Stillness of the Sea

Title Page
Prologue
Stillness of the Sea
Epilogue
Copyright

The Hague, December

“Your Honours, before I address you on the subject of the crime, I would like to give you a brief account of the historical context within which it was committed. Until 1991, the former Yugoslavia was a federal republic made up of six constituent republican states. The death of Marshal Tito, head of state, led to the threat of complete breakdown in the country. The Yugoslav People’s Army intervened, at first in Slovenia, then in Croatia and finally in Bosnia, with the intention of creating a new state from these bloody conflicts. In the midst of the seceding nations, a new Yugoslavia was to be forged around two of the republics, inhabited by Serbs and Montenegrins – Montenegro being Serbia’s closest ally. Senior politicians in Serbia and Bosnia hatched this plan, which the Yugoslav People’s Army carried out with a complete lack of moral restraint, while also relying on special units under the control of the Serbian Ministry
for Internal Affairs and paramilitary groups financed by the nationalist parties, acting as go-betweens for local politicians and police headquarters. The Serb forces carried out their military operations in a coordinated and systematic manner until, by the end of 1992, the campaign had resulted in the murder or forced
resettlement
of some two million non-Serbian citizens.

One particular case brought the town of Višegrad grim notoriety.

Before the war reached Bosnia, Višegrad was a small town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of several communities on the shore of the River Drina, it now belongs to Republika Srpska.

During the war, numerous factors conferred strategic importance upon the town. One of these was the large hydroelectric station at a dam located in the municipality. The dam served not only to generate energy, but also to control the water level in the river and thus prevent flooding. A second factor was Višegrad’s position on a major traffic route, which is the crucial road link between Belgrade and Sarajevo.

On 6th April 1992, locally recruited Serb units began shelling the town and the surrounding villages, principally targeting the Muslim villages and residential areas. A small group of vengeful Muslims occupied the dam and threatened to blow it up. One of them succeeded in opening the gates sufficiently to cause flooding of some houses and streets, with the result that many civilians, Muslims and Serbs, fled from the town. Units of the Yugoslav People’s Army moved in and established control of the dam and, soon afterwards, the town as well.

Army representatives told the Muslim spokesmen that no one had anything to fear from the soldiers and,
reassured, they called their fellow citizens back from their hiding places and advised them to return to their homes. Many trusted these assurances and followed the advice. This was to have appalling consequences. Policemen and paramilitary militiamen robbed them and threatened to kill them. Muslims holding important posts in the town were allowed to go, though some of them disappeared. Paramilitary units drove through the streets with loudspeakers mounted on their cars,
broadcasting
recorded torture sessions.

The situation deteriorated further when the Yugoslav army withdrew from the town. Once the soldiers had left, the leaders of the local Serbs designated Višegrad a Serbian town and took over the running of the local authority. They organised training camps where the men were taught how to use guns. Before long, the Serb citizenry were ready to join the police and the paramilitaries in the execution of one of the most brutal ethnic cleansing actions of the Bosnian war. Muslims were to be cleared out of the town forever.

Hundreds of unarmed Muslim civilians were killed in Višegrad. The dead bodies of men, women and children were thrown into the Drina after being murdered on the riverbank or the ancient Turkish bridge – a historic symbol of the smouldering hostility between Serbs and Muslims. The current carried the savagely mutilated corpses down the river and deposited them on the bank near the village of Slap, where the Drina forms a great loop. Muslims who did not fall victim to murder were imprisoned. They were beaten, tortured and sexually abused. Many of them died. The town had two mosques and both were completely destroyed.

In the Balkan war, Višegrad is one of the most striking examples of successful ethnic cleansing.
Muslims made up over 61 per cent of the town’s population of twenty-one thousand. According to records compiled by the Red Cross, twelve thousand inhabitants were either forced to leave or murdered. It is Višegrad’s heartbreaking claim to fame that in no other community – except Srebrenica – have so many human beings disappeared, principally young adult males. These are facts that you should keep in mind during the days, weeks or months that might pass before a verdict is reached in this trial.

It is my belief that this short introduction was necessary to provide you with some understanding of the circumstances which pertained at the time when the man who now appears before you took part in a vicious crime.”

A slight breeze
rippled the sea, which recovered its smoothness close to the beach. The flow of air came off the water, passing over the wide Baltic beach and the two of them, and then on through the dune grasses. They lay still, with closed eyes. “How do you say that the sea is calm?” she asked. He didn’t understand what she meant. When the sea is calm, it’s calm. Or still, perhaps. “So, you have no word for it?” she queried. “In my language there is a word.”

He can hear her voice. Very clear, a little too deep. He recalls the face that goes with the timbre of her voice. Serious eyes, high cheekbones, a narrow nose, a forehead with a few wrinkles and pale, almost
anaemic-looking
skin, framed by dark hair. From above, he observes the imprint of his body in the sand, but she has left no mark next to his. He can’t explain it. Perhaps the sand was too firm and she too light. How can that be? Was it reasonable that some people should leave no trace in the sand? Not even in one’s imagination? She was lying next to him, he is certain of that. But he doesn’t know for how long. He could sense the tips of her hair, her long, dark hair, touching his face and tickling it.

He opened his eyes. She had been bending over him. Seen from above, it must have looked as if she were kissing him. She placed her hands on his face, hands that were always so cold. “
Bonaca
.” The word locked into his mind. Seastillness.

He is one of the last to enter the public gallery. A guard hands him a set of headphones and points to one of the few free seats. He goes to sit in the third row, next to a group of young people who, he guesses, must be students because all of them have a notepad open.

A low murmur coming from the headphones fills the air. He examines the courtroom through the pane of bullet-proof glass. Three black-robed judges, then a row of clerks of the court, the prosecutor on the right and, on the left, a phalanx of defence lawyers seated in front of the defendant, who wears a dark suit, a white shirt and a tie. His thick, black hair is unusual for a man of his age; he is sixty years old. His forehead is high and his shapely, slender nose makes his face look almost gentle. Two blue-uniformed guards, who are relieved at regular intervals, stand close by, keeping a watchful eye on him.

The presiding judge, a thin, elderly man with white hair, turns to the prosecutor, a Mr Bloom, and asks him to complete the plea for the prosecution in the three hours that remain before the court will withdraw for lunch. The prosecutor – a tall, handsome man, whose robe sits tightly across his broad shoulders – rises, glances at the defendant, and begins to speak. At first, the interpreter interrupts a few times to tell him to stand closer to the microphone.

From where he is sitting in the public gallery, Mr Bloom’s back is turned to him most of the time.

“You will grasp the extent of her suffering when you see the pain in her eyes and the scars left on her face by that night of fire. You may find her voice too faint and fail to understand everything she says. You will doubt if this woman can be telling the truth, because her truthfulness will make you question your ideas about humanity. She will try to give an account of that night and the
unspeakable
crime of which she is the sole survivor. I assume that you all understand the courage that this woman has had to summon up and the agony she has endured at the prospect of coming here to speak out in front of you all, and in the presence of this man, whom she has met only once before: on the night when her family, the Hasanovićs, were burnt to death.”

The defendant slips his headphones off for a few minutes and inspects the nails on his left hand, starting with the little finger. Then he rubs his hands together, only to stop suddenly, as if it took him just that brief moment to realise how cynical it made him look, in this setting.

He watches the defendant from behind the glass screen, and is unable to take his eyes off him. At the same time, he wishes he could hate this man just as much as the others in the public gallery do – people who are less familiar with his name. Sensing his breath flow between his lips and the tip of his tongue, he realises that he is soundlessly forming the letters of that name: Zlatko Šimić. He looks around anxiously, but the young woman next to him has put on her headphones and isn’t looking his way.

“This man claimed that he was a Red Cross worker, showed the family documentation and then ushered them into the house in which they were later to be burnt alive. All forty-two relatives of the woman who stands
before you died in that fire – her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, her three sisters and her baby brother, just two days old. The man had told them that they would be safe in the house and that buses would arrive in the morning to take them out of town. By then, there was nothing the Hasanovićs wanted more than to escape from the place that had for so long been their home – until their own neighbours drove them out. They were the last Muslims in the entire village to abandon their houses. On 14th June 1992, they crossed the old Višegrad bridge in search of the Red Cross station. The family’s great tragedy began when, as a result of this expedition, they crossed the path of this man, who has told this court that his name is Zlatko Šimić. He has declared himself innocent of the charges brought against him. He will assert that he had been admitted to the Višegrad hospital for treatment at the time the crime was committed. In evidence, the defence will produce a copy of the admission record. This forces us to draw the conclusion that either he or she is telling the truth, that either the defendant or this witness is lying to this court. It is your task to decide which you believe, him or her. In doing this, you must be aware of what it has meant for this woman to appear before the court today and speak of the night when her relatives died in the fire. She will have to live through those events one more time. You should also keep in mind the risks she has taken in coming to the court and you must look into her eyes. Then you will realise that this woman cannot be lying.”

Eyes are the window to the soul, or so it is said. He asks himself if he ever truly looked into her eyes. He loved her eyes so much, but if he had looked closely, might they not have revealed something else – a lie,
perhaps, or shadows cast by a life routinely hidden from him? He could not see the defendant’s eyes; he was too far away. But would he trust himself to meet them, if they ever came face to face?

“True enough, this man is not the vilest of all defendants who have ever appeared before this court, in that he is not someone who murdered with his own hands, nor was he the one who struck the match and let it drop. His crime began when he offered to help these desperate people, led them to the house already soaked in an inflammable liquid and assured them that buses would be ready for them in the morning. This is the man who locked them into the house and stayed on the spot until two men arrived – two men he knew well. These men robbed the Hasanovićs of their money, watches and jewellery and forced every one of them to undress. Next, one of the men struck a match and let it drop. The house instantly went up in flames. They locked the door and, for about two hours, waited in front of the building until the screaming had finished. You look at him now, this man, who with aforethought led forty-two human beings, most of them women and children, to their death; this man, for whom the fire clearly was not enough. The following morning, he had pigs brought to the site and made sties for them out of the remains of the house. Such a calculated gesture: pigs!”

He stands very still, his gaze fixed on his notes. His accusations are stated in a surprisingly calm tone of voice and without urgency, even when the passages might have caused him to display some emotion.

“Perhaps you cannot imagine quite how hard it will be for the young woman to appear here as a witness and testify. Memories from that night will forever torment her, but even so, running through such images in one’s
mind is not the same thing as having to find words to describe them. You should consider this when she is called to the witness box to stand before you. And remember this too: she was fourteen years old on the night she was robbed of everyone she loved.”

Now and then, Zlatko Šimić tilts his chair back so that it leans against the wall. At one point, he takes a comb from his jacket pocket to tidy his parting; from time to time he plays with the end of his tie, winding it around his finger and then smoothing the material out again. When he lets his eyes scan the hall, they never stay on anyone in particular, as if he refuses to accept that these are the people sitting in judgement over him or watching him being judged from behind the glass screen.

Šimić’s lawyers keep taking notes and passing pieces of paper to each other. The judges sit still. One of them puts his elbow on the armrest and leans his head on his hand.

He takes the headphones off and hears once more the subdued murmur from all the other ones. He looks around. Practically everyone is following the trial, intent, fascinated. An elderly lady begins to cry. She wipes her eyes with a hanky.

He thinks of how much easier it would have been for him if she too had wept just once – if he had seen her tears and comforted her. He would have hugged her, or maybe stemmed her tears with his finger, wiping them away. Now, he wishes it intensely. Why isn’t she here at least, sitting next to him? Why not be here together?

The young woman next to him has already filled several pages of her notebook. He studies her slender wrist as it rests on the small desktop and watches the
play of fragile bones beneath the pale skin on the back of her hand.

Then, through the glass, he notes Mr Bloom making a gesture in the direction of the defendant, like a silent invitation.

How could Šimić just sit there so impassively?

A woman starts to curse. So far, he has taken no notice of her. The guard, who all this time has been standing behind the rows of seats, comes along and tells her to be quiet. The woman removes her headphones and speaks in English. “He’s such an animal. Do you understand what I’m saying?” The guard replies: “Please, you must leave the room.” He waves towards the door. A few people turn to watch, some of them scornfully, others sympathetically. The woman breathes in – it sounds like a sigh – then puts her headphones back on.

He resumes his observation of his neighbour’s hand and the mechanical shifting of bones. The sight calms him. He has a vision of tiny piano hammers soundlessly hitting the strings. Then he too pulls his headphones on.

The judge asks the prosecutor for the name of the house where the crime took place, because it has become confused with another. There was a second house, also in Pionirska Street, in which other people had been burnt alive. The question of the number of the house is raised. But in this instance, the house had no number as, he points out, is unfortunately quite common in those parts. Mr Bloom suggests that, because the house belonged to the Memićs, it should be referred to as the Memić house, but the judges disapprove, arguing that it is too difficult to keep track of names. Instead, they agree to call it the House by the Stream. At this point, the presiding judge announces the midday break.

The public must clear the courtroom and go downstairs to the lobby. The guard addresses him as he is about to leave the public gallery. He should stand when the judges rise. Everyone in the courtroom has to and that means members of the public too, the guard points out adding, “It’s to show respect.” He doesn’t know what to say. He nods and goes out without looking back.

The lobby is two floors down. The few armchairs are already occupied. He crosses over to the water dispenser, fills a beaker and takes it outside. It is snowing now. Above the roofs, the sky is a wintry grey. He is the only one to go out.

He stayed in his seat to see Šimić being escorted out and, as the last one to leave the courtroom, watched the defence lawyers pull off their black robes. One of them wiped his brow with a handkerchief, and another got a salami roll out of his briefcase. Behind their backs, Šimić was led away by the two guards. Their route took them in the direction of the public gallery and when for a brief moment he had the impression that Šimić was coming towards him, he felt like ducking to hide behind the seats in the row in front.

He arrived in The Hague on the evening of the previous day, after nearly eight hours on the train. At first, he sat by a window, absent-mindedly leafing through the magazines and the book he had bought for the journey, until just after Hanover, when he put them down on the seat next to his. From then on, he stared out at the flat landscape, the bare trees and brown fields, their furrows outlined by a crust of snow. For long stretches, there were hardly any houses, not even a farmstead. A road,
field tracks and grey clouds gathering in the sky. It rained intermittently.

He sought out a hotel on the shore. He wanted a room with a view of the sea. The receptionist asked him how long he would be staying, but he had no idea what to tell her. “I don’t know,” he said, “four nights, perhaps five. Perhaps more.”

The train stopped once, owing to “an accident involving a man on the line”, as the announcement put it. A man behind him had been outraged. People should top themselves at home, if that’s what they want, he said. There are plenty of ways to go about it. No one contradicted him.

They were kept waiting for an hour, stuck in the empty landscape. By the time the train finally started moving, the person who had killed himself had vanished from his thoughts. Everyone left thoughts of the dead man behind. Ana couldn’t do that, he suddenly realised. Forty-two dead bodies, forty-two anguished deaths. And now here is the accused, who keeps smoothing his tie. He was expecting another kind of man – someone broken, with grief-stricken eyes, pale skin and hollow cheeks.

He would like to know whether Ana would consider this an appropriate image. But they didn’t talk, and haven’t seen each other since. He doesn’t know if that was the end or not. He doesn’t know what had held her back, why she hadn’t told him earlier. Why couldn’t she confide in him? He often fails to understand why she decided to tell him anything at all.