Shards: A Novel (32 page)

I opened the front door and was hypnotized by the sight of two men in civilian clothes. I stared at them as though they were a pair of naked, toothless Bedouin.

“Günter?” said one of them. I shook my head no.

“Günter?” tried the other one.

“There’s no Günter here,” I managed.

The men looked at each other, apparently devastated.

“
Nein?
” said the first one.

“
Nein?
” repeated his friend.

“No,” I said, pointing behind me, “
Nein
Günter.”

They craned their necks trying to see beyond me, then slowly backed away, gesturing that they understood and that they were sorry. I closed the door, locked it.

“Who was that?” Ana asked.

“Some Germans . . . I think.”

“Who was that?” Mina yelled from the kitchen.

“Some Germans,” Ana yelled back.

We ended up having the most marvelous conversation about food, about differences and similarities between Croatian and Bosnian cuisine, about Osijek, where Ana was from, and Tuzla, where Mina and I were from. Mina brought out some old photographs and talked about every single one of them. I watched in wonder at her newly apparent tenderness and heartbreaking pride as she pointed out various members of her extended family, illuminating their black-and-white images with stories of eccentricities, hard work, and triumph. It was as if her furrowed brow and blunt ways, this mask and shield, suddenly became transparent and revealed an extraordinarily good, truth-loving, down-to-earth person. I could have hugged her right then.

Later on in the afternoon, although frightened and unsure, I decided to go out. Part of me felt like a caged animal and all of a sudden I couldn’t tolerate it any longer. Usually I gave my letters home to Mina, who had this reliable channel to get them into Bosnia via UN convoys, but this time I figured I would take my letter to the bus station myself and stretch my legs.

Parts of Croatia and most of Bosnia were occupied territories and there was no conventional postal service of any kind between them. If you wanted anything to go back home you had to give it
to a trustworthy someone who was going there by bus or bribe the daredevil drivers and hope they were honest enough to deliver it. Trips that in more peaceful times took three to four hours tops now took whole days, because the buses had to go around all the troubled zones and pass through innumerable checkpoints where any military or paramilitary formation could pull you off the bus on a whim and put a bullet in your sad, hapless head.

I was sealing a letter to my mother, thinking about where it would really end up, when Ana came out of the bathroom, hugging her bundled arm like a baby, her face lopsided from pain. She walked by me like I was an abhorrent lamp and locked herself in her room, where she started to moan, a miserable lioness in a zoo. There was something both fuming and desperate about her moaning. “Fuck this arm,” I heard her say. “Fuck this arm.” Mina closed the door to the living room, which meant don’t come in. A man and a woman started to yell at each other in some language from her television. “Fuck this arm,” cried Ana.

It was as if the magical breakfast we shared earlier had never occurred.

I went out. It was not my custom to tempt fate and venture outside unless I really had to. I didn’t feel like I belonged out there. My month-and-a-half-long quasi incarceration had shrunk my universe and made the outside world seem immaterial. I hallucinated stepping outside the building and sinking ankle-deep into a doughy street and having to keep moving lest I get devoured whole.

Despite all my efforts, this state of not belonging in the world (not just this city) persisted until I saw the cop. I was at the station early, meandering outside the bus parking lot, counting steps, walking back and forth between a bench and a wire fence through which I could see three parked buses with Bosnian stickers and Tuzla license plates. My plan was to call on the driver when he
showed up to get the vehicle ready for departure and give him my letter home and ten or twenty deutsche marks, depending on his mood. I was checking the time on the big clock on top of the station tower when I noticed a uniformed cop, his eyes fixed on me, leisurely coming my way.

The street pushed at the bottoms of my feet, hard. There was no way of sinking into it and getting away.

Shit. What now?

While thinking this, something took over my body. I saw myself start to walk toward the cop, smiling. The cop broke his stride a little, shilly-shallied in his step, surprised by this behavior.

“Good afternoon, Officer,” I heard myself yell ahead as I pulled out my passport before he even had time to speak.

“Good afternoon,” he murmured, visibly miffed that he didn’t have the element of surprise as he had hoped. His cap was pulled so far down over his head that it covered most of his eyebrows, making the flat part on the top bulge out comically. “May I see your personal identification, please?”

As he was pronouncing the word
identification
my passport was already in his hand. Seeing the Bosnian emblem etched on the cover he smirked.

“Do you have a visa?” he asked, flipping through the book, which opened to what he was looking for. His lips tightened as he read it and then the smirk returned.

“This expired a long time ago,” the cop said, closing the passport with a motion that had an aura of finality.

“I’m just in transit,” I said. “I’m waiting to get my papers to go to America, for college.”

“Do you have any documents that prove this?”

“No, not on me, no.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but you have no papers that allow you to stay
in Croatia or to corroborate your story. You’ll have to come with me.”

He lightly touched my elbow to get me going. For a second I was thinking of driving my palm upward into his nose, shattering its brittle divider, pushing shards of it into his sinuses. I felt a tingling in my right hand. But I kept it at my side and walked toward the station building like I was told.

We walked in and climbed several flights of stairs, past staring citizens, who all seemed to know I was up shit creek, and ended up in a big office on the top floor. It had huge tinted windows on three walls, overlooking most of the station and the parking lot in particular. I realized the cop had probably clocked me wandering around the Bosnian buses from his desk. I might as well have worn a sweatshirt with
ILLEGAL ALIEN
printed on the front.

“Sit down,” said the cop and took his cap off, revealing the reason for wearing it so far down over his head. The top of his head was bald in the way a cue ball is bald while the rest of it was infested with patchy tufts of brownish hair. Hanging his cap on a coat rack he reached for the door.

“Wait here,” he said and stepped outside just to return in a couple of seconds with another cop, a younger, pleasanter fellow who took a seat behind the desk in front of me, fed a paper into his electric typewriter, and looked up at his boss, awaiting orders.

“We’re starting a report,” said the bald cop. “Answer all the questions truthfully, cooperate, and we’ll make this as pleasant as possible.”

“Of course,” I said as if offended by the implication that I wouldn’t have told the truth anyway.

“Today is October 29, 1995, 16:05. Police outpost: city bus station. Suspect . . . Name?”

“Ismet Prci
.”

The electric typewriter buzzed and crackled under the junior’s blurry fingers, recording everything.

“Father’s name?”

“Osman.”

The bald cop checked the genuineness of every answer against the first page of my passport.

“Date of birth?”

“March 9, 1977.”

“Place of birth?”

“Tuzla.”

“Your address in Croatia?”

“Ilica 702, 41000, Zagreb.”

I had no idea where this believable answer came from. Then I remembered: It was Cousin Zvonko’s address with a made-up street number. The junior cop rained it onto the keyboard like it was the truth.

“What are you doing in Zagreb?”

“I’m in transit. I’m waiting for my papers to emigrate.”

“You told me you’re going to America to go to college.”

“Well, yeah. The reason I’m emigrating is to go to college. My uncle lives there and he’s gonna be my sponsor.”

The cop made a face. He walked over to the window, shaking his head. He stared out in silence for a good two minutes, grooving on his power. I looked at Junior but his face was neutral. He was just there to type.

“Tuzla is the largest free zone in Bosnia,” the cop said, not turning around. “Why do you wanna emigrate so bad?”

“Better education.”

“Oh, come on! Millions of others have it worse than you do. Shit, the youth of Croatia is over there, risking
their
lives and dying, defending
your
country,
your
town, and you’re hiding here like a pussy.”

My hands knotted into fists.

“I’m not hiding here because I’m a pussy, I’m hiding here because you’re not allowing any Bosnians to stay here legally,” I said before I could stop myself. “The reason I would want to enter legally, which I did, by the way, is because Croatia is the closest spot from which I can emigrate. In order to emigrate you need papers. Papers take time and I went a little bit over. Would you pass on an opportunity like this for your son or daughter? Free education in America?”

I wiped the tears from my eyes.

The cop slowly sat down on the edge of Junior’s desk and let his left leg dangle back and forth. Dispassionately, he picked up my passport again. His smirk returned but this time with undergarments of malice.

“You’re giving me stories without any proof. All you have is this passport and this expired visa. That’s all I really know about you.”

“But I have all the other papers at home. You cannot expect I carry all that on me all the time.”

“Yes I can.”

I broke into sobs. He just dangled his foot and played with my passport. Next to him Junior avoided my eyes as though embarrassed by something and pretended to look for things in the drawer.

“I’m sorry about that, Officer,” I said, collecting myself.

The cop shrugged.

“I’m afraid that sorry is not going to make this visa valid. We’re going to finish this report and then take you to the main station. You can argue your case to them, although, I’m gonna tell you right now, having an expired visa is looked upon as inexcusable. All right, where were we? When did you enter Croatia and how?”

“I came by plane on . . . I believe it was September 11. There’s a stamp in there somewhere.”

The cop flipped through the rest of my passport for the first time. “If you were really going to America you would have a plane ticket and a visa allowing you to—”

He came upon something in my passport and abandoned the sentence. His brow furrowed as he pulled the passport closer to his face. Finally he looked at me with disgust.

“What is this?”

He flipped the passport open toward my face.

“Oh, that’s my visa for Great Britain.”

“But you said you’re going to America.”

“Well, yeah. That’s my final destination. But first I have to obtain my refugee status here, then fly back to England, for which I have a visa, and from there emigrate to the United States. My uncle bought my ticket from London to Los Angeles; that’s why.”

“Wait a second. Back to England?” The cop was dumbfounded.

“Yes. I was there before I came here.”

“Why did you come here when you were already there?”

“To obtain my refugee status, so I can emigrate.”

“To America?”

“Yes.”

The cop rubbed his eyes as the Danube of veins swelled in his temple, empurpling all its curvy tributaries up the shiny dome of his befuddled head. Then he reexamined my visa against the light, which revealed to him a hidden profile of Queen Elizabeth vouching for the document’s authenticity.

“When does this expire?” he asked, handing my passport to Junior.

“February, it says right on it,” I said a little too eagerly.

“I wasn’t asking you,” the cop hissed.

Junior looked over the visa himself.

“He’s right,” he said. His voice was high and screechy like a parrot's.
rot’s. “I’m just wondering about this stamp. This visa has already been stamped.”

“They stamp it every time you enter or leave,” I offered.

“That’s true,” said Junior.

“What does this mean?” the cop asked, pointing to something in my passport.

“I’ve no idea. I had Russian in school,” Junior said.

“I know English,” I said.

The cop walked up to me and pointed to a phrase stamped in black in the corner of the visa.

“Single entry,” I said reading the words in English. “That means something like free access or free to come in. It’s a pretty common phrase.”

The cop’s lie-detector eyes scanned up and down my face, searching for telltale signs of deceit. But I made it look honest, made it look human.

“Why didn’t you tell us you had a visa for England?” The cop broke the silence suddenly, aghast at my stupidity and lack of concern for his time. From malevolent judge, jury, and executioner in one he became a high school principal scrutinizing a usually decent student’s bad choice.