Mak said to me, I don’t know him.

Did he tell you to get out of town?

Mak shrugged it off and said, Why say things to a stranger only standing, looking in at a few empty tables? No use. Now we go to find your Karaman’s house.

—

We drove to the train station in Miljevina and up to the farmhouses looking down on the little town. We drove back and forth along a narrow road, trying to match the two-storey house in my photo. Mak pulled over, studied the photo, the line of the mountain ridge below the new tree growth, the iron gate on the steep driveway leading into the house. He said that we could match the pattern on the gate if it was still there, distinctive, three rectangles side by side like art deco. Back and forth we drove along the road. Maybe they tore the house down. Mak pointed to a jag in the mountain ridge and pointed to it on the photo. Suddenly he spotted the gate, partially hidden by hedges at the bottom of a steep drive. He turned on the empty farm road and parked the car facing back toward the main road. He got out, scanned the steep bank of woods above us.

Are we okay?

Of course. I make valet parking for you.

Why so careful?

I crossed the road and walked down the track to the gate. I touched the ironwork, the heavy lock, and I studied the house, small windows on the second floor, a door on the valley side, not much yard, a bit of wild mint, rock, no paths to the village, all access only from above.

Nowhere to escape. Even if a woman could crawl out a window or open a door there was nothing but a steep drop. What did it feel like, the first drive down this isolated road, sitting between soldiers you knew were going to rape you? What did it feel like trapped in that house, looking out windows?

I heard boots on gravel. Up on the road, a stranger was crossing toward Mak, and I hurried back up the drive.

When the man was in touching distance he spit at Mak’s feet. Mak straightened to his full height, not stooped as when he talked with me. He shifted in front of me and the man spit again, at my feet, his eyes hard on mine and if I had been alone I would have been very, very afraid. I did not move, like an animal taking stock. In this moment I decided. To stay. To risk being wrong. To risk being right. After an unnatural pause, the man moved on down the empty road, kicking stones.

Let’s go, said Mak.

—

Over time I learned the women’s stories. I learned how the lawyers had reviewed with Merima her first statement, given eight years before. The young woman told me a little about her counselling and how she had put the war aside in order to survive. To learn German. To go to school. To become someone not destroyed. She did not want to remember who she had been before Vienna.