Eija Hetekivi Olsson reflects on what it’s like to be a working class woman writer in Sweden’s  middle class literary world

World Book Day 2012. Standing, waiting, vibrating, I’m about to do my first reading onstage. I’m sweating like hell, but I’m up for it. I check out the audience. White intellectual types. Collared pullovers and fancy cardigans, blouses and shiny scarves. Button eyes. One old guy in a beret, sitting in the front row with a posh lady. The place is full. Sweaty-fun-exciting. Go out and stand in front of everybody? I’d rather not, bloody hell, look how many are staring at me! I open up my first book, No Child’s Land, as it slips in my slick hands, fill my lungs and read:

She was pounding the shit out of him. Sitting straddled on his back, screaming ‘SAATANAN SIKA’, fucking pig. Her arms rotated like little propellers, pummelling his shaven scalp, turning the pork underneath to mincemeat. […] Huora, homo ja paskapää – whore, faggot and shithead. That was all he could say with his splintered mouth. HIM: the snot-eating, manky-smelling, mealy yellow-toothed one. She pounded harder.

Whoa, what a buzz to rage-read! I look back out at the audience. Angry red patches have spread over the old guy’s neck, and the lady’s face is albino-white. She totters up after the reading and hisses, “That was the most dreadful thing I’ve ever heard.”

A storm breaks out and emails, texts, phone calls and voicemails flood in. From young people wanting to write, with urgent stories to tell about us and our society. And from loads of journalists who want to know… things about me and my personal life. What. The. Fuuuuck?

From blokes. Dads who cyber-flirt and tell me their sex fantasies. Priests who sermonise and want to save me with the Bible – not sure what from. Psychologists who offer ‘free’ private therapy.

Cheeky lads who are infatuated with Miira, the book’s main character. Professors who want to conduct research – of the physical sort – in their summer cottages. Yes, and then you can sit and write in my attic, and I can bring you some sandwiches and cookies when you get hungry… Pensioners who’ve gone soft in their pants and their heads. I’ve cut you out of the morning paper and wrapped you round my warm ballsack. Hundreds of blokes. Sound blokes too, and lonely ones. Some slimy ones. Politicians wanting hotel flings left and right.

And from more journalists asking How much of the book, and which episodes, are things you’ve experienced yourself? How would you describe yourself as a child? What was your childhood like? Is it true you picked up fag ends off the ground? Are you ashamed of having worked as a cleaner? What’s it like to be a Finnish immigrant? Can you speak proper Swedish? When and where did you last visit a sauna? What’s your favourite Finnish tango tune?

Ha ha ha, this new world is completely mad!

Income disparities are rising, a disastrous process that has been going on for thirty years, more than in any other industrialised country, regardless of who’s been in government! Even as Sweden ranks among the world’s fastest growing economies, more people are homeless and jobless, without enough money or food for their children, or they’re wearing themselves out in low-paid manufacturing and manual jobs while a few others keep getting richer. Or as Miira puts it in the book: She could not understand HOW Mr I-own-the-building could stand here without cringing his arse off at the shame of buying his car with the beardy old lady’s money. He must be missing some parts of his brain. The car must be worth half a million kronor. That’s fifty thousand packets of pasta!

I bounce like a rubber ball between vastly different worlds, from new intellectual environments back to my old estates, meet young people who say, “Hey, if YOU’RE from round here and can write a book, then so can I!” “So, how exactly do you write a book? Can you help me?” “Hey, want to read what I’ve written? It’s six hundred pages, poetry and stuff, can this be a book?” “I didn’t know you could publish a book if you don’t have parents who are, like, writers or rich, y’know? I’ve been involved in loads and loads of stuff, it’s like, I just need to get it out of me…” “Erm, have you got some cash so I could get a burger? I haven’t eaten in a long time… hey, you got a pen as well? Can I crash on your couch?”

Even more journalists get in touch and venture, What do you do in your free time? Tell us what you do on an average Saturday. What does your home look like? What kind of mum are you? Tell us about your parents. Can they speak Swedish? Have you found love? Seriously! Not all journalists are after gossip like that, though. There’s a whole load of serious ones as well. There are. I just have to learn to tell the difference between gossip reporters and serious journalists. I haven’t a clue which ones are which. I don’t know anybody and don’t recognise their names, and sometimes it’s pretty damn hard to tell the differences between their questions. And their ideas for photos. The whole lot of them want run-down tower blocks or bare concrete walls in the background, ideally with graffiti.

I turn down newspapers, radio and TV sofas. They all just want to talk about me and my personal life and refuse to reconsider. I’m not looking for an ego trip. I say no more often than yes and bash up against baffled reactions. “No?! What do you mean? You can’t do it that day?”

“What? Are you saying NO to ME? I’ve been working in this industry for twenty-five years and NOBODY has said no to me or my programme. No writer. They’re queuing up to be on!”

“But we’ve already announced that you’ll be appearing, and we printed a photo and everything…” And they’ve even decided what my talk will be about without even asking me. “You can’t say no! Please, I’m on my knees begging you, can’t you rethink?” Thanks, but NO!

“Oh for God’s sake, Eija, what are you doing? Don’t say no to anyone!” the publisher’s PR guy grumps. And the perky PR girl says, “Remember, ALL publicity is good publicity!”

No way, not in this solar system. Everything we say, write and do shapes our world, or at least our understanding of the world. And our children’s. I say yes to the people who want to talk about the book’s content and themes. And I focus intently on the young people who’ve been in touch. Read their writing with enthusiasm. Wow! They are future bombs of books, songs, plays, films… what talent! Only they don’t know it yet, and reading them wears on me. Life is heavy going, buffeting me like a tornado.

I take a deep thinker’s break and head out to a party in the city centre, where there promise to be new people. Fun times!

Feeling full of beans, I burst into a long corridor that smells of popcorn, where stiff personages wearing dresses and jackets stand along the walls and chit-chat over pleasant, low background music. Everybody is staring, just like on World Book Day. Everybody is white.

“Oh, erm… where’s the party? And what are they waiting for? Isn’t this where the party is?”

“Yeah,” the photographer whispers next to me. “It’s a literary party. Lots of journalists.”

Straight into their nest. I can’t back out now. Or stand still. I dash around the room like a polecat, checking things out. Strange party. Nobody’s laughing out loud or gesticulating wildly or showing real emotion. Nobody’s going off the rails, nobody’s wasted, everybody’s just… acting all stiff. And they’re all siblings and partners and exes and related through multiple branches. What kind of cult is this? Arghhh, I need some air. I wrestle the window open and stand there. One inhalation, and five dresses have encircled me to launch into an interrogation: “When’s your next book coming out? Have you got a publication date? What’s it about? Can you send me a few pages? I’ve heard you’re still working as a cleaner, is that right? Are you in a relationship?”

I burst out laughing, think about drinking them, or one of them, under the table, but the beer here tastes of flowers. Awful. I suggest arm-wrestling, but nobody’s up for it. Most of the people here aren’t the sort. The ones sitting on expensive designer sofas, conversing and drinking fancy wine aren’t. They are definitely serious journalists. I turn to avoid hearing them say “… good for my career… great… great…” and bump into a man who’s read my book. He exclaims, “I found it shocking!”

I’m shocked by his shock, and lit up by the news the book had an effect on someone. Shock-lit, want some chocolate, and one of the dresses won’t get out of my face with her questions! I pick her up, spin her a few times in the air and set her down again. She twirls off with her wine glass and finally calms down. Unlike her colleagues, who don’t stop asking work-related questions. At a party! I cannot deal with this! I catch sight of a fire extinguisher. I could go berserk with it. Time to head out. So I make a break for it and hear, “Wait for meeee! I don’t wanna stay… can you take me for a spin toooo?”

I’m sitting on a bench in Bergsjön, a run-down estate, with one of the kids who sent their writing to me. She’s just come out with a line about wanting to become instantly famous, ideally yesterday. I glance at her bitten-down nails. “Don’t aim to be famous. That’s not what should be steering your writing. Concentrate on what you want to say and what you need to express, what you’re passionate about.” “Don’t you get it?” she replies, kicking an annoying stone with her worn-out shoes. “I’ve got no money, and if I get famous I’ll be able to pay for food and a flat… it’s a matter of life and death, and I don’t want to die… Four of my friends have already died. They didn’t even live to be twenty-three, and my best friend hanged herself when she was fifteen. I think about her every day.” She tears at her bleeding cuticle.

The week before, she sent me some new pages she’d written, stuff that got so far under my skin it made the hairs stand on end. I’ve got the pages with me now, covered in constructive ‘go you!’ comments. We walk through the tunnel tagged with art, past blotchy dark tower blocks with shabby, mossy balconies, windows half-covered with bed sheets and bent venetian blinds, one plastered with advertising flyers. To the pizzeria, where she devours ‘go you!’ comments, wants to read them again and again and hear me say more, as if she has a bottomless need to feel that she doesn’t suck, that she’s actually good, that she can do it, that she’s got amazing talent. Maybe it seeps out through a leak.

“I’ll still never publish a book,” she despairs, doubting the opportunities available to her. “It’s like thinking you can get a bus from here to Pluto.” I know that feeling. “To the Pluto that’s on Earth, to the parallel planet – that’s possible, but it takes time to write a book. You have to be patient.” She is homeless, dossing here and there, and has been searching for structure and regular work for years with no luck, has suffered crisis after crisis and sought psychiatric help but keeps being turned down. “Keep at it,” I say.

She grows tired of my pep talk. “I haven’t got time, I need money now… you know…” She swallows, swallows and bounces her legs, nervily glances towards the square, where other young people circulate, stand, exist. She reads my mind and smiles. “Yeah, I’ll keep trying, I promise…” Raises her proud chin and adds, “I’ll do anything. Got nothing to lose.”

I sneak into the Gothenburg Book Fair without paying… only joking. I’ve been sent one of those book-talker badges you’re supposed to wear on your chest, but I’ve buried mine in my pocket. And I’ve cancelled my talk the PR guy booked WITHOUT asking me! Do I look like a performing seal? Well… maybe I do. But still. I’m so into my subject, my head’s on fire. I hold forth onstage, but only for people who promise not to root around in my personal life. I go into book-talk mode about Miira, smart/fierce girls from estates, and segregation. My heart pounds against my ribcage and my back is damp with sweat. And it’s SO amazing – and surreal – to meet people who’ve read my book.

Rushing along the book fair aisles with my buzzing head, I bump into a government minister who turns red, swerves his suited body and flings his arms about in an attempt to mimic a cool ‘urban’ greeting. It looks so wrong, ha ha, and he’s not the only one to do it. Then a well-known literary figure flutters into view, attempts to say a couple of random words in a mispronounced approximation of Finnish and chuckles to himself. “I see… let’s turn the tables. How about I turn up in front of you and babble a few words that a toddler could say better. Do you have any idea what a fool you come across as?” He switches off and slinks away in shame. Good.

I trot along, passing clusters of publishing people and suit-jacketed men on the make. I’m handed an invite to a hotel suite from a short man, another key cultural figure – who, as it happens, later ends up in prison for rape. I chuck it in the bin and look forward to my first literary dinner. The editorial staff from my publisher will be there. They changed my view of humanity by showing that it’s possible to publish a book when you come from a council estate, and that there are well-off book lovers who want to change the world. Even the cultural world.

The dinner is like being in the first-class dining room on the Titanic! I’m wearing ripped black jeans that I’ve patched up myself, a washed-out top that got snagged on a nail, and a fake leather jacket that’s falling apart. And I see the posh clothes and the posh food and posh wine – and long rows of cutlery next to the plates. I’ve only got ONE mouth. I turn to the people nearest me and fill their wine glasses up to the rim. I guzzle some down and barely have time to start eating before the waiter takes my plate because my knife and fork are lying across it. “Hey, give me back my food. I haven’t finished!”

And later on, in the bar in the same building, a well-fed posh man stands and emits a brain fart from his mouth. “Yessss, well, I’m part of the Swedish cultural Establishment…” He stands there with his belly, gawping at my breasts. I can’t go over and tear a chunk out of his throat; his horniness levels would go right up to the chandeliered ceiling. “My father was also part of the Establishment, as you know…”

“No. Who was he?”

He mentions a name, then adds, “Mm, and I am…”

An inbred leftover from the Titanic era, I think.

I interrupt his tiresome self-absorption, thinking of the young talents I know, and the ones who can’t make it up from the lower decks of the ship because their path is blocked by barriers and madmen. “Sounds to me as if it’s time for a little disestablishment,” I say. “But my dear little girl, you can’t dismantle the system,” he chuckles, triggering an urge within me to bash him with a right uppercut. “Some people have to lead,” he adds. “And others follow.”

I take the train to another, even POSHER cultural event. I’m burning with curiosity and decide to adopt an anthropological approach. It’s huge fun to meet new people from different planets. Smile and shake hands – ‘Hi, I’m Eija, what’s your name?’ – and nearly break one woman’s slender fingers. An older man refuses to introduce himself. He looks put out and snaps, “Don’t you know who I am?” I take it as a joke and let out another cackle, but nobody else is laughing – including him. Do these people even breathe? Some resemble wax figures. I suddenly miss honest wrinkles and rough working hands. And I will definitely NOT leap up on to anyone’s back and yell ‘Yee-hawwww!’

A little fellow who smells of dairy cream comes up and asks, “I say, have you ever tried lobster? What, you’ve never tried lobster? I’d love to have you over for some lobster in Djursholm,” he says, mentioning the wealthiest part of Stockholm as he hands me his gold-embossed business card. “I’ve got plenty of spare rooms, and you can bring a young lady friend if you like.” Then, still on a seafood theme, an elderly politician the colour of a cooked crayfish gives a little hip thrust and says ‘Yo,’ by way of greeting as he hands me a card as well, from a luxury hotel. He’s written his room number on it. I mean, what IS it with certain old men in positions of power? Haven’t you heard that flirting has to be mutual, and haven’t you caught sight of yourselves in the mirror in the last thirty years? You could be my dad, and grandads and great-grandads to my children and other young women you chase after. Grrrr!

I am whisked away from the red carpets to the concrete tower blocks in Angered, another low-income estate built to house the working class. I’ve heard that two of the young girls I mentor for writing have been selling their bodies out of desperation for money, and one of them has been raped. She’s in so much pain, she can’t sit down. Adrenalin courses through me and my body shakes with rage. I grab a meat tenderiser and want to pound that attacker’s chickenshit balls into mush. I hand her the tenderiser, a symbolic ‘take no more shit’ present. “I’ve got my own ball-breaker at home if you need backup. I inherited it from my mum.” She takes the tenderiser, chirruping like a summer bird, and now she’s written more knock-out pages for her book.

2013. A newspaper gives me the opportunity to write a feuilleton column. I google the word feuilleton and am ecstatic, electrified with enthusiasm. Mega-thanks for this opportunity! I can amplify young people’s brave voices and have them contribute and…

“Nonono, we want you to write about YOUR life, what it was like before you became an author and what your life is like now, how being a writer has…” With that, the newspaperman extinguishes my enthusiasm. It reignites when Sweden’s Public Art Agency, which I didn’t even know existed, emails to say they want me on their judging panel for a competition for EVERYBODY aged between thirteen and nineteen. The competition is titled Space for me: Public spaces and young people’s experiences of using and being in them.

YESSSS! Move over, milky old men and the cream of society clinging on to power, and make way for new creators who lack your old-boy connections in the cultural sphere. But I can’t go along with the idea of a competition that marks out some teenagers as winners and others as losers in creativity! None of us want the kids who are already losers in the system, living in poverty, to be losers yet again, made to feel that they suck. I discuss it with the other judges. It takes just ONE day, and we get the rules changed. Now everyone who submits an entry will be a winner and will receive an encouraging response. These are our future photographers, writers, film-makers… we can change the system if we want to!

Another magazine contacts me, wanting to do an ‘At home with…’ piece. “So we’re thinking we’d have a photo of you sitting on your bed, writing on your laptop. It’ll be, like, a new angle. Nobody’s had that photo of you. Can you do Monday at two?”

Haha ha ha. I dash off to Finland, where the sky rumbles. Talk myself into a sauna-like sweat at the Helsinki Book Festival and say how hauskaa – fun – it is to be able to run around here. And get a shock at the Finnish publishing house when I see plaster busts of men on display in nearly every office. Where are the women’s heads? I rage. This is where wicked, wise literary women work!

I bus it up to a war veterans’ village in Kyyjärvi, where my hardy gran ruled the roost with a pitchfork, axe and shotgun. And felled trees to clear a plot in the forest, and toiled to scrape a living from the uncultivatable bog the Finnish state had given them in gratitude after the war. And Gran talked a hole in Grandad’s head, who died and left her with nine children. And the neighbour put a stick of dynamite in his mouth, lit the fuse and ran out across the bog, seeing how far he would get.

I’ve got loads of emails from young people in Sweden. The girl who was raped and abused has fought to scrape together her first book, a slim booklet she’s written on loose pages, free napkins and bits of loo roll, then assembled on a library computer. Wow… Bloody hell, that’s powerful. Tears rush forth. There are literary people who have transformed not just my view of humankind, but my whole life. Who have ensured my writing and mentoring can continue even when I’ve been homeless with no income, by providing grants, stipends and residencies – and awards.

Carrying them within me, with thanks, I turbocharge my way, along with photographer Jerker Andersson, to Gothenburg’s council estates – Lövgärdet, Rannebergen, Hjällbo, Gårdsten, Bergsjön, Kortedala, Tynnered – to make space for more young people who rarely or never get a chance to be heard in public. Over half the young people from Sweden’s council estates leave school without completing their education, but not a single politician has bothered asking them for their views, despite the fact that there’s at least one case of arson in a Swedish school every day, and that Gothenburg tops the statistics for school arson attacks anywhere in Europe!

We’re warned about the students. “They’re poor learners, difficult to handle,” one teacher sighs. We steer the teacher out and take over the lessons. Let several hundred Year Nine pupils tells us what it’s like in their schools, what they want to change, why they think kids start fires in school buildings and what things have most influenced them in secondary school and how. And they get to tell us what they would say to the politicians who make decisions for education and what they would do if they were politicians with the power to decide. And they get to take photos inside their school.

At first, they have trouble believing they’re allowed to be honest and speak their minds, with no one judging them or grading them. Ten minutes of silence follow in every classroom, and then they get started and write up a storm until the end of the lesson. That lovely sound of pens rally-racing to put feelings down on paper.

We’re not actually like they say out there, we’re really nice and motivated to learn…

We have a few good teachers and get on with them, but how are we supposed to learn anything when the books are old and there aren’t enough to go round… and there’s not enough food to go round either…

It’s run-down and manky and a mess, the chairs are broken and the school can’t afford to buy new ones…

We’ve only got a few ancient computers, so it’s hard to do our coursework…

The other day a teacher asked me a simple question: How are you doing? It feels good to know somebody cares.

At least I’d be a fair politician, compared to the ones we’ve got now. One who listens to students… I’d make sure students could mark their teachers and help them to improve education, and once a month I’d visit schools to see with my own eyes what they’re like and what’s needed to help the kids do well.

I’d give more food in the canteen so students don’t go hungry. Not everybody gets to eat at home…

The kids who set fires in school want to say something, but no adults want to listen…

Politicians ought to care! They’ve forgotten the estates… they’re also the cause of criminal behaviour…

You CAN’T cut money for schools, it’s where the future is being educated!

Schools are so unfair in Sweden. Some people go to rich schools and others go to poor ones. Everybody here is poor. It’s like a prison!

The students’ pieces are compiled into a book with a title that translates as Fuck School: Year Nine Students from Council Estates on School and Education Policy. The book is published in the run-up to the 2014 Swedish general election, and a copy is sent to every politician. After our school visits, students say that they want to continue writing and photographing. “I didn’t know you could work as a photographer. That’s what I want to be. How do you get to be one?” one beams. I recognise that thought, even as an adult.

I bounce like a rubber ball between vastly different worlds, from my old estates to new intellectual environments, where a guy who also refers to himself as part of the Establishment, same as the Titanic-era guy, growls, “You come here and… come in and think you’re somebody… I’m the one who works with kids. I could have done that book… It’s my career!” Imagine thinking – and being – like one of those people! “Dear culture guy. Didn’t even know you existed. But I know now. The more of us that work with young people, putting them at the centre and not ourselves, the better, and the better things will be for them.”

I bounce home to my estate. Sporadic fun visits to the bubble are enough, and they are enriching. Contrasts are always enriching; they enable you to question assumptions. Even your own. And there are plenty of unselfish bubble people in that bubble world too. My attention is focused on mentoring aspiring young writers and trying to help them keep hope alive. They see society as a series of tall barriers and closed doors, and they feel gloomy. Yet they make brilliant progress in their writing and light up like stars when they’re given affirmation, encouragement and praise.

I’m also working on my next book, a sequel to No Child’s Land. Miira lives on the same sort of disadvantaged estate and harbours a burning desire to learn and transform her life. She is determined to study hard at school and get a professional career as a brain surgeon, move somewhere else and snog on HER terms. And escape her cleaning job. The path may be winding and life may be woolly, but she refuses to give up. By sheer force of will, she’s going to smash her way through obstacles in Sweden’s segregated system and she refuses to take any shit! Miira is published in 2016.

I pace and hop around onstage at a cultural conference in front of local politicians and other members of officialdom. And Miira’s longed-for academic career has ended before it had a chance to begin, as a result of class and culture clashes. Bearing the internal scars, in one scene she applies for a job at a youth employment centre:

“Two thousand kronor full time?! I get that much as a cleaner!”

“It’s not up to me, it’s the politicians…” the dried-out twig mumbled.

“But you go along with it.” He didn’t get it. Referring to the politicians, she said, “Tell those shrivelled walnuts that I don’t intend to be a slave.” She explained to him and the adult world, “I mean, you’re paying the same amount for a whole month as a punter pays for an hour…”

She gave a nod, saying yes to the job referral she needed, not to anything else. She was going to make sure the process became more dignified and worthwhile. More worthified.

A new surge of book people engulfs me, but this time everyone who comes up is respectful. The slimy blokes have cleared off after receiving no response. And the gossip journos have also dropped away – I probably frightened them off by laughing. And I’ve learned to recognise my own preconceived opinions as well. Most people in the cultural sphere mean well; nobody WANTS to be narrow-minded or prejudiced. “But what do you want me to ask about?” one frustrated serious journalist frets after getting a thanks-but-no-thanks to his interview questions.

There is hope for the future. I meet new young aspiring women writers, recent arrivals in Sweden. We read extracts of our own work aloud to one another. I get chronic goosebumps all over from their life stories and their raw strength in the midst of poverty and vulnerability. They write about roads filled with bodies, guns, militias… Smoke in the sky, the sky is sorrowful. I witnessed a massacre, over seven hundred people killed in one day, children, men, women, boys, girls, old people. Fear, sleeplessness, hunger. War took what was my life, everything that was nice… The scent of the large jasmine tree.

After my session with the girls, a gossip columnist phones me with a nosey question: “What do you always carry in your handbag”

Then, on the tram, some racist goes off on one and yells, “You smell like a monkey’s arse. Get out before I give you a kicking!” to a person he doesn’t even know. I go over and roar in his face, “You smell like an arse from the nineteenth century. Get out before I give YOU a kicking!” He stares at me in shock and stammers, “Well, you… you smell…” but can’t think of anything. He tries to spit, but ends up gobbing on his own trainer and gets off the tram. And a politician who’s also a racist offers me a writing grant, saying, “If you’re Swedish, you can have the money. If not, I think you should be more honest about your origins and live in your own homeland.” I tell him, “Take your writing grant and stick it up your BUMMM!”

The young women writers’ dreams, nightmares and aspirations are assembled into an anthology entitled New Voices, edited by Victor Estby, a writer and journalist. The girls say they want to become doctors, opticians and biomedical analysts, and they enjoy reading non-fiction, poetry, short stories, playing piano and guitar – and writing.

I hope that the war will be over one day. And that someday I will be able to stand under the large jasmine tree and breathe in the scent borne by the breeze.

It’s 2018. I’ve been given an opportunity to write a work for a theatre in Stockholm, a monologue entitled The National Anthem, which is also published in book form.

I step inside an apartment. It smells of glue and burnt materials in here. The embossed wallpaper is nicotine-brown. Cockroaches run along the skirting boards and between the mattresses. The WHOLE place is filled with mattresses, people lying on them. Kids playing cards, a couple cuddling like jigsaw pieces. A mother with antsy twins and, over there, a man in the foetal position. Is that his barefoot child with a plastic-bag nappy stroking his grey hair? Four tense men standing around smoking. Water leaks have caused the tilework to come loose; the grouting has crumbled. Tiles lie on the floor like lumpy biscuits… Dim light from a dusty bulb, muffled groans. A sweaty creep bears down on a girl in a lacy vest. I grab hold of his greasy hair. “You’ve got one second to evaporate from the surface of the Earth before I slice you open and rip out your heart!”

Think I’m having a heart attack. My knees tremble going downstairs, some doors are open a crack, some wide open. Mattress people EVERYWHERE… I wobble a bit and am taken into the apartment at the bottom of the stairs. The thought occurs to me that we exist, together, here on this planet for just a few cosmic seconds before our sun, the tiny grain of sand in the sandpit, goes out.

There are mattresses available for homeless people to rent. In Sweden, a country wealthier than it’s ever been before.

The girl who sat with me in the pizzeria and soaked up words of encouragement is renting a mattress. She is relieved to have a roof over her head and temporary safety. Living on the street is more dangerous. She’s also happy because she has managed to complete the last sentence in her first manuscript. “Am I a writer now, even though the fuckin’ book ain’t finished?” she giggles. “So what comes next? I can’t afford to print many pages. It costs a lot. Can you print them? Who should I send the stuff to? Who are the people out there on Pluto who publish books? And what do I say to them?” She practises on me. “Erm, here… here you are. If you steal my words, you’ll have to fight me. You’re gonna lose.” Then she laughs at herself, at the whole situation.

The slim booklet, which she struggled and sweated blood to put together, has now become a hefty book. And the others write long works and short pieces one after another, and one also makes short films as well. Her latest film had its premiere at the Gothenburg Film Festival in 2019. They are fighting for their lives and with their various lives’ works, along with thousands of young people, all of them with amazing talent, in an environment of poverty and struggle, longing for meaningful connections.

I’m just coming from a writing session in Biskopsgården, another low-income estate, with two of the girls. I told them, “This is something you’re doing yourselves, creating art with your own ideas and your volcanic power. Keep going, and never ever give up.” Their new writing glows like lava and sears into my marrow. As they sit and wait for the tram, three lads swagger up and stand in front of them, assuming the right to stare at the girls’ bodies. One of them says, “You’re cute… I’ll have you. I wanna do you,” to the girl who’s chewing gum with her mouth open. He does a grinding motion and licks the air. His wingmen guffaw.

Her eyes darken. She spits her chewing gum at him. It hits him on the forehead. She stands up to her full height, goes right up to him so that their bellies touch, and fires verbal salvoes right in his downy face, machine-gun style. “You got no brain, man… Didn’t your mum teach you how to behave? You don’t speak that way to anyone!” She gets support from her mate, who steps up to the lads and lets off another machine-gun salvo: “Go on, clear off! You’ve got no dicks. Look at you… What you standing there for? I said clear off. Haven’t you heard of #MeToo? Were you lot born yesterday?”

The lads back off, their eyes darting. They break into a run.

The girls and I can’t stop laughing.

English translation by Ruth Urbom

A Swedish-language reading by the author was broadcast on Radio Sweden P1 in July 2019.

The author and translator gratefully acknowledge a grant from the Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation for the translation of this piece.

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