Shards: A Novel

by Ismet Prcic

  In the Name of God, the most Gracious, the most Merciful.

  Dear son,

  Where are you? Are you alive?

  I’m writing this even though I don’t know these things. I’m writing this because I have to, because I have to tell you something that I cannot, that I never could, not even to myself. But it’s killing me.

  Everybody says you’re dead. People I haven’t heard from in years call and offer condolences, send food, money, say, If you need anything.

  I donate what they send. I don’t believe them. I know you’re alive. I just know.

  Americans sent me pictures of a body to identify. Porridge of meat and guts, shards of bone. They said you jumped off a building, killed yourself. They said they had partial fingerprints. But it wasn’t you, was it? They couldn’t find your appendectomy scar. Weren’t sure. They couldn’t find the birthmark below your knee. Inconclusive, they said. The body’s head had good hair like yours but it was too gray for you. One can’t go gray overnight, can one? They say it’s possible but I don’t believe it. How can I?

  Your . . . father is the one who signed the affidavit of identification or whatever and got everybody believing in this nonsense. Face the facts, he said when I called to beg him not to do it. He’s quick to wash his hands of people that way. He tried to wash his hands of me, too, but I’m still alive, right? That’s the last and only time I spoke to him.

  * * *

  Right now I tried to write the impossible (truth) to you, what I can’t tell myself, and couldn’t. What a surprise. But I tried really hard, son. People are not saints. Some things can only be admitted to in person. There’ll be time for that, God willing.

  But at least I can tell you the news. Your brother moved to Sarajevo to go to the university down there and to get away from your father. They were fighting something awful, I heard. He’s studying pharmacology and dating a girl he won’t let me meet. He’s either ashamed that I’m religious or that I’m crazy, or both. He calls once a month or so.

  Asmir made a documentary film in Scotland about your guys’ troupe and it played twice on national TV. Mehmed taped it for me. I watch it every day, so much that the parts you’re in are getting worn and the images dance up and down. Asmir came to visit in August and brought me tulips and bonbons and cried for you a little. Gave me a disc of the film but I still don’t have that player thingy. He said that Bokal married a woman twenty years his senior to stay legal in England. Also, he said that your friend Omar was in rehab for an overdose but that he’s better now. He didn’t know where Ramona was because they had a falling out.

  Your friend Eric from America sent me a letter and a book by Faulkner, but I can’t read either, as you know. We learned Russian in school. There was a picture, too. He has the cutest little blond boy and his wife looks strong and sturdy, which is good for women in that crazy America. They are all smiling—you know how Americans are in front of a camera.

  Oh, I almost forgot. Do you know someone named Mustafa Nalic?;

  He writes that he knows you but I don’t remember him. I’ve yet to meet him in person. He’s more like an angel to me, invisible but good. He takes care of me. Every month he sends this kid to my door with all my medications and some money, too. He sent me a kurban for Bajram, nearly half a lamb. (I made some of it with okra, the way you like it. I froze most of it so you can try it when you come home.) He seems to think that he owes me. He sent me this note and thanked me for visiting him in the hospital. It says that I was the only one who ministered to him during the war when he was wounded when a tree fell on his neck, although I don’t recall doing any of it. But, with my head, who knows.

  Where are you, my son?

  I feel you. I know you’re out there somewhere.

  Why don’t you call me?

  Call me when you get this.

  Or just come back to me. I have lamb and okra waiting for you.

  And sauerkraut. Who’s gonna eat all this food? I can’t do it alone.

  I miss you like I would miss a limb.

  I need to tell you what I cannot write here.

  I’m alone. In the walls.

  In God.

  Waiting.

  * * *

  *This is the final entry and it appears here exactly as it does in the original without any of my meddling. Bear with it.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank the following humans for helping me to write this book:

  My mother, for being an artist despite her life; my wife, for her unwavering love and for keeping my ego in check; Samir Mehanovi who opened the doors; Eric Carlson, for friendship, for Tom Waits and for editing my “those boots that you use to go hiking-s” to “hiking boots”; Aleksandar Hemon, for writing back; Michelle Latiolais, for teaching me how to read what’s on the page and encouraging me to write my book; Ron Carlson, for teaching me how not to leave the room; Geoffrey Wolff and Gil Dennis, for taking me in; Christine Schutt, for knowing what—unbeknownst to me—my writing is all about; Brad Watson for all the stories and encouragement; Eileen Myles, Rae Armantrout and Allan Havis, for starting it all. Thank you so much.

  For looking at a mess of five hundred pages and believing that it’s a book I’d like to thank my agent P. J. Mark and my editor Lauren Wein. Much love to you both.

  Thanks should go to these exquisite lunatics as well: Who-is-it-that- is-your-daddy Deborah, J. M. Geever, Stephen Cope, Frankozoid, Ramona-fauna-land, Merris, Byrnage, Lordy, Papa Max, Momma Erin, Sizzlechest Summel, Lady-what’s-the-fuck Marissa, Kevin I’ll-filet-you-like-a-fish Lee, Michael hmm-deep Andreasen, Jacoby, Quinlan, Grostephan, Leila, Kim O’Neil, Nelson and Agent Sanchez for enduring me in various workshops. “You motherfuckers are gonna believe it now!”

  I am also greatly indebted to the UCI School of the Humanities and International Center for Writing and Translation, Glenn Schaeffer and the National Endowment for the Arts for their generous financial support.

  Last but not least I thank the Hansen-Johnston, Prcic, McNeil, Guti, and Huki clans for all the love and support. Extra thanks for my sister-in-law for being a great reader; chances are if you’re holding this book it’s because Jessica made you buy it.

  Shards

  Ismet

  Prcic

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  We hope that these discussion questions will enhance your reading group’s exploration of Ismet Prcic’s Shards. They are meant to stimulate discussion, offer new viewpoints and enrich your enjoyment of the book.

  More reading group guides and additional information, including summaries, author tours and author sites for other fine Black Cat titles may be found on our Web site, www.groveatlantic.com.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  The author begins the book with two epigraphs: an excerpt from Hamlet, in which the hero gives advice to the players, and lines from a poem by Iraqi writer Saadi Youssef. How do both epigraphs speak to the themes of the book? Might they be taken together as the author’s statement of purpose? Are there similarities between Ismet’s and Hamlet’s preoccupations? And perhaps also Asmir’s, who quotes from Hamlet’s advice to the players (p. 106)? Where else in the book does the image of shards recur?

  Shards plays with the conventions of both the novel and memoir, with Ismet acting as the novel’s hero as well as the author of the memoir within it. How is this layering of fiction and nonfiction elements essential to the larger story? Ismet writes in his diary that as he was working on his memoir “things—little fictions—started to sneak in. I agonized over them, tried to eradicate them from the manuscript, but it made the narrative somehow less true” (p. 22). How might these inventions make his story more true?

  Why is Ismet more affected by seeing what he thinks is Mustafa Nalic’s grave than by seeing his own cousin’s (p. 168)? How much of Mustafa’s existence has Ismet imagined and what purpose do his imaginings serve? Does Mustafa help give shape to the pain of war that Ismet experiences? How do their life stories intertwine and then fuse toget
her at the end?

  The novel alternates between Ismet’s stories (told in the first person point of view) and Mustafa’s stories (told in third person) and jumps forward and backward in time. How would the meaning of the story change if it were told chronologically using only one point of view? Why has the author chosen to tell some parts of the story in the second person point of view (see sections beginning on pp. 78, 313, and 378)?

  How does the author establish the setting as uniquely Bosnian? What do you learn about the culture? About family life and gender roles? About village life and values (see pp. 85–93)? About the role of religion in daily life? About the politics of the region and the war? How much of the story depends on this particular setting and how could it be seen as a coming-of-age story that might be set anywhere?

  Notebooks, diaries, and letters are the forms the author employs to tell Ismet’s story. How might a writer’s tone, choice of content, and level of honesty be different in each form? How do Ismet’s word choices and tone of voice help establish his character? Ismet is very self-aware, but are there things he doesn’t see about himself?

  How does Ismet develop a sense of identity as he grows up—what distinguishes him in his own mind from others? How does his sense of identity change when he leaves Bosnia and becomes “Izzy” in America? How does Ismet situate himself in relation to his fellow refugees arriving at the airport? Ismet contemplates his friend Eric’s existence and then thinks about his own on p. 43. Do you think his dreams of belonging and being anonymous can ever be reconciled?

  How has Ismet’s awareness of his mother’s unhappiness and fragility helped shape him? What are his mother’s strengths? Does Ismet’s relationship with his mother change as he matures? Consider the symbolic implications of Ismet’s cat/person dream (p. 342). What do you think his mother wants to tell him that she cannot bring herself to write in her letter?

  Ismet’s first two girlfriends, Asya and Allison, pursue him and he leaves them both. Does his relationship with Melissa represent a change? What attracts him to each of these women? What does he learn through his relationships with them?

  As war is brewing, fifteen-year-old Ismet tells his mother, “I thought we were all Yugoslavs,” then wonders why he’s broached a question he already knows the answer to: “Maybe the Communist message of Brotherhood and Unity had been so thoroughly drummed into my head that it surfaced robotically and overrode my actual experience” (p. 6). Does this awareness of doublespeak and propaganda contribute to Ismet’s comedic sense and ironic detachment? Return to Ismet’s description of Tuzla’s architecture and the naming of its municipal offices (pp. 97–98)—what picture do you get of Bosnia’s Communist legacy and its effects on its citizens’ approaches to life?

  Can Ismet’s childhood experiences of faking appendicitis (pp. 34–36) and directing the ninja high jinks in the forest (pp. 51–56) be seen as his first experiments in theater? What does he learn from them and how does his relationship to acting deepen with his membership in the theater troupe? When Ismet and the others stage an impromptu tableau vivant in the park and the shelling starts (pp. 110–111), how does their act take on larger meaning?

  Ismet relates Asmir’s theory that “democracy is not the way of the theater and if theater is to be worthy there is lots to be learned from dictatorships” (p. 101). What sort of tactics does Asmir use to achieve successful performances? Do they echo the humiliation and submission tactics Mustafa endures in military life? How is the power struggle between Brada and Asmir described (pp. 105–108)?

  Can Asmir be seen as an alternative father figure? What does Ismet admire about him? How is Asmir, though charismatic, also flawed, like Ismet’s father? Do you have any sympathy for his father?

  How are Bosnian Serbs depicted in the book? What sort of neighbors are the Stojkovics? What sort of person is Nebojsha, the Chetnik who surrenders himself in Mustafa’s trench (pp. 206–210)? When Mustafa (existing in some fusion with Ismet in this chapter) realizes he’s at a party with a bunch of Chetnik-supporting Serbs in California, why doesn’t he leave immediately (pp. 317–330)? What is his attitude toward Jovan?

  Ismet explains that the war “had begun with politicians fighting on television, talking about their nationalities, their constitutional rights, each claiming that his people were in danger” (p. 6). The television is on throughout the book, including at important moments, as when Ismet’s family talks with him about immigrating to America (pp. 183–185). How does TV affect Ismet’s experience not only of the war but of his daily life?

  Why do you think Mustafa’s special forces unit chose to call itself the Apaches? What distinguishes the Apaches from the regular army? How does Mustafa come to identify himself with his given name, “Meat”?

  How does the book investigate the boundary between what is real and what is unreal? Does war make this boundary less stable? Ismet asks in his diary, “How is it that I can exist in both the past and the present simultaneously, be both body and soul simultaneously, live both reality and fantasy simultaneously?” (p. 40). Does Ismet ever make peace with this sense of doubleness?

  In what ways does the book’s form mirror its content? What are some examples of the splintering, and examples of reassembling as they appear within the novel? How are these processes embodied by the novel’s structure itself?

  Eric plays Tom Waits for Ismet on his birthday, and he writes in his diary, “It was then, mati, that love was born in Izzy for America, for its sadness and madness, for its naiveté and wisdom, for its vastness, its innumerable nooks where a person can disappear” (p. 43). Are your own feelings of affection for particular countries influenced by those countries’ artistic contributions? For what reason does Ismet say he wishes Lendo had allowed his theater troupe to travel to Scotland (p. 175)?