Everything I Don't Remember (10 page)

“I think it’s her salary that’s the problem. In the application it says she will only earn thirteen thousand kronor per month.”

“But I’m the one who helped her,” Laide said without waiting for her client to respond. “We were told that thirteen thousand was the minimum.”

“According to the rules, that’s too little if you write that you work full time.” Samuel lowered his voice and looked around. “Perhaps Zainab here can work a little less
from now on? For example, if she could consider
writing
that she works at eighty percent for the same salary, there is a
very good
chance that her application will go
through.”

He said it in that slow way you say things when you want it to be clear that what you want to say is different from what you’re actually saying. Laide looked at him and smiled.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

They kept standing there in the parking lot. None of them quite knew how to end things.

“Was there anything else?” Laide asked.

“No.”

The client thanked Samuel, Samuel thanked the interpreter, everyone shook hands and said goodbye and instead of asking all those questions he’d been hoping to get into (who are you, where
do you live, where are you from, what’s your favorite tea, what’s your personal definition of love, when will we meet again and what is your phone number) Samuel swiped his access card
and took the elevator back up to his office.

*

Nihad continued:

“The frying pan was nearby, I could have reached it but I didn’t, I could have bitten off his tongue, but I didn’t do that either, I let him start, when it didn’t work he
swore and said cruel things about my body, he said it was too disgusting, that I was too fat, that no one would ever want me. Then he propped himself above me and touched himself until he came,
most of it landed on him, only a little got on me, he told me to lick it up but I couldn’t reach it with my tongue, then he grabbed my tongue and yanked it, then he kissed me, then he said I
was too disgusting to touch, then he left, he walked toward his car, I kept lying there, I heard the elevator as it went down to street level, I heard the beep from his car, the engine when he
turned the key, then it idled for a minute or two and then he drove off, he was gone, I kept lying there.”

*

The office was exactly as Samuel had left it before lunch. The copy-machine smell. The whiteboard. The desk. The plastic plants. The pale gray computer screen with stickers left
behind by the person who worked there before him. And Samuel. Who suddenly, there in his office, felt as natural as a bear on a skateboard. He had a hard time sitting still, he was sweating, he
felt like the walls were closing in on him, he wanted to get away, get out, move on. Finally he opened the case again, he saw that the contact person-slash-interpreter was named Laide. He entered
her number into his phone.

*

Silence for a few seconds, then the policeman’s voice:

“Can you ask her to clarify if the act was consummated?”

“She says it was not consummated.”

“Can you ask her to describe in what way she resisted?”

“She says she was too afraid to resist.”

“Why didn’t she come in right away?”

“She was scared.”

“Can you explain to her that I am more than willing to make a report? I definitely think we should report it. But can you tell her there is a risk that this case will not
proceed?”

“Do it yourself.”

“You’re the interpreter.”

“But she can understand you.”

“Yes, but I don’t think she understands me as well as you do.”

“I don’t think I understand you.”

“Please, this is not a judgment on my part. I’m not a lawyer, and you’re not a lawyer, and she’s not a lawyer, right? So I’m sure we can agree that it’s up to
the lawyers to determine what happened here, can’t we?”

Nihad’s voice: “What did he say?”

Me: “That it’s going to be difficult.”

Her voice: “But I know where he lives, I have his address, although I think he gave me a fake name.”

Me: “I understand that, but I’m not sure if he understands that.”

Her: “His blood is still on the sofa.”

The policeman’s voice: “What did she say?”

Her: “What did he say?”

Me: “He’s a fucking idiot.”

Her: “I know.”

Me. “Is there anyone else you can talk to?”

Her: “I don’t know, I’m so, I’m so, I don’t know what to do.”

Him: “What did she say? Can you try to get her to calm down? I know it’s hard, but it’s no help to anyone for her to act like this.”

Me: “Say you want to speak to a female police officer.”

Her: [moaning, crying, snuffling]

Him: “What did she say?”

Me: “That she would like to speak with a female police officer.”

Him: “She said that?”

Me: “Yes. She wants to speak with a female police officer.”

Him: “Are you aware that this conversation is being recorded?”

Me. “She wants to talk to someone else.”

The policeman sighs, a chair is pushed back, a door opens.

Her: “What did you say to him?”

Me: “That you want to talk to a female police officer.”

Her: “What will happen to me if I file a report?”

Me: “We’ll have to ask her. You have to talk to someone else, someone who is on your side.”

Her: “Thanks.”

Me: “No problem.”

Her: “What do we do now?”

Me: “We wait.”

*

Later that same night we were sitting in our shared kitchen, talking through what had happened. Samuel described (for the fourth time) what she had said and what he had said and
what she had been wearing and how beautiful she was.

“The energy in that parking lot was extremely special. I swear, man, it wasn’t just in my head. She must have felt it, I swear she felt it.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Don’t know. What do you think?”

“No idea. But I would lie low if I were you.”

“Why?”

“I think it would be best that way.”

That was the best answer I could come up with, and I don’t know why I said it. I just answered with what I felt there and then. It isn’t the right time for Samuel to meet someone, I
thought. Not now. Not her.

*

While we waited, Nihad said that her husband had accepted her decision to divorce him. He had never hit her. He was a good man who was being trained as a cook in a lunch
restaurant in Nacka. But she would never be able to tell him about this. She had left him to be free and she had been allowed to borrow the apartment temporarily because she was desperate and now
the sofa was ruined and the man who called himself Bill knew where she lived and . . . She started crying again. I explained to her that since she was here on her husband’s permit there was a
risk that she would be taken to a detention facility and be sent back now that she had confessed that her relationship with her husband was over.

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. But if I were you I would get out of there. Fast.”

*

But was Samuel listening? Did he trust his best friend’s gut feeling? No, a few days later I came out of the shower and found Samuel at the kitchen table.

“Okay. Okay okay okay,” he called, half happy, half panicked. “I just did it. I pressed ‘send.’ I texted her!”

“Who?”

“Her. The contact person. The interpreter. I went the work route. I said thanks for last time and asked her to contact me if her client needed any more assistance. Best, Samuel, Migration
Board.”

“You said thanks for last time?”

“Yeah, was that weird or something?”

“That’s what you say after you’ve been to a party. Not when you’ve had a random encounter in a parking lot.”

“Oh, but . . . It felt like the right thing to . . . I don’t know.”

I poured a cup of coffee, I looked out at the courtyard. An empty playground, the swings were moving gently in the wind like absent-minded leaves.

“So has she responded?”

“Not yet. But it was a good text. I wrote lots of drafts. Want me to read it to you?”

“No thanks,” I said.

But I didn’t say it in a mean way, I just informed him that I wasn’t all that curious to learn the exact contents of his text. Then I went to my room to get ready for the workday.
Samuel was still sitting at the kitchen table when I came back out. He was still bare-chested, his twig-like arms held the phone, his eyes were focused on the screen.

“But of course it could be taken ironically as well.”

“What can?”

“Thanks for last time. Maybe she’ll see it and think it was a joke. Was it stupid to sign off with ‘best’? Is that too impersonal? I should have written out a whole
greeting—‘best wishes, Samuel, Migration Board.’ Or maybe I should have ended with ‘all my best.’ Or ‘xoxo’? What do you think? Would it have been too much
to—”

I closed the front door and pressed the elevator button. If I had been able to put a stop to it all there and then, I would have. I had a bad feeling about it. But the pinball of fate was
rolling and nothing could stop it.

*

Of course it was unusual. I had no right to give Nihad legal advice. I had only heard what had happened to other women in similar situations. Maybe it was different for Nihad. I
don’t know. But I asked for her number and called her right away from my personal phone and we talked as she stood up and left the room. I heard the sound of doors and running steps, elevator
dings and two voices talking about a soccer match (“it was like total fucking pyrotechnics!”). Then the rubber-squeaking sound of her shoes against the hallway floor as she ran for the
exit, her breathing, the scraping sound of her jacket collar, someone (a taxi driver?) calling out a last name, he said it slowly and tiredly, as if he had been standing there in the hospital
entryway calling the same last name since the dawn of time. Then birds chirping and car engines and wind and creaking brakes and the hissing sound of opening bus doors.

“I’m out.”

Before we hung up, I promised to help her apply for a work permit.

*

Three days went by. Three days in which Laide didn’t respond to Samuel’s text. A normal person would have realized that it was time to let go and move on. But not
Samuel. To him, the fact that he didn’t receive an answer was a sign that it was really
her
, she was
the one
. Four days after Samuel’s first text he asked if he could come
with me to the gym.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Yes. I need to get some exercise. It’s been a long time.”

“How long?”

“Oh. Eight or nine years.”

Samuel came down the stairs to the gym changed and ready. I understood. I would have done the same thing if I had arms as strong as spider webs and thighs as thick as candles. He was wearing a
pair of purple sweatpants with cuffs, a T-shirt from a music festival, and two sweatbands dangling from his wrists like bracelets.

“Wanna get going?” he asked. “I was thinking of starting with the jump rope.”

And there’s nothing wrong with warming up by jumping rope, but it all depends on the way you jump with your jump rope. If you have control of your body and mix single jumps with double
jumps while dancing like a boxer, it’s okay. Samuel jumped rope like he was back in the schoolyard. His feet got caught in the rope, he started over, people stared at him, people shook their
heads. But the crazy thing was, I wasn’t ashamed. I liked that he was there. And since he was there with me, no one dared to say anything. But Samuel sure was talkative. As I worked through
my program, he commented on the brands of kettlebells, he asked if I thought the sounds coming from the stereo were happy or sad, he wondered if I thought Laide would answer his text today or
tomorrow or next week. A lot of the time I let his questions hang in the air, I was focused on doing my own thing, it didn’t mean I wasn’t listening to them, but sometimes there were so
many of them that it was enough to respond to every other one.

*

The calls kept coming. I translated for moms who needed help being informed why their applications for housing assistance had been denied. Men who wanted to appeal an assault
verdict. Teens who wanted help with an EU application for a cultural grant for a Palestinian music festival in Norsborg. Women who had been abused, raped, burned with cigarettes. Men who complained
of discrimination in the housing market and the job market and when they tried to register the discrimination with the Ombudsman for Discrimination they were discriminated against there too. Women
whose shins were kicked in half, whose eyes swelled closed. Women who pointed at the scars on their chins to show where the dog had bitten them. Women who said that when he was driving drunk I
wasn’t allowed to put on my seatbelt, when I took a second helping he forced me to eat cat food, when my colleagues asked about the bruises he started pulling my hair. Women who said that he
had a routine, he locked the security door with a police lock, he put a particular song on the stereo, he whistled along with the melody as he found his gloves. Then he came in and started. The men
were lawyers from Jämtland, Finnish-born triathlon medalists, Swedish TV personalities. The men were Syrian fruit sellers, Belgian violinists, Skåne alcoholics. But the men were
unimportant. The men were superfluous. It was the women I wanted to help.

*

We kept working out. I went for upper body, Samuel did push-ups, four regular ones, the rest on his knees (!). He looked over toward the treadmills and suddenly stopped
talking.

“What is it?” I asked.

“See the guy in the red tank top? Shit, I think that’s Valentin.”

“
That’s
Valentin?”

I could hardly hold back my laughter. The guy Samuel had described as the terror of the school was as muscular as an earthworm. He had the threatening posture of a croissant. He looked like he
might be able to pet a kitten pretty hard.

“Where are you going?” Samuel called.

I wasn’t even aware that I was doing it, but I was, I was heading for the guy in the red tank top. I flexed my neck first to the left and then to the right.