by Kim Echlin
What’s that?
A criminal, you know, like a low form of man, a beast.
I asked how a man could want to hurt a woman with his own body in this way.
Lieven said, You do not ask the right question. A soldier only sees an enemy.
A beast, I said. Not human. Do you think Dragić would rape again?
Lieven got impatient then, said, He is a man at war inside himself. He won’t have a chance again. I am not going to waste my time at night thinking about him. I have to guard him all day.
War makes murderers of ordinary men.
Not all men. He is a brute. War took away constraints and he found none inside himself. Are you tired of talking yet?
Yes.
Is this okay? he asked as he unbuttoned my blouse.
Yes.
He said, Your questions are sad and strange.
* * *
—
William Steyn was on his feet again. He moved with ease, his body concentrated but relaxed, and he appeared to enjoy the performance part of a trial. He was one of those rare mature men blessed with confidence. He was here because he wanted to do something meaningful. Later I read that he was the first in his immigrant family to be educated. He had grown bored, wanted the stimulation of being in a world court, wanted to work with new people from many legal traditions. Back at home his neglected marriage was over. His children grown. And here he loved the new challenges and the high stakes.
They had been questioning a military historian, and near the end of his cross-questioning, Judge Romano asked Steyn to make a connection between a campaign of ethnic cleansing, which Mr. Dragić claimed he was unaware of, and the particular crime of rape.
Romano had rarely spoken during all the months of proceedings. I put down my sketching and listened carefully.
Steyn responded, The court has heard from three generations of women in the same family. This illustrates an attempt to destroy the past, present and future of a community and ultimately, a population.
He reiterated that the court had heard from witnesses about a single man. He reminded the court of the thousands of pages of written statements submitted from victims throughout the region who had not been brought to testify.
Judge Romano, who had much more experience in this international court than most of the lawyers, pointed out that Article 5 did not require the prosecution to prove that the rapes were widespread but to prove that armed conflict against the civilian population was widespread.
Steyn and Karla had discussed this over and over as they looked for the connections.
Steyn answered, Absolutely. Rape is a constituent element in the widespread or systematic attack against civilians meant to destroy a people.
All three judges, Romano, Smith and Banda, saw the connection.
With these words, the law could change.
An individual woman was no longer a spoil of war.
Monumental jurisprudence. A new way of thinking. Nine months of exploring the way the rapes had taken place and the effects of those rapes had shown that rape is an attack on human dignity. Sexual integrity and human dignity are too tightly intertwined to be separable. To violate one violates the other. Rape is an attack on our shared human condition. A crime against humanity.
I watched Steyn sit down and raise his eyebrows to share the moment of victory with Karla. In this brief and complex moment their team had not fallen short.
* * *
—
The cornerstone of the defence lawyer’s strategy had been that Dragić had no authority over the men in his unit once they had returned to Foča from active duty. In this way, the assaults in town could not be considered systematic or widespread. They were the chaotic actions of depraved men. Mataruga brought in a retired general, now a professor, and for three days the general argued that command responsibility is only when men are functionally engaged in a mission. For three days he also said that the interpreters were not doing a good job and confused the interpretations of the words for command and direction and control, komandovanje, rukovodjenje and kontrola. I looked up to see the usually cool-headed professionals in the interpreters’ booth occasionally tighten their lips at his accusations.
* * *
—
On the last scheduled day with the general, William and Karla decided to question him together, hoping he would underestimate a woman. William began in the morning.
General, he said, do military regulations state that the responsibility of a commander includes the conduct of his subordinates?
Yes.
The regulations say that this includes undertaking all the necessary steps to prevent the perpetration of war crimes or crimes against humanity?
Yes, yes.
Professor, are there any exceptions?
No.
Can you point to any section in the regulations that says functional commanders are not responsible for the actions of their subordinates?
I cannot point to that. But the fine point is that the responsibility is temporary because the group itself is temporary. And the Foča units were informal.
In the afternoon, Karla picked up the questioning.
She said, General, the accused said, quote, I lined up my men and told them whoever raped one of the women I was personally going to execute them. This is consistent with someone who is in charge. In another part of his statement he said, quote, I issued him an order to not let anyone in the house. Is this not the clear language of someone in charge?
The general responded, You interpret it that way. I interpret it as a man protecting his reputation.
Karla said, The men obeyed the order. Would you agree the men believed he was their commander?
It does not seem that way to me.
Karla pressed, So, the men follow his orders while they are on military missions together because he is their commander. Back from their assignments, the group is disbanded and they are not under his command. But he orders them to guard the door of a house where women are being raped and they obey.
She moved to the general’s left side. She had noticed when William was questioning that the general was agitated by this and she learned that he had no peripheral vision in his left eye, a war wound.
Karla moved in and out of his vision, said, And if the accused posted a guard on the door, does this not suggest he knew someone inside needed protection?
No, it does not.
Then what does it suggest?
They would not know what was going on inside. They were just doing what they were told.
Obeying orders?
Karla glanced at William. Boxed in.
* * *
—
After making love, the eyes are soft, the jawline soft. I love the delicate colour under the cheeks. I love the human face. Day after day for weeks, when the blind was down in the gallery, I listened to the voices of the interpreters and tried to imagine the faces of the women who spoke.
Now the blind was up. I watched the strained tilt of Dragić’s head to the right become more pronounced, and the deepening crease between the eyebrows and the jaw clenched hard. His head was balding below the crown and his hair loss had quickened. I saw a new anxiousness in a twitch in his left eye and though I could not see his feet, his continuous restless shifting seemed to begin in his legs. He often dipped his chin and turned his head to stretch the sides of his neck. Stillness made him wary. Sometimes I imagined him on the mountain, prowling through darkness, alert to the broken twig revealing the hidden mine. He would no doubt perceive odd movements in half-light and hear sounds others did not. His men depended on his senses to keep them alive. On the mountain he was a skilled survivor.
Here, in the court, he was expert in nothing, a nearly illiterate unofficial soldier. He continually opened his mouth and rubbed his tongue over a back tooth. I watched t
he delayed television transmissions and saw how his eyes widened revealing the whites all around, the pupils dilated, his expression defensive and wild.
Steyn questioned Dragić about Edina.
He said, She kissed me, and I tried to refuse her behaviour but she put her hand on my mouth.
Steyn said, You are strong. You could have stopped her.
She kept kissing me, Dragić said. She would not allow me to talk. She looked like a vegetable because the others did so many things to her. How could I be attracted? I claim this as truth that she fondled me, for ten, fifteen minutes, and did everything to excite my manhood. So I followed through.
He spoke with quickened breath and his skin coloured under his cheeks and his hand constantly worried his eye. I listened to his unbelievable fantasy about Edina. Dragić could not make me believe in even a few minutes of his life. Because storytellers believe in their dragons and glass slippers, they can make their listeners believe. But Dragić did not believe in his own lies and he could not make any of us believe either.
Judge Banda asked, Is it your position PW-71 seduced you?
He answered, I had sexual intercourse with her against my will. I did not want to, you know how it is.
Judge Banda interrupted him, That’s enough. Questions, please.
Steyn said, The court has heard PW-71’s testimony. Beatings, starvation, humiliation, fear for her life. The accused is trying to tell us that the victim raped him. No, Your Honour, I have no questions.
* * *
—
In his closing statement, Steyn spoke to the honesty of the women and to the sincerity of their emotions. They had travelled to the court and they had told about the things that happened to them for which there are no easy words. He reminded the judges that though they had been incarcerated and starved and beaten and assaulted, they also mentioned in their testimonies small kindnesses from certain people, a bit of offered food, a moment of protection. He said that this showed how the women did not come for revenge but to tell their full experience, to truthfully bear witness.
Behind the glass I listened and watched. Each woman had told things they wanted to forget and each suffered shame. Each woman had reached inside for strength to speak. But strength does not sweep away anguish and fear.
The women were not human to Dragić. He claimed that he was only doing what everyone did. There were thousands of men like him. What is the absence of empathy for another? I do not know but I do know that violence and cruelty step into this absence. It can happen anywhere. Some of the women felt that the trial was like washing a mortal wound—it did neither good nor harm. The wound would still be mortal. And yet still they spoke.
* * *
—
I went home at the end of November to wait for the judgment. I did not easily fit back into my old life in Toronto. The city felt grey, dull. People felt dull. I walked by the grey lake. I visited Jacques Payac who was finishing an edit on green technologies and he did not have time to talk and told me to come back in a few days. I was an outsider at home. I made myself fit into Mam’s and Biddy’s peaceful routines. Biddy asked if I had seen her father and when would she meet him.
I said, Soon now. This summer.
She asked again for stories about him and what he was like and if he had changed and where did he live and what did he do and when she would go. She said, Will I have grandparents there? Cousins? I had to tell her that the war had created great loss in his life. She thought this over and I saw her put a few more of her hopes aside. She seemed very alone.
I asked, What do you hope for most when you see him?
She said, I want to know if he loves me. I want to know why he left.
* * *
—
Biddy was running her school’s science fair and she had recreated a Michelson interferometer with mirrors and a laser pointer and some little mounts and a ruler and Post-it notes. She explained how she measured the wavelength of optical beams, that the tool was used to detect gravitational waves. Her deft hands adjusted the lenses and her fingers pointed to light sources. I could not follow the calculations.
She said, Don’t worry. Mam can’t either.
She was proud to have knowledge I did not.
We looked at an incubator she had set up in the living room.
Hatching eggs?
Biddy said, My friend can’t have it at home because her mother doesn’t want a bunch of Rhode Island Reds running around the house.
Mam said, I can’t say I blame her. We haven’t figured out what to do with the chicks after the science fair.
Biddy and her friend Emily often sat together staring at the eggs. One evening Biddy knelt with her lips pressed against the glass while I was reading.
I asked, What are you doing?
I’m thinking about the eggs.
What are you thinking?
I’m thinking about the yolk becoming the embryo and the heart and the blood vessels and the tail bud and the wing and leg buds, the brain and eyes.
She showed me Emily’s charts, coloured pictures of chick development. Each egg was numbered.
Why did Emily number the eggs?
Biddy said, It’s an experiment.
On the twenty-first day the girls stayed home from school to watch. We called Mam to come but she said she would leave all that birthing in their capable hands. She was going to the airfield.
In the evening we finally heard a wobbling as the eggs shook back and forth and then the first pipping of the egg tooth as the little chicks broke through the shells. Biddy had predicted numbers 9, 3 and 6 would hatch first and they did in that order. Emily had worried along with Biddy about number 11 and indeed it never hatched. The chick was turned over inside and drowned. The two girls put the eleven surviving chicks in a box they had prepared with warming lights and took the drowned bird outside in the dark to bury near Biddy’s previous pets, a goldfish and a hamster.
I asked Biddy, How did you know which would hatch first?
She said, I watched them.
Emily said, They really give birth to themselves. They just peck their way out when they are ready.
I said, I would like to do this.
Emily said, But you’re already born.
I know, I said. But maybe we are born over and over. Maybe we need to keep pecking ourselves out.
Biddy said to Emily, She always talks like that. It isn’t very scientific.
Emily said to me, You would have to be careful not to get turned over and drown.
* * *
—
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.
* * *
—
The law creates a scaffold of order and civility. But every person who has been through a trial knows that under the surface lie cruelties. We accept law’s illusions because we have nothing better. We try to shape our complicated ideas into acts. It is all we can do. We are otherwise creatures driven by rage and revenge.
Judge Gladys Banda today would read the long judgment. She and Smith and Romano had had long discussions, reviewed thousands of pages of evidence and testimony in order to write the three-hundred-page judgment. The women witnesses had spoken. I feel dead but I am condemned to live. I feel destroyed. These words would have settled in Gladys Banda in a place she could not completely cordon off. All her life she had fought the idea of women as property and so, legitimate spoils of war. This judgment would find rape in war to be an assault on human dignity.
