The Quiet Librarian

by Allen Eskens

Turn right and become a refugee. Turn left and be a hunter. Nura turned left.

She felt no fear, which bothered her. She should be trembling. She should be second-guessing herself, but instead she breathed in the scent of pine trees and wildflowers. It was a beautiful day, the sky above her a powdery blue. It was a good day to call her last.

Articles on trauma call it exercise intervention. What Hana knows is that an hour of hard exercise—the kind that drains her to the point of collapse—calms her.

The Sweater Lady—that’s what the children call her behind her back. What would they think if they saw her beating the crap out of that heavy bag, her arms cut with muscle, her left foot pounding the bag high enough to break a man’s eardrum?

But a call to 911 will capture her cell phone number. If only the world still had payphones. Does the world still have payphones?

Hana had seen such bravery in the war—no, not bravery. Love. To give your life for another can only be an act of love in its purest form.

There had to be millions of girls her age—Amina’s age—going about their lives unaware that people in a small country called Bosnia were being tortured and murdered. What would it be like to be one of those girls?

made Nura sad to think that the world would never know that she and Amina had been held captive in that basement. Their graves will be, like so many Muslim graves, just holes in the ground, the only marker of their resting place an imperceptible depression in the terrain. They will be covered with dirt and forgotten. No one to mourn them. No one to remember them.

“Minnesota. There is a Bosnian community there that will sponsor you and help you start a new life. You will have the documents you need to become Hana Babić in America.”

Hana Babić would take refuge in America, but Nura Divjak—the Night Mora—would remain in Bosnia as a whisper floating in the wind, haunting the dreams of her Serbian enemies.

“But if the world learns what happened—” “The world doesn’t care—don’t you see that? It never cared, David. The Serbs slaughtered eight thousand men and boys in Srebrenica—took them into the woods and shot them. The men who pulled the triggers will never face justice. Luka Savić was one of them. He has come here to murder Dylan—and I won’t let that happen.”

I had the chance to make a difference—to balance a scale that needed balancing.”

“A wise person once told me that we have both light and dark within us—written on our hearts—and to do what is right, we need only pay heed.