The God of the Donated Clothes Magazine

Years after spending three weeks in a refugee camp in Sweden, a Bosnian police detective learns the true identity of the camp’s gatekeeper of clothing.

We arrived at five a.m. in front of a building that reminded me of a miniature airplane hangar, the morning thick with mist, snaking its heavy, brooding tendrils through the pine forest that ensconced the camp. The dew smelled like the earth waking up.

Though it was barely a minute after five o’clock, many were already there. By the look of it, they must have come even earlier. Big sister said: two hundred people at least. All strangers to us, all strangers to each other, grouped together at the intersection of purely coincidental itineraries forced upon people fleeing a war. Seen through the mist, the bodies waiting to be chosen looked like zombies risen from the underworld.

All of us wanted to change our clothes. All of us needed pretty much everything: shoes, pants, shirts, socks, underwear, jackets. 

Mama, big sister, and I had worn the same clothes for four months. Mama kept saying it would be our turn very soon, with a sadness on her face that pulled her tired eyes even farther down her worn cheeks, a sadness as forcefully unseen as remembered (many years later) by a ten-year-old. I prayed and made wishes, using the few words I remembered from the two times I’d visited the mosque for Bajram, not knowing what the words meant. Alahu ekber. Bismilaihrahmanirahim. Please give me a Bulls jersey, Reebok pumps, Nike jacket, and so on. Big sister called me a retard. Mama slapped her and told her to act like a big sister. 

Mama, big sister, and I had worn the same clothes for four months.

Days went by. On the day we were chosen, we had waited two weeks. At that point, we were showing up out of some abstract duty, like when people would show up to mosque or church back home even though they didn’t believe God ever intended to bestow them with any special grace.

Our clothes were stinky, worn out, coming apart, pathetic. But the clothes didn’t bother me the most. It was sleeping in the tent. There was the cold. It was September, and yet in the mornings it felt like the winters back home. I could see my own breath when I exhaled, in September! I pretended I was smoking. Big sister called me a retard again, this time without Mama’s presence. It was excruciatingly uncomfortable to sleep on the hard mattresses on the hard ground.

Worse than this were the sounds coming from the other tents at night. I heard snoring that made the ground tremble (quickly exposed as coming from Mustafa, a fat single guy in his fifties, quieter than a church mouse when not sleeping). I heard screams from men and from women. I heard joking, laughing. I heard arguments, fighting. I heard babies and young children crying. And I thought: Amazing how this doesn’t wake big sister and Mama up. I covered my ears with the palms of my hands as hard as I could, but it didn’t work. 

There were too many of us arriving too quickly, so the government had to put a few of us close to an army firing range, which also happened to be close to a Swedish air force base. The worst was the artillery fire and the low-flying fighter jets. Alen, who used to be a pilot in Yugoslavia, said it was the JAS Gripen, “Sweden’s military airplane, named after a mythical flying beast.” The first few times we heard the artillery and the planes, people went crazy. Some got hurt simply by losing control of their bodies and running into something or throwing themselves down violently. Some tried to escape into the forest, until someone else, more measured in the moment, ran after them to tell them it’s just drills. Mama didn’t freak out like the others did. She never freaked out. “Sometimes you just draw the shortest straw,” she said and shrugged her shoulders.

As we approached the waiting zone, we could hear that the shouting, pitiful as always, had already started. A sea of raised hands rose and fell in wild waves of desperation. They reminded me of people drowning, waving their terrified arms for the rescue boat to save them. I thought of the Titanic. Arms, voices, bodies blended together. “Me pick me pick me I’ve a baby here over here over here we’ve been in the same clothes for four months I beg you I’ve waited every day for over a week!” Not one of us spoke Swedish, so all this came out in Bosnian.

The imploring arms and begging words were directed at the raised podium beyond the high fence separating the waiting zone from the entrance zone. Directed at him: Lasse. Lasse with blond hair like a coarse brush. Lasse with the leather jacket that came up just over the belt of his Levi’s, the kind we fantasized about owning in Yugoslavia. Lasse with the shiny black cowboy boots. Fucking Lasse.

Lasse whistled. He nodded. He laughed. Occasionally, he sneered. Sometimes he snarled. He would point at the chosen ones, the ones he blessed with entrance to the magazine. At most eight per day, big sister and I counted.

Next to Lasse stood Zara, his assistant. She was recently taken from the flock to facilitate communication, to act as his translator—or so she said in the only announcement from the podium she ever made. All the other times she just stood there, chewing bubble gum. 

In the canteen over breakfast one day (on the menu: juice, too sweet; flavorless corn flakes; some kind of meat; potatoes boiled to undead versions of themselves; watery milk; bread that fell apart at the slightest touch), I overheard Tea, a younger woman who had become friends with Mama, tell Mama: “One night I saw Zara sneaking around with Lasse behind the canteen, and wouldn’t you know it, the next day she’s his high priestess, standing next to him all smug, donning new fancy clothes! And that poor husband of hers, I can’t imagine what he thinks of all this.” Mama said: “Who knows what’s going on,” and shrugged her shoulders.

I have these vivid memories of the first days after we arrived at the camp: just before the chosen walked into the magazine, from behind the open door a heavenly light flooded over us not chosen, to retreat as soon as the chosen had shut the door behind them. When the chosen came out in those first days, some had very nice new clothes on. They looked like changed people. Like new people. Like people reborn. They walked differently. They talked differently. No more getting up at five for them. No more standing in the cold. No more begging. They were better than us, the not chosen.

No more standing in the cold. No more begging. They were better than us, the not chosen.

A few denied the reality of this magical transformation and called the rest of us fools, morons, and such. Zlatko, the smart-ass philosophy professor, a slim man with glasses and a funny little mustache, said we might as well indulge in worshipping the golden calf and that we’d soon be making this idiot Lasse offerings. Having nothing but our bodies to offer, we’d have to offer our bodies. “Take your useless Marxist-Leninist philosophy and shove it up your skinny ass,” someone told Zlatko, making others laugh. 

One day, a man from Srebrenica by the name of Enes said in front of everyone in the canteen: “Why do I get the sense we’re the ones being . . . I don’t know what, maybe the ones being picked, like for an auction, for a display, as mannequins, yes, as mannequins, to be dressed in the garbs of Swedish moral uprightness.” Then he spat on the floor, which was already quite dirty.

The day Enes said that, the police came and took him away in the evening. At first, people complained to the camp manager through the designated translator. “Is this a police state? What kind of way is this to treat a refugee?” Some were terrified, because it reminded them of their ordeals in Bosnia and foreboded in their minds some freakish historical repeat. 

But we soon learned what the Swedish police had learned: Enes wasn’t Enes. Enes was actually Milorad, a Bosnian Serb who’d committed war crimes. When this was discovered, people’s consciences found relief, for most people had told Enes to shut the fuck up when he said that about the mannequins. Most had pitied him on account of his bloodshot eyes and look of terror on his face, a look that most had pegged down to personal experience of atrocity and not willful infliction of atrocity. 

In the canteen, which smelled of piss and shit because the port-a-potties were stationed right outside the entrance, all were silent for days after the Enes-Milorad incident. Perhaps they thought this: Who else pretending to be someone else might be in our midst? 

Perhaps they thought this: Who else pretending to be someone else might be in our midst?

* * *

On the day we were chosen, we took turns waiting. Big sister and I waited for an hour while Mama rested in the tent, then she relieved us for an hour, and so it went. We had stopped raising our arms and shouting, finding the gestures of no use. But we watched as we made ourselves as visible as possible to Lasse. I listened to the squirrels scurrying up and down the trees. They seemed to always be in a hurry. I unlistened to the live fire exercises as best as I could. 

Around eleven in the morning, big sister and I saw Lasse extend his mighty arm of power straight up and then slowly let it fall down, still extended, midway to his chest, his index finger suddenly pointed at us. We had been chosen.

Electricity shot through my body. Big sister said, “Hurry, go get Mama, quick!” I ran fast as lightning, woke Mama up, and dragged her to the magazine, which lay a mere twenty meters from the tent.

The three of us pushed through the crowd huddled together in the waiting zone. In that moment, there were no individuals, no people with histories. There were only obstacles of flesh slowing us down.

We found ourselves at last in front of the gate. Lasse unlocked the massive padlock and took off the chain with links the size of twisted sausages. The gate opened to a scratching sound, metal dragging over cold earth. We walked through quickly, Lasse closing and locking the gate behind us. He gestured with his hand for us to go through the door and into the magazine. Just above the door, I saw the large banner with the Red Cross logo up close. It was dirty from the dust. It swayed gently in the wind.

As we opened the heavy magazine door, light washed over us and we stepped inside. From the outside, the light looked magical. From the inside, as its strength pierced our eyes, the magic instantly wore off. 

We were the only ones in there. As my eyes adjusted to the strong beams of light, the smells became pronounced: mold and mothballs meshing with the hints of smells permanently set on fiber: sweat, dirt, rain, Coke, milk, ketchup, spit, dust, snow, chocolate, bread crumbs, coffee, vodka, beer, body odor, urine. 

Four older women in Red Cross vests were positioned in the four corners of the space. They smiled at us and pointed to the clothes: go ahead, please, choose from the heaps of clothes laid out on these plastic tables that stretch along the corrugated metal walls. 

I surveyed the whole. A palette of anticolors: shit brown, diarrhea yellow, pea soup green, vomit gray. Large signs in Bosnian and Swedish marked the sections: Žene/Kvinnor, Muškarci/Män, Curice/Flickor, Dječaci/Pojkar.

We spent no more than ten minutes perusing the clothes. We tried some on right there in front of the women, because there were no changing rooms. Mostly: shrunken pants, sun-faded jackets, beat-up shoes, tired shirts, soulless garbs. 

I felt disgusted. “Fuck me,” big sister said. “Shh!” Mama admonished her. Mama did her best to conceal her profound disappointment. She said, “Hvala, eh, tak” to the women after we had made our choice. Two of them smiled and put their hands to their hearts. The other two began to rearrange the clothes we had inspected.

When we walked out, we weren’t new people. We were these people:

One ten-year-old boy dressed in mustard-stained pants that were just a little too short, a Mickey Mouse sweater that had a tear on the collar, and a thick blue winter coat that smelled like someone’s basement. 

One fifteen-year-old girl wearing exactly what she wore when she came in, for she refused to choose anything. Her Mama approved of the nonchoice with her eyes, one could even say with immeasurable pride. 

One thirty-three-year-old woman exiting with the same clothes she entered in except for her shoes. She had chosen a pair of brown boots with uneven soles that were, despite their shortcomings, still better suited to the season than the knock-off Adidas sneakers she’d been wearing the last few months.

* * *

We spent a mere three weeks living in the camp. My obsession with it has only grown with age. 

We spent a mere three weeks living in the camp. My obsession with it has only grown with age.

I’ve tracked down and spoken to seventy-three individuals who stayed in the camp (I had to engage in minor abuses of my privileges as a police detective). 

I’ve spoken to the people from Revinge municipality and the Red Cross in charge at the time. 

I’ve rummaged the Revinge town records and the Migration Agency archives, for what I don’t quite know. 

I’ve read the academic literature about the camps. I’ve read the national and local newspapers covering that three-week period. 

I’ve spoken to Mama and big sister. 

And, of course, I remember. I’ve amassed a great deal of material, but I’m at a loss as to what I can or should do with it. 

I’ve made a few major discoveries. They sometimes appear in my dreams as whispers from a time more mythical than historical.

Some 323 tent camps were erected around the country, each accommodating four hundred to five hundred people. All camps followed the same master layout. Each site was built around a central storeroom for donated clothes. A canteen was invariably placed on the edge of the camp. Each canteen served exactly the same food (through a lucrative public-private contract, a big food company made and delivered the food). The tents (two- and four-man tents) fanned out from the central structure. Only one camp was placed close to an army base that conducted drills and exercises with live fire: ours. 

By far, the most significant discovery about the camp that I obtained was from Maria Svärd, investigative reporter at Kristianstadsbladet, and her article published on August 7, 2018. The discovery: Lasse wasn’t Lasse. Lasse was Hasse, Lasse’s twin brother. The story, in brief:

Hasse (Hans Quick) had escaped from Kumla prison, where he was serving ten years for murder. He made his way (“wearing rags for clothes,” Svärd points out) to the house of his brother, Lasse (Lars Quick), to (as Hasse later confessed) hide out. Lasse, “a recluse and pious member of the Swedish Church,” was shocked to see his brother. Lasse refused to help Hasse. Hasse, feeling betrayed, assaulted Lasse. “I didn’t mean to kill him, I swear to God,” Hasse told the police. But kill him he did.

Hasse buried his brother in the woods adjacent to his brother’s house in the middle of nowhere, northeast Scania. The phone rang one day in Lasse’s house (a cottage really). Hasse picked up as Lasse. It was someone from Revinge municipality’s reception and integration ad hoc unit, asking Lasse to help out with a refugee camp that was going to be raised in the municipality as an emergency solution. Standard protocol didn’t apply, Lasse just had to get the job done. Not many questions were asked. No one could tell that Lasse was actually Hasse. How could they have known? 

After the Revinge camp was dismantled, Hasse, still pretending to be Lasse, found work in other institutions for vulnerable people (children with autism, unaccompanied minors, women escaping abusive partners, and so on). One day, as Svärd was browsing through complaints of inappropriate or harmful behavior exhibited by staff in these institutions, she came across the name Lars Quick again and again. 

She took a closer look at this Lars and found that he was nothing but an upstanding citizen, a professional with a spotless record for much of his career. In her research, as she writes in the article, she “stumbled over the story of Hans, entirely by accident.” Svärd’s aha! moment came when she saw that the complaints about Lars began not long after Hans had escaped. Using her gut instinct, she convinced the local police to do a thorough search of Lars’s house and the surrounding area. 

It didn’t take long before they found and dug up Lars’ remains. In the interrogation, Hans (now as Hans) broke down quickly and confessed to killing his brother. 

I was the detective who interrogated Hans. I made no mention of our shared, however brief, past. 

I was the detective who interrogated Hans. I made no mention of our shared, however brief, past. 

Svärd won a Golden Spade—Sweden’s most prestigious investigative journalism award—for her story.

Not long after Hans Quick was convicted of murder and sent back to Kumla, I returned to the site where the camp lay, having found the exact coordinates in the Revinge town archive. There was no trace of the camp or what transpired there during those three weeks. There was only the evergreen forest. I heard the mighty sounds of artillery firing off every few minutes or so. In between those minutes I listened to the squirrels climbing the pines hurriedly. I heard an owl hooting mysteriously. I watched as my breath left my body.

Brussels, Belgium