been the hundredth time. Still no sign of Stieg. I’m usually pretty tolerant when it comes to people turning up late, but now I was starting to get annoyed. It was nearly an hour after the time we had agreed to meet and I found myself formulating a rather stiff dressing-down. I had better things to do than hang about in a third-rate restaurant all day. Besides, I was hungry. Now it was 2.00; if it hadn’t been for my Kurdish upbringing I would no doubt have ordered food long since. To make matters worse, waiters were hovering around my table, as if they expected me to continue sitting there on my own, then leave without ordering anything. An hour and a quarter late, I thought to myself, smacking the table with my rolled-up newspaper. That’s it. Enough is enough.
Just as I was getting up to leave, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a smiling, self-assured-seeming man wearing round glasses, a grey corduroy jacket, a checked shirt and a yellow polka-dot tie. He approached me at a leisurely pace, running his hand through his light brown hair. The first thing that struck me was that anybody observing this man would never have dreamt that he was over an hour late for an appointment.
“I’m sorry,” he said as he sat down. “I’ve been held up by the usual threats. The police tell me I have to be careful. My way of dealing with this is never to turn up on time. Are you hungry? I only want a cup of coffee.”
We shook hands; he lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.
“No problem,” I said with a shrug. “Ever since I was a kid things have always gone wrong for me on Wednesdays. Why should today be any different?”
I was not happy with either my attempt to smooth things over or Stieg’s evasive apology, but I did my best to conceal my irritation. I ordered cod and boiled potatoes, not expecting the food to put me in a better mood.
To begin with, we talked about
We moved on to the topics of the moment – the Laser Man, the way in which the populist protest party New Democracy had wormed its way into the parliament after the 1991 general election, the increasingly anti- immigrant image of the Sweden Democrats, and the incredibly naive reaction of the established parties to the threats to democracy these developments posed.
We must have talked for at least two hours. Ashtrays were changed regularly and rapidly filled by Stieg’s cigarette butts. Despite the fact that we had only just met, it felt as if we had known each other for ages. I thought he was one of the most courageous people I had ever encountered. There was no mistaking his commitment – I had rarely come across anybody more passionately convinced of the democratic ideal and the equality of all human beings.
But at the same time there was something modest about him. I immediately detected a paradox in Stieg Larsson’s make-up, and my suspicions would be confirmed as the years passed. He would go out of his way to find people with whom he could work, but all the while he wanted to dictate the way in which the cooperation functioned. He disliked being in the limelight and doing all the talking, especially on television. This led to friction at times, and when I look back over the years we worked together, this contradiction was nearly always the root cause of our disagreements.
Having said that, the paradox was convincingly trumped by the vehemence he displayed in his fight against racism and neo-Nazism. It is simply impossible to describe how passionate, how fervent, not to say how obsessed he was by this mission. I once described him as a mixture of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama and Pippi Longstocking. I concede that this was perhaps a little crude, but it was a sincere attempt to pin down a man with unique and contradictory character traits of a type one rarely encounters.
Another thing that struck me that first time we sat talking – me waiting for my lunch, Stieg with his cups of coffee and his cigarettes – was how animatedly he gesticulated. He also impressed me with the breadth and depth of his knowledge. Naturally, we were well aware that the precarious position in which Sweden found itself in 1992 was nothing compared with the intolerant, anti-immigrant forces at work in Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, Belgium and Italy. We were indisputably living in a Europe beginning to show its claws in a way that made us worry that a catastrophe might be imminent.
You could say that Sweden was emerging from a Sleeping Beauty-like torpor. For years Swedes had been convinced that they were immune from racism – not the unease with regard to everything new and foreign that is sometimes discussed around dinner tables here and there, but the
I have often been accused of being a bad listener. People tell me I talk too much. No doubt they are right. But on that occasion I hardly said a word; I sat there entranced by Stieg’s powerful imagery, neat turns of phrase and black humour. Believe it or not, I let him say all he had to say without interruption. Perhaps I was already fascinated by the contradictory nature of what he was saying. In addition to the mixture of team player and solo performer already mentioned, there was also a remarkable combination of stress and inner calm. He spoke both forcefully and calmly about important principles: about how people should never be insulted, about the struggle for women’s rights, about the importance of humane refugee policies. Matters that most people would agree on, even if many would nod in approval but not do very much about ensuring that things changed for the better. Here was a man who would never give up until the goals had been achieved.
Stieg’s duality was a feature of our friendship from the very start. But there was no question at all about where his heart was. During all the years of our friendship I never doubted for one single second that Stieg Larsson was on the side of the weak and vulnerable. He was always prepared to speak up for anybody and everybody incapable of making a case for themselves. And that was not all: he was willing to pay a high price in order to bring about change.
I had realized this long before the sad-looking cod and overcooked potatoes landed on the table with a thud.
How can you get to know somebody who hardly ever talks about his private life? That’s something I’ve often thought about. Whenever Stieg entered a room, he automatically became the centre of attention. Despite that, it was impossible to regard him as anything other than unpretentious.
Some people would no doubt maintain that the fact he spoke so little about himself and was always keen to avoid the limelight was due to his northern Swedish origins. He often reminded people that he was, for better or worse, from the far north. He actually said as much the very first time we spoke, during that brief telephone call. He referred to his northern origins and the fact that he had been involved in politics while still clinging to his mother’s apron strings – those two basic facts about Stieg are impossible to ignore.
You may be born a northerner, but being involved in politics is something else entirely. Stieg’s burning interest in politics was aroused as early as 1968, when he was fourteen years old. He was lucky in that his mother, Vivianne, was devoid of prejudice and loved to indulge in long political discussions. He spent hours talking to her about starvation in Biafra, Soviet aggression or the Vietnam War – much of his passion for justice can doubtless be traced back to conversations with his mother in their kitchen. Contemporaries also attest that Stieg’s mother was a gifted storyteller; perhaps he learned a few tricks from her, who knows?
The 1970s were a politically charged decade, and Stieg was hardly the only fourteen-year-old to protest against the Vietnam War by joining the National Liberation Front. Even at secondary school he contributed polemical articles to newspapers and magazines.
Nevertheless, his political involvement cannot be explained exclusively by the trends of the time or some kind of teenage revolt. It was a built-in part of his character, just like his northern origins.
There are few aspects of my life that cannot be traced back to the fact that I am a Kurd. The inevitability of my being an outsider is obviously associated with my origins. I am closely linked with a people that is either disowned or opposed. This fact is an important part of my make-up and my memories, and it has inevitably formed what interests and drives me.
