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By quarter past seven on Sunday morning, the front windows of the bakery were still black mirrors and Nawal had already answered one question about Baghdad. The man who asked it had come in for two cardamom rolls and a loaf of dark rye, exactly as he had nearly every Sunday for the past four years, and until that week their conversations had rarely moved beyond weather, his wife’s preference for darker crusts and the continuing decline of his knees. That morning, while Nawal wrapped the loaf in brown paper and folded the seam beneath it with the side of her thumb, he glanced toward the radio on the shelf behind her and asked whether she thought the Iraqi government could withstand the mounting pressure. He lowered his voice slightly when he said it, as though a quieter question might somehow become less intrusive. Nawal continued folding the paper until the parcel was neat and told him that the rye was still warm enough to soften the crust if he left it wrapped too long. He waited for more. When none came, he looked vaguely embarrassed, asked whether they still had the orange cake his wife liked, and allowed the morning to return to something Nawal considered herself qualified to discuss.
Karin had heard most of it from the kitchen. She came through the swinging door carrying a tray of seeded rolls, her blond hair pinned up hastily and one sleeve dusted with flour, and gave Nawal the look they had developed over years of working together in a room where customers could hear almost everything. Nawal answered with a slight movement of her eyebrows. Karin slid the tray into the display case and murmured that one question before opening time was surely a record. Nawal told her she had stopped keeping count on Friday after a customer asked whether sanctions had altered agricultural production while ordering cinnamon buns. Karin’s mouth twitched, though she knew better than to laugh too loudly when the man responsible for the latest question was still deciding between cake slices. Nawal could usually tolerate curiosity. She had lived in Stockholm long enough to distinguish genuine interest from a person searching for someone conveniently foreign to turn into a walking newspaper column, but the frequency had become tiring. The newspapers were full of Iraq. The television was full of Iraq. Now, apparently, the bakery was also expected to be full of Iraq, provided the discussion could be fitted between bread orders.
The bakery occupied the ground floor of a narrow corner building in Södermalm, with two small tables near the window and barely enough room behind the counter for two people to pass each other without turning sideways. Nawal and Karin had taken it over eight years earlier from a retiring couple who had operated there since the 1950s, inheriting the ovens, the flour bins, a temperamental mixer and a clientele capable of detecting even the smallest alteration. During their first months, Karin had changed almost nothing, partly from business sense and partly because Nawal had warned that replacing too much at once would make the regulars behave as though a municipal landmark had been demolished. They had added things gradually instead. Sesame rings appeared one season, date pastries the next, then a walnut cake from Nawal’s childhood that barely sold at first and eventually became so popular that Saturday production doubled. Swedish rye, limpa, crisp rolls and familiar buns still filled most of the shelves. The glass case, however, told the more complicated history of the household behind it, where recipes moved between languages and countries without anyone feeling compelled to explain what belonged where.
At eight, Karin unlocked the door properly and turned the sign. Cold air entered immediately with the first customers, carrying the dry January chill from the street and the faint mineral smell of old snow hardened overnight along the curb. Sunday mornings came in waves. The earliest people were older, punctual and specific. They wanted the same bread every week and noticed at once if a loaf had risen differently or a tray had been moved. Families arrived later, after children had been fed, dressed and persuaded into boots. By ten, the two window tables would be occupied by people who believed the purchase of one cup of coffee entitled them to remain for an hour. Nawal liked the rhythm because it gave the morning a shape independent of clocks. She could usually tell the time by the customers entering the door, by which shelves were emptying and by whether Karin had started the second pot of coffee.
Their daughter Lena came downstairs at twenty past eight wearing black jeans, an old band shirt and the expression of somebody hoping to cross a room without attracting parental attention. At sixteen she had become skilled at disguising intention as sleepiness, though neither of her mothers was particularly susceptible to the technique. She took a roll from the cooling rack, kissed Karin on the cheek and reached for the coffee pot. Nawal stopped her with a look and pointed toward the kettle instead. Lena muttered that she was nearly seventeen. Nawal replied that nearly seventeen remained entirely young enough to drink tea before breakfast, which prompted Lena to observe that coffee was not contraband. Karin, passing with a tray balanced against one hip, warned her that arguing would only encourage Nawal to become inventive. Lena poured tea without further protest and carried it to the narrow preparation table beside the kitchen door.
The subject waiting between them had been postponed since Friday evening. Lena’s band, Glass Harbour, had been offered six weeks supporting another group on a spring tour through Sweden and Denmark, with several possible dates in northern Germany if promoters finished arrangements in time. According to Lena, this was the sort of chance young bands waited years for. According to Nawal, it was also six weeks of school replaced by vans, clubs, strangers’ spare rooms and whatever the phrase “accommodation will be sorted” meant when spoken by musicians barely older than her daughter. Karin occupied the space between them uneasily. She understood why Lena wanted to go and had attended enough of the band’s performances to know the offer was not fantasy. She also understood why Nawal had responded by asking for names, dates, contracts, addresses, school arrangements, transport plans and the full legal identity of every adult expected to travel with them. Lena had anticipated opposition and prepared arguments. Nawal had anticipated arguments and prepared questions. Neither had yet managed to surprise the other.
That morning, the bakery prevented the dispute from developing. Lena finished her tea and was immediately asked to refill napkins, then to carry clean cups to the window tables, then to fetch another stack of paper bags from storage. She moved through the room with the competence of somebody raised inside a family business and therefore unable to convincingly claim ignorance of any ordinary task. She had learned to make change before most of her classmates received regular allowances and could identify some customers by bread order before remembering their surnames. When she was small, regulars had lifted her onto stools and given her broken biscuits. Now she was tall enough that Nawal sometimes caught an unfamiliar figure in the corner of her eye before recognising her own daughter. The change had happened gradually, but parenthood had an unpleasant habit of revealing growth suddenly, in moments too small to prepare for.
At eight forty-five, the second Iraq question arrived. Birgitta, a primary-school teacher from nearby, ordered six rolls, hesitated while Nawal folded the bag, then asked whether people in Iraq supported the government’s position. Nawal looked at her and asked which people she meant. Birgitta seemed genuinely puzzled, as though the category should have been self-explanatory, and said she meant ordinary people. Nawal placed another roll into the bag and observed that ordinary people had a persistent habit of disagreeing with one another. Birgitta gave a small embarrassed laugh and then asked whether Nawal still had family there. That question changed the air more than the first. Nawal did have family scattered through several countries, some by choice and others by history. There were cousins she had not seen in years, an aunt who wrote long letters, and a childhood friend who was not technically family but had ceased to fit any other category long ago. She had left Iraq in the early 1980s and had spent enough years in Sweden that her memories of Baghdad now belonged partly to another era. Customers sometimes heard that history and treated it as a direct line into the present, as though exile preserved perfect information instead of creating its own distance. Nawal simply said that she still had some family there. Birgitta seemed to recognise at last that she had reached the edge of what was welcome, thanked her for the bread and moved aside.
Lena had been watching from near the cups. When the queue thinned, she came behind the counter and suggested that they put up a sign saying BREAD, CAKES, NO FOREIGN POLICY. Nawal tried not to smile and asked whether Lena intended to design it herself. Lena said she would make it tasteful. Karin, listening from the kitchen doorway, said they could hang it beneath the opening hours. Nawal told both of them there would be no sign because customers would only ask why it existed, at which point Lena proposed a second sign explaining the first. Nawal informed her that she had inherited Karin’s instinct for escalation. Karin objected from the kitchen that this was slander, and Lena grinned broadly enough that the seriousness of Friday’s argument briefly disappeared.
The breakfast rush strengthened. The door scarcely stayed closed before opening again. Scarves and wool coats crowded the narrow room, and melting snow darkened the floor near the entrance. Nawal moved constantly between register, shelves and display case, her hands working almost without conscious thought. Two loaves of rye disappeared, then the first tray of cardamom buns, followed by half the walnut cake. Karin brought out another tray before anyone needed to ask. Lena carried coffee to the tables and cleared plates, occasionally stopping to talk with people who had known her since childhood. A toddler dropped half a bun and stared at it as if personally betrayed. An elderly man complained that the coffee seemed cooler than last Sunday despite having been poured less than two minutes earlier. Two university students bought one pastry each and occupied a window table with notebooks, creating an economy so unfavourable to the bakery that Karin joked they should begin charging rent by the page.
A man in a dark wool coat asked Nawal whether Sweden’s long-running boycott of Iraq had made a meaningful economic difference. He asked while deciding between two loaves. Nawal stood behind the counter holding both and stared at him long enough for the question to become uncomfortable in his own ears. He clarified that he meant the effect on trade. Nawal said she knew what he meant. The man waited, apparently believing clarification would unlock the analysis. Instead, Nawal lifted the loaf in her left hand and told him it would remain fresh longer. He took the bread but persisted, saying he had read conflicting reports and thought she might know more. Nawal finally asked why. His answer came automatically: because she was from there. She said, with more fatigue than anger, that being from Iraq did not make her an employee of the Ministry of Trade. The man flushed. Behind Nawal, Karin lowered her face to the pastry case because otherwise she might laugh. The customer apologised at once, and Nawal softened just as quickly. She had no interest in humiliating him. Most of these questions were not malicious. They were merely thoughtless in a way that accumulated. She told him she had left years earlier and knew less about current economic conditions than anyone carefully reading several newspapers. He accepted this, then asked whether the walnut cake contained almonds, a question she answered with far greater confidence.
Once he left, Karin came close enough to murmur that Minister of Trade was a promotion. Nawal replied that she had shown admirable restraint. Lena passed behind them carrying a tray and said she supported the appointment. Nawal pointed toward table two and told her to clear it before ministerial privilege extended further. Lena went, smiling to herself.
By ten, every chair was occupied. The bakery smelled of yeast, cardamom, hot coffee, warm sugar and damp wool. The windows had misted at their lower edges. Outside, Stockholm remained pale beneath winter light, the pavement edged with ridges of grey-white snow where ploughs had pushed it aside. Inside, conversation moved over itself until individual voices became difficult to separate. Nawal liked that kind of noise. It meant the room was working. She could distinguish Karin’s movements behind her by sound alone, the soft slide of a tray, the cupboard latch, the scrape of a knife against wood. Lena moved through the same space differently, faster and less economical, carrying too many cups at once because she trusted her hands more than Nawal did.
The tour returned to Nawal’s mind every time she watched her daughter cross the room. Glass Harbour had begun two years earlier as four teenagers playing badly in the back room of a youth centre. Nawal had attended their first performance and spent most of it hoping nobody would damage an amplifier. They improved because they kept working. Lena played bass and wrote some of the songs. At first the audiences consisted almost entirely of relatives and school friends, but gradually strangers began appearing. Then other bands invited them onto bills. A small independent label sent somebody to one of the shows. The tour offer came because the group supporting a better-known act had withdrawn. It was not a glamorous story, but it was real, and that reality made Nawal more anxious rather than less. If Lena’s ambition had been fantasy, time could have solved the argument for them. Instead, Nawal had to decide what to do when her daughter had become good enough for opportunity to arrive before adulthood felt comfortably complete.
Karin waited until Lena had gone upstairs for more paper bags before returning to the subject. She stood beside Nawal while they sliced walnut cake and said quietly that they needed to decide soon. Nawal answered that she was deciding. Karin said she was gathering information with the intensity of someone preparing to invade Denmark. Nawal looked at her, and Karin immediately acknowledged that the phrasing was unfortunate. Nawal resumed cutting. Karin reminded her that the school had already indicated missed work could be arranged if individual teachers agreed. The tour organiser had provided an itinerary. The drummer’s father planned to travel with the band for the first two weeks, and another adult would be present for most of the rest. Nawal said none of this made six weeks short. Karin agreed, then added that none of it made Lena eight years old either.
Nawal’s knife paused briefly against the cake board. She told Karin that she knew how old their daughter was. Karin said she knew that too, then rested two fingers lightly against Nawal’s wrist before saying that Nawal herself had left home younger than Lena was now. The comparison tightened something immediately. Nawal said it was not the same. Karin answered that she had not claimed it was. Nawal’s departure had not been six weeks with a band, had not been voluntary in any ordinary sense, had not included parents waiting for telephone calls and a printed itinerary tucked beside the kitchen calendar. Nawal knew all of that. Still, her own history had left certain instincts intact. She knew how quickly an ordinary place could become unreachable. She knew how a person could leave believing return remained available and later discover that borders, governments and time had changed the meaning of home. None of this made Lena’s tour resemble exile, and Nawal would never insult her own past by pretending it did. Yet the body did not always organise fear according to reasonable comparison.
Karin squeezed her wrist once and let go. Lena returned a minute later carrying two bundles of paper bags and immediately noticed that both mothers had become overly interested in separate tasks. She asked what had happened. Nawal said nothing. Lena looked at Karin instead. Karin told her that her mother was considering a new career as Swedish Minister of Trade. Lena laughed. Nawal gave Karin a look of betrayal and said there would be consequences later. The humour eased the room again, but only temporarily. All three knew the decision still waited.
Shortly after noon, the rush began to thin. Families carried bread home for lunch. The two university students remained long enough for Nawal to wonder whether they intended to complete an entire degree at the window table, then finally gathered their books and left. Karin cleared cups and wiped surfaces while Lena swept near the entrance. Nawal counted remaining loaves and made notes for the next weekend. The bakery settled into the softer aftermath of work, chairs scraping, water running in the sink, paper rustling under the counter.
Then Lars came in.
He had been buying bread from them since before Lena started school. He knew where Nawal came from, knew roughly when she had arrived in Sweden, knew Karin’s birthday and had once helped carry a broken freezer through the back door because the delivery men refused to do it. He ordered his usual loaf, complained cheerfully about the snow and asked how Lena’s band was doing. Nawal relaxed without noticing that she had. Then Lars said, almost casually, that she should tell him honestly how worried people ought to be about Iraq.
The fatigue came before irritation. Nawal looked across the counter at a man who knew her better than most customers and watched understanding arrive in his face a second too late. He apologised before she answered. Nawal wrapped the bread. Lars rubbed the back of his neck and said that he had done exactly what everyone else must be doing. Nawal told him yes. He promised not to do it again, then observed that he had never once asked Ingrid at the fish shop to explain Norwegian monetary policy merely because she was Norwegian. Nawal looked up at that, and the absurdity finally broke through. She laughed. Lars laughed too, relieved. The moment passed without resentment.
Instead, he asked about Lena’s tour. Nawal said their daughter had made her decision while her parents remained inconveniently involved in the process. Lars nodded and said that sounded exactly like sixteen. Lena, sweeping within earshot, called that she could hear him. Lars replied that this saved him the trouble of repeating himself. He left with the bread under his arm, and Lena stood for several seconds with the broom resting against her shoulder before putting it aside.
She came behind the counter and asked whether they could finally talk. Nawal looked around the room. Only one older woman remained by the window finishing coffee. Karin folded a cloth over the edge of the sink and said they could. Lena pulled a spare stool closer but remained standing, as though sitting might make her appear less prepared. She began by saying she knew six weeks was long, knew school mattered and knew Nawal considered at least some members of the band idiots. Nawal objected to the last point, which made Lena remind her of Tomas trying to heat soup in a coffee pot. Nawal said this example hardly strengthened the defence. Lena admitted Tomas occasionally deserved concern and moved on.
She explained that she had already spoken to four teachers. Three were willing to give her work ahead of time. The fourth wanted to meet with Nawal and Karin. She had asked the tour organiser for addresses and now had them for every stop already confirmed. She knew which dates remained uncertain. The drummer’s father would travel with them. She had agreed, without being asked, that if her schoolwork collapsed she would return early. Nawal listened without interrupting. Some of the answers were good. Some merely demonstrated that Lena had correctly predicted the questions.
When Lena finished the practical part, Nawal asked about examinations. Lena said nothing major fell during those weeks. Nawal asked whether this was according to her own interpretation or the actual school schedule. Lena said the schedule. Nawal asked what happened when she returned and had to catch up while the band continued rehearsing. Lena said she would catch up. Nawal replied that everybody said that before leaving. Lena’s shoulders tightened at last and she asked what answer her mother actually wanted if every answer was going to be treated as insufficient.
Karin did not rescue either of them. She only said that Lena should explain why the tour mattered beyond excitement. Lena looked down at the counter for several seconds. When she spoke again, the rehearsed quality had gone out of her voice. She said it mattered because they were good enough to have been asked. They had played Stockholm long enough that the people coming to see them increasingly knew who they were before arriving. This tour meant performing for audiences who did not. It meant finding out whether the band could work outside the small world that had formed around them. She did not want to leave school permanently and was not pretending three clubs and a van had made education irrelevant. She wanted six weeks. If touring was miserable, she would learn that. If the band was terrible outside Stockholm, she would learn that too. If she discovered she hated travelling, sleeping badly or playing to people who did not care, then at least she would know. What she did not want was to stay home solely because missing classes frightened her more than finding out.
The phrase stay home hung in Nawal’s mind longer than the rest. Lena had not invoked Nawal’s past. She had never said that Nawal had left younger, never tried to turn a history she only partly understood into leverage. The restraint mattered more than Lena probably realised. Nawal asked what Lena would do if the answer remained no. Lena swallowed before saying she would be angry. Nawal told her that much was obvious. Lena then said she would not run away. Karin looked down. Nawal did too. Lena continued more quietly, saying she wanted them to trust her enough that she would never need to think in those terms.
The last customer finished her coffee, put on her coat and thanked Karin on the way out. The door closed behind her. For the first time since opening, the bakery belonged only to the family.
Nawal came around the counter and leaned against its edge rather than remaining opposite her daughter like someone conducting an interview. She told Lena that she did trust her. Lena’s face showed that this was not yet the answer she wanted. Nawal continued before she could interrupt, saying that trusting Lena did not mean trusting every road, every club, every organiser, every drunk stranger after midnight, every tired driver, every broken heater or every person who announced that accommodation was arranged without having checked the locks. Lena nodded. Nawal said that fear did not disappear simply because the person she feared for was responsible. She was still allowed to worry. Lena answered that she knew.
Nawal looked toward Karin, who remained deliberately neutral, then returned to Lena and began listing conditions. She wanted the complete schedule printed and kept at home. She wanted telephone numbers for every organiser and every adult travelling with the group. She wanted the school agreement in writing rather than passed through Lena’s recollection. She wanted to meet Tomas’s father before the band left, and she wanted regular calls that would be frequent enough to reassure her without becoming so frequent Lena could later claim she had spent the entire tour searching for telephones. Lena remained completely still until Nawal reached the end. Then she asked how often she had to call. Nawal said this would be negotiated.
Lena’s mouth opened slightly. Nawal warned her not to celebrate because she had not yet used the word yes. Lena’s expression changed into the familiar mixture of triumph and affection that had defeated Nawal since childhood. She said conditions were simply yes with paperwork. Karin laughed. Nawal tried to maintain severity, but Lena moved around the counter before she could recover and wrapped both arms around her.
The embrace caught Nawal with unexpected force. Lena was almost her height now. Some part of Nawal still expected a small child’s head beneath her chin and instead found herself holding a young woman who could carry amplifiers, argue with teachers and leave Sweden without either mother beside her. Nawal told her not to make them regret the decision. Lena immediately promised she would not. Nawal pulled back enough to look at her and said that was a promise no one could honestly make. Lena corrected herself and said she would try very hard not to give them reasons to regret it. Nawal told her that answer was better.
Karin came around the counter and kissed Nawal lightly on the cheek. She called her Minister once more, and Nawal told her not to encourage Lena’s disrespect. Lena grinned and picked up the broom again, though she swept with considerably more enthusiasm than before. The tension that had sat beneath the weekend finally loosened, not because Nawal had stopped worrying but because worry had become something they could carry together rather than something blocking the doorway.
The bakery closed at two. They cleaned without hurrying. Karin counted the till while Lena swept flour from beneath the preparation table and Nawal wrapped the remaining bread for Monday donations. The snow outside had begun falling again, lightly enough that individual flakes could be seen turning in the air beneath the streetlamps. Lena talked almost continuously now, planning what she would bring, wondering aloud whether the van had enough room for everybody’s equipment, deciding which teacher would be most difficult about assignments and listing the songs the band wanted to add before leaving. Nawal let most of it pass without response. There would be time for practical questions later. For the moment, Lena was allowed to be pleased.
When the chairs had been turned onto the tables and the front lights switched off, Lena ran upstairs to telephone the guitarist. Her footsteps crossed the ceiling almost immediately, followed by the faint sound of her voice from the flat above. Nawal stood near the counter folding the last cloth while Karin checked the register drawer a final time. After a while Nawal said, quietly, that six weeks remained a very long time. Karin agreed. Nawal added that Germany was another country. Karin reminded her that those dates were not yet certain. Nawal said uncertainty made it worse because she preferred her worries with addresses.
Karin came beside her and slipped an arm around her waist. Nawal leaned against her. In the darkened front window, their reflections floated over the faint view of the snowy street. Behind them, the bakery smelled of cooled ovens, coffee grounds and the bread that would remain overnight. Karin said Lena would come back. The words were simple enough to mean only the tour, and Nawal knew that was what her wife intended. Still, they touched another part of her.
She nodded.
Upstairs, Lena laughed loudly enough for them to hear through the ceiling.
Nawal stood there another moment with Karin’s arm around her, listening to their daughter tell somebody the news, before reaching for the last light switch. The bakery went dark beneath them as they started upstairs together.