After my brother left that night, I felt restless. I was tired of being alone. I wondered if I had fooled myself. For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night. But I could no more deny my love than the sky can deny its stars. I could not make it make sense, but I was fine. Most of the time.

The next morning I was leaving for New York for three days and I worried aloud to Mam about leaving Biddy whenever I travelled for work and about feeling restless and needing to write about things I cared about.

Mam said, Gota, you’ve had it all.

Mam was rarely impatient and this stopped me. I said, I’m sorry.

She said, Work. Biddy’s fine.

I said, I worry about being away.

Mam asked, Aren’t I doing a good enough job?

I didn’t mean that.

Biddy is doing what she is supposed to be doing.

What is that?

Learning not to need you.

But I still need you.

I know. I need you too. This is the strangeness of love.

—

Every night we saw more news stories about massacres and about refugees struggling along roads toward borders and one night the camera rested on a woman holding a child’s lifeless body. I could not say, Oh that is only something happening far away because of war. I felt those images in my skin. I could not say I did not know. To turn away is to accept. To remain silent is to accept. Now they were opening the borders, inviting us to the besieged city. What was I going to do? Write about corkscrews with rabbit ears?

Sarajevo

Kosmos had dropped me at Edina’s office to join her first meeting with Karla Vogel-Babić, the lead prosecutor from The Hague. Edina led us upstairs, unlocked a door into a main office, led us down a hallway to a waiting room, and then she unlocked a second door into her own office, a small room with a worn couch and two low chairs around a table, bookcases on three walls, a row of file cabinets on the fourth wall, no window. Edina moved behind her cluttered desk and gestured us to sit.

Karla greeted Edina in Croatian, then said in her brisk and formal English, I am German, and my husband is from Croatia. Before the war we went every year to visit his family. I grew up in Hamburg. My city was destroyed. I joined the court in The Hague when it opened. We are very pleased to meet you. I understand you are a lawyer.

Edina nodded.

Karla introduced their interpreter Lise Favre-Rastoder, Swiss-Montenegrin, a huge woman with a comfortable smile, and Sue Rupasinghe, American–Sri Lankan, her co-counsel.

Edina introduced me, Gota Dobson. A friend.

Karla said, We are grateful to you for allowing us to see your files in order to build this case. Our preliminary investigations are leading us to many women who now live abroad. The statements you have gathered are from women who live throughout the region? We need to put all this together and to strategize.