Montecore Read online

  This is a Borzoi Book

  Published by Alfred A. Knopf

  Translation copyright © 2011

  by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Originally published in Sweden as Montecore: En Unik Tiger by Norstedts, Stockholm in 2006.

  Copyright © 2006 by Jonas Hassen Khemiri.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Khemiri, Jonas Hassen, [date]

  [Montecore. English]

  Montecore : the silence of the tiger / by Jonas Hassen

  Khemiri; translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles.

  —1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  Originally published in Stockholm as Montecore en unik Tiger.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-59532-4

  1. Tunisians—Sweden—Fiction.

  2. Immigrants—Sweden—Fiction. 3. Sweden—Fiction.

  I. Willson-Broyles, Rachel. II. Title.

  PT9877.21.H46M6613 2011

  839.73′8—dc22

  2010023510

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket illustration and design by Chris Silas Neal.

  v3.1

  Thanks, Mami, Baba, Hamadi, Lotfi

  They just think I’m a strange tiger who walks on two legs.

  ROY HORN, of tiger-taming duo Siegfried & Roy

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Hello, dear reader, standing there skimming in the book boutique! Let me explicate why time and finances should be sacrificed for this particular book!

  Let us together visionate how the world’s best dad, and superhero of this book, wanders white-costumed on his luxurious loft’s rooftop terrace in New York. Shadows of birds soar over the reddening sky, taxi horns fade away, and in the background bubbles a gigantic Jacuzzi.

  Our hero observes the swarms of Manhattan. The wind flutters his virile ponytail while his mind memorizes his life. The paltry upbringing at the orphanage in Tunisia, the relocation to Sweden, and the battle for his career. Excellent photo collections, frequent disappointments, repeated betrayals. Accompanied by the sun’s sinking and the Jacuzzi bubbles’ sprinkling, he smiles at the thought of his career’s late success.

  Then suddenly his nostalgic shimmer is broken. Who are those balloon-bearing surprise guests who, cheering, are exiting his personally installed elevator? Photographic equilibrists like Cartier-Bresson and Richard Avedon are waving. Intellectual prominences like Salman Rushdie and Naomi Klein are being welcomed. Bighearted world consciences like Kofi Annan and Sting are arriving. Champagne corks levitate toward the sky as servers roll out a gigantic cake glazed with his name. Before the night is over, a leather-draped Bono will salute his fiftieth birthday with an acoustic version of “Even Better Than the Real Thing.”

  Our hero tears his eyes and thanks his friends. How was this cosmic success reached by a paltry, parent-free boy?

  Invest your ticket immediately in the book’s journey and you will learn!

  PART ONE

  Dearest greetings!

  Divinate who is writing you these phrases? It is KADIR who is snapping the keys!!!! Your father’s most antique friend! You memorize me, right? My hope is for your eagerly bobbing head. The year was numbered 1986 when I afflicted you in Stockholm: your smiling mother, your newly landed small brothers, your proud father with his fresh photo studio. And you who assisted your father’s and my learnings in the Swedish language. Do you memorize our rules of grammar? At that time you were a corpulent, linguistically gifted boy with a well-developed appetite for ice cream and Pez candy. Now you are suddenly an erected man who shall soon publish his premiere novel! Praise my gigantic congratulations! Oh, time ticks quickly when one has humor, no?

  Your house of publishing has corresponded your e-mailbox to me and I’m writing to interpellate if you have been given the gift of any news of your father. Do you know where he localized himself in all of this? Is your relation as tragically silent as it has been for the past eight years? Your father and I stood steady in friendship until a month ago, when he suddenly stopped responding my e-mails. Now my breast is heaped with an obstinate unease. Has he been kidnapped by the CIA and taken to Guantánamo Bay, draped in an orange coverall? Has he been abducted by the Mossad? Is he a prisoner of Nestlé in retaliation for his revealing photographs of their slavelike factories in Paraguay? All of these alternatives are fully potential since your father has grown to a very strong political prominence. Since his relocation from Sweden, his photographic career has been glistened to a goldish success!

  In recent years he has toured the world around with his camera as a political weapon. His lodgings are localized in a luxurious loft in New York; his bookshelves are occupied by intellectual contemporary literature, and his time is passed with global world-improvers like the Dalai Lama and Bruce Geldoff. On free evenings he takes part in peace conferences or gallops the avenues in his violet Mercedes 500SL with leather upholstery and an interactive rain drier.

  Write me … is your success equivalent to your father’s? Has your bookly contract transformed you into a millionaire or a billionaire, or just secured a few years’ safe economy? Are literary equilibrists like Stephen King and Dan Brown close friends, or just formally acquainted colleagues? How much muff can one stuff as a soon-to-be-published author? Are you offered perfumed panties daily in correspondence? Please respond me when time is accessible to you.

  I, too, have had literary dreams. For some time I projected a biography devoted to your father. Unfortunately, my ambition was handicapped by gaps in knowledge and blasé houses of publishing. Before the writing of this message, my brain was suddenly radiated with an ingenious idea: How would you consider forming your father’s magical life in your secondary book?

  Let us collide our clever heads in the ambition of creating a biography worthy of your prominent father! Let us collaborate in the production of a literary master opus that attracts a global audience, numberous Nobel prizes, and possibly even an invitation to Oprah Winfrey’s TV studio!

  Correspond me very soon your positive response. You will NOT condole yourself!

  Your newly found friend,

  Kadir

  PS: In order to moisten your interest in my proposition I am attaching two Word documents. One is adequate as a prologue to our book; the secondary forms your father’s childhood. I recognize your father’s antique unwillingness to detail his history for you. But believe me when I write: If he had only been able to, he would have portioned much more. And if he only knew your coming novel, he would be shining ample avenues with radiant pride.

  Once upon a time there was a village in western Tunisia that was named Saqiyat Sidi Yusuf. Here my birth was localized in the fall of 1949. Here I lived in familyesque idyll until 1958, when a tragic accident terminated my father’s, my mother’s, and my four younger siblings’ lives. Unfortunately-located bombs from the colonial powers’ Frenchmen in Algeria chanced themse
lves down onto our village on their hunt for FLN sympathizers. Sixty-eight people died and as a consequence I became family-free. A friend of the family transported me to the city of Jendouba and the house where the generous Cherifa and amiable Faizal accepted my entrance into their unofficial orphanage for anticolonial martyrs.

  Has your father exposed you the skeleton that remains of this house? It is localized in Jendouba’s eastern district, not far from the sculpture park and the now-defunct cinema. There were two dormitories with turquoise shutters and decorative black bars. There was a kitchen and a dining hall, a schoolroom with uneven double benches and a worn chalkboard, as well as complete colonies of nightly ticking cockroaches.

  Already at this historical time, Cherifa’s heart was as big as her backside was wide. Her gigantic belief in potentials could compete only with her burning hate for the Frenchmen’s task as spreaders of civilization. Faizal, Cherifa’s husband, was a timid village teacher who, as compensation for his inability to sexually reproduce, had authorized his wife’s care of solitary martyr children. My lodging was partaken with the large muscley brothers Dhib and Sofiane, whose parents had been murdered by the method of attack against FLN terrorists that the Frenchmen comically dubbed “des ratonnades” (rat hunts). Lodged in the room beside mine were Zmorda and her sister, Olfa, whose parents had been found dead with sabotaged fingernails and flambéed skin from electric shocks. Also there were the hearing-impaired Amine; Nader, who had one leg shorter than the other; and Omar, with a high-strung belly which gave nightly discharges of gas. All of their parents and siblings had been erased as a consequence of the French troops’ effective hunt for suspicious terrorists. [N.B.: Do not place a tragic weight on the children’s stories in the book. Focus on your father’s mysterious arrival rather than the million dead in the wake of France’s spreading of civilization. (Certain eggs must be decapitated for a delicious omelet.)]

  My premiere rendezvous with your father was installed in the end of 1962. In many ways the morning was ordinary. I lay, wakened early, on my mattress as Sofiane mooed his snores and Omar released flatulence. I heard Cherifa’s morning body as it shuffled its steps toward the garden to gush the water pump. And then suddenly … in between two hoarse-throated rooster melodies … a knock at the door. First faint and fluttery. Then stronger.

  Cherifa went toward the door, mumbling; I levitated myself and followed her steps. The door was turned out toward the sunlight of the dawn and on the outside stood …

  Your father.

  Here his age was that of a small twelve-year-old, his arms twiggily thin and his black hair a burred outgrowth. His shirt bore reddish traces of vomit and his body vibrated in the sunlight. Cherifa interpellated him his errand. Your father separated his dry lips and gesticulated his arms like a desperate bird. He hacked his throat and rattled up hoarse sounds. But no words were pronounced. I remember how he himself looked very disbeliefed at his muteness.

  The limit for Cherifa’s sympathy was more than reached. The house was topped and she had guaranteed Faizal that NO more martyr children would be saved at his expense. But how could she act? Should she return this poor mute being to the street? While she contemplated her decision your father presented her a well-folded envelope. She gaped its contents and quickly aired her lungs as when the water in the shower suddenly becomes ice-cold. She immediately conducted your father into the cool shadow of the hall. What did your father delegate to Cherifa? My guess is an explaining letter. Or a generous sum of finances.

  While Cherifa looked to the envelope’s contents as though to guarantee that she had not misestimated the substance, your father’s eyes mirrored mine. I erected my safe hand against his spongy one, and calmed his nervous eyes with a sparkling white welcome smile.

  “My name is Kadir,” I auctioned. “Welcome to your new home!”

  “…,” responded your father.

  “Um … what?”

  “…”

  Your father regarded me with questioning eyes. It was as though black magic had blocked his speech. In reality, it was a natural shock consequence of a nightly explosion, a mother’s death, a confused flee, and the emotion of being the absolute solitariest in the world. I patted your father’s shoulder and whispered:

  “Don’t worry, you are at home here.”

  In the book, this scene must be filled with great dramatic gunpowder and symphonic bass tubas.

  Write:

  “So here they are. My father and Kadir. The hero and his escort. Kadir, who will follow my father’s fate forever, kind of like how Robin follows Batman or the Negro in Lethal Weapon follows Mel Gibson. They are two newly found best friends who will never break each other’s promises.”

  [Maybe you can then form two soaring birds out in the dawning sky who meet and smile their beaks at each other and then sail away toward Kroumirie Mountain. (That would be like a symbol of our initiated friendship.)]

  Your father and I quickly knotted our band of friendship into a beautiful, wordless rosette. Already on the first day we parked our bodies on the same double bench when Faizal performed lessons. At lunch I showed how one hid one’s sweets under one’s shirt so as not to attract the older boys’ jealousy. During siesta I uttered many questions about his origin, which he tried to answer, but … his tongue still did not work. He waved his arms. He exposed me to a black-and-white photo depicting a suited man being suppered with two Europeans. He let me hold a gnarled chestnut. But not one word was pronounced by his lips. For that reason he was soon nicknamed ironically with the Arabic equivalent of “the one who talks as much as one who has swallowed a radio.”

  Your father’s muteness grew Cherifa’s sympathy. He became her new favorite and he assisted her often with domestic assignments. She tried to cure his muteness by constantly conversing him. She discussed heaven and earth, weather and wind, village rumors and relations, scandalous pepper prices, and erotic neighbor visits.

  Jealous of the active attention that your father got from Cherifa, Faizal began to plow his palms with hard, punishing blows of the cane. He anticipated moans from your father, but all that happened was that your father’s palms reddened, bled, and were scarred into stable scabs. Your father’s muteness was intact. (Incidentally, isn’t it bizarre that your father’s speech problem was later inheritaged by you? For you must remember what problems you had expressing simple letters like r and s in your childhood?)

  Let the date now leave the spring for the fall before the next winter. Let the frost enshroud the yard, let the crickets become silent. Your father and I played wordless games, partook sunflower seeds, spied on the water-fetching girls of the district. We developed an advanced sign language that only we understood.

  Your father’s nights were still perspiring wakes, memories of a mother’s screams, sparks and fiery roars and nightly crossed borders. Frequently the tears welled his eyes with mental pictures that always bore the character of indistinctness. I tried to comfort his tears but only certain sorrows are comfortable. Others are not. This is the tragic fact of life.

  Here I propose that you inject some of your own memories from your yearly vacations in Tunisia. If you fear needing to compete with my metaphoric magnificence you can vary your font. Do you memorize anything from Jendouba?

  Sure you remember Jendouba …

  The city in western Tunisia where Dads grew up. The city where wrinkly, straw-hatted farmers sit crookedly on horseback and red trailers rattle iron bars. You remember the hectic souk, hajjis who bite together their white veils with their teeth, the movie theater where they showed Chinese kung fu films with German subtitles.

  You remember the pounding at the hamam, the eternal rubbing out of sweat dirt, Dads’s hairy bodies, and then go home on the truck bed with cactuses whizzing by and stacked mountains of garlic.

  But your strongest memory is Grandma Cherifa, who was so fat she always went sideways through the doors. Cherifa, who welcomed you with a pat and called you felouse and always pinched your spare tire to
check your subcutaneous fat and always scolded Dads because you were practically starved to death from all the strange Swedish food. And you remember Grandpa Faizal, the retired village teacher with a doctor’s bag who always defended Jendouba and maintained that the city actually has a lot in common with New York. Both cities are quite near rivers, for example. Both cities are run by idiots. Both cities have yellow taxis. Both cities have big garbage problems. And both cities are hard to get lost in—New York has its grid system and we have our brilliant alphabet system—and then Faizal smiles so his white mustache becomes an extra smile on top, because he certainly doesn’t need to explain whose cousin it was that thought up Jendouba’s street system …

  And both cities have also earned a long list of nicknames. New York has “the Big Apple,” “the Melting Pot,” “the World’s Capital,” “the City That Never Sleeps.” Jendouba has “the Asshole,” “the Armpit,” “the Sauna,” “the Colon,” “the Donkey’s Ass,” “the Grill,” “the Fireplace,” “the Oven,” or maybe Dads’s ironic “the Freezer.” And it’s only when Dads want to be a little extra academic that he says that you will be spending the summer in “Anus Rectum.”

  And you remember all of Dads’s friends. The journeys home from the airport in Omar’s 1960s Mercedes with taped hubcaps, the welcome-home couscous with Olfa’s family, Amine’s roaring greetings, Zmorda’s warm lap. Everyone’s sighs when Nader starts to brag, as usual, about that tailor who believe it or not sews pants with legs of different lengths at no extra cost. And you remember so incredibly much more, the tattoos on Sofiane’s gigantic biceps, Dhib’s left arm that’s always extra brown from all the sunny hours in the taxi, the nights sleeping on the roof, and the smell of just-washed sheets, hookahs with apple flavoring, and just-baked cookies from Emir’s factory. Twilight on the medians of the downtown streets, where you sit with Grandma and break off pieces of watermelon with a splitting sound, spitting seeds at passing cars, waving at Dhib’s taxi, enticing him with the pulp while the light pink watermelon juice runs slowly down your forearm. But the question is, does any of this belong in the book about your father? Presumably not. Presumably it’s better to let Kadir steer in the beginning … because of course you remember Kadir, too. Dads’s best friend. The woman-hungry compliment sprinkler in a violet suit who visited your family in Sweden in the middle of the eighties and left in a fury for reasons you don’t remember. What was it that really happened?