by Kim Echlin
She said, Please tell the court when you were separated from your family.
We were taken from our hiding place in a gully in the forest by men who were our kums.
Karla glanced up at the interpreters’ booth and as soon as the interpretation was finished she said, Excuse me, Witness, for interrupting you. I just heard the interpreter say the word neighbours in English. But when you spoke you used the word kum. Will you explain to the court what kum means in your language?
Edina answered, This is a word for someone close. A godparent or a best man at a wedding. The parents of newlyweds call each other kum.
And so you knew the man who assaulted you?
Yes. It was a shock that a kum would hurt me.
What was the date?
I left home on June twenty-eighth. I remember because it was the holiday of Vidovdan. They probably didn’t want to attack us on that day.
Edina had demonstrated an excellent memory.
She said, We were hiding in the forest and it was cold. I had a little radio and I was listening to news and when I heard gunshot from our village I woke people up and said, Let’s move further away. The others were afraid to move. They said the dogs barking were wolves and then we heard a man shout, Catch them alive. Don’t shoot. My mother told my father to run and he did and was shot before our eyes. Then my daughter and mother and three neighbours tried to hide. But a soldier, a neighbour I knew, shouted at us, Get out, balijas, a terrible word for Moslem. This is how he talked, swearing at us as if we were strangers. He had been my kum. He had eaten at my table.
Karla said, Thank you, Witness.
Judge Banda said, Recess.
Behind the glass and the blind I tried to absorb what I had heard. Beyond the pixelation and the altered witness voice and interpreter’s neutral delivery and the time delay, it was still Edina.
* * *
—
The next morning Mataruga said to Edina, You have introduced a completely new event not in your previous statements. Could you tell us something about that?
About what?
That you went with Mr. Dragić to a mountain cabin.
I just remembered it.
So in fact you are giving us bit by bit what happened.
I am telling you everything I remember as I remember it.
When did you remember going there?
Yesterday.
I’m not asking you what you remembered yesterday, and don’t look at the prosecution, please.
Why shouldn’t I look at the prosecution?
Judge Banda urged, Counsel, go ahead with your questions. We are observing the witness here.
He said, Witness, I’m interested in knowing why you introduce new circumstances and new facts into the case.
Judge Banda said, Counsel, the witness has already explained that she gave explanations of the incidents as she remembered them.
Mataruga said, Your Honour, she responded that she decided to tell the truth when she came to court.
Ask her directly. I’m sure she has understood everything that you have said.
He turned back to Edina. Do I have to repeat the question or have you understood?
Repeat.
You said that you decided to tell the whole truth when you came before the Trial Chamber. This means that you did not tell the whole truth in your statements.
No, it does not mean that. Eight years ago, when I gave my first statement, I was ashamed and injured. I did not remember certain events. Now I remember more. Mr. Mataruga, I am an attorney. I know the importance of the whole truth. Perhaps you don’t understand our language.
I do understand our language very well. But never mind. You said you stayed one night at a soldier’s parents’ house. He introduced you to his parents using a different name.
Where is your question? I had no choice. He said he would kill me. I had to meet his parents and pretend. He raped me on his childhood bed when the parents went out. Then other soldiers came in and they all raped me.
The gang rape, was it painful?
Yes.
How did this make you feel?
Dead.
Did you ever consider fleeing from the house?
How? There were soldiers everywhere. Every night they told us who they killed. They gave us their bloodstained uniforms to wash. They said no one would survive to tell the truth.
Did you see Mr. Dragić at the Lepa Brena apartments?
Yes, with PW-187.
How often?
Often. One time he had a car accident on the way and his ribs were damaged and I had to bandage him and he said, I wonder if you cast a curse on me. I thought, I would have cursed you with death, not a cracked rib.
Do not talk about made-up things like a curse.
He said the curse, not me.
How did you feel?
I was in a continual state of shock. Waiting to be raped or killed. How would you feel?
Your Honour, she asks questions.
Counsel, we are aware. Go ahead.
So you were living in an apartment with Mr. Dragić and his friends, cooking, washing, in fact keeping house for them. He tells the story differently. He claims he wanted to help you but you would not stop kissing him. That you took advantage of him.
He said I took advantage of him?
Witness, I must ask the questions. Did he try to help you?
Help me? He brought soldiers to rape me. Over and over he raped me and then he rejected me and took someone else.
What do you mean, he rejected you?
He did not want to rape me anymore. He gave me to someone else. They all took one girl after another.
Will you agree with me that when a person is jealous, she is ready to do certain things?
What are you talking about?
I’m referring to the fact that you said Dragić rejected you. In my understanding, when a man rejects a woman, it is someone he has loved. Perhaps you wanted to seduce him back?
Edina said nothing.
Mataruga said, Witness?
What?
Answer the question.
That is not a question. That is an evil lie.
Judge Banda interrupted. Counsel, after listening to the evidence and the witness’s explanation and what she meant by the term reject, I don’t think we should waste time. Please proceed with other questions.
Any of the judges could have reminded him that consent was not allowed as a defence because there can be no consent under conditions of slavery. This was clear in the rules. The defence lawyer ignored it. And in a momentary lapse, the others did not mention it.
* * *
—
I was alone that day in the gallery of Edina’s cross and the questions were sickening. She was being assaulted again. She was lying under a giant ice pick and Mataruga was swinging and chopping down on her. Stop. Please. Stop battering her. Stop the lies. Once again she was alone and being assaulted.
She had to protect herself.
I heard her scrambled voice say under the neutral voice of the interpretation, Not even dead could I ever be Dragić’s, or any one of theirs. Never. Not in all eternity.
She said deliberately, Put this on the record. Record this. Never, even dead, would I ever be one of theirs.
Judge Banda said, Don’t bother, Witness. Don’t waste your energy.
But Mataruga was permitted to finish his cross-examination.
Was Dragić at the school on January twenty-third?
I don’t know.
At the Lepa Brena apartments on February third?
I don’t know.
At the Partizan Sports Hall on March twelfth?
I don’t know.
At Lepa Brena apartments April seventh to May twenty-first when forces were fighting in the
western region?
She said, I don’t remember.
I don’t know.
I don’t remember.
I cannot be sure who was there.
Edina blocked him. Both acted within the law. Like a king sliding in and out of check with no clear resolution.
I don’t know.
I don’t remember.
She could make Mataruga disappear the way she had made the rest of them disappear when they were hurting her.
The blows were still raining down on her. Where? When? Who? She resisted each blow. No answer. No answer. No answer.
He sat and watched. She told me that when she became disassociated in court and kept repeating the same answer she could see Dragić staring at her with a disgusting look of false tenderness as if he owned her and was sorry it had to be this way.
She said to Mataruga, Do you know where you were eight years ago? Do you think they gave us calendars?
Judge Banda said, Counsel, the witness does not know. Recess.
* * *
—
After Edina’s testimony, I wanted to go to her, but I could not. Her witness assistant took her back to the hotel, protected her from any contact.
Was this really the best we had, this bludgeon of law, the severed reality of the court? To extinguish rage as if it has no place in truth? To demean a woman? Make her a victim trying to defend herself all over again?
I went to the café in the Novotel next door, transcribed my notes, reread a letter from Mam. I wanted to call her and Biddy to hear their voices, but I did not trust myself not to cry. I looked at Mam’s familiar handwriting. She had written that she had found a shoebox of old-fashioned christening announcements and antique funeral cards. She would keep for me the tattered notebook in which her grandmother had jotted entries about her eight children born one after another in a prairie farmhouse with a wood stove and no running water. She wrote, It is a good read. My grandfather wouldn’t let her have the horses to drive to town when women first got the vote so she walked, thirteen miles in and thirteen miles back. And there is an entry after the flu death of her eldest son, Baden: He’s gone—my first baby—Tonight the sky feels too big—I am a speck—The stars are more real to me than anything down here—poor Baden—he always wanted to ride in an airplane—and now he never will.
At the end of the letter Mam wrote that Biddy was doing well, becoming a young scientist. She wrote that the girl had taken to stargazing even in winter. She wrote, When the trial is over, I’m going on a holiday to Iceland to fly with some friends at their club. Work hard. Come home soon. XO, Mam.
* * *
—
Dragić struggled with the headphones and different languages. Did memories come back to him too, out of the fog of alcohol and the adrenalin of war? At Karaman’s he had ordered the women to cook and serve him meat and fresh bread. Edina’s was very good. He reported saying to her, I would come here only for your baking.
He made her serve it to him naked. He cracked her skull if he didn’t like how she looked at him. He had said that he wanted her pregnant. He kept track of her in Foča, even when he was out dismantling booby traps and land mines.
* * *
—
Merima spoke clearly and slowly. Many times she had rehearsed her story and she wanted to say it and go back to Vienna. She began, We girls were used as special rewards for soldiers. When Koza was finished with me, he let other men choose me. Sometimes they forced us to bathe them. They always kept their weapons with them. Sometimes they put guns under their pillows but I was too terrified to try to take one.
She told these details as if she were reciting. But already she had forgotten and called him Koza, his nickname. Why had she done this?
Karla asked, Can you identify in this courtroom a man who was there?
Yes. The man sitting two from the left, with a green stripe in his tie.
Do you know his name?
Žarko Dragić.
What was his nickname?
Koza.
What was his role?
He was the leader. The others obeyed him. At Ribarski restaurant he organized everyone for trading us.
Was he the first to rape you?
No, that was Stankić. He was our kum before. He was very forceful. He said he could have done worse but I was the same age as his daughter. He wanted to hurt me as much as possible. But he could never hurt me as much as my soul hurt me.
Did you tell your mother?
No. After I was taken away I did not see her again until after the war. For a long time I was afraid she was dead.
What about your grandmother?
No, I did not see her either. I thought she was dead.
How long were you there?
I don’t know exactly. I know we were hiding on Vidovdan Day. Someone told me I was there for about eight months. I know when I left it was winter.
What did they do to you there?
They said we would have their babies. They said they would destroy us.
What did they do specifically to you?
They destroyed everything in me.
You were taken from Partizan Sports Hall by a group of men when you were hiding in the bathroom. Do you remember this night?
Yes. Because it was the first night. I remember most of their names because they often came for me later. Perhaps I will miss some because it has been eight years and I do not like to think about it. There was Luka Radović from Foča, Darko Dubljević, and Ranko Radulović, and Tolja and Bane. Those are nicknames, because I don’t know their real names. Others I knew only their nicknames, Šćepo, Puko, Miga. There was one who had a wound in the stomach with a bandage, and they made me give him pleasure too, because he could not rape me with his wound.
These persons you mentioned, were they all soldiers?
Yes.
Who was their leader?
Koza, I mean that is the nickname for Dragić.
Where did they take you?
A motel in town, I do not remember the name.
How far was it from Partizan Sports Hall?
Not far, five minutes in their car.
And what did you do there?
They forced me to give them pleasure.
What do you mean by give them pleasure?
During the witness-proofing sessions, Merima had told Karla she had never wanted her mother and her grandmother to know the details of what had happened to her. She did not like to say the words in public. She was afraid when she saw him she would freeze inside.
Karla asked again, What do you mean by giving them pleasure?
I cannot express myself. Please, I cannot tell you this.
Please, just use the formal words. It is all right.
Even from behind the glass I could feel the stillness in the courtroom. She was again in the chaos and choking, covered with their filth. Darkness behind her eyes. Who in this courtroom knew what it was to be grabbed by men’s hands, clothes stripped off, burned with a cigarette on her nipple? Who had heard themselves scream?
She had tried to forget about it in Vienna. And these lawyers arrived and disturbed her peace.
he pointed his finger and chose me they were all drunk and stinking I was fighting them and there was the cold blade of a knife against my cheek a man is behind holding my wrists and a man is in front ripping off my clothes, putting his face on my face, breath-stink and I am naked, they tore away my clothes and opened their rough pants and now my shoulders are jerked and my hands are grabbed by one on each side, everything happening all at once, I am not me, a man is kneeling over me and squeezing my jaw open and putting it in, his thing in my mouth and down my throat and I am choking and another is pushing my legs apart and jamming himself inside and one of them has cracked my knuckles with a gun butt and he is putting it in my hand and on t
he other side too and stick is all over my arms and face and lips and legs and they are on me like a pack of wild animals, changing places and I cannot see who is where, I am just trying to get my breath and finally they are finished and I am lying alone and they are zipping and reaching for cigarettes and matches and now one of them has grabbed my wrist and jerked me up and I have trouble to stand
Karla repeated, Please, we need you to tell us exactly what happened. Just use correct language. Did you have a penis in your mouth?
Yes.
What else? Please just describe.
I cannot say.
Please try.
Try.
They came in together and all got on me at the same time.
How many?
Five.
Where were they on your body?
I can’t say.
Just use formal words.
Say it.
One in the mouth, one down below, one in each hand.
That is four.
There were five. I think they took turns below.
How long did this go on?
It has never stopped.
I don’t remember. An hour? It felt long.
What happened when it was over?
I was destroyed.
They left. I went to the bathroom for water. A young one came in, Tolja. He tried to give me a hand grenade. He said, They might cut your breasts. Please, if they want to cut you up, pull this pin. You will be gone, but quite a few of them will be gone too. I was too afraid to take it. One came in with a knife and he said, Which breast do you like better? But Tolja stood over me and said, Please don’t do anything to her. She’s such a wonderful girl. So the one with the knife spat at him and called him a name and then he raped me again and then a commander walked in and he stopped. That is all I can remember.
Karla asked Merima, What happened after?
The next day they took me back to Partizan.
What did you do there?
I hid under my grandmother.
Judge Banda interrupted, Counsel, break.
* * *
—