Montecore

Thanks, Mami, Baba, Hamadi, Lotfi

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!

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 themselves 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: