The Family Clause by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

Author:Jonas Hassen Khemiri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2020-05-07T13:12:08+00:00

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A father who has become a grandfather is woken early by his mobile phone. It rings again and again and again, and eventually he answers. His son really wants to see him today, because next week he is on paternity leave and it’s now or never if they want to meet one on one. They agree to meet. The father dozes off. When he wakes, the son is creeping about inside the flat. He has opened the door and let himself in. The father can hear his irritated sighs from the kitchen. He’s grumpy. Like always. He was born grumpy and he’ll die grumpy. In the son’s presence, it’s impossible to do anything right. If you ask questions, you’re too nosy. If you don’t ask questions, he gets annoyed because you don’t care about whatever might be going on in his incredibly boring life. If you bring food, he accuses you of importing cockroaches. If you don’t bring food, he gets annoyed when you ask him to buy some basics. If you stay for a month, it stops him from being able to work. If you stay ten days, you don’t have time to see his children. He also manages to link everything that happens to historical events that no one but him cares about. They might be watching a football match on TV, sitting in a café in town or walking along Drottninggatan. Life is going on around them, and there is no reason to bring up the past, yet the son always finds a way. He says that the football team’s shirts remind him of the colour of the painting in the waiting room outside the father’s hospital room. The son weighs a coffee cup in his hand and asks the father whether he remembers the time he got into an argument with that fat old woman in McDonald’s. They are walking up the hill towards Tegnérlunden and the son says, apropos of nothing, do you remember the time you hit me in the kitchen at the old flat? The father doesn’t remember any hitting. There was never any hitting. What the father does remember is the son as a greasy, spotty teenager with a flabby gut. He hung out with the wrong friends and dressed like a gangster, he wore red bandannas on his head like a pirate, his jeans were baggy and flapped like hurricanes, he came home from the youth centre and looked at the father with disgust, all because the father was ill. And once, while they were standing in the kitchen, the father had gently asked how his studies were going and the son had said they were going well and the father had said that the most important thing in life is to do as much as possible, and the son said that the father certainly didn’t seem to do much himself, and then the father lost his temper. But he didn’t hit him, it was barely a push, and

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