We played with grandmother, my sister and I. Sometimes, when the sound of a low-flying airplane was heard high above our roof, grandmother would turn her face up and shout: The Russians are coming! As a child I never quite understood why she would think that an airplane flying over our quiet suburb on a Saturday morning would actually be a Russian one or why that would be dangerous, but the playing stopped for a moment and I realised that her childhood was much different from ours.

FRIEND OR FOE is a project based on mine and my grandmothers personal memories, on historical facts, current theories and speculations on fear.

Grandmother, you used to laugh until you couldn’t stand up straight but you couldn’t sleep at night. You would lie awake and listen to your favourite radio programs until dawn and then grandfather would bring you breakfast in bed when everyone else had already had theirs. As a child I just thought you weren’t a morning person, a bit like my father, but then mother told me you had trouble sleeping. I wonder what you were thinking about, what kept you awake at night in your tiny Swedish city that felt so safe to me. Where did the fear come from?
I remember the smell of your skin when you played with us. It was a smell of older people, a sweet smell of talc powder from the bottle in your bathroom cabinet. Your hands were cold but your body was warm and soft. Your hair had no gray in it and was curly, not in a natural way but just like all the other ladies your age and sometimes you slept with curlers on although that must have been uncomfortable.
I moved far away after you died grandma and for years I surrounded myself by a collective fear. I made it my business to go to places where people were afraid for very tangible reasons. It was a different kind of fear, a more real and relatable one for me because the danger was actually there, staring people in their faces. At home I never felt any reason to be fearful at all and I wondered why you did. I think that the fear is something that lives inside of us, no matter the plausibility of a threat. Either you feel it, or you don’t. I don’t feel it, I never did. On my travels for work people ask me all sorts of questions about fear: Are you afraid to sleep alone? Are you afraid to travel alone, aren’t you afraid of going to all of those places etc etc.
Then sometimes I think of you lying awake at night in your bedroom with the lovely dark red wallpaper and the framed pictures of royal families, turquoise on gold, and I think of us playing on a Saturday morning and I think of you being afraid of an invisible enemy and how me and my sister can’t understand and I think it must be your childhood. I went home a while ago and saw that those kinds of headlines had come back again and it made me think of you. So it came back, the fear, your fear. And so, maybe you were right after all, I thought.

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Grandmother you used to laugh until you couldn’t stand up straight but you couldn’t sleep at night.

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You would lie awake and listen to your favourite radio programs until dawn and then grandfather would bring you breakfast in bed when everyone else had already had theirs.

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I wonder what you were thinking about, what kept you awake at night in your tiny Swedish city that felt so safe to me. Where did the fear come from?

Untitled

I remember the smell of your skin when you played with us. It was a smell of older people, a sweet smell of talc powder from the bottle in your bathroom cabinet. Your hands were cold but your body was warm and soft. Your hair had no gray in it and was curly, not in a natural way but just like all the other ladies your age and sometimes you slept with curlers on although that must have been uncomfortable.

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I moved far away after you died grandma and for years I surrounded myself by a collective fear. I made it my business to go to places where people were afraid for very tangible reasons. At home I never felt any reason to be fearful at all and I wondered why you did. I think that the fear is something that lives inside of us, no matter the plausibility of a threat.

Untitled

On my travels for work people ask me all sorts of questions about fear: Are you afraid to sleep alone? Are you afraid to travel alone, aren’t you afraid of going to all of those places etc etc.

Untitled

Then sometimes I think of you lying awake at night in your bedroom with the lovely dark red wallpaper and the framed pictures of royal families, turquoise on gold.

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and I think of us playing on a Saturday morning and I think of you being afraid of an invisible enemy and how me and my sister can’t understand and I think it must be your childhood.

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I went home a while ago and saw that those kinds of headlines had come back again and it made me think of you. So it came back, the fear, your fear.

Untitled

And so, maybe you were right after all, I thought.