Stieg Larsson, My Friend - Kurdo Baksi [30]
“You are right,” he said.
We sat there in silence, smoking. It was impossible to know what he was thinking. Suddenly he said, “You must have lunch with Erland the next time you give a lecture in Umeå.”
“Who’s that?”
“My dad.”
“Stieg, you mustn’t call your father Erland, that’s rude. You should simply say ‘my dad’.”
We both laughed. We weren’t quite sure why we laughed, I suspect. Perhaps because the difference between his background in the north of Sweden and mine in Turkish Kurdistan had suddenly become so obvious.
“I promise,” I said with a smile, “to have lunch with your father the next time I’m in Umeå. It will be an honour.”
Then we struggled up out of our comfortable hotel armchairs. Stieg collected his rucksack and we went out into the chill of Kungsholmsgatan. We shook hands as colleagues and best friends. Our friendship had passed the test. It was as if we breathed a mutual sigh of relief.
A year later I heard that Stieg had been one of the instigators behind another member of the Expo staff – a mere twenty years old – becoming an infiltrator into a neo-Nazi-inclined xenophobic group.
7
The sleepless warrior
It is impossible to describe Stieg without mentioning his insomnia. The man seemed never to sleep. He was aware of this and we often spoke about it. One conclusion we came to was that there are people who manage to do their jobs efficiently despite sleeping very little at night. When it comes to comparing him with insomniacs like Churchill and Napoleon, however, I sometimes have the feeling that Stieg had something else in common with them: he was always ready to do battle. The difference being that the battles Stieg fought always took place in the mind, in mental arenas. I would call them battles over human values.
I occasionally used to say that Stieg was a sleep saver. Maybe there is no such expression, but I always thought it suited him. He admitted that even as a child he had found it difficult to go to bed in the evening. He had become a night owl early on, despite the fact that his constant curiosity and his eagerness to work meant that he was driven to be just as active during the day.
We often discussed whether sleeping well resulted in a longer life. Looking back, it feels uncomfortable to recall those many discussions; we agreed it did not necessarily follow that people who always slept well accomplished more. We could think of too many cases where the opposite applied.
One might even ask if it is possible for any dedicated and committed person, always involved in hundreds of projects, to sleep well. How can a good-hearted individual relax when human rights are being violated on a daily basis? When there are people with no roofs over their heads? When there are millions of refugees in the world? For somebody unacquainted with Stieg, such questions might sound somewhat naive and illogical; but in all our conversations these undeniable facts were an overwhelming driving force that empowered his will to change things.
The fact is that Stieg himself sometimes compared his sleeping habits to Churchill’s. He used to say that they were in the same league when it came to insomnia, but that the old statesman had the edge. Apparently Churchill seldom slept for more than three hours per night. Nevertheless he lived to the ripe old age of ninety, as Stieg never failed to point out when I or somebody else complained about his bad nocturnal habits.
I suggested that the number of hours one slept was not the most important thing. When you sleep is also crucial. Stieg usually went to bed when most other people were getting up. I don’t actually know if the time when you sleep is all that significant in fact, I suppose I just wanted to see him properly rested – something as unlikely to happen as our bringing about peace. Tired, red eyes, irregular breathing and slowing reflexes spoke