We continued talking after a good nights sleep. In Westgermany he heard about Sweden and began dreaming of imigrating here because here you were not judged by the color of skin.

Did you really believe that, I wondered very surprised. I was a blue eyed Swedish blonde supposedly stupid thanks to Marilyn Monroe but sadly my knowledge of my people and the existence of race biology. Tony didn’t answer instead he said.

How are you who is not black ever going to understand how it is, Tony said. I was born black and can never pretend that I am anything else.

And why do you have to pretend that you are something that you are not. I want to understand what it’s like being you. I was mobbed in school because my mother was sick and taken in to a mentalhospital, it wasn’t fun. Nothing I can help. I just can’t let that rule my life.

Why some Swedes think they are superior over others I don’t know but I would like to know. And it’s sad that people in this world think they know you because you are black, me because of just being a woman. By the way weren’t you disappointed when you came here with such high hopes. He nodded.

It didn’t help trying to involve the trouble that women go through in our relationship with men. Sometimes even seen as lesser beings. I am a stupid blond whose words are not heard by men and a few women who speaks over ones head. Still he kept saying that I don’t understand.

Why sharing something which happend long ago maybe because Afroswedes and some folks in the USA still are convinced that I who is still white can’t understand what it means being black. That I am a human being who has the ability to put myself in other peoples situation to feel other peoples paint, grief being killed, beaten only because of color of skin that does not matter. I often withdraw because it is difficult when no matter what I do or say I am white which means I don’t know what it means being black.

One of Martin Luther King’s dreams was to not be judged by color of skin only by character. I had heard that first speech already in 1963 not understanding every word. My English wasn’t all that good was after all only ten. Thought it was a bit stupid to judge people by color of skin. Being certain that it must be more to us than that. Something my mothers art and my fathers poetry had told me.

All across the world is shown that to police, governments so on so forth that Black lives still matters less than white lives. That is not how it should be. At this first moment Tony didn’t listen, but his point of views triggered my arguments and I also searched for knowledge. Some activists among black people meant that men’s fight for his rights was more important than women. Why can’t we fight together for a cause that should be our birthrights. So did the radical white Swedes think in the seventies.

After I had been to the bathroom I lay down by his side and touched his back with my fingertips. I noticed saw some very light strings on his back and butt, I asked what it was for scares.

I was in a foster home when I was 11 years old. The woman was white. This was in Philadelphia. She whipped me with an electric cord if I had not left her house spotless.

This was not the only ugly story from Philadelphia he shared with me next night he spoke of death sins. The Catholic church in Philadelphia were he had been a quire boy had told him that when he died he would find himself in purgatory were he would burn for millions of years for every little sin. Sounded strange to me wasn’t it something called confession were you were forgiven. Not death sins he meant and the worth sin you could commit were being born black.

There was his awful feelings coming from about being black. Outside of the Catholic Church there in the forthies and fifties were “Whites only” signs, so I could understand him, but did not want him to believe in that. I was not about to say what most Swedes would say that God doesn’t exist that I can’t say. What I did say was that if I was God I would prefer a black church to any other church out the gospel that’s often is sung there comes faith and you know Tony in Ethiopia Jesus is black. Something so wrong with that Catholic church’s teaching.

We did have a good cuddling and fell a sleep. That was the first nights of our lives together.

• Biografi