The Bullet Collection

by Patricia Sarrafian Ward, Patricia Ward

Marianna watches her older sister Alaine collect the detritus of war from around Beirut—bullets, shrapnel, grenades, a gas mask. These objects, some taken from dead bodies, catalogue Alaine’s retreat into a dangerous depression. As the family struggles to endure the daily violence of the Middle East conflict, it is Marianna who becomes her older sister’s keeper, watching for any signal that might trigger one of Alaine’s frequent, grim excavations. But once the family escapes to America, Alaine’s newfound contentment is as alien to Marianna as her madness once was. As Marianna longs for her beloved, war-torn home, she struggles to understand that now she is the difficult sister.

Patricia Sarrafian Ward mines both the stunning, exotic landscape of Beirut and the pure, defiant landscape of a child’s heart, and shows how war leaves its indelible scars on both.

Genres: Fiction, Lebanon, Middle East

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2003

About the author

Please see Patricia Ward

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mrs. Awad kept saying, If they build a subway, then we will know how many people died.

To say this work was unexpected is putting it mildly. It may even prove to be my first absolute favorite of the year if the review works out, as oftentimes influence is less love and more result, as was the case with Memoirs of Hadrian, wherein I simply had to bow down and acquiesce to the conclusions of the evidence of what it had wrought upon me. As for a reason for the unexpectedness, I may have had a habit of nurturing the underread long enough that this work's 28 ratings is more than that of ten other books I've read this year, but treasure is characterized as buried for a reason. The same goes for independent publishers, an assumption that has now spawned regret on my part, as the friend who once touted Graywolf press and a number of others is no longer on Goodreads. If they ever come back, I promise to take small presses more seriously than the occasional self-congratulatory glance, although I reserve the right to concentrate on the usual non-white and/or non-male authors under featured in an already under featured bunch. There's no limit to subversion of the hierarchy.

Sitting next to a corpse after it is buried, knees tucked under her chin and the spoils of his death ready to carry away, the story of the country is caught in the dirt on her hands and legs, that history of a place abandoned by a retreating sea that should never have left, that should have preserved the land in silence.

The rate of PTSD in children during the Lebanon Civil War of 1975 to 1990 is reported at around 46.5%. Many remark on PTSD in veterans of imperialistic invasions as a sign of sympathizing with the endeavor, but many of those supposedly sympathized with are homeless, or sick, or both, and many of them are constantly dying before their time. What, then, does that mean for the children? Ward did not write this book for me, but she may have accidentally done so in part by featuring a first person perspective, two sisters, and suicide, which does not entirely fit my non-hegemonic identity but, when you're an insane bisexual woman whose nine out of ten kindred are most likely dead, you take what you can get. The story crossed more countries than passport-less me may ever visit, but there's a way to condition those ranging from eighteen to eleven to want to die that doesn't require a single step outside their door.

I struggled to understand this, that it was better he was dead.

I didn't used to have an opinion one way or the other, but now I've decided that prose style is something you cannot teach. There is many a danger in confusing voice with writer with biography and back again, but I would like to read translations of Ward's Arabic prose, if ever she chooses to write such. All the better if she chose to translate it herself, for I am sick and tired of fluency in a language being considered anything but subjective, as if my permanent fixation on death meant I was better at parsing out its English metaphors and Arabic learned by a CIA operative was anything of non-genocidal value. I wouldn't have grasped this nearly as much if I hadn't read The Woman from Tantoura, which goes to show yet how a native language is anything but native when the self-aggrandizement of "world language" has been sinking millions of other nativeness for the last five centuries or so, to the point that the dominant will never be fluent in the truth.

Then she says, Nobody wants to think about that kind of thing.
—Why?
—Because it's not important. Now's important.
—But now is coming from somewhere.

This isn't the best review I've put out, but despite the mundanities of dinner and grocery shopping weighing me down, this book has indeed proved my first favorite of the year. The fact that two thirds of 2016 went by beforehand may be indicative of my increasingly concentrated reading habits, or the enhancement of my critical gaze, or that I am less interested in awarding high ratings left and right as I once was. What I know for sure is that I will need to reread this when I am older, for I am still not satisfied with how this migrating juxtaposition appealed enough to bypass the usual stereotype radars. Wish fulfillment, perhaps. For those puzzling over that in conjunction this, I am enamored enough with this work to refrain for the sake of those who hate to stumble over spoilers. I would term it more "hope", myself, but there you have it.

When I complained to Daddy, who was a professor of history, he said sadly, The past is a code that may or may not be broken, which did not explain anything.

[Jean Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

lived a decade in Beirut, ending with the first two year of the Civil War. The Bullet Collection is a magnificent novel--in that cliche, "it tells it the way it was." My sons had bullet collections, and so did virtually all the kids who lived on the AUB campus. I had forgotten the emotions of civilians in war, and Sarrafian Ward brought them back to me--the excitement and adrenalin, the pathos, the boredom and fear. She describes the city and campus lyrically. Her writing makes me want to go back.

[Nahla Bassyouni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully raw. I felt like i was reading my own thoughts on some pages. Patricia Ward captures both the mundane thoughts and the extensive imagination of children, teenagers, and adults alike.

Secondary traumatic stress, which in the mind of a young girl manifests itself as the selfish need to suffer and be given credit for that suffering, is carefully described in a way which has got me thinking about the reality of my life—and the lives of many others—in Lebanon today.

[Troy Davison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been able to complete reading this book today, much thanks to the writer Patricia. Wonderful