ismet prcic Archives - A Geography of Reading

Regarding the Bosnian War with Susan Sontag

June 12, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Most of the roofs in Dubrovnik are bright red–a sign that they have been recently replaced.

Of the Bosnian War, I remember only images on CNN of the bombing of Sarajevo. My excuse is that I was a teenager, though I lived for a year in Eastern Europe during the height of the war and should have been more aware. I later studied it in Political Science, but I could never find an entry point to start to relate to it on a human rather than academic scale. Even Dubravka Ugrešić’s The Ministry of Pain felt abstract despite her incredible depiction of the war’ effects on one person. Reading more relatable books by Ismet Prcic and Saša Stanišić in preparation for our trip humanized the war, but the former Yugoslavia still seemed like a far off place. As Susan Sontag writes in Regarding the Pain of Others, “The memory of war…is mostly local.”

Flying from Paris to Zagreb, I wondered at the large, orderly collections of dark rectangles on the ground. They were too small to be cars. As the plane descended, I realized they were all near churches and that they must be graves. They looked so fresh and plentiful. I started to feel leaden.

I tried to forget about the graves as we flew to Dubrovnik and entered the beautiful, walled old Town. For a couple of days I was a right good tourist exploring the sights and spending money. But I kept looking for signs of the war. The guidebook said the only evidence we would see of the bombing of Dubrovnik was the new red tile roofs. It wasn’t until walked the walls that I saw that most of the roofs were the bright red of new tile. Almost no building was left untouched. I wanted to think that there were other reasons for some of the new roofs, but there were so many of them…I was curious and I wanted to know more, but I didn’t know who to ask and I didn’t want to be rude. I wanted to see the place for more than its war experiences, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

On our final day in Dubrovnik, we turned from sunny Stradun street with its masses of tourists down a narrow side street and stepped into War Photo Limited. There were three main exhibits that day: Blood & Honey by Ron Haviv, Srebrenica Genocide 11/07/95 by Tarik Samarah, and Bosnians by Paul Lowe. Wandering though those exhibits, I saw images of the aftermath of the Bosnian War: mass graves, survivors being DNA tested to identify corpses, and bones that no one bothered to bury. Sontag had seen these photos. She wrote broadly about images from the Bosnian War and specifically about Ron Haviv’s image of a Serb kicking a Muslim woman’s corpse.

There are images that recur in conflict and thus war photography—starving people and mass graves are all too common. Sontag writes “shock can become familiar” and this exhibit contained some images familiar from conflicts past, including images of dolls as a metaphor for the loss of innocence. I had seen images like these from World War II and Viet Nam but they didn’t speak to the unique character of the conflict and I wished I could have learned more from them. In contrast, one of the more affecting images was of a decomposing corpse and the Koran that had fallen from his hand. The image spoke specifically to this one conflict and to the young man who was torn from his home and who was likely praying when he was murdered. I thought of the families detailed in Prcic and Stanišić’s books who had been forced out of their homes and then murdered. One of my favorite photographs showed people congregating for water outside bombed out buildings. I thought of Prcic’s hero and the lengths he went to in order to shower to impress a girl and how Prcic found a way to marry the perfect detail in a story with something that spoke to the larger condition.

When I saw an image of an American law enforcement agent searching a field for graves, I found my connection to this story. Madeleine Albright wrote in her autobiography about her disappointment with the way the US handled the Bosnian War—with how long it took us to get involved. I don’t advocate for widespread US intervention, but I do think the world community has a moral imperative to intervene when civilians are being killed. When genocide is being committed. After all the time I spent reading about the Holocaust as a child, I thought it couldn’t happen again, that we knew better. Part of what I was experiencing in Croatia was disbelief that it did. In Bosnia, Rwanda, Syria, and so many more places.

Sontag writes, “One should feel obliged to think about what it means to look at” war photography and I have been thinking about my motives. The exhibit did not quell my curiosity. I still examined buildings for bullet holes and wondered about the story and family behind each burned out house. In fact the exhibit made me more curious, but it also framed that curiosity. Instead of worrying about the base nature of humans, I am focusing on the history. I am learning where places like Vukovar, Tuzla and Srebrenica are on the map. I am thinking about the wonderful, friendly people we met throughout Croatia and Slovenia and about how they are like people everywhere. It’s far too easy to watch war on the TV or even to change the channel. Somewhere inside I have always been terrified that war could happen to me and I think that is the real reason I have disengaged. But the Bosnian War is no longer a war that happened somewhere to someone else. War can happen anywhere to anyone. I hope never to experience it, but I’m no longer going to pretend it couldn’t happen to me. I’m not going to let my fear be an excuse for ignoring what is happening in the world.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Regarding the Pain of Others from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

The Story of Steffie Cvek’s Patchwork Life in Lend Me Your Character

June 10, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I picked up Dubravka Ugrešić’s Lend Me Your Character to work my way through the lingering jet lag from our trip to Croatia and to soak up a little more information about the human side of the Bosnian War, but sometimes you get what you need not what you ask for. Because most of the stories in the book dated from the 1980s, I got to read about pre-war Yugoslavia—something I had been craving when reading Saša Stanišić and Ismet Prcic. Though constrained by the Iron Curtain, Steffie’s life is remarkably and enjoyably ordinary.

Ugrešić has always challenged my expectations as a reader. In The Ministry of Pain, she shocked my sensibilities and created a direct pipeline to what it must feel like to be without a country and a language. In The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, she pieced unrelated fragments together to convey the experience of a fractured life. The initial novella in Lend Me Your Character is similar in construction to The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, but the tone is delightfully different.

Ugrešić calls “Steffie Cvek in the Jaws of Life” a patchwork, and that’s just what it is, figuratively and literally. Using fragments from Madame Bovary, advice from women’s magazines, and sewing instructions, Ugrešić creates the story of Steffie’s misadventures in love and life. Though Steffie is depressed, the narrative is playful enough that I was optimistic for Steffie. But it isn’t just the tone that I loved. Ugrešić manages to make feel like a collaborator not just a reader. As we stitch together the narrative, she tells me about the choices she is faced with, how she makes them, and the options she discards (including an entire section on what she could have written for one of Steffie’s love affairs). The casual, inside view of a story could feel haphazard if it wasn’t so masterfully handled.

I don’t know what’s next in this book, but I am looking forward to seeing how Ugrešić will challenge me. I do know that I have a lot to learn from her about successfully fracturing a narrative—something I look forward to using in my next book.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Lend Me Your Character from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Shards of Ismet Prcic: Fragmenting the Balkans through Literature

May 19, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I picked up Shards by Ismet Prcic because we’re traveling to Croatia soon and I often like to explore the literature of a country before arriving—something about getting to know the soul of a place and a people through art. The book is a fantastically well-written story of a man who grew up during and escaped (kind of) the Bosnian War and I could say all kinds of complimentary things about its construction and the characters and language. But what I want to talk about today is how an outsider views a culture.

When making my reading list for this upcoming trip, I wanted to read contemporary works that were available in English. In listening to Benjamin Moser’s “That Other Word” interview, I realized how selective the process is that leads to works being translated into English. Prcic wrote Shards in English, but Saša Stanišić wrote How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone in German and Dubravka Ugrešić wrote The Ministry of Pain in Croatian. I mention these three in particular, because these are the books that came to hand in my search (though I had already read The Ministry of Pain).

These books have in common that they all deal with the effects of the Balkan War on their characters, and I came to wonder, are there contemporary Balkan books that don’t? I am thinking about definition a lot lately and the roles we put on ourselves and the roles others put on us. I could understand if every contemporary writer in any way associated with the region only wrote about the war—war has a huge and lasting impact—but I suspect that there are writers who deal more peripherally with the war (if at all) and I am interested to know if their work is being translated. I am curious about the filters that are being applied by translators and agents and editors and publishing houses to the way I see the Balkans. How horrible it would be if writers from the former Yugoslavia were given the impression that the world is only interested in their work if it is about the Balkan War. How limiting for their potential audience.

Perhaps I’m wondering how much daily life in the tourist areas of Dubrovnik is affected by the war or I am curious about the lives of our soon-to-be landlords. Perhaps I feel a little guilty that I have gone from seeing Plitvice as the place my grandmother most loved to seeing it as the place where the first shot of the war was fired. Perhaps I am thinking about my own writing and the lack of control I feel in a world where the success of a writer is still determined by so many external actors (and I don’t mean readers). In learning more about Croatia and its neighbors, I have read some very good books, including Shards, but I keep feeling like I’m only able to experience through these books one aspect of a rich group of cultures. I guess that’s what the plane ticket is for…

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Shards from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.