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The mothers check their belongings into lockers and pass through metal detectors They learn the rules of the public gallery and the name of each judge After court adjourns for the day, they walk to the supermarket wearing winter coats over their saris, boots sinking into the snow Some remove their gloves to catch snowflakes, licking their palms to see if it’s true, it’s just water, while others concentrate on their wheelchairs and canes    Under fluorescent lights, the mothers compare different brands of biscuits and squeeze loose tomatoes and onions    One mother is the first to return to the island She is disappointed with the straight-backed chairs, the ‘No food or drink!’ signs and the realisation that the trial is concerned with crimes and humanity, while she herself is consumed by the absence of a single person who was born on the second day of Navaratri His name had to begin with an ‘a’ or ‘aa’, which is why she named him Ahilan    Ahilan Sivapragasam, Pranavan Muthukumar, Keerthana Ravichandran   The mothers have written these names on forms submitted at every administrative level The names are now in a public database, and the list has been filed with the court as evidence    In the gallery, the mothers sit next to diligent undergraduates and doctoral candidates who lean back, unimpressed Many of these students will write research papers about enforced disappearance as defined in the Rome Statute They will use ‘disappear’ as listed in the dictionary (verb, used without object) but, on the island, people are objects who receive the action: they do not disappear, they are disappeared   In the gallery, the mothers sit alongside journalists who write for syndicates, magazines and news outlets, including those from the island One journalist watches the mothers closely and, even when they seem bored and distracted, she writes about their resilience Another is a staunch supporter of the defendant He writes headlines like ‘Crocodile Tears in Kangaroo Court’ for which his editor commissions a cartoon of the mothers as sly reptiles, their eyes peering over the waterline as the defendant dangles at the end of