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.’
