Broken Shells (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Aref: In the harsh desert climate, in the most challenging of circumstances, traveller Aref is a man who flourishes where others might fail; he feels free where they feel forgotten or lost. Aref’s experience of life and his memories of lessons taught to him as a child makes him an open-minded person, and resilient; his understanding of the past replenishes his hope for the future.
• Freeman: An American soldier, used to the harsh realities of war, Freeman is not an ordinary woman. However, a sudden chain of events dramatically changes her perspective on reality. Taken as a prisoner in an unfamiliar environment by another woman intent on the most brutal form of revenge, Freeman begins to question her own sanity but, she’s the kind of person who holds strong beliefs, whether based on truth or not.

Quotes edit see section history

• “From blindingly bright, interminable skies and vast plains of sand they gradually entered a nighttime world of gently sloping dunes, the very largest of which was no taller than a squat, two-storey building. Unlike the great, singing dunes of Kazakhstan or the streamlined, light-blocking yardangs – sharp-looking, silt and clay ridges of the wind-carved Dasht-e Lut – the dune field they were entering was made up of gentle, undulating mounds of powdery sand that had been deposited there slowly over time and were easily navigable. Beyond the sloping landscape, if viewed from the more prominent dunes, Aref could see further, into a world of strange and elusive structures that did not at first seem hard like rock, but appeared to have either grown up out of the sand or been steadily concealed by it.”

• “Carved on all sides by strong winds, the mounds of rock were wider at the base than they were at the top and their stumpy stature gave the impression that the rest of their bulk remained hidden beneath the surface. Corresponding unusually-shaped shadows cast by the delicate moon stretched out behind each unique structure, and seemed to give the place a secretive character. As Aref lifted his eyes, he was able to take in an even more overwhelming sight – that of the distant mountain range whose giant, jagged peaks dwarfed the closer sandstone shapes. The moon appeared unusually grey in colour that night but the land seemed bluish beneath it. A refreshingly cool wind-swept his face, bringing tears to his tired eyes.”

• “As a young boy Aref had been a keen explorer, taking off with the family herd and going miles across the desert without his father, finding new routes to water, picking out sites for wells and milking the animals to survive. One time, he was away for weeks. On his return to their temporary camp his mother had cried and cried, thinking he had died of starvation or been attacked by aggressive animals. Upset for his poor wife, Aref’s father grabbed him, whipped his legs and kept him in the maharama – the female section of their tent – for two days and two nights as a punishment. Each evening while the others ate, his sisters would visit him in secret and paint his face with colourful desert dyes to embarrass him. Aref smiled when he remembered their craftiness and youthful, pretty faces, but his sadness returned when he realised how long it had been since they were taken. He would give anything to see them again.”

• “Rather than finding the time to continue the search for his loving sisters, fate handed Aref the task of helping a woman who might have lost her mind; a foreign soldier. If he had taken her at face value, he would have ignored her and simply walked away – but he hadn’t. Aref was not the kind of man who could.”

• “Always, even when he entered a state of complete exhaustion, Aref could see that he had reason to hope.”

• “During the brief months when he and his close relatives paused their nomadic lifestyle to attend festivals or family weddings, his mother would play the Persian lute or the shabbaba flute, reminding young Aref of the historical khosravani, the Sassanid modal compositions from which she believed everything she sang or played should be derived. In keeping with tradition, she would place great emphasis on the quality of her improvisations – Aref remembered her telling him that the best musicians were the ones who did not restrict themselves purely to the basic gusheh, but who broadened their mind beyond the rote-learned melodies and created something unique. A lover of poetry, particularly the great master Abu Abd Allah Rudaki who, though blind for most of his life, wrote delicate poems about the remembered beauty of nature, Aref’s mother would recite her version of Mother Of Wine as she put her son to bed.”

• “<. . .> like Aref, Yashar was not able to wipe the wonder of the open desert from his system – although it challenged him, he saw it as freedom at its best. One thread led to another: Aref was able to entertain the boy by recalling experiences of his time with one of the larger bedouin tribes of the Negev. Yashar listened with impatience and energy, casting his eyes across the desert whenever Aref mentioned the long journeys they would undertake with their animals by moonlight. It was a life of contrasts: of plentiful supplies; then poverty. But, Aref explained with a glint in his eye, however heavy the hardship weighed upon those people, every guest to the mag’ad was welcomed with enough cardamom coffee to burst a thirsty camel. Yashar had not laughed in a long time.”

• “Several close families travelled together as a goum, linked by lineage and marriage. Each had a sagging, black tent made of goat hair – the women’s pride and joy, their beit sha’ar – and the men kept loyal saluki hounds to help them hunt for food. When times were fair, he remembered feasts, marriages celebrated by full moon, game-playing, music and poetry. More recently, however, his people had felt the need to fight to remain in the desert, holding tightly to their lands and keeping their herds intact to prevent external influences complicating their right to a simple existence. The remaining tribes coped with drought, resisted the draw of the oil fields and turned down the promise of a better quality of life in the cities. They even adapted their core occupations – Aref’s father turned his hand to breeding white doves for the last few years of his life, but money was never a driving force for what they chose to do.”

• “Together, he and his friends had trodden the uncertain path of false freedom, replacing serenity and sense with the symbols of domination, witnessing, only moments before their demise, the truth. War was as far from what they had been taught to expect as any of them could have imagined and that, in itself, was incredible. Each stage had been logistically nightmarish, mocking government capacity and casualty predictions and evolving rapidly into an obscene, lethal conflict that was drawing on interminably and in secret internationally. It was the likelihood of lies sent home that struck him as the worst part. Intercepted by State, the frequent reports from the so-called frontline told a fictional tale. For the people back home, reality was now beyond comprehension. It might have gone unsaid, but Freeman and the stranger had one secret in common: when silence descended, they did not benefit from its calming presence.”

• “One man’s fight is another man’s freedom.”

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• ‘Kāshābad Desert’: To further my belief that we should respect differences rather than persecute one another for them, I began to develop the idea that, although I wanted to set the book in an Iranian desert, I would not settle for complete and utter reality. Rather than limit the Broken Shells journey to a single, specific region in Iran, I invented my own, fictional name for the desert Aref (the main character) calls home – the ‘Kāshābad Desert’. I think the idea works remarkably well. It certainly did for me as I began to write. By using fictional place names, I managed to demonstrate that the themes are not limited to one place or, more importantly, only to the people of one region or country.

First Sentence edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Civilisation Change: Broken Shells offers readers a chance to explore a world very different to their own from a unique perspective. Set in modern day Iran the story is about a traveller who leads a simple life following the guiding principles of his Persian ancestors. As the country around him begins to change, he contemplates how the threat of war might affect him, the nomadic people of the desert and civilisation itself.
• Conflict: Against the backdrop of a fictional yet plausible conflict, the book considers one possible outcome for several individuals trapped in a situation that is global in its effect, yet also deeply personal to millions.Early on in the book, a conflict takes place at a level more personal than the conflict occurring between the two warring nations. It’s an example of one of those all-important contrasts that make the story more of an individual struggle than a high-level military one. That was the distinction – or comparison – I was so determined to achieve. Freeman, an American soldier, finds herself in a deadly situation not only because of her involvement in the fictional war that forms the backdrop to Shells but because of her involvement with another soldier from her own army – a field officer – intent on destroying her.
• Friendship: Describe this theme.
• Trust: Using a gradual change in the balance of events in the book, I wanted to show how fast a situation can alter in reality and how wrong a person’s first impressions can be of another. Trust and mistrust are at the forefront of my mind again. They’re common themes in my books.
• Torture: Initially fuelled by resentment, the angry field officer falls prey to lack of food and water. Suffering her own hallucinations and paranoia, she gives Freeman, her prisoner, a “shallow bargaining pot”, to cruelly raise Freeman’s hopes. Now and then, at times of her choosing, she drops a few rials into the pot at the prisoner’s feet. The act of leaving coins that are completely meaningless to either of them in such isolation symbolises the terrifying control one person can have over another but also the futility of their fight compared to the events taking place at an international level.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Amaya Ellman (Author)

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Broken Shells (Official Website)
• Ellman Books: Author Blog