—

I was happy to be back in The Hague.

I walked through a city that was now stitched into me. I walked through the Peace Palace and saw again the Japanese gobelins and remembered my hours in the library. I walked on the beach. I heard that Lise was leaving the court. That she had a job as a secretary. After her brilliant fieldwork with the women, making the first approaches, creating the relationships for Karla and the rest of the team, working on the trial, she had tried to keep her professional reserve but the stories haunted her, and the suffering broke her. Karla asked her if she could find the right armour to put on to keep working, but Lise simply said, I need to get out. All of us who interpret are damaged to some degree.

One evening I was in an Aldi to pick up something for breakfast and a stranger approached me where I stood in front of the large refrigerators.

The woman said, I am supposed to testify tomorrow.

Oh, I said.

You were watching the trials. I saw you there.

Yes, I said. They will read the Foča judgment tomorrow. That is what I’m here for.

I am afraid I will not be able to bring myself to speak in court.

I said, I am sorry. It is very difficult.

Why are you here?

I have a friend who testified.

Quite spontaneously, in the way we sometimes tell strangers intimate details of our lives, I told her the truth. I told her I had been drawn to watch these trials because of this friendship, but also because I knew a man from the region, and I watched the war on television and I could no longer remain indifferent. I said that I had learned that we revolt when something threatens our inner meaning. That watching this war had touched something inviolable in me, and I could no longer turn away.

I said, I know nothing of what it is to be in war. But you do. If I do not listen to you, who am I?

The woman traced her finger nervously along the cold shelf. She said, I cannot bear to say what happened to me during the war. I hate my own voice, the tissue in my own throat. Can you imagine? Horrible. Horrible. I will be silent to death. I will not be a victim.

Neither of us was choosing cheese or milk or anything from the refrigerated shelves. I said, I like your voice. I don’t think you are a victim. You are the strong one.

Unexpectedly she laughed. She said, I am not strong. In my town is a memorial stone to all those killed soldiers. Is there anything for me? No. There is no stone inscribed: Remember all the heroic women raped in this place for nothing.

Then she chose a single small container of Fage plain yogurt off the shelf and looked at it as if it were something unknown to her.