by Ismet Prcic
* * *
Across the road some old-timer came out of his house, slowly, as though his shoes were too small and made of wood. He wore the black French beret that generations of Muslims traditionally wear in these parts. It was too small for his big, white head and looked clownish. He went around the house, reappeared with an ax in his hand, and painstakingly made his way to a dried-out plum tree in the corner of the yard.
Is this his grandfather?
He looked up at the tree, shook his head with sadness, put his hand against the sun-bleached trunk, and pushed at it. The treetop rustled and some brown leaves parachuted down into the yard.
His father?
Chop went the ax. The old-timer’s swings were measured and slow but he knew what he was doing. Splinters of wood flew from his ax like sparks.
“Merhaba, grandpa,” I heard myself say, and felt myself walk across the road toward him. The man turned to look who it was, then put down the ax and leaned on it like on a cane.
“Merhaba, son, merhaba.”
“Time for doing some work, huh?”
“Yeah . . . we got hit this spring. One of their . . . shells. It hit right there at the base of the house, you see, and all the bullets made all kinds of mess in the yard.”
“Not bullets, grandpa. They are called shrapnel.”
“They’re metal and they go fast and they kill and break things. They’re bullets.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“Of course they’re bullets . . . I didn’t mind the broken windows or the goat but they hit this here plum tree. Thirty years ago I put a stick no thicker than my little finger into the ground and look at it. Every winter I wrapped it in plastic. I picked bugs and worms off of it with my fingers, one by one. I scraped pigeon shit off the roof, mixed it with water, and used that to feed it. It was the best plum tree in Mejdan. But these animals . . . these mountain people . . . and look at it now.”
He reached up and bent one of the small branches, which snapped off in his hand.
“Look,” he said and broke it effortlessly in three places and showed me the lamentable twigs. “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” I said. “It’s good firewood.”
“I guess,” said the old man. “My sons said the same thing but I didn’t let them cut it. I told them, I said, I don’t wanna see you near it. I thought it might pull through, you know, rejuvenate itself. God can do that. But I can’t look at it anymore. Every time I see it something cracks in my chest. What a pity. Thirty-some years. Burn it up in a stove.”
I shook my sympathetic head. We both stood there for some time looking up at the tree. The old-timer’s eyes were wet slits, trifurcating into crow’s feet.
“You don’t happen to be a Nali?” I asked him, to my own surprise.
He came closer to his side of the fence—holding down his beret as if afraid that a gust of wind might nab it off his head—and looked at me.
“Nope.”
“Do you know any Nalis?”
“I had a couple of refugees living with me, brothers.”
“Mustafa?”
“Yeah, he’s in the army now.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Commando, I hear.”
“Big guy, with a beard?”
“You know him?”
“I was drafted on the same day as him.”
“What unit are you with?”
“I don’t know. I go in September.”
“Mustafa’s been in the army for a year now, son.”
I looked at a wristwatch I didn’t have, rubbed the place where it would have been if I had one.
“When’s the last time you heard from him?”
“Yesterday. He brought me some cornbread.”
“I think I have the wrong Mustafa, then,” I said, backing away.
“I was looking for the family of the guy who died in the last shelling, at the Gate.”
“You mean Bakir?”
“Who’s Bakir?”
“Mustafa’s brother. He died at the Gate.”
“Why does the grave say Mustafa?”
“The grave says Mustafa?”
“There’s a picture of Mustafa on it, too.”
“Are you kidding me, son?”
“No, I swear to God, grandpa.”
“I have no idea,” he said. “I’ll have to ask Mustafa.”
My neighborhood lit up just as I was walking across a children’s soccer game in the parking lot in front of my building. As soon as they saw the lights they all started to cheer and ran home to their TV sets and Atari pedals in full gallop. Three or four seconds and they were all gone. Only the boy with whose ball they were playing lingered for a moment longer to retrieve his property from under a shell-mangled Cinquecento; then he, too, disappeared into one of the vestibules.
For the first time in who knew how long I used the elevator.
When I opened the front door I could hear the pressure cooker hissing in the background already, some terrible turbo-folk music from one wing of the apartment and the demented ramblings of World Wrestling Federation’s Macho Man Randy Savage from another. I knew exactly where every member of my family was and what they were doing. I also knew that there was no way of avoiding them. The only unoccupied room was my parents’ bedroom and I had no desire to go in there.
I stood in the corridor by the coat hooks, trying to decide where to go. I took two steps toward the living room—where I knew my father, dressed in his sweatpants, was sitting in the rocker and hoarding the remote—then halted, and went the other way. The door to my room was ajar and I saw my brother jump, elbow first, off of a chair onto a sofa cushion on the floor. The crowd cheered loudly through the speakers, as though for him. I took a deep breath and started to go in but then just stopped and stared at a sticker on the door, a yellow and red triangle with a silhouette of a guy being struck by a serrated spear of electricity. HIGH VOLTAGE, it read. I exhaled.
The parquet floor squeaked under my right foot and I lifted it off. I stood there on one foot, staring at the sticker. I stood and I stood there. I stood breathing deeply until the door to the kitchen opened behind me and I heard my mother freeze in the doorway.
“You’re home.”
I put my right foot down. The parquet squeaked imperceptibly.
“What are you doing?”
I faced her. Mother was up to her elbows in flour. Her graying hair was in a ponytail, her arms chalky white.
I went up to her and kissed her cheek, said hello. She looked at me sideways.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“What?”
“Listen, I think you guys will make it to Scotland.”
One of the parquetry squares had a dark node and I made it appear and disappear under my white sock. A tear worked itself out of my eye and dropped two centimeters north of the node. I pressed my big toe on it. When I lifted my foot, it was gone.
“I just don’t know what to do.” My voice was whiny, stupid.
Mother stepped in and half hugged me, keeping her floury forearms away from my useless T-shirt.
“Let’s talk about it.”
“Listen,” my father said from across the coffee table, “I talked to Branka today and she thinks you guys are going for sure.”
On the TV was a blonde woman opening and closing her mouth into a microphone and swaying idiotically. The sound was muted.
“She didn’t tell us,” I said.
“I know,” he said, condescendingly nodding his head. He couldn’t help himself wanting to be important, acting like he was. I hated that. “We would like to know what your plan is.”
I looked at my mother smoking in the armchair. She held my gaze but said nothing.
“What plan? If Lendo signs the passport I’ll go to Scotland with everyone else.”
“And then?”
“What do you mean ‘and then’?”
“He talked to Ramona’s father,” my mother said through her personal haze.
“Ramona will stay in London after your tour,” my father said.
This was no news to me. Ramona had an older sister in London and the whole troupe knew she was planning on staying in the UK. We also swore not to tell anyone about it.
“I hope you didn’t tell Branka that,” I said. The singer on TV finished swaying and bowed to us.
“I didn’t. Her father did.”
I looked at him.
“Yes, he talked to Branka and arranged everything. Branka’s gonna let her stay. That’s better than having to run.”
“Did he have to pay for this?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“I could arrange the same thing for you.”
“If you want him to,” my mother added.
“To stay with Ramona in London?”
“To stay in Zagreb on the way back.”
“What for?”
“To get papers to go to America.”
Heat came out of nowhere and I thought I was spontaneously combusting. It spread from inside out, all over me, saturating my flesh.
“Your uncle Irfan phoned earlier today,” Father said. “He says you should come stay with him in California, go to college.”
I thought nothing.
“So what do you think? Ismet!”
I looked at Mother, her worried eyes. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know.”
A gray-haired man was strumming a silent guitar on the screen now and the back vocalists behind him clapped their hands in unison.
“I think I want to come back,” I said.
Father leaned back in his rocker and turned to the screen, his hand distractedly rubbing his face, rasping against his weak stubble. Mother took deep tokes of her cigarette. I could hear the smoke whir through the filter and into her lungs. When it came out it was silent like the TV, climbing slowly to the ceiling.
“I don’t know what’s smart,” my father said. “Who knows how long the war will last. It can go on for years or end tomorrow.”
“It will not end tomorrow,” Mother said with venom.
“Why don’t you want me to come back?”
“We do—” my father started.
“Because if you die on the front lines, I’ll kill myself.” It was Mother.
The room swung, the gray-haired man strummed his guitar, the three women behind him clapped, and the smoke billowed toward the ceiling. All things were in motion, not making a sound.
AUGUST 2
“When are you gonna call me tomorrow, goober?” Asja asked and I felt angry. It was 8 AM and we were on our favorite bench in the city park and I had just told her that there was a big chance Lendo had signed our papers—we were to find out later that morning.
Her brow was mountainous. A light breeze picked up portions of her hair and let them go, picked them up and let them go.
“Did you hear what I just said?” I asked.
“My dad’ll be home all day but he usually goes to work on our car around ten o’clock,” she said.
“Look at me,” I said, but she wouldn’t.
Instead, she put a kiss on my lips, unexpectedly, and sensing it was going to be a brief, devastating one, I leaned into it more and felt my pursed lips fight for purchase against hers, trying to protract the mellifluent contact, and then it was all over. She stood up, told me to call her tomorrow morning, and walked away forever. I watched her devolve from the flesh-to-flesh contact, to a specter down the street, her peach-colored backpack bobbing slightly, noiselessly, her hand flying up for a wave, then—foliage.
* * *
I was waiting for the County Office of Personal Documents to open. I guess I looked like a down-in-the-mouth late-blooming virgin with heartache, because the first thing Asmir said when he walked up with Bokal was:
“Why are you sad; you haven’t even given it to her? By the time I was eighteen I had more pussy than salad.”
He ruffled my hair like I was his fucking nephew or something and I punched his hand away.
“Get the fuck off me!”
“Whoa,” he cried out, trying to shake off the pain as though it were a crab clamped to his finger.
It took me all that time to notice that Asmir had on new clothes. He sported a pair of Levi’s—fake and probably made in Turkey, but crisp and jet-black and nice-looking. On top he had a striped polo shirt and in his hand was a plastic bag with more stuff. Both of them had on brand-new Converse All Stars, also fake.
“How did you get the gear?”
“Oh, our troupe was sponsored by an undisclosed German humanitarian organization today,” Asmir said.
“Well, some members of it anyway,” added Bokal and the two of them cackled like children.
“You got a sponsorship for the troupe and you went shopping for clothes?”
“Do you know what I had to do to secure this sponsorship?”
“What?”
“Six, no, five and a half times I had to sexually please a forty-seven-year old aid worker with pussy flaps the size of elephant’s ears. I think I deserve a pair of sneakers out of it.”
“Not a word about this to Branka, though,” Bokal said.
“Or her sons.”
To the left of the County Office was a rectangular hole that used to contain a pane of bulletproof glass but now was boarded up with a sheet of plywood. We heard some scraping coming from the inside, and the top of the sheet tipped back. Four fingers wedged themselves between the plaster and the wood on each side and the whole sheet disappeared inward, revealing the disgruntled face of a county employee, a youngish fellow with dark hair and a week’s worth of stubble.
“Are you open?” Bokal asked.
“What do you think?”
As I was closest, I went to him first and gave him my ID card.
“Here to pick up my passport and the license to travel out of the country.”
He snatched the ID out of my hands and disappeared inside. When he came back he held the navy blue document and a sheet of paper.
“Ten marks,” he said.
I took the note out of my pocket, straightened it out, and handed it to him. He folded the piece of paper twice, stacked the ID card on top of it, put the whole thing inside the passport, and gave it to me.
Asmir stepped up next. I opened up the passport and stared at my picture. It was a little crooked, but the signature to the right of it looked official.
“Wow,” I said. “I can’t believe we really are going.”
“I can’t believe they are charging us,” Bokal said. “You have ten marks to lend me?”
“Sorry, man. My old man talked to Branka and she said bring ten marks.”
“Didn’t I tell you we’re going to Scotland?” Asmir said, holding up his passport, then spread his arms and mimed flying like a bird.
“Fuck,” Bokal said. He walked up to the window and put his ID in front of the man, who just looked at it without picking it up.
“It costs ten marks to pick up the passport.”
“I’ll go get it; I just want to see if they approved mine.”
Grimacing, the man took the ID and once more vanished into the back. Bokal turned to us.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t have ten marks at home, either.”
“Fuck, Bokal, why didn’t you tell me? We just spent a hundred and fifty on the black market.”
“I didn’t know they were gonna charge us.”
The man coughed to get Bokal’s attention.
“Your passport is here, but your license to travel was denied on account of your being a member of the military.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you can take this passport and wipe your ass with it, is what it means.”
“What’s the point of giving somebody a travel document and forbidding them to leave the country?”
“What’s the point of trying to make sense of the bureaucratic lap
ses of an infant state in the fourth year of a devastating war?”
“So what am I gonna do now?”
“You can go home and bring me ten marks and I’ll give you a worthless document. Or you can go home, take those ten marks, buy a bottle of moonshine, and drink it until the colors of the world melt off.”
“I can’t drink,” Bokal said, changing tack. “I lost a kidney in the trenches.”
