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