by Kim Echlin
The soldier said, You’d be shot.
William asked what would happen to a woman from there if she testified and then went back.
They’d probably kill her.
Karla said, Steyn asked me to have coffee with him in his office when he got back but there were no machines and he had no cups and he had to apologize that there was nothing to drink. He pulled a chair out from behind his empty desk to face the only other chair in the undecorated room and he said, I have been tasked with leading this case.
Karla smiled ruefully and said, How often had I seen men scoop up work done by others as their own. I knew how they feign temporary disadvantage if it meant a long-term win. But I did respect that he had gone to the crime scene. I saw that he was a formidable negotiator. He asked me, What do you want?
I intended to stick to my position. I refused any silly tit-for-tat games with him. I told him I did not want a man to lead. This was no game of tactics. Even the male investigators were a disturbance to the witnesses.
I told him, I want to interview all the witnesses.
I watched him control himself and then he asked, Which of the witnesses do you think would refuse to come if they thought they would be questioned by a man?
All of them.
That was when he told me about his visit to Foča. He understood that a lot of people would prefer us dead.
He said, Karla, I want to win this case. You take the prominent role in the trial.
I insisted to him that I would not give him any of the rape victims to question. People would not respond to his American directness. Naturally, he was a little insulted by this. I knew of course he was not American but I also knew that he had learned the history of the region from a BBC documentary. Then I discovered that he was pragmatic, and fair.
He stood and said, All right. You take the rape victims. I’ll take the expert witnesses. Maybe give me one or two of the older women, so we do not show any weakness to the defence. We are going to win this together. Yes?
There was no turning back and the women were counting on us.
His first job was to write the opening statement and he asked me for advice, not to flatter me but because time was short. He wanted to know, as he put it, how to capture the human element.
Karla said to me, Always women must protect what is already theirs in bureaucracies. I have had to do this all my life. It is infuriating. I had been thinking about the opening statement for years. But I had to give it away for the larger good of the work. I told him I had planned to quote a woman who had said to me, I had no control. I was like a machine in their hands.
* * *
—
Merima was withdrawn. Esma was tired. Fidgety. We sat in the Beach Club café at their hotel with Edina, drinking coffee and trying to relax. Their witness assistants sat nearby. The women had returned from visiting the courtroom and from witness-proofing, the painful, meticulous review of their statements with their lawyers. Merima had asked her witness assistant to look after her grandmother. She needed to concentrate. She needed quiet. I watched Merima half-turned away from our table, staring over the ocean, her intelligent grey-blue eyes drawn into the distant depths. She had her mother’s eyes. But more vulnerable.
Esma said to me, I brought wild orchid root and sugar and cinnamon for us to drink with warm milk at night. It is good to calm the nerves.
The old woman’s large work-worn hands were restless and her fingers unconsciously searched for a missing wedding ring around her third finger. She said that she had never stayed in such a luxurious place where she could look out her window at the sea. Her witness assistant, Beatrijs, had offered to take her to visit the miniature village or perhaps to walk along the beach to see the big sculpture of the Fisherman’s Wife, but the old woman wanted to stay with her family.
Merima turned back to our table and said to me, My identification in court will be Protected Witness 81. That is the number from my first statement eight years ago. But the name of the trial is for him. We women remain nameless and his name is written. Do you not find this ironic? I do.
She laughed without mirth. Her laughter was a wall to keep people out. She touched her grandmother’s arm and asked, Baka, are you frightened of speaking in the court?
I am frightened of what I have to say.
Do not worry, you are strong.
Edina smoked. She nodded toward the assistants’ table and said to me, You are making people nervous.
I thought so, I said. I’ll go now. I won’t see you until after you testify.
Edina said, I will telephone. And I will know you are there behind the glass.
I finished my coffee in a single swallow, kissed each of them and left.
* * *
—
The night before the trial began, I visited the public gallery. I looked into the empty courtroom through the glass, a body without a soul. The back of the witness chair was to us and much of the testimony would be made with the blind down over the window. I taped a handmade Reserved sign to a chair in the front row on the left. This was not permitted and it was gone in the morning when I arrived. When the blind was down, I would watch the trial on the monitors with pixelated images and altered sound. I needed to hear the caught breath and the emotion that trial transcripts do not capture. I wanted this corner of the gallery to be my safe perch. I had dreamed the night before of a living bird turned into a ceramic bird that slipped from my hand, cracked into pieces and turned into a handful of sapphires. The long dream was filled with mountains and eight-pointed stars and water and disappearances and crescent moons.
There was a movement at the side door of the courtroom. I saw, with surprise, Karla coming in alone. She walked to the desk that would be hers. She stared at the witness chair. Her short hair was uncombed and when she saw me she left the courtroom. A few moments later she came through the gallery door.
I asked, Are you nervous?
Why would I be? I have evidence.
I said, But much of the evidence will be the victims’ words against the accused. And there is no case law about sexual confinement in war.
Karla walked the length of the window. She was looking at the courtroom from the world’s vantage.
She said, After World War Two, there was a trial about rape.
I did not know, I said.
With sorrow and with hope, a plea of humanity to law, we cannot shut our eyes.
No one does. It has been kept secret. The trial was not held in Germany.
Why has it been kept secret?
To protect witnesses. Secrecy would have been their condition to testify.
But what use is it if the country, the perpetrators and the outcomes are all secret?
She said, This is how deep the shame goes.
I said, But secrets and silence encourage the tormentor.
The conscience of humanity is the foundation of all law.
I must go, she said. At the door she turned to me, Tomorrow the case will be on the record. For all of us.
Dragić (IT-93-01) ICTY
Protected Witnesses
(PW-21) Meliha Subašić
(PW-24) Hana Izetbegović
(PW-31) Fuada Puškar
(PW-43) Zehra Zlata
(PW-49) Uma Hadžiosmanović
(PW-52) Jasmina Begović
(PW-70) Esma Sefo
(PW-71) Edina Pašić
(PW-75) Šefika Tvrtković
(PW-81) Merima Pašić
(PW-91) Nura Muslimović
(PW-97) Hanifa Kalajdžić
(PW-186) Nejra Kulenović
(PW-187) Mubera Sokolović
(PW-199) Rakifa Hafizović
(PW-212) Šaha Imorović
* * *
—
Judge Gladys Banda leaned toward the microphone and spoke the first words of the trial: May the registrar call the case.
Mr. Hans Bakker rose from the registry desk. He wore practical leather dress shoes and a grey suit. He called the case number and he announced the reason they were there: The Prosecutor versus Žarko Dragić.
* * *
—
The turbulence started the first morning of the trial. Čedo Milinković, the defence lawyer, turned his body slightly away from his client, Žarko Dragić. The accused was tall and dressed in a cheap, ill-fitting suit. His skin was weathered and greyish from continual smoking, with skin bagged under his eyes, a carved vertical scar on his right cheek and a deep wrinkle between his eyebrows. He moved with censored physicality. He was extremely self-conscious and had chosen to affect an expression of false submission. I had often watched our dog at home make this look. Dominated by someone in our small pack, Mam or me, she would lower her head and her ears and turn her eyes away, all the while watching us from the sides. Edina had told me that before the war Dragić was a village man known more for hunting and bumming cigarettes in the cafés than anything else.
The counts were read as part of the routine opening of any trial and Dragić had been instructed to plead guilty. But with unnaturally open eyes he stood and pled not guilty to the count of crimes against humanity.
I watched Karla look to the judges in surprise. Had they been aware? She had not been informed ahead. She should have been. The judges’ faces remained impassive, though I saw heightened alertness in their eyes, always a slight dilation of the pupils that cannot be masked, and a tightening of displeasure in Judge Smith’s jaw. He was already turning the pages of the indictments in front of him. Judge Banda asked Dragić to explain himself.
Dragić said, I hope you understand why I pleaded guilty. I have been listening to you read the charges. Will someone tell me where in these counts you are…in the paragraph nine, is that what you are all talking about?…and then I might be able to plead guilty, of course, taking into account the circumstances, the circumstances being war. I am trying to explain the amount of hesitation in my mind, and why I said I was guilty of one but not another. I tried to explain to my lawyer but I think he does not understand me or maybe believe me. Am I failing to make myself clear in legal terms, which I do not understand? I was misled, not knowing the law. I do not want to tell a lie at all. I came here to be honest, to be decent, to tell you what exactly I did, and it is up to you to say how guilty I am, and to mete out a sentence. I hope I have made myself clear.
His lawyer looked at the judges as if to say, You see what I am dealing with. He thinks he can endear himself, plead directly with you. Then the lawyer lifted his palms to the ceiling as if to say, Why does he not know that this is not the way of the court?
Judge Smith turned another page, thinking, and in a firm voice told Dragić that of course he had the right to speak in court but that he strongly advised the defendant to use his counsel. He asked Dragić if he understood what he was pleading guilty to. He slowly explained, unfolding one finger at a time from a closed hand as he spoke: the components of a crime against humanity are three—an attack on human dignity, attacks on civilians, and part of widespread or systematic attacks.
Dragić must have believed, in the first hour of his trial, that he was in control of his destiny, that a trial was a conversation between him and a judge. His eyes were so wide open that the whites were visible all around their frantic dark centre.
He said, I am only trying to tell the truth. I did not understand the words systematic attacks. I raped but I did not do that.
This man who laboured over writing his name, who could hardly read, was revealing too rich a narrative for the court, one that was beyond its conventions. He was making the court after his own image. Dishevelled. Disorderly. Too human in its confusion. No one had foreseen a confession in the first ten minutes of the trial, even the lawyers with their training in twists and quiddities. It would not be seen as justice. It was intolerable and had to be contained.
Judge Banda ordered a closed session with the lawyers, and court was adjourned.
* * *
—
The next day, I watched everyone arrive back in court. Karla was beside Sue and William, and the interpreters settled themselves in their booth above, where they worked in pairs and alternated every half hour. From their glassed-in room at the same level as the judges’ desk, they could see the whole courtroom. In the rows of desks below were the clerks and legal assistants. Nita and Joop sat near the witness chair. Dragić entered between two security officers, but his lawyer’s chair was empty. All rose for the three judges.
Judge Banda asked everyone to sit.
Then the court was informed that the defence lawyer had disappeared from The Hague.
Dragić stood and said, I want to represent myself. I will tell the truth and that will be to the prosecution’s advantage so they can quickly finish this case. Only I know what really happened, but I need to ask some legal questions. I have no one to get legal ideas from.
Karla looked at the judges with swift intention, poised to object, eyebrows raised. Who would take control? Judge Smith assured Dragić that this was his right. He assigned him a temporary counsel and Judge Banda adjourned for ten minutes for them to meet.
When they returned Dragić said he wanted a counsel. Judge Banda made rebukes, demanded apologies for the record and then turned to Dragić and told him briskly that a new counsel would be found for him.
Court was adjourned for three weeks.
* * *
—
I walked the long way home, breathing in salt air. I phoned Jacques Payac from my balcony overlooking the sea. I said, The trial is delayed. I’m going to Sarajevo to see Edina for a few days, then I’m coming home. Can you give me a few weeks’ work?
Jet-setter, said Jacques. Young man, what is this trial about?
About the women.
More detail.
About violence.
What else?
I am not going to call you anymore if you do this.
Yes, you will. What else? What are you going to write about a defendant who says he was only following orders, or about a defence lawyer who can’t control his own client? They will say the generals knew nothing. Tyrannical regimes are captive to their own lies. But the law too can be a tyrant.
I will resist those lies, I said. I will dispute the tyrannical habit of pretending not to pretend.
How?
By telling the truth. I want Edina’s story engraved in the air we breathe.
All right, young man. Come home. I need a lively feature on how to pack for carry-on. Fais de beaux rêves. By the way, I got you a free air pass for a year. Ciao. See you soon.
* * *
—
I found Edina and Kosmos in the lobby at the Sartr Theatre on Gabelina Street. Kosmos said, Come, see where we watch the trial.
On the stage were two old chintz-covered armchairs once used as props. In front of them was a small television on a chest of drawers. Kosmos had told all the actors that he and Edina would use the stage during the days until the trial was over.
The actors argued, What about our play?
He laughed at them and said, Eat shit. You can have the theatre at night.
Eat it yourself, they said to him, but they left.
We sat on the stage and had coffee together and Kosmos said, I do not want to watch alone in an office. Here at least are hairy-balls actors complaining in the halls.
Edina said, I like my office.
I will stay with you, said Kosmos
. After the trials I will write my play. Right now I am too fucking sad.
Edina handed me a cake.
I felt how close they were. I also felt the strangeness of their war being retold in a faraway court. In a foreign language. Under a foreign system.
I told Edina this and she nodded but Kosmos said, I like that shit-on-your-sunshine court.
We both had to laugh.
She said, They’d never do it here.
* * *
—
Everywhere in Sarajevo, people were half watching the trials, adjusting screens and volume, complaining, gossiping, lawyers take more breaks than our politicians, why no America?
People went for walks, to the park to watch men playing chess on the big chessboard with pieces each a metre tall. They called out jokes and mocked each other. One player took three pieces in a row and said, Now I have enough wood to keep me warm all winter.
At the end of the game his opponent cursed him across the crowd, It was the first and last time in your life you will win.
People walked along the river. Workers were rebuilding the National Library and the Oriental Institute after four months of devastating bombs. They were once again raising the dome and painting two thousand square metres of arabesques on the walls. But the beautiful books were gone, the rare manuscripts and incunabula, all ash, all gone.
* * *
—
Kosmos brought us burek pastries and coffee in small porcelain cups. Edina set up her chessboard on a low table between the two chairs on the stage and turned the black side to me.
I sleep badly, she said. I wanted the trial to be over. Now I must go back. What will you do?
I am going home till it starts again.
She lit a cigarette with stained fingers. She said, I should go to Vienna. But I want to be alone. I stay in my apartment. Kosmos comes to me but we never meet like light-squared and dark-squared bishops. My family is destroyed. When one family is damaged, all are.