The Shadow Girls

17

The silence took Humlin by surprise.

No one asked Tea-Bag any questions. Had they heard all this before, or was her story a combination of everyone’s experiences? Had they even been listening? He didn’t know.

Tanya had been at the stove stirring something in a pot the whole time. When Humlin got up to fetch a glass of water he realised to his consternation that the pot was empty and the burner cold. Leyla sat with her watch in her hands, as if she had been timing Tea-Bag’s story.

‘Why don’t you ask her anything?’ Humlin finally asked.

‘Like what?’ Leyla said, continuing to stare at the watch.

‘Tea-Bag has just told you a remarkable and gripping story. She certainly doesn’t need to attend a writing seminar in order to learn that.’

‘I can’t write, though,’ Tea-Bag said. She had clearly worked up an appetite and was squeezing mayonnaise onto a piece of bread.

A phone rang. Humlin flinched, and even Tea-Bag reacted uneasily. The only one who seemed unaffected was Tanya, who seemed to be able to tell the rings of all mobile phones apart and even to detect if the caller was her enemy or not.

It was Leyla’s phone. She looked at the display and then handed it to Tanya.

‘It’s from home,’ she said. ‘Can you answer and say we’ve got our phones mixed up? Tell them you don’t know where I am.’

‘It’ll just cause trouble.’

‘Not any more than I’m already in. Go on — just answer it.’

‘No, you have to do it.’

‘I can’t. You don’t understand.’

‘I do understand. But you still have to answer.’

The phone continued to ring. It lay on the table and was sent back and forth across its surface like a half-dead insect. Humlin saw how afraid Leyla was when she finally grabbed it and answered in her own language. Humlin heard a man. He sounded extremely upset. Leyla initially hunched her shoulders at the sound of this voice but suddenly she straightened her back, shouted back at him and ended the conversation by banging the phone on the table until the battery cover came off. She yelled out something that Humlin didn’t understand, got up with clenched fists and then sank down on the chair again and started to cry.

Tanya had resumed stirring her empty pot. Humlin wondered if she were preparing an invisible meal for her daughter who was somewhere far away. Tea-Bag picked up the battery cover from the floor and put the phone back together.

Leyla stopped crying.

‘That was my dad.’

Tanya groaned.

‘Don’t go home. He’s not allowed to lock you up. Your brothers are not allowed to hit you.’

‘I can’t stay here. I can’t stay with my grandmother.’

Tanya flicked her tea towel angrily at Leyla’s arm.

‘But you can’t go home. When you told me what happened to your sister I thought you were talking about yourself, right up until the end. It was only then I realised it couldn’t be you because you were right there in front of me and your ear wasn’t burnt away with acid.’

Humlin drew back in horror.

‘What’s this — a sister? What ear?’

‘I’m not going to tell. At least not with you sitting here.’

Tanya kept flicking the tea towel at Leyla’s arm.

‘He’s our teacher; he’s supposed to listen. Perhaps he’ll learn something from what you say.’

‘I want to hear it,’ Tea-Bag said. ‘I need to listen to someone else for a while. My head is filled with my own tongues. They fly around in here like misshapen butterflies.’

She rapped her head with her knuckles. Leyla pointed to Humlin.

‘Not while he’s still here.’

‘He can wait out in the hall.’

Tanya gestured for Humlin to leave and so he took his chair and went to sit out in the hall. I’m not supposed to see her in the act of making her confession, he thought. Leyla was quiet for a long time before she started to speak.

Once upon a time I had a doll named Nelf. I found it under one of the beds in a room at the refugee camp where people came and went, and where you could hear people scream and cry in their sleep. But there was also an atmosphere of relief there. We had arrived. We were in Sweden. Everything was going to be all right, without anyone actually being able to say what ‘all right’ was. I thought it was ‘good’ that I found the doll, and I immediately gave her the name Nelf. I was surprised that no one seemed to understand what it meant. Not even grandmother Nasrin who was still clear-headed those days. But even she didn’t pick up that it was the name of a god.

We had just arrived from Iran but I don’t remember much about that trip, only that when we were about to land my dad tore up all our documents. My parents’ passports, Nasrin’s passport — which actually wasn’t hers but belonged to Uncle Reza. First we landed in the small Swedish town called Flen where I found the doll and a few months later we moved to Falun where we lived for three years before we came to Gothenburg, to Stensgården.

It was in Falun that my dad decided my sister Fatti was going to marry one of Mehmed’s brothers. Mehmed lived in Södertälje and was one of the first to move to Sweden; he came even before the Shah was overthrown and Khomeini had us all under surveillance and was in the process of making the country into something better and which maybe one day it actually will be. But Fatti had eavesdropped on the conversations between Dad and Mehmed — she had been told to stay out of the way — by crouching down outside the door to the living room and when she crept back to bed in the room that we shared I heard her cry.

I got up and crawled into bed with her, which is something we always do when someone is sad or has a nightmare or is just alone. Fatti dredged up the terrible words she had just heard through the closed door, sobbing as she told me. She had heard Mehmed and Dad agree to marry her to Mehmed’s brother Faruk. Both of us knew who he was, he had a little shop in Hedemora and everyone took it for granted that Mehmed was supporting him since there were never any customers in there. Faruk often came to visit us at the weekends. Neither Fatti nor I liked him. He was nice, but perhaps it was that he was too nice, so you actually became afraid of him. And now Fatti was going to have to marry him.

She said she would run away, but she didn’t know where to. We both knew you can’t run away from your father; he would look for you for a thousand years and finally find you. I said this to my sister and that there had to be another way for her to escape a marriage with Faruk. Our mother was not going to be a help; she never did anything without asking Dad first, but maybe Nasrin could stand up to him. The following day was Midsummer’s Eve. I remember that Fatti and I walked down to the lake through the birch trees and talked with Nasrin. But Nana just got angry and said that Fatti should be grateful to get someone like Mehmed as a relative. I’ll never forget the fact that Nasrin talked about Mehmed the whole time even though Faruk was the man Fatti was supposed to marry. I could see how desperate Fatti was getting. Nasrin had been her last hope. She pleaded with her for help but Nasrin just kept on talking about how wonderful it would be to have such a well-established man as Mehmed in the family.

That night I crawled into Fatti’s bed again. She told me she was going to run away but I didn’t believe her. Where would she go? Sometimes girls from families like ours run away but I’ve never heard of anyone who didn’t eventually come back. Even the ones who commit suicide are brought back. But when I woke up the next morning the bed was empty. Fatti was gone. At first I thought she was in the bathroom or out on the balcony wrapped in a blanket, but she was gone. I peeked in all the rooms. Dad was snoring, Mum’s foot was hanging down on the floor. Fatti’s red coat was gone. She had not taken very much with her. The only bag that was missing was her little black backpack. I walked out on the balcony. It was still early. A bird somewhere was chirping, the sun was rising out of the mist, and I wondered where Fatti could have gone. I thought that I should have gone with her because Fatti and I are really the same person. Fatti is thinner than I am. That’s the only difference.

I will always remember when I stood on the balcony in Falun and realised that Fatti had run away, and I remember thinking that everything would be different from then on. They found Fatti in Sala four days later. She had fallen asleep on a park bench, or else she had fainted. The police drove her home and when they had left, Dad hit her so hard that she fell and got a deep gash in her neck. Dad wasn’t the only one who hit her, he wasn’t the worst, he only hit her that one time. My brother came down from Gothenburg and he didn’t even bother taking off his hat before he dislocated her shoulder. Fatti was no longer allowed to go out after that. She was nineteen, she wanted to be a nurse and she had been interested in the sport of orienteering. I don’t know why, but she was drawn to the idea of running around in a forest, looking for the most indecipherable clues marked out on maps.

Nothing came of all that. We still shared the same room and whispered to each other at night. I saw her face in the moonlight and it looked like Nasrin’s face: dried up, turned inward. The whole time she kept talking about the four days she had been on the run, how she had been afraid but also had the feeling of complete freedom. Something happened during that time that she never told me about. Under her pillow she kept a gleaming metallic nut with bevelled edges. Sometimes when she thought I was sleeping she would get it out and look at it. Someone must have given it to her, but why would anyone give her something like that? What was it she wasn’t telling me? I don’t know. Of all the riddles I have been given, this is the biggest: the gleaming nut that Fatti kept hidden under her pillow.

It was a time I don’t like to think about. Fatti was so afraid of being beaten that she wet herself, even though she was nineteen years old. I remember her saying, ‘I’m going to be slaughtered. I’m going to end up in a slaughterhouse.’ I didn’t understand then what she was talking about. The following year Fatti was married to Faruk and they moved to Hedemora. She still had no children after two years. We had moved to Gothenburg by then and I wanted to visit her but was not allowed to. I couldn’t even call her since only Faruk answered the phone. When he wasn’t at home he disconnected the line. Then it happened again. Fatti ran away. She ran away in the dead of winter wearing only her nightdress. I don’t know what had happened but I think Faruk used to beat her because she didn’t have any children. When Faruk dragged her back she refused to sleep in the same room as him. It didn’t help that Mum talked to her, and Nasrin. She didn’t care about being beaten any more. She had made up her mind. She didn’t want to be married to Faruk.

I still don’t know if it was Faruk or Mehmed who threw that container of burning acid in her face. A neighbour heard a terrifying scream from the apartment and when she opened her door she saw a man running down the stairs, but we never found out who it was. Both of them denied it, both had alibis. Fatti’s whole face was deformed, especially her cheek and one ear. She never goes out any more. She lives in an apartment here in Gothenburg with her curtains drawn. She never talks to anyone; she’s just waiting for it all to end. I have called out to her through the letterbox in the door. I’ve asked her to let me in but she always tells me to go away. The only one who visits her is Mum. Dad never talks about her, nor do Faruk or Mehmed.

Faruk is remarried now. No one was ever punished for destroying Fatti’s face. I think about her all the time, my sister in her dark apartment, and I know I never want my life to turn out like hers. She wanted to wait until she found someone she really wanted to share her life with, she wanted to be the one making the decision. I can’t understand my father. He always says that we left our homeland in search of freedom, but when we want to be free that’s wrong. I wonder what happened during those four days that Fatti was free. I think freedom — if it actually exists — is always threatened, hunted, always on the run.

I know Fatti met someone during those four days, someone who gave her that gleaming nut with the bevelled edges. Each night before I fall asleep I hope, I pray that Fatti will get to dream about that person who gave her the nut when she was free and terribly afraid. Maybe that’s why I want to learn to write; I would want to write about those four days, I would want to write about everything that happened to her then, everything that people walking past her on the street would not have noticed.

If I don’t care about Fatti, who else is going to do it? Mum loves her, and Dad probably does too in his way. I know that I have to defend love where it exists and where it doesn’t exist and I know it exists even for me since he waited for me in the underpass, and he must have done so because he knew I would go that way to get to the tram stop.

There was a loud knock on the door. Humlin flinched on his chair out in the hall, Tea-Bag zipped up her coat as if she were pulling out a gun and only Tanya didn’t move. Leyla slowly got to her feet, pushing the hair of her sweaty forehead and walked to the front door. When she came back there was a young man by her side. He looked anxiously around the room.

‘This is Torsten,’ Leyla said. ‘The one from the underpass. The one from my story.’

Nasrin’s temporary home assistant, Torsten Emanuel Rudin, had a terrible stammer. Tea-Bag started giggling when she first heard him speak. Leyla was furious with her and Tanya had to come between them in order to stop Leyla from punching Tea-Bag.

‘Are you the one who writes c-c-c-c-c-c—’

‘No,’ Humlin broke in sharply. ‘I don’t write crime novels.’

‘I mean those concise, minimalist poems,’ Torsten said.

Leyla stood between them.

‘This is my professor,’ she said proudly. ‘He is going to teach me to be a great writer. He knows all the words there are.’

Then she sat down in Torsten’s lap. The chair groaned beneath them. Love takes many forms, Humlin thought. This may be one of the most beautiful I’ve seen.

‘I’ve run away from home,’ Leyla announced.

Torsten was taken by surprise. His exclamation died away in a long stutter.

‘I’m frightened,’ Leyla said, ‘but I’ve done what I had to do. Now my family will hunt for me as long as I live.’

She looked at Humlin.

‘They’re going to think it’s your doing.’

Humlin immediately felt a sense of panic.

‘Why would they think that?’

‘They’ve seen you pat girls on the cheek. They think we send secret messages to each other.’

‘I’m shocked by what you have told me about your sister. But that convinces me all the more that you need to speak to your parents about this.’

‘About what?’

‘About the fact that there’s someone in your life,’ Humlin said nodding at Torsten.

‘They’ll kill me and lock me up for ever.’

‘They’ll hardly kill you first and then lock you up. As far as I have understood what happened, no one in your family had anything to do with what happened to Fatti.’

‘She doesn’t exist.’

Humlin gasped.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Of course she exists. What I mean is, it’s as if she’s never existed. As if she closed all the doors, pulled a scarf over her head and stopped existing. Even though she’s still alive.’

‘You can be dead even though you’re alive, and alive although you’re dead.’

It was Torsten who spoke, and he did so without a single stutter. He smiled. Leyla smiled. Everyone smiled. It was a shared triumph.

The conversation died away.

Tea-Bag and Tanya washed the dishes while Leyla and Torsten went off together somewhere in the big house. Humlin walked down into the den in the basement. There was a large jumping jack in the shape of a policeman hanging on a wall. Something about it made Humlin feel uneasy. It was eleven o’clock. He hesitated, then dialled Andrea’s number. She picked up straight away.

‘I hope I didn’t wake you up.’

‘I had just fallen asleep. Where are you?’

‘Gothenburg.’

‘Why are you calling?’

‘I wanted to talk to you. Isn’t that what people do? I thought we were a couple.’

‘“I thought we were a couple.” Listen to yourself. You sound like someone from an old Swedish movie. I want to end this relationship right now.’

‘I can’t manage without you, Andrea.’

‘You’ll manage perfectly well without me. If you don’t, that’s your problem. When are you coming back?’

‘I don’t know. Don’t you at least want to know what’s happened?’

‘Is anyone dead?’

‘No.’

‘Seriously injured?’

‘No.’

‘Then I don’t want to know. Call me when you get back. Good night.’

Andrea hung up. Humlin stared at the jumping jack. That’s not a police officer, he thought. It’s me.

Humlin walked back up the stairs. The kitchen and living room were empty. He continued to the first floor. Through a half-open door he saw Tea-Bag and Tanya stretched out on a double bed. They were holding hands. Tea-Bag still had her coat on. Tanya’s mouth was moving but he couldn’t hear what they were saying. The door to the next room was closed. When he pushed his ear up against the door he could hear Torsten’s stuttering voice. He walked back downstairs.

This would be the right moment to leave, he thought. The seminar is over, the seminar that never was. But I can’t leave yet. I haven’t heard the end of Tanya’s story. And I don’t know if that monkey I sometimes see is real or not.

Humlin finally fell asleep in an armchair. He immediately started to dream. Olof Lundin was rowing across a bay with furious speed. Humlin was in a boat with Tea-Bag, fishing. Suddenly police dogs were swimming towards them from all sides. He drew back and woke up when one of the dogs bit him on the shoulder. It was Tanya shaking his arm. Humlin looked at his watch in confusion. A quarter to two. He hadn’t been asleep for more than twenty minutes. He saw Tea-Bag behind Tanya.

‘She’s real,’ Tanya said.

‘Who?’

‘Fatti, Leyla’s sister. I know where she lives. Do you want to meet her?’

‘According to Leyla, Fatti sits in an apartment with the curtains drawn and a silk scarf over her head — why on earth would she want to meet me?’

‘Leyla visits her every day. That’s why she’s never in school. She’s been taking care of her sister.’

‘Why didn’t she say that?’

‘Don’t you have any secrets?’

‘This isn’t about that.’

Tea-Bag broke into the conversation.

‘Should we leave?’

‘Can’t this wait?’

‘Do you want to meet Fatti or not?’

Tanya called a taxi. They sat in silence during the trip. Leyla’s sister lived in a building that was squeezed between a steep hillside and the ruins of an old brick factory. They got out. Humlin noticed he was shivering with cold.

‘How do we get back?’

Tanya showed him some mobile phones that had not been in the bag confiscated by the police.

‘But I don’t know why you have to ask about that when we only just got here.’

Humlin looked up at the dark building. He started having misgivings about this visit.

‘I don’t want to meet her,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to see a young woman whose face has been burned away with acid. I don’t understand why I’m here.’

‘She has a silk scarf over her face,’ Tanya said soothingly. ‘It’s dark inside anyway. Of course you want to meet her — you’re curious.’

‘It’s the middle of the night. She must be sleeping.’

‘She sleeps during the day. She’s awake at night.’

‘She won’t open her door.’

‘Fatti will think it’s Leyla.’

The front door of the building was unlocked. Someone had spilled jam in the lift. Fatti lived on the top floor. Tanya took out her collection of skeleton keys. Tea-Bag gave her a sharp look.

‘Shouldn’t we knock? Or ring the doorbell?’

‘In the middle of the night?’

Tanya started working on the lock. Humlin wondered drily if Leyla also picked the lock when she came over to visit.

The lock gave way. Tanya pushed the door open and put her equipment back in her backpack. Tea-Bag pushed him into the hall. The apartment had a stale smell, like bitter berries. But there was also something sweet in the air. Humlin was reminded of the smell of the exotic meals his mother made in the middle of the night.

‘Who is there?’

The voice called out from a room at the end of the hall. Some light from the streetlamp fell in through a crack in the curtains.

‘See, she’s waiting for you,’ Tanya hissed.

Humlin resisted.

‘I don’t know who she is. I don’t want to see her: I don’t even know what we’re doing here.’

‘She has a veil over her head. You’re the one she’s waiting for.’

‘She can’t be waiting for me; she doesn’t even know who I am.’

‘She knows you. We’ll be waiting downstairs.’

Before Humlin had time to react, Tea-Bag and Tanya had left the apartment. He was about to go after them when he saw a figure in the doorway at the end of the hall.

‘Who is it?’

She had a strong accent, but she still reminded him of Leyla.

‘My name is Jesper Humlin. I’m so sorry to disturb you.’

‘There is no need to apologise.’

‘But it’s two o’clock in the morning.’

‘I sleep during the day. I’ve been expecting to hear from you.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, I’ve been expecting you.’

Fatti turned on a lamp in a corner of the room. A white cloth had been thrown over the lampshade, and the light that came on was very soft. She gestured for him to approach her. Had he misunderstood? Had she really been expecting him? There was a thick rug in the living room. There was nothing on the walls, a few simple chairs, a table without a tablecloth, some gaping shelves with only a few books and newspapers; no trinkets or ornaments of any kind. Fatti sat down across from him. She was wearing a long black dress and a light-blue silk scarf over her head. Humlin thought he could see the outline of her nose and chin through the thin cloth. The thought of her deformed features made him feel sick.

‘Don’t be afraid. I won’t show you what he did to me.’

‘I’m not afraid. Why do you say you’ve been expecting me?’

‘I knew Leyla would tell you about me sooner or later. And I imagine an author likes to see for himself what he cannot quite believe, or what he has never come across before.’

Humlin was starting to feel more and more uncomfortable. He tried to think of something other than the disfigured face beneath the veil.

‘I’m right, aren’t I? Isn’t that what you are trying to teach Leyla: to be curious? If you think she has what it takes to become a writer, that is. Do you think she does?’

‘I’m not sure I can answer that question.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s too early to tell.’

Fatti leaned forward. Humlin flinched.

‘Who is going to speak for me? Who is going to tell my story?’

Don’t ask me to do it, he thought. I can’t bear it.

‘Why don’t you do it?’ he suggested carefully.

‘I am no writer. You are.’

It was as if she could see perfectly in spite of the veil.

‘Are you afraid I might ask you to do it?’ she asked.

He didn’t give her an answer, and she didn’t press him for one. She leaned back in her chair without saying anything. Humlin had the feeling she was crying behind the scarf. He held his breath and thought that this moment was something unique, something he would never get to experience again.

Suddenly she stretched out her hand and pressed the play button on a cassette player next to her. The sound that came from the cassette player was not music, just static. Then he realised it was the sound of the ocean, of waves breaking on the shore, or rather, on a distant reef.

‘This is my only solace,’ Fatti said. ‘The sound of the sea.’

‘I once wrote a poem about a drift net,’ Humlin said hesitantly.

‘What is that?’

‘It’s a particular kind of net used in fishing. I wrote about how I saw one once down in the clear depths. It was a fishing net that had torn away from its anchors and was floating away. The body of a wild duck and a few fish were entangled in it.’

‘What was the theme of the poem?’

‘I think the image of the drifting net seemed like an image of freedom to me.’

‘Freedom is always adrift?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

They were quiet. The roar of the ocean washed over them.

‘You are afraid,’ she said after a while. ‘You are afraid that I might ask you to write my story. And you are especially afraid because you couldn’t write it without looking at my face.’

‘I am not afraid.’

‘I won’t ask you to, don’t worry.’

She paused and he waited but she didn’t say anything else. After half an hour of silence he said, very carefully,

‘I think I’d best be going now.’

Fatti didn’t answer. Humlin got up and left the apartment. As he shut the door behind him it came to him that the sweet smell in the apartment was cinnamon.

Tea-Bag and Tanya were waiting for him down on the street. They looked at him attentively. Tea-Bag leaned forward with frank curiosity.

‘Did you see her face?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve seen it. It looks like someone carved a map into it: islands, crags and waterways.’

‘I don’t want to hear any more. Please call a taxi. Our priority right now is figuring out what to do with you. Where are you going to hide?’

‘I have to hide too,’ Tanya said. ‘And Leyla. We all need hiding.’

They returned to the Chief of Police’s house where Torsten and Leyla were waiting for them.

‘How long can we stay here?’ Humlin asked.

‘Someone may be coming tomorrow morning. We should be gone by then.’

‘That gives us a few more hours, until dawn. Who might be coming?’

‘A cleaning lady.’

‘When does she get here?’

‘Not before nine o’clock.’

‘Then we’ll leave at eight.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I don’t know.’

Humlin returned to the armchair where he had fallen asleep a few hours before. Tea-Bag and Tanya went upstairs. I have to take care of this, he thought. I don’t know exactly what I have got myself into, nor what my responsibilities are. But I’m caught all the same, like having a foot stuck in the railway tracks when the train is thundering down the line.

He tried to sleep but the image of the woman with the light-blue headscarf wouldn’t leave him. Tea-Bag and Tanya were also in his dreams, rowing a boat over an ocean the same colour as the silk scarf.

He woke up at dawn.

He still didn’t have the faintest idea what they were going to do next.