Read Online Everything I Don't Remember by Jonas Hassen Khemiri - Free Book Online Page B

and more often he would say:
    “To love.”
    Even though both of us were single. He talked about Panther more and more often, he was annoyed that she wouldn’t answer his emails, he said we should go down to Berlin and visit her.
    “We were as close as you can be without being together, and now suddenly she’s gone.”
    But every time I wanted to book a trip, he put it off.
    *
    I moved home to Sweden in the spring of two thousand ten. I had gone back and forth like fifty times. Weekend visits, friends’ wedding, Dad’s sixtieth birthday. All
the trips were the same. When I was little I loved to fly. Mom used to sit next to me and say that I was steering the plane, that it was up to me to take care of all the technology. When we backed
out of the gate I was the one who did it by twisting the knob that held up the tray, and when we started the engines I was the one who gave them fuel by pushing on the recline button and to take
off I had to push the recline button and turn the tray knob at exactly the same time. Then the plane would get up to cruising speed and then we could turn on the autopilot and retract the landing
gear by turning the tray knob and pushing on the recline button.
    *
    Mostly, of course, we hung out together. But sometimes Samuel got the idea that he should go on a date. He met girls with names like Malin-slash-Esmeralda-slash-Zakia. They
exchanged numbers, they went for coffee, they went out to eat. They were heading in a certain direction. Then a few weeks later I would ask how it was going with
Malin-slash-Esmeralda-slash-Zakia.
    “Oh, nothing came of that,” Samuel would say.
    “What happened?”
    “Malin and I went to the movies and the way she breathed was totally disgusting, it was like the air whistled when it went through her nose. At first I didn’t notice, but once I
heard it, it was impossible to stop thinking about it.”
    Or:
    “Esmeralda was nice but her parents are conservatives, I mean like they’re on the city council, and that’s not going to work. Plus she lives in Gärdet.”
    “So?”
    “It’s kind of far to go all the time.”
    Or:
    “I don’t know, Zakia and I never clicked. Yeah, we hung out a little but I was never quite there. Something wasn’t quite right, I don’t know what. Maybe it was the age
difference.”
    “Wasn’t she just two years younger than you?”
    “Mmhmm. But it felt like more. Plus she had an ugly purse.”
    *
    By now traveling was a boring routine, a tiresome waiting game. I hardly remember my trip home. But I remember that it felt weird to bring less luggage home with me than I had
had when I moved down. I had left most of my books behind, and a lot of clothes too. My belongings felt sullied somehow, they were part of a relationship that was over, they were a shell I had worn
for five years and now I was free.
    *
    At the same time, Samuel started sliding up to strangers at bars to ask about their definitions of love. People would be sitting there talking about the kinds of things people
talk about in Stockholm (how hard it is to find good skilled labor, good realtors, bad realtors, who earned what on a rental turned co-op-slash-sale-slash-bid) and without any sort of lead-in
Samuel would approach them and force whatever he wanted to talk about into the conversation. Like this:
    “A good tradesman can make you fall in love a little, and by the way, how would you define love?”
    Or:
    “I assume you end up with an intimate relationship with your realtor, almost as intimate as with a romantic partner. And how would you define . . .”
    I saw him do the same thing time and again. And the strange thing was that people answered him, everyone had their own definition. One taxi driver said that for him, love was a relationship that
always yields increased returns.
    “Like a bank account?” said Samuel.
    “Yes, but a damn good bank account. With amazing interest. And guarantee of deposits. Not one of these fucking huge banks, you