Mind's Garbage


I confess... I admit... no, that's no way to kick off a relationship with you.  Here, you get a kiss for not rolling your
eyes.  Let me just put some crimson lipstick to these cherry lips, ahhh, there you go, now, here comes the kiss.  And
now comes my top 10, no, my top 11 list, of what, you wonder?  Well, let me take an awfully long time to introduce
myself, before I grant you access to my list.  I mean I bet you have a list, all kinds of lists.  I have been making lists
since High Fidelity, only longer.  Top 5?  Huh, you don't fit anything into 5, it's more like the grading scale back in
Bosnian schools(1).

Right now I'm no more than a scrapbook, a damn shoebox full of notes on yellow post-its, pieces of three-layered
toilet paper, cut-out corners of kitchen cloth, napkins, the insides of tampon boxes with scribbles from edge to edge.  
A collection of pieces from different jigsaw puzzles.

There's also a well-rounded ME, described in a book called [Refuge]e.  You see, I was tricked into being the protagonist
of it.  I still don't know how to pronounce that damn title.  I gave the author a terrific piece of amateur editorial advice
to change it into Memoirs of a Bosnian, or even add a "nervous wreck" Bosnian.  "Trust me, that'll sell," I said pointing
my thin, nail-eaten-to-the-quick finger at his left eye.  The wretched wannabe writer gave me the cold shoulder, left out
all the quirky but fine incidents from my life.  So much was taken from me by the war already, my virginity for instance.  
And he just chucks half my life into a kind of mind's garbage.

He said, "I must have some logic and linearity."  My God, as if I were testifying in Den Haag against war criminals, who
by the way weren't caught anyway, and couldn't afford out-of-character traits.  So it's my turn to do it myself.  Why
let anybody else make your life into art?  That makes me sick to death.  On a pitch-black Swedish winter morning, I like
this scrappy-ME better.  In this [Refuge]e book, I was described, or rather given to you like a dinner heavy for your
stomach, not a light breakfast in bed or some such thing.  I was described through a variety of expressionistic stories
as a Bosnian, a rape victim who has lost her whole family (Dad, Mum, seven brothers), a victim who fights not be a
victim, who struggles to be taken for her other qualities, one of which is her violent nature, propensity to existential
angst, her utter hate of racism and nationalism, inability to connect with people her age, or younger or older, cynicism.  
'Nuff said.

Below follow my own outtakes, like those which film directors scramble up and put on an extra DVD and charge us poor
fans double as much for the extended cuts, director cuts, CO cuts, the genitor cuts.  I know I know, I too buy those
double, triple, quadruple DVD boxes, but boy do I get disappointed.  I say "disappointed" like Kevin Kline in A Fish
Called Wanda, which by the way had really nice extra footage, so buy it.  Have you ever thought that watching the
special features feels like having a waiter come up to you after a terrific meal and ask if you'd be interested in having
the scraps that the cook didn't use in the final version of the dish you just devoured like a starving animal, I mean I eat
like that, not very feminine, whatever.  Imagine a waiter not unlike John Cleese from The Meaning of Life with a
bucketful of peels of onions and potatoes, eggshells and cellophane, pieces of bones and paper tissues swimming in
burnt oil and water in which he washed his hands.

But if you're a sucker like me, imagine lying awake in the wee hours, hearing the raspy voice from American previews
saying, "Meet Almasa."  Almasa is my name; sorry I forgot to tell you earlier.  The man goes on, "She's everything you
fear to meet.  She's your worst nightmare.  But one man will solve the mystery.  One man will tame the brawling
Bosnian beast.  Almasa The Movie.  Now on Double Disc Wide Screen Edition, in HD quality so you can't miss any
tints, textures or hefty gestures.

Where was I, yes, linearity, important to follow.  Ah yes, mind's garbage.  My problem has always been that I
accomplish the opposite of what I want.  When I try to be complex, I get flat.  When simplicity and subtlety is my latest
attempted virtue, I start bustling like some Middle-Eastern market.  Never been to one though, but I've heard of them,
read about them, seen a picture or two in a magazine.  No woman is a market anyway.  Even if I were, I'd still need a
place for the garbage.

In another era, I would have a simple dustbin, but, since I'm a modern woman and in these modern times we recycle
everything so as not to hurt nature, I'll try to sort my life into different containers so that others, God knows who, can
perhaps use these leftovers and save the environment.  We never really reuse our own garbage ourselves.  There are
other wretches who get to do the dirty work.

I will try to order my garbage thematically, or even organically, top to toe(2).   I will select 11 middle sized containers in
different colors and neatly put there everything this author didn't use in the stories about my life, starting with A
Woman Already Not Young, which in the original had a fancy title in French just in case some super educated literary
critic one day picks it up and says, "This title is a direct reference to the French philosopher blah blah blah."  I have
even forgotten which one it was Adnan Mahmutovic tried to refer to.  It feels like such a total waste of effort to put in a
reference hardly anyone would ever get.

Anyway, finally, your patience has borne fruit, the top 11:

1) Paper and Cardboard
2) Hard plastic
3) Soft plastic
4) Colored glass
5) Non colored glass
6) Metal
7) Batteries
8) Wood
9) Clothes
10) Food
11) Objects too large to fit into any of the above.  11 is like an amendment to the ten commandments of my scrappy
life.

1) Paper and Cardboard. Pink Container.  (I know it is incorrect to mix the two, but I just can't be bothered.)

I never use napkins or handkerchiefs to wipe my nose.  I so much love those beautiful textures and abstract patterns
or pictures they have and which my girlfriends and I used to collect back in elementary school.  If they were not nice,
then I wouldn't want to use them at all.  A damn snob who wiped her snout with her sleeve.  I'm not sure I should
have said this at all.  At least not first, but this is my mind's garbage.

2) Soft plastic.  Yellow Container.

One winter morning, I was returning from Swedish for beginners class, my head swollen with thoughts about positive
integration and the mixing of cultures, people from different backgrounds all living in the suburbia and hating each
other's guts, and other such clichéd concerns of a young immigrant bird like I was.  Suddenly(3), a couple of boys
and girls attacked me with frozen snowballs to avenge their destroyed snowman, which I had unintentionally hugged to
crumbles (smithereens?) after my first and last drinking session with the downtown homeless people.  I never had a
drop of alcohol after that incident and I was glad the kids snowballed me.

3) Soft plastic.  Brown Container.

I'm a real softy.  Once a month I sit in a children's playground, watching the little things mess around.  I weep inside,
but keep my face dry as if training to be a Spartan mother.  Yesterday, though, this skinny girl came to me and put her
sandals on the bench where I was sitting.  Then she took out a few coins and said, "Can you take care of these things
for me?  I'll be right back."  I said, "All right, I'll keep an eye on the valuables."  She dashed away but then returned
immediately, took her stuff and disappeared.  A minute later, she came back with a bag of licorice sweets and fed them
to me.  I hate that disgusting candy.  It always makes me tearful, dammit.

4) Colored glass.  Black Container.

When I started high school, a teacher we called Methuselah Mehmet recited an old epic about this vagabond and thief
who used to attack some prim queen's delivery boys, like some Balkan version of Robin Hood.  Anyway, in the poem,
the man was captured and tortured in the most horrible ways to divulge the secret whereabouts of his gang.  He said,
"I won't do it," and tried to spit but he was too weak so he only spat on his chin.  The queen herself stuck large rusty
spikes under his nails.  The teacher said, "Whoever tells me why she did it won't have to lift a finger for the rest of the
term, and still get a 5.  The guesses: because he was a thief, because he was a hero, because he was a terrorist and
she wanted to find his stash of weapons of mass destruction, because…  You get the point.  I said, "Because she
loved him."  Everybody thought it was a perverted thing to say, but Mehmet nodded and smiled at me.  Now how is
this not a part of my personality?  I'm not sure.  I'm still a bit kinky.  Ah, I know, it's because I thought I'd be a great
academic, but ended up being… something else.

5) Non-colored glass.  Purple Container.

Methuselah Mehmet told us about an old priest called George Herbert who couldn't pray except when set on fire by a
shooting star.  My father told me to tell Mehmet it was William Blake.  I did.  Then Mehmet said my father was an
ignorant peasant.  I told my father and he said that I should say to Mehmet that a man can be mistaken about
something without being called an ignorant peasant and that he should go and…  Here, father stopped and never
finished the sentence but I thought it was finished so I gave the message to Mehmet, who obviously filled in the gap,
which I at the time could not understand, and he bereaved me of my hard won victory.  My father was furious,
mounted a bike and drove away.  The next day Mehmet sang another song.

6) Metal.  Blue Container.

To cut a long story short, I used to make small nicks on my thighs with forks.  I didn't have a favorite fork, but liked to
change forks from time to time.  We didn't have any silverware or gold forks, so after I'd exhausted my possibilities at
the low-class level we clung to, I just stopped.  My obsession with change put an end to my suicidal tendencies.

7) Batteries.  Orange Container.

Last year I married this Somali man, Ibrahim.  I first met him some sixteen months earlier when I was waiting for bus
420 to the Stockholm University where I work as a research fellow in English literature.  I was so attracted to him.  I
wanted to jump him right there at the bus stop, but he was new to Sweden and could hardly put together two words
of Swedish so I used body language, wink wink, you know what I mean.  Next morning, I had an extra padding in my
bra.  I'd put triple layers over my skinny behind, because I figured African men liked big bums.  The communication was
perfect.  I showed him the picture of the Somali bankers from Stockholm who were accused of having financed Al Qaida
without a shred of evidence and whose bank was shut down.  I shrugged my shoulders and said "Life's a bitch, ain't
it?"  He smiled and nodded like a schoolboy staring at my long neck and my cleavage.  I winked again but then he
explained he was a pious Muslim.  I said I was too.  Then, his face flooded in sweat, and he said we'd have to get
married first.  "All right big boy," I said in Bosnian, one Friday morning.  In the afternoon, I busted the door of a
classroom where he had his Swedish for beginners lesson and dragged him to a local tailor who fixed him up with a nice
jacket and a tie.  Then we found an imam who could perform a quick joining of good souls.

8) Wood.  Grey Container.

Ibrahim is great in bed.  I love him.  He's a keeper.

9) Clothes.  Well, another Grey Container.

I never wear a bathing suit when I take dips in the nearby lake.

10) Food.  Green Container (of course).

Now I have to take another risk.  Ever since I came to Sweden, I've stopped eating.  Or, I mean, not stopped, like being
anorexic or bulimic as is fashionable these days.  I just don't really pay any attention to tastes, that's all.  I eat
anything.  I have become a vulture of a kind.  Since I eat anything, except for bones that my dog eats, I have nothing
to put with the garbage.  I'll just leave some blank space on this sheet, empty like a roaring stomach.  You can put
anything in this slot.  Take a pen and fill it in. {

                                                            } ~This should be about enough.

11) Objects too large to fit into any of the above categories.  (I have run out of containers so I'll just, well, I actually
have no idea what to do with this.)  I'll just repeat a thing from [Refuge]e...

                                       I nearly killed a woman on the refugee bus that brought me to Sweden.

                                                                                           ***

THE END
p.s. Ah, who cares about p.s.


1 In Bosnia, we were graded 1 for no-pass and 5 for excellence, like an A in the US.
2 Speaking of feet, this sentence is a bit awkward, isn't it? Never mind, let's keep it.
3 I have to say I don't like using this word "suddenly".  I've stopped using it, but here it obviously must be together
with the remains.

Adnan Mahmutovic