Only a Photo

There once was a time when we lived without fear. Original by Katerina Janouch.

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The year is 2006. My four youngest and I pose for a promotional photo for my column in Mama Magazine. My job there is to field questions about parenthood and relationships. I live a quiet life with my five children and husband in a villa outside Stockholm. I'm not particularly active politically, but I'm interested in equality, feminism, and drug abuse. I write about sex and relationships. Little do I know that, ten years later, I won't be able to let my teenage daughter ride the subway alone at night.

It's a photo I've kept in a drawer. It brings back many memories. Those were good times, times of innocence. I can remember it now, looking at the five of us in the photographer's studio. It tears at me. A feeling of loss. Not because I long for the child-rearing years. They were wonderful but a lot of hard work! No, the feeling of loss is for the Sweden we had back then. That was a time when we lived without fear. That time no longer exists.

Little could I know that, only twelve years later, I would be bullied, persecuted, and lose work because I refuse to be quiet about what's happening to Sweden. Little could I know that I'd leave the 'establishment', more or less of my own accord, and become a so-called 'controversial' figure, just because I have the guts to not stay silent about these frightful developments. To think that the truth could be so controversial in a highly developed country like Sweden! To think that the things I say, in 2017 and 2018, would so frighten those in denial, frighten them more than the fact that criminality and sexual violence have escalated to levels never before seen in Sweden's history! Bestial gang-rapes have become daily fare. Shootings are so common that they get a small mention on the back pages of the tabloids, if at all. The violence is more and more brutal. No one is spared - not the pensioners, not household pets, not the children, not the handicapped. People are assaulted, stabbed, and raped on a daily basis. People are dragged behind automobiles and the criminals get ridiculously lenient sentences. Someone talks back to a gang of teenagers and gets stabbed as a result. Many of us don't dare go outdoors anymore. Our society shuts down in the evenings. Mr and Mrs Sweden cower in their homes. They buy alarm systems so they might be able to protect themselves from gangs of burglars who don't hesitate to simply break in and take what they want. And our elected politicians keep on lying, tell us they have the situation under control, even as our society falls apart.

I'm one of those who can actually remember what things were like 5-10 years ago, remember how we lived in a safe and mostly harmonious country. I wasn't afraid to go jogging in the woods. I had pods with music for my ears when I went out to meet friends, and I traveled alone on the subway at night. I went into the nightlife without a thought that something might happen to me. Of course I took the usual precautions a woman takes, but I wasn't uneasy about it. Sexual assault and rape were the exception, not the rule. My oldest son went to school in town and hung out with his friends there. The other boys started commuting into town already at the age of 12 or 13. They took the subway and hung out at the Internet cafés. I wasn't worried they'd be stabbed or shot. I wasn't worried about runaway lorries and terror. I was confident the police would come if needed, and that they'd sort things out if a crime had been committed.

Such nostalgia to see that photo again. I look so carefree! I felt safe! I'd brought a lot of kids into the world and I take for granted their futures will be bright. For I live in the best country on the planet, and I have a social contract with that country. I pay my taxes and in return get fantastic childcare, education, medical care, and law enforcement. As a woman and mother I know that I have my democratic freedoms and rights, and I don't think much about how loud I'm talking when I say what's on my mind. To be honest, I don't have a lot to complain about. OK, one of my sons broke his arm, and we had to wait nearly 24 hours at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital, but he got his arm fixed in the end. And OK, my daughter's appendix operation was delayed so much that her life was in danger, that wasn't good, no. What can you do?



Now I beg the powers above every day that none of us fall seriously ill. I've begun to understand that my parents are the last generation that will receive an acceptable pension. I also understand that the social contract has been broken. The police are dangerously undermanned, our government can no longer be trusted. Everything that used to work without a hitch - agencies, institutions - is down on its knees today. More corruption is unearthed every day.

They try to distract us from the things that matter. They hound those who offer resistance. They shut down their investigations of serious crimes and mete out laughably lenient sentences to hardened criminals.

The citizens of this country have been abandoned. The old folks are suffering. I'll go so far as to say they're being 'terminated' by a state that abuses them mercilessly, by evicting them from their homes, by not giving them the care they need, for which they've already paid through a lifetime of hard work, and by discontinuing medical assistance for those who are severely ill. Every day I get letters from citizens who feel betrayed, forgotten, and abused by a government they once could trust, I get letters from parents who wonder what the future has in store for their children, I get letters from young girls who've been sexually assaulted, threatened, called 'Swedish sluts', I get letters from law-abiding pensioners who are summoned to police interrogations, and get their homes raided, because they posted something in anger on Facebook.

It's only a photo. A photo I've kept in a drawer. A memory from a better time. A reminder of what we once had - and what we've lost. It feels unreal. You don't miss it until it's gone. Perhaps we didn't understand that we had something special back then, back when life was easy, predictable, and undramatic.

Katerina Janouch is an author and journalist. She debuted with her first novel in 1993.

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Katerina Janouch: Det fanns en tid när vi levde utan rädsla i Sverige