“I don’t know. My grandmother might have had bipolar disorder. But they’re all crazy.” I laughed. Then I turned on her. “You know that I have the right to sign myself out, right? I can walk out of here. I can’t legally be held here against my will. I don’t want to talk anymore.” IT ISN’T LONG AFTER NEDRET’S ARRIVAL in Srebrenica before his colleagues at the hospital begin asking him, casually, about his qualifications. How much surgical training has he done? Fatima tries to come across as curious, rather than suspicious. Srebrenica, buried in a valley, oppressed him. In the mountain’s shadows, rather than their heights, he felt as if he was living under siege, and he escaped to the hills whenever his schedule permitted. Years passed without the time to write poems. Medical training kept him too busy even to date. He found himself still single at age twenty-nine, an unusual status for a pleasant-looking, affable young man with a solid profession.
