A Bloody Mary, I said.

Yes, he said. I learned this uncivilized drink from a Canadian actor in London. But I do it my own way.

How?

I have the bullet that shot my grandfather’s shoulder in his war. I open it and put a few grains of gunpowder into the drink. This makes it a Bloody Bosnian.

Tell Edina I am thinking of her, I said.

—

Through the glass, I watched Dragić’s jaw clench and unclench as he stood to hear the verdict. First he had to wait for the interpretation. When the sentence reached him, he shook his head. Wronged.

Mataruga leaned in, no doubt to tell him they would appeal. I watched the man absorb, with shock, with anger, what had really taken place in the last eight months. He was going to prison. He knew that others from the detention centre were imprisoned in Norway and Sweden and Germany and Italy. I had heard that Dragić had had death threats from men he had named in his old unit. He could not even go home safely. I watched the white knuckles of his clasped hands and the disbelief in his shoulders.

—

Afterwards Edina would not pick up the telephone. Kosmos said they smoked and drank their gunpowder vodka.

Kosmos told me that when he said You won and got up to hug Edina she moved away from him. So he unplugged the television and wound the extension cord around his open hand and his elbow and asked her, What now?

Work. You?

Kosmos said, I told her I will write my play about bridges.

—

It was the women witnesses who won this case. They refused to back down and they refused to remain silent and they refused to hide. They transmuted the word victim into hero. I am in awe of their strength. They spoke. For themselves, and for us. The whole world cannot stand trial. But we can all be responsible. A human is human through others.

Sarajevo, Toronto

I flew to Sarajevo.

Edina slept a lot, woke up, played chess with me and slept again. Said she needed to work. Said they needed trials here now. Said thousands of men who had committed the same terrible crimes sat in cafés drinking coffee.

She said, It was a letdown. Was it not a letdown?

I said, You changed the law.

I found Kosmos in the theatre and we made love in the projection booth while the movie was playing. I said, Aren’t you afraid someone will hear us?

No, he said.

During the last reel as we rested on his mattress on the floor watching the flickering light, he spoke about his family. He said, I lost them all. My brother. What do trials do?

We listened to the ticka-ticka of the projector. He was alone lying in my arms that day. We were amphibious creatures at the bottom of the sea looking up through fathoms of water, his dear voice describing all the ocean’s loved and lost.