You sit down at a café in the galleria, pick up your notebook and your good black pen. From here you have a good view of the people moving along walkways, in and out of the shops. Once you’ve sat here awhile, you notice a man, it’s the third time he has walked past you. He has a rosary in his hand and the same pants as Rozia’s dad and all the other men from your childhood. You realize this is how he spends his day when it’s raining or snowing—walking round and round the galleria closest to his home.
The train is heading north, stopping everywhere, picking up more and more people the closer to the big city you come. When you all finally arrive, it’s snowing and it’s wet, night even though it’s only four o’clock. Your mother has lost track of the other families you were travelling with, doesn’t know when they got off, thought you were all going to the same city. You and your siblings keep asking where you’re going and what you’re going to do next—turning to Mum just like you used to do at home—but unlike then Mum simply answers I don’t know or I don’t understand, says I can’t make sense of these signs and then wait a minute, I’ll see. Not until Gran exhausted sits down on the shiny floor of the station building and some guards approach her to ask her to stand up does Mum manage to get out some of the words she has memorized. She says that she’s a political refugee and this is her family, that she has been fleeing for months trying to reach this place and now she wants to seek asylum here. You pick up your bags and follow the guards into a room.
What sort of place is this? your sister says the first time you step through the doors of the refugee reception unit and see a large foyer with mirrors and a painting, a fringed green rug with a floral pattern, and a little farther on a sign pointing out the toilets. By the stairs are other families, who like you are waiting with their bags in a cluster, and in the distance a blond woman and a man are going through documents. Later your sister finds out that this was a conference hotel and it’s near to where she lives now, she can walk right over and have a look if she likes. I would never do that she says as the two of you sit at the kitchen table, drinking your afternoon tea. I’ve considered it you say and look out—but only so as to write about it one day and then remember the dining room and the laundry room, the grocery store, the motorway and the white girl who’d come by during the week to play while her parents, the owners of the facility, sat in their office.
Gran doesn’t dare ride the elevator up to the little room you’ve been issued and says we should always stick together as she’s getting dizzy on the big spiral staircase with the fringed floral rug. That night after dinner, you ride with her in the elevator up to the door of your shared room—just so she doesn’t get lost or stuck somewhere Mum says softly and from then on this is your job. Sometimes you don’t say a word until you’re outside the door to the room, but for the most part you talk about how bad those fish balls and potatoes tasted, that tomorrow it’ll have to be hard bread instead, how it scarcely matters anymore that it makes you sick to the stomach.
Every day your mum asks you kids to buy bread or milk and in this way gets you to go out awhile. But not after four o’clock she says one afternoon when you’ve suggested going to the grocery store to buy some soft drinks and a sponge cake. But it’s light out now, Mum your brother says and points to the April sun outside—and besides it might not have been racists who beat Hamid up, we talked yesterday and he said he didn’t see who they were, after all they came from behind he says. Even so Mum says, sitting on the bottom bunk with a pen and paper and a dictionary in hand—I want you all home by four.
So you weren’t born here? they ask during the third and final interview for the job you would very much like to have. No, I came here when I was six years old you say and fall silent. You know what’s going on, where the woman who asked the question is going with this. It’s very impressive, says the man who might become your boss, that you know so many languages and have managed so well, he says. On the way out of the interview he’ll tell you that the office has planned a business trip, that your language skills would be a perfect fit for the trip to the city with the corniche, that they’ll bear this in mind as they review the final candidates.
The caseworker will pick you all up from the refugee unit, give you train tickets and the document that includes a map and directions to the house where you will be living. Does it have a garden Gran asks—can you ask her if the house has a garden she asks turning to your sister and your sister asks the caseworker about it, speaks well, has taught herself just by watching TV and reading books at the library closest to the refugee unit. The caseworker says that the house has a small garden, yes, but the accommodation is temporary, which you must bear in mind. That’s all I need Gran says—I simply want to rest my hands in the earth a while she says, facing the caseworker, who does not understand.
The first night in the house you all stay up late, eating and drinking what little you brought with you. Mum lays out a blanket on the living room floor and sets out white cheese, bread and tea on the oven tray she found. Isn’t it lovely Mum then says—to be sitting here like we used to at home and looks outside at the summer evening.
That summer the five of you take long walks through the neighbourhood and down to the lake. None of us should have to ask anyone for directions Mum says, leading you down the pavement—in this country, you have to make your own way and that’s precisely what we’re going to do she says and takes a turn that leads to what will soon be your school.
It’s when you pronounce the word went that the teacher in the preparation course starts laughing. It’s a W sound, not a V, she says and draws all the children along with her. It’s your first day of school and Mum has plaited your hair shiny and tied it with bows that she had sewn from a shawl the night before. Later you don’t want to go to school, saying you don’t like that teacher and you want to go back to your real home, back to Rozia.
One evening Gran tries to bake sweet bread for you, to cheer you up. I can’t get my head around these ovens—ours were much faster and better she says, turning the knobs on the oven this way and that. Then when she opens the bag of flour, she notices that it’s brown. The flour, it’s brown she calls out to Mum. Then I’ve made a mistake Mum says and picks up the bag, tries to read it. It does say flour she says turning it around—isn’t this flour? and shows your brother who’s now standing next to her. Yes, but it says garham up here he says. No, it doesn’t says your sister, who has set her library book aside and stood up from her chair. It says graham she says, pointing. Oh, well yes it does Mum says and kisses you as you wait by the oven. Just double the sugar and it’ll be fine.
You come home with the school’s new weekly newsletter, give it to Mum. She calls to your sister and brother, asks them to read it as well, takes out the dictionary and a notebook. You ask if you can watch TV in the meantime and she says it’s fine, you can watch until bedtime.
Neither your sister nor your brother have to take a preparation course, there are no teachers for what this is, Mum says as she straightens the collars of their jackets and tosses a glass of water behind them as they go. When the homeroom teacher sees your brother sitting there among the other children in the room to which he has been directed, he comes over, asks, so who do we have here? Then he gives a mild laugh, says that there must have been a mistake, that he’ll accompany your brother to the principal’s office, who in turn can point him in the right direction. When they return from their visit to the principal, the homeroom teacher doesn’t say a word, shows your brother to where he was sitting just a moment before and asks the students to turn to chapter five.
Early in the morning when your mum leaves for her language course on the other side of the city, it falls to your sister to plait your hair. She tugs at it and doesn’t brush it out properly, uses rubber bands instead of bows and leaves you with flyaways. Then she has to help you with your jacket, roll up your pants, make sure you have your PE bag. When that’s done, she sits down in the hall, puts her head in her hands. Did we leave everything behind just so I could help some snot-nosed kid with stuff she should be able to do herself? she screams. You’re still standing there, waiting for her to take you to school.
On Saturday afternoons you and your siblings usually play soccer in the schoolyard nearest the house. Sometimes other children pass by, but none want to play when you all are there. Gran and Mum usually take a seat on the bench opposite, pour tea from the thermos and place sugar cubes on their tongues. What do you think of the earth in the yard Mum asks—do you think anything can grow there? Gran straightens her headscarf, waves as if to chase away a fly. I’ve put my hands in the earth several times she says—but I don’t feel anything. This has never happened to me before Gran says and puts the tea to her lips—the earth not speaking to me.
You call your mother to tell her that you got the job, that they’ve finally called with the news, that you start in two weeks. Cordial and sugar she cheers into the phone—date cakes and incense she says and asks you to come home immediately. Since you’ll be quitting that awful hourly job anyway she adds and you say you’ll miss your co-workers but certainly not the warehouse.
It’s your first winter in the house with the little garden, the darkness outside. Something hard hits the windows and your brother stands up, puts on his coat. After a while he comes back in, says he needs something to wipe off the dog shit from the window and the mailbox. In his hand is a blue-and-yellow sticker that he’s torn off, like the ones you’ve seen high up on lampposts around town.
The first time you correct your mother’s pronunciation in front of your white schoolmates, she speaks up, asks you to stop, reminds you that she can talk however she likes as long as she makes herself understood. You don’t understand why she’s angry, you just want her to learn and so you keep correcting her. After a while she doesn’t speak up anymore and instead starts talking about herself as being bad at the language, saying it like a joke at the start of every conversation with white people, that she talks a little funny and they should excuse her.
In the morning, right as your brother is changing after PE, his schoolmate yells that the locker room stinks of kebab sweat and eyes him. Do you always have to wear that same shirt, he says before he disappears—it’s ugly and rank and you look like a girl. Your brother is heading to woodworking two buildings away and the jacket Mum found at the secondhand shop doesn’t keep him warm as he runs across the schoolyard.
So there you are again, Gran you say when you get home from school and see her sitting by the kitchen window next to the radiator. She hugs you, says she’s managed to vacuum and mop too, but that the days are so long here and there’s nothing on TV. How many people have you seen go by then? you say, brushing the snow from your bangs. Three Gran says and pours tea to warm you both up.
In class everyone talks about Christmas, how wonderful it is, how you have to have a Christmas tree, don’t you have one? We celebrate our own holidays Mum says when you complain and besides, we can’t afford it right now. Nonetheless during the end-of-year sale she buys the loveliest Christmas tree you’ve ever seen and then your brother drives it home in a shopping cart you borrow from the supermarket. When you meet up with a schoolmate on the first day of school to play in the snow, you tell her that you have a Christmas tree now too, it’s really pretty and has a star on top. Hold on, she says—it’s too late for that now, Christmas is over.
Later, your mum tells you that the first thing she was told after talking about how she had been tortured in prison was that no one would hire a person like her. One eye missing, older and not entirely fluent—it’ll be tough, the caseworker had said.
Your new workplace has a beautiful façade, is centrally located. You get there at the stated time and ring the bell, are met by the assistant. Am I the first one here today? you ask and she laughs and says that you’ll probably be the first one here every day if you arrive at this hour. Nine-thirty will do, she says, and shows you to your desk. Later when you all return from your trip, you decide to make the desk space more your own, put up a postcard with an old image of the mountains behind the corniche from back when the corniche was open to the sea, as well as a picture of you and your gran on a summer’s day in the park.
You are ten years old the first time you scheme to get a notebook from the grocery store. Your family can’t afford anything but food and to get it you say that the teacher asked you to bring one to school, that it’s important, that everyone else has one but you and it’s embarrassing. You say you need it the very next day and in the moment—among the shelves crowded with batteries and erasers, rolls of tape and wrapping paper—you are fully aware that Mum doesn’t have the courage to call the school and check. Later, you set it aside, say it’s for Rozia, that she can have it as soon as she arrives.
Your sister has walked all the way home in the rain. As soon as she throws off her outer layers, she says she needs a shower, goes into the bathroom, disappears. As you pass by, you hear her crying in there, tell Gran, say she seems really sad, that the two of you have to do something. Gran says to leave her be, that your sister is having a hard time right now, that she misses her friends like you miss Rozia.
My friends actually get some of their kiddie cash, you know you say to your brother as you’re sitting around the kitchen table—he absorbed in a book and you with your sketchbook. It’s called child benefit, dummy, and I want you to stop talking about it—Mum barely has enough money for food he says without looking up.
For the first five years after you left, you celebrate Rozia’s birthday. You draw her a picture, which Mum puts in the mail, and then you eat chocolate pralines, her favourite. The next day you tell your schoolmate about the celebration and she responds by saying that she has a pen pal too, it’s Lisa in the parallel class, they exchange letters during the breaks sometimes.
Later Mum asks if you’d like some Easter decorations and if she should gather some twigs on the way home for you both to tie some fabric to. Isn’t that the kind of thing your schoolmates do? she repeats when you don’t respond. There’s no need you say after a while—the Christmas tree was enough, thanks.
You tell the office about your pregnancy, say that it’s unexpected but welcome and that you are looking forward to experiencing what many before you have also experienced. Have you thought about a name? your co-worker asks—there are lots of trendy ones these days. You say you don’t know, the only name that has come to mind is Rozia, who was your best friend. Does it come from the word for rose? he asks—is it the same in your language? It is you say but this particular name comes from the word for day. Ah-ha, he then says and laughs—Dayia.
The first time your grandmother finds out that the white schoolmates you’re having over would rather eat pancakes than her stew, she doesn’t understand. She stands at the stove happy to finally have a task, has already sliced the onions and potatoes, heated up the oil. You and Rozia liked my food she says quietly and you reply I still do, Gran, but could you please make pancakes today?
It’s spring and at your brother’s school everyone is talking about summer jobs. Your brother has applied for a dozen, doesn’t know what more he can do. The competition is tough, his white schoolmate says as they walk down the corridor to the cafeteria. So where are you working this summer? my brother asks, and he replies, with Dad.
What do you have in mind for the future? your sister’s teacher asks her at the end of the term. I’d like to qualify for university your sister says happily—to study history or geography, I’m not quite sure. Afterwards she tells you that her teacher said that was brave and ambitious, but perhaps she should consider becoming a day-care assistant instead, that she’d be well suited to it, since she’s already so considerate.
One day the teacher thinks it’s time for everybody to switch seats. She puts you next to the most popular girl in the class, who removes her hoodie and shows off the swastika she has carved into her forearm. When you tell the teacher about the swastika and ask for a different seat, she tells you that you’re just kids and the girl will grow out of it soon. Besides, isn’t it in fact a very good thing that she has the opportunity to sit next to you, since you can show her just how wrong she is about immigrants?
Later your mum gets a job as a middle school mother-tongue teacher and celebrates by buying you both ice cream. It’s only an hourly gig she says and I’m not working with high school students like back home, still it’s something she says and takes a bite of her cone. Before you leave the galleria, you persuade her to treat herself to a new shirt, saying she really can’t use the one she has on anymore, the collar is in tatters.
Your new boss asks you what you think about the destination of the business trip. He says he knows the city has been ravaged by the war, but the architectural solutions are so fascinating. The fact that buildings covered in bullet holes have been left standing among newly built hotels and skyscrapers along the corniche—doesn’t that just say everything about the world today? he says and looks at you. You reply that you find the trip problematic and that you don’t see the development of the city in the same way, that much of what is considered a solution is mostly the result of a country in deep crisis and that it feels odd to study a place like that without a critical eye. What a shame, he then says. Unfortunately we can’t change our destination at this stage, but perhaps you could compile a risk analysis for the trip? I think it might make everyone feel safer.
At your year-seven parent-teacher conference Mum shows up in the finest and most precious item she owns, a striped rabbit fur she received as a gift. A few year nines point at her and laugh, asking who the hell is that. Later on the walk home you take up a long lead, leaving her behind.
The first time your brother brings a white girl home, Mum and Gran cook up a storm, a proper feast of rice, salad and stews. Later they stop seeing each other. Your brother says her family was strange, he didn’t like them and it’s better this way. The third time things don’t work out with a white girl he finally tells it like it is—her father didn’t want her to be with an immigrant, and if she insisted upon it, she wouldn’t get her share of her grandmother’s inheritance.
Your sister moonlights as a day-care assistant, sometimes talking to the children in their shared language, laughing and joking around. At a weekly meeting, her co-worker asks if she has checked with the children’s parents if it’s okay—if she may speak a language other than the one spoken in this country, that is.
Sometimes when your schoolmates come over, Gran starts talking about Rozia. She does this after the friend has left, sees it as an opportunity to chat with you, thinks it will make you happy. Gran says do you remember how you and Rozia used to swing in her garden? or do you remember the time you two wanted me to sew you each a cape? For the most part you simply reply yes or I remember but on one occasion you get upset, say that your new friends are nothing like Rozia, that it’s not the same thing, that it’s boring when Gran only talks about what used to be.
Mum comes home and lies down on the sofa, falls asleep with her shoes on. Later she says that work wants her to expand her class, that more children have arrived who also need instruction in their mother tongue, that she has to take on another ten students.
You are sitting in the lunchroom at work, eating Mum’s dolma out of the lunchbox she packed for you the day before. Is that the kind of thing we’ll be eating on the corniche? your co-worker asks as she walks by—it smells divine. You say you don’t know, you’ve never been to that country before.
You are sixteen years old when your gran tells you about her dead children, the one she lost after only a few months and Halima, who made it to five and loved cherries and had the silkiest hair on the block. She fell ill after drinking from the well in the schoolyard she says calmly when you ask—that’s how senseless death is she says and takes you in her arms.
Hello, I am calling about my grandmother, she wants to make an appointment with a doctor to review her medication. … Yes, exactly, diabetes and high blood pressure. … Yes, she had that operation done in March of last year. … No, that’s not necessary, I’ll interpret.
It’s Saturday night. You and your brother are telling each other about your days. You do it exclusively in the new language, fast and without pause, and Mum tries to follow. After a while she gets up from the sofa, switches the TV off, goes to bed.
You sit by your uncle’s bedroll laid out on a rug during your first trip back. He is half-reclined, trying to reassure you that he wasn’t always this worn out, telling you about how strong he was as a young man, that he’d work twelve hours straight carrying sacks back and forth across the market and that he did it every day. Between sentences he coughs, turning away so as not to bother you. Upon homecoming, you try to explain what you’ve experienced, how the house you so often visited as a child was unchanged, how there have never been sofas or beds there and how much you like that that’s how it is. Your white friend looks at you and says that’s great, even though she herself couldn’t take it—if she so much as looks at a bedroll, she gets bruises.
At lunch your sister’s co-worker asks if she was forced into her marriage. Well, I mean, I’ve read about how that kind of thing happens in your culture, she says—that you, as it were, don’t get to choose. Later your sister says she’d wanted to ask if the woman’s husband tends to travel overseas in order to buy children—I’ve heard that happens in your culture, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t your sister tells you on the phone—I can’t afford to leave this job, plus I only have to see that racist hag twice a week so it’s fine.
Your gran talks about all the beautiful dresses she sewed in addition to the bedspreads and quilts, the curtains and tablecloths. She says the women from the other side of town would see a dress on TV and bring it to me, ask me to sew one up for them, give me some fabric and some thread, and then it was done. She talks about different styles and fabrics as the two of you walk around the clothing shop and the assistant eyeing you adjusts hangers that don’t need adjusting.
The day before you go off on your business trip, Mum spends the night, tells you about everything you need to bear in mind, that you mustn’t walk too much no matter how many buildings they want to study and that you must eat enough, drink enough, sleep well. Don’t buy too many books or earrings she says as well as don’t sit in tobacco smoke, not even on the corniche. You ask if she wants a souvenir from there and she says absolutely not and that’s when you know exactly what to bring back for her.
The nurse who admits your mum asks your sister if it’s essential that she accompany her—no need for a family reunion in the ER, she says, opening the door. But I’m on my own your sister says—and she’s my mother.
Your brother has sent the manuscript of his novel to a publisher, is in high spirits as he talks about it. They’re into it he says—but they think it’s too soft, that there’s not enough of me in it or of today’s harsh realities. He plops down on the sofa next to you, puts his feet up just like you. I don’t understand you say after a while—do they want to know more about what it’s like to be a physicist today?
You go through a long period of unemployment and usually have no more than 700 kronor left after paying for a bus pass and all the bills. You meet your white friend at a café, reasoning that you can spend 30 kronor on a coffee if you sneak in some biscuits from home to eat on the sly. Your friend talks about her weekend, about her mother coming to visit, her vacant pied-à-terre. Your friend is considering moving in now that it’s no longer a shared apartment, but thinks renting from her parents is a drag.
Your mum is sitting at the computer, trying to figure out what to do with the document she got from her employer. Thank you for taking the time, darling she says as you try to determine why she hasn’t yet received the money for her sick leave. The caseworker said I need to log in to My Pages she says but what do I do next? and searches the screen.
Once you’ve landed in the city you tell your boss that you never imagined the mountains would be so big and so close. And that the plane would fly right alongside them you say and that the corniche would be so bright! Yes, your boss says proudly—isn’t it fantastic?
None of your white friends have wanted to hear any of your memories from the war. It hits you one day as you’re sitting with one of them, listening to him talk about how he used to pick berries with his grandmother as a child. He goes into minute detail, pulling out photos from when he was in the bilberry patch in the woods, one where he is sticking out his tongue, pulling a face. Yes, but my friend Rozia was found in the rubble after a bombing, what do you think about that? you say and wait for him to respond.
I’m hearing that you’re functioning in your daily life, is that right? the psychiatrist asks your sister at the end of her assessment. Well, yes, I am your sister says—but I have memories of the war that make me feel very bad, I need help dealing with them, it’s having an impact on my children she says. Later she begins again, calls the health centre, is again asked to describe her troubles.
Your gran’s last wish is to not be buried in this earth, to be allowed to go back home. She says she should at least in death be allowed to rest in the arms of her ancestors—this is all she wants now, it is her only thought. Afterwards none of you know what to say.
Your brother and his friend argue about political consciousness. His friend says it’s not his fault he grew up in a welfare state where neither he nor his parents had to take a major political stand. The Vietnam War, apartheid, colonialism and segregation were also there for your parents to take a stand on your brother says—they just didn’t give a shit, when are you going to see that?
In the coffee shop at one end of the galleria, your mum is talking loudly on the phone about the validity of the independence referendum. A white woman stops demonstratively, watches her. After a while I turned around and asked, what do you want? Mum tells you on the phone when you call home from the hotel a few streets away from the corniche. You have to understand that people like her are to be pitied Mum says shortly afterwards—their ignorance, how little they’ve experienced in life. Later that same night you’ll have dinner with your co-workers, and as soon as you’ve hung up, you take out your velvet dress, put your hair up. It’s a spot the hotel recommended and is supposed to have a stunning view of the ocean and serve mostly organic produce from around the mountains, your boss tells you later as you’re all walking up the long road, the sea and sky dark against the glittering corniche.