Karlsson, we have to stop fighting with each other, we have to unite and spread love. And every time we see a blatte going by in a fancy Benz, Beamer, or Audi I swear we never play Swediots and play jealous instead we just make a fist in the air and show respect because what the racists want most of all is we fight with each other and we won’t do that, shit we’ll even show the fist of respect if it a cheap damn sellout Iranian who’s driving a Volkswagen Passat, it don’t matter, Iranian, Assyrian, Polski—blatte is blatte! Now shake hands.