Montecore (18 page)

The journalists.

The publishing people.

The art critics.

The queen.

The most important ones seemed to be conspicuous in their absence.

Here follows a section that we can call “Studio Silvia awaits success.” We wait patiently for the attention of journalists. We observe newspapers in hope of praising reviews, we correspond yet another series of invitations to art critics. The result? A monumental silence.

Three weeks after the opening ceremony, your father received a
letter from the Swedish palace. The envelope bore the king’s official seal and the queen’s typed “thanked for the congratulations.” Your father framed the letter behind glass and placed it in the display window, to the right of the photograph that sparked his brain with the idea for the studio’s name.

My official task at Studio Silvia was soon transformed. From photo assistant and makeup-responsible to coffee maker, backgammon player, and general waiter.

Your father tried to putter parallelly with a new artistic collection, but he had difficulty finding inspiration. He noticed that time was limited, that he had invested his wife’s patrimony in an uncertain photographic studio. The future suddenly seemed to glide uncertainly like a water slide.

In the summer of 1986, your day care was annulled to save economy. Instead you spent your time down in the studio in our company. Do you remember those summery days? Do you remember how your child arms helped us spread leaflets in the newly built shopping center, where many retail spaces still stood unrented? Do you remember how we let you sneak into the nursing home and nail leaflets onto the bulletin board? You worked very effectively, although your age was that of a child. And although your father perhaps did not pronounce it in your presence, he was very proud of you. Very, very proud.

Do you remember how we partook our lunches? How we assisted your father when he apart-took his camera? How we began to roar rude Arabic insultations after the customers who invaded the studio, encountered your father’s welcome greeting, and then for some bizarre reason returned out to the courtyard with a regretting exterior? And do you remember how you often imitated your father when he nervously drummed his fingers against the perpetually silent booking telephone; you drummed your small fingers in the exact same rhythm and your father lost his train of thought, silenced the drum, and regarded you, a copy of himself
when young, the same suspect imagination, the same speech-related problems. He lovingly patted your cheek. But the telephone continued its silent rest.

The economic success for Studio Silvia bided its time like a patient meter maid. Your father said:

“Do not worry, Kadir. This is a premier phase. Swedes bear a certain initial suspiciousness, particularly toward us Swedes who do not bear a Swedish appearance. But soon, anytime, our business will take off. In just a few weeks they will realize my artistic talent. Soon there will be lines and guest lists in order to access my photographic services.”

“What shall we do until then?”

“We wait.”

And we waited. With the ambition of patience we let the hours tick on while waiting for the assault of customers. To pass the time your father and I started to layer our backgammon games with nostalgic discussions. While you found your friendship with the neighborhood children, your father portioned his memories
of his father and the lostness he felt from having been abandoned. I also remember how he very poetically related his longing for his father despite that this father had never been his actual knowledge.

“Is this not bizarre, Kadir? That my soul feels perpetually hollowed. It has only become worse since I became a father. I thought the consequence would be diagonally opposite. How can a hollowness arise even though what I miss has never been experienced me? How can an emptiness cause pain? And how can one cure the pain that is caused by an emptiness?”

“I do not know. Have you tried exchanging these thoughts with your wife?”

“It does not work. I can’t. I do not know why. She still believes that Cherifa and Faizal are my real parents. And she knows nothing about the loan I owe you …”

Here we were interrupted by your storming income. With sweaty forehead, bare chest, and a long whip made of a string you whistled down the stairs and took shelter behind your father. A second later the door was opened by the master of the nearby flower shop. Furiously he sought after “the Turks who chased his grandmother’s cat with darts.” Your father hid your body effectively and pointed out that anyone who likened his son with a Turk would be afflicted with rumbling fists, understood? The flower master mumbled that “this neighborhood is really going downhill.” He excited the studio and you crawled, smiling, from your hiding place.

“Where were we?” I coaxed. But your father did not want to continue. He signaled in your direction and made me understand that this was
NOT
intended for your ears. Your father varied the subject:

“Anyway: I am very glad to have your company here in Sweden, Kadir. But I have to reveal you one thing. I have no possibility of returning your economy. Unfortunately. Not right now.”

“That pains me to hear.”

“It pains me to admit.”

“But my salary?”

“I will outpay your salary, I promise you that. With a certain delay. This studio’s success has perhaps not become as I had hoped. But I want to present you an offer: If you agree to postpone the repayment of the loan, I will offer you a golden exchange.”

“What? Free passport photos?” I sighed.

“No, much better. The possibility to learn the foundations of Swedish!”

“How can that benefit me?”

“Well, imagine. Swedish is a Germanic language with many international loan words. If only you know Swedish you will soon know German and Dutch and after that almost English.”

“So?”

“If you want to cultivate a future as a hotel owner you
MUST
learn many languages, particularly Swedish. Then you can return to Tabarka with perfect prerequisites for hotelish success. By the time I repay you my debt you can open the doors for your own hotel that tempts Nordic tourists. And Nordic touristettes. What do you say?”

“Well … I would probably rather choose to obtain my promised economy.”

Your father presented a face that looked so miserable that I immediately regretted my words.

“I lack that possibility, Kadir. Unfortunately. However, I can teach you the foundations of Swedish. This will further your future. And mine. Pernilla is frustrated that my static Swedish is never glistened to gold. And Swedish is the only language that works in Sweden. No other country I have afflicted has tied a greater worth to the perfection of language.”

“But … which other countries have you actually afflicted? Besides Tunisia?”

“Many upon many.”

“Which ones?”

“For example, Pernilla’s relatives in Denmark last summer. What do you say?”

“Okay,” I sighed.

Accompanied by the summer’s transformation into fall, your father and I begin to repeat Swedish personal pronouns, the intensifying of adjectives, and the mystery of prepositions. We memorize how all Swedish words referring to people and animals are noted with the indefinite form
“en,”
with the exception of
“ett barn,”
a child. We tame our tongues to the mystery of Swedish pronunciation, where there is a big difference between
u
and
y
. Migratory birds leave Sweden, green leaves become firishly red, the ground is frosted, the sandbox sand stiffens, and Stockholm loses its delicious odors. All while we note that some call Swedish “the language of twenty-nine letters” or “the language of breathing,” because
h
gives an actual exhalation instead of the muteness of French, and the inhaling sound with suck-formed lips indicates an affirmative response.

I want to describe what occurred with the following words underlined in a different form of text:

Swedish filled me. Expanded me. It harmonized every bodily particle.

Where did this emotion come from? Perhaps from your father. It was he who passionately spoke of the Swedish language. It was he who led my process, who delegated me his antique handouts from
Swedish for Immigrants
, who praised my encouragement and honored my storming progress. Sometimes he mumbled:

“You learn very easily, Kadir, very easily,” and this seemed to
fill him with a big dose of happiness (spiced with a shade of jalousie).

I said to your father:

“My conviction was first that you just wanted to teach me Swedish in order to postpone the payment of economy. But now it feels like I have waited my whole life to get to speak this language. It is as though my tongue is made for this. Not Arabic. Not even French. Swedishness is my destiny and my studies go as quickly as a dancing feather in hurricane winds. Don’t they? Is the learning equally simple for you?”

Your father hmmed forth his response to this question. This last part may surprise you but I must admit it: Sometimes I was given the emotion that your father learned more slowly than I. That something in his experiences blocked his learning.

The studio continued its empty echo during the fall. Your father’s invested photo equipment glistened almost unused, the telephone waited in silence, spiders wove webs in the darkroom. The studio’s photographic activity lay quietly in hibernation, and not even your mother’s friends left their beloved Södermalm to support the studio despite their eagerly expressed curiosity for what they called “the colorful, multicultural suburb.” I never really understood the meaning of this expression. The neighborhood in the vicinity of the studio was not particularly separated from the neighborhood in Hornstull where you localized your lodgings. The same rectangular box houses, the same brown house colors. The same brightly shining mailboxes, the same Konsum grocery, the same Apoteket sign. The same red-nosed alcoholics who sat mumbling on the benches outside Systembolaget. The same Assyrians who started the same pizzerias with the same clever Italian names. Sometimes I noticed that people from Södermalm truly enjoyed pointing out every crucial difference between “the suburbs” and “downtown.” Sometimes I thought that the situation was similar to when tourists in Tabarka enjoyed pointing out
the crucial difference between “the mystique of the Orient” and “the stress and pressure of the Western world.” And sometimes I was heaped, like your father, to frustration by people’s constant ambition of focusing on differences between people. Where does this infection come from? Can your memories of that fall offer any response?