Witness 247 Finishes

The Translator's Silence

Chapter 17: Witness 247 Finishes

The final day of Witness 247's testimony was a Friday. The courtroom had the particular atmosphere of a Friday at the ICC — the same proceedings, the same protocol, the same professional rigor, but beneath the rigor a faint current of anticipation, the anticipation of the weekend, the two days of non-court time that the ICC's schedule provided and that the court's workers needed the way the body needed sleep, the weekend the rest between sessions, the rotation extended, the thirty minutes expanded to two days.

The witness entered. The same door. The same walk. The same chair. The headphones, the microphone, the water glass. The blue head wrap — the same head wrap, or a different head wrap in the same blue, the blue constant, the blue the witness's signature, the blue a statement or a comfort or a habit or all three, the wearing of the blue undisclosed, the reason the witness's private property, the blue hers the way the booth was Amara's.

Amara was in the booth. Left chair. Headphones. The red light ready. Kwesi beside her. The morning light entering the courtroom through the windows at an angle that was different from the angle of March, the angle now the angle of late April, the sun higher, the spring further advanced, the light carrying more warmth, the warmth visible in the color of the light on the pale wood of the judges' bench.

The prosecution completed its additional examination quickly. Devaux asked the witness to clarify a detail about the timeline — a matter of days, the prosecution wanting to establish the exact sequence of events between the attack and the witness's arrival at the IDP camp, the sequence relevant to the prosecution's case theory about the systematic nature of the attacks, the sequence showing that the attacks on multiple villages occurred in a planned order rather than randomly, the order evidence of command, the command evidence of Mukiza's responsibility.

The witness clarified. The clarification was brief — two sentences, the sentences factual, the sentences carrying no emotional weight, the sentences the kind of sentences that witnesses delivered at the end of long testimony, when the testimony's emotional center had already been spoken and what remained was detail, specificity, the fine brushwork after the broad strokes, the painting nearly complete.

The defense declined additional cross-examination. Laporte stood and said, in French, that the defense had no further questions for this witness. The sentence was procedural. Amara translated it: "The defense has no further questions."

Judge Okonjo looked at the witness. He looked with the particular attention he gave to witnesses at the conclusion of their testimony — the attention a form of seeing, the seeing an acknowledgment, the judge seeing the witness as a person rather than as a source of evidence, the distinction important because the trial's procedure tended to reduce the witness to a source, to a conveyer of information, and the judge's seeing at the end was the court's correction, the court's reminder to itself that the witness was a human being who had traveled a great distance and endured a great difficulty and who deserved, at the conclusion, to be seen.

He asked the witness whether there was anything she wished to add. The question was standard — the question asked of every witness at the end of their testimony, the question a final opening, a last opportunity to say what the prosecution had not asked about and the defense had not challenged, the question the court's acknowledgment that the witness's experience was larger than the court's questions, that the testimony was an extraction, a sampling, the court extracting what it needed from the witness's experience and the extraction necessarily incomplete.

The witness looked at the judge. She looked at him for a long moment — four seconds, five. The looking was its own language, the witness's eyes communicating something that the mouth had not yet decided to speak. Then she spoke.

She spoke in Lingala. She spoke slowly. She spoke with the deliberation of a person saying something she had thought about and had decided to say and that the saying was important enough to warrant deliberation, the deliberation visible in the pace, in the careful placement of each word.

She said that she wanted the court to know that she had come to The Hague to speak. She said that the speaking was difficult. She said that the difficulty was not the traveling, though the traveling was long, and not the courtroom, though the courtroom was unfamiliar, and not the questions, though the questions were hard. The difficulty was the language. The difficulty was putting the thing that happened into words. She said that in her village, they did not speak about it. They lived with it. They carried it. They carried it the way women carried water from the river — on their heads, in vessels, the carrying a daily act, the weight balanced, the carrying done without speaking about the carrying because the carrying was not something you spoke about, the carrying was something you did. And the court had asked her to speak about the carrying, to convert the carrying into words, and the converting was the difficulty, and the difficulty was not the court's fault and not her fault but the nature of the thing itself, the thing that resisted words, the thing that was too heavy for words, the thing that words could approach but not contain.

Amara translated this. She translated it with the care that final statements required, the care of a translator who understood that these were the witness's last words in the courtroom, the last words the court would hear from this particular voice, the last crossing of this particular bridge. She translated the metaphor — the carrying, the water, the river — and the metaphor was the witness's gift to the court, the witness offering not more facts but a framework, a way of understanding the testimony not as a legal performance but as a labor, a carrying, the carrying the thing the witness did every day in her village and the thing she had done in the courtroom, the two carryings the same carrying in different containers.

The witness said one more thing. She said it in Lingala, and the Lingala was quiet, the voice low, the words emerging from the interior, from the place where the carrying resided, the words the carrying's brief expression, the carrying speaking through the words before the words ended and the carrying resumed its silence.

She said: "I have spoken. The speaking does not change what happened. But the speaking means someone has heard."

Amara translated: "I have spoken. The speaking does not change what happened. But the speaking means someone has heard."

The sentence was simple. Subject, verb, object. The syntax elementary, the vocabulary common, the sentence the kind of sentence a child could produce, the simplicity the sentence's power, the power residing not in complexity but in directness, the directness the witness's particular gift, the gift of a woman who did not have the education or the legal vocabulary or the rhetorical training of the lawyers who had questioned her but who had something the lawyers did not have, which was the authority of experience, the authority of a person who had been there and who had carried the being-there in her body for eight years and who had now spoken it in a courtroom and who understood that the speaking was not a cure and not a remedy and not a resolution but a hearing, a being-heard, the hearing the thing the court provided and the thing the witness had traveled four thousand kilometers to receive.

The courtroom was still. The sentence — the translated sentence, Amara's English rendering of the witness's Lingala — hung in the air the way all final statements hung, the statement the last note of a long musical phrase, the note sustained, the sustaining the courtroom's silence, the silence holding the note.

Judge Okonjo spoke. He thanked the witness. He said: "The court acknowledges your testimony. The court has heard you." The echo was deliberate — the judge using the witness's own language, the witness's own framework, the hearing the thing the witness asked for and the thing the judge confirmed. The judge's words were translated into Lingala for the witness, and the witness heard the judge's confirmation, and the hearing of the confirmation was the circuit completed, the circle closed — the witness spoke, the court heard, the court said it heard, the witness heard the court say it heard.

The witness stood. She stood slowly, the standing the physical conclusion of the testimony, the body rising from the chair where it had sat for four days, the body returning to its full height, the full height small, the small body the body that had hidden in a ditch and walked through smoke and carried water from the river and carried the grief of remaining and carried the testimony to The Hague and sat in the witness box and spoken into the microphone and described what had happened in the village and in the church and in the years after. The body stood and the standing was an ending and a beginning — the ending of the testimony, the beginning of the rest of the witness's life, the rest of the life to be lived in the village, in the place where the violence occurred, in the geography of the untranslatable word.

The victims' legal representative accompanied the witness. They walked together toward the door — the witness's door, the exit from the courtroom, the threshold between the space of testimony and the space of afterward. The witness walked slowly. She did not look at the judges. She did not look at the prosecution. She did not look at the defense. She did not look at Mukiza.

She walked past the booth.

She walked past the one-way glass. She walked past the glass behind which Amara sat with her microphone off and her headphones on her hooks and her hands in her lap. The witness walked past and she did not look up and she did not know that behind the glass was the woman who had translated her testimony, the woman who had carried her words from Lingala to English, the woman who had sat in the booth for four days and heard the witness's voice without mediation, without relay, the voice direct, the voice entering Amara's ears and exiting Amara's mouth and settling in Amara's body.

She did not know Amara's name. She did not know Amara's face. She did not know that Amara was Ghanaian, that Amara spoke seven languages, that Amara had learned Lingala in Kinshasa, that Amara ran along the North Sea every morning, that Amara lived alone in a flat in Scheveningen, that Amara drank rooibos tea and flinched at the sound of Lingala in the street and dreamed in the witness's language.

She knew only the voice. She knew only that a voice in her headphones had spoken her words back to the court in English, and the voice had been steady and accurate and neutral and had not broken, and the not-breaking was what the witness needed from the translator, because the not-breaking meant the testimony survived the translation, meant the words crossed the bridge intact, meant the court heard what the witness said in the language the court spoke.

The witness walked past. Her blue head wrap moved through Amara's field of vision like a vessel on the sea, small and self-contained and carrying something invisible, the carrying visible only in the waterline, in the way the vessel sat in the water, the depth of the vessel's immersion indicating the weight of the cargo, the cargo invisible but the weight visible, the weight the witness's weight, the weight of four days of testimony and eight years of carrying.

She walked through the door. The door closed behind her.

Amara sat in the booth. The booth was quiet. The courtroom below was transitioning — the judge announcing a recess before the next witness, the lawyers reorganizing, the gallery murmuring with the particular murmur that followed significant testimony, the murmur a form of processing, the gallery processing what it had heard the way Amara processed what she had carried.

Amara sat with her hands in her lap. Her hands were still. Her hands were not gripping the console, were not tight, were not white-knuckled. Her hands were resting. The resting was not the rest of ease but the rest of completion, the particular stillness that followed the end of a sustained effort, the stillness of a runner at the finish line, the body not at ease but finished, the effort complete, the effort's residue still in the muscles, in the breath, in the heart.

She thought about the witness's final words. "I have spoken. The speaking does not change what happened. But the speaking means someone has heard." She thought about the hearing. She thought about who had heard. The judges had heard — had heard through their headphones, had heard in English (Judge Okonjo and Judge Tanaka) or in French (Judge Herrera), had heard the translation, the translation the hearing the court recognized, the hearing that would form the basis of the verdict. The prosecution had heard. The defense had heard. The gallery had heard. Mukiza had heard — had heard through the French relay, had heard in the language he understood, the language of his orders, the language in which he had commanded the forces that had entered the village and performed the acts the witness described.

And Amara had heard. Amara had heard first — had heard before the English channel delivered the translation to the judges, before the French relay delivered the translation to Mukiza, before anyone in the courtroom heard the English or the French. Amara had heard the Lingala. Amara had heard the original. Amara had heard the witness's voice in the witness's language, the voice unprocessed, unrelayed, direct, the first ear to receive the testimony, the first mind to process it, the first body to carry it.

The first hearing. Amara was the first hearing. The witness spoke and Amara heard and the hearing was the bridge's first step, the testimony's first crossing, the word leaving the witness's mouth and arriving in Amara's ear and beginning the journey across the bridge that would carry it from Lingala to English and from English to French and from French to Mukiza's headphones and from the headphones to the record and from the record to the verdict. The journey began in Amara's ear. The journey's first destination was Amara's body.

She sat in the booth and she thought about this. She thought about being the first hearing, about being the first body to receive the testimony, about the weight of being first. The weight was the sponge's weight, but it was also something else — it was the weight of the witness's trust, the trust that the witness did not know she was giving, the trust that was not personal but institutional, the trust the witness placed in the court and the court's procedures and the court's technology, the technology that included the interpreter, the interpreter part of the technology, the interpreter the human component of the mechanical process, the human component carrying the weight that the mechanical components did not, the headphones carrying the sound and the microphone carrying the voice but neither carrying the weight, the weight the interpreter's burden, the burden the sponge's content.

She thought about the witness's walk past the booth. The walk that did not include a look upward. The walk that did not include an acknowledgment. The walk that was not a slight but an ignorance — the witness did not know that behind the glass was a person, a woman, a body that had carried the testimony for four days, a body that would carry the testimony after the witness had returned to the village and resumed her life and continued the carrying that the witness had described — the carrying of water, the carrying of grief, the carrying that was not spoken about because the carrying was not something you spoke about, the carrying was something you did.

Amara did the carrying. The carrying was her work. The carrying was the sponge. The carrying was the silence.

She sat in the booth for ten minutes after the courtroom emptied. She sat in the silence that followed the testimony, the silence that was not the absence of the testimony but the presence of the testimony's weight, the weight settling, the settling slow, the weight finding its place in the body the way sediment found its place at the river's bottom, the settling a physical process, a gravitational process, the weight moving downward, inward, finding the place where all the testimonies settled, the place that was the body's deepest layer, the layer beneath the professional composure and the trained neutrality and the protocol's requirements, the layer where the sponge held what the sponge held.

She removed her headphones. She placed them on their hooks. She turned off the microphone. She gathered her satchel — the thermos, the notebook, the pens, the laminated witness list. She stood. She pushed the chair back. She walked to the door.

The door. The threshold. The click.

She walked the corridor. The corridor was the same corridor — gray carpet, fluorescent lights, numbered doors. The corridor did not change because a witness had finished testifying. The corridor was the corridor's continuity, the building's indifference to the testimony's weight, the institution persisting while the individuals within it carried and were carried and set down and picked up and translated and were translated.

She walked to the exit. She walked through the lobby. She walked past the flags. She walked into the air.

The air was April. The air was warm. The spring had arrived while the testimony was being given, the season changing while the witness described the unchanging grief, the change and the unchanging simultaneous, the spring's green arriving while the testimony's gray remained, the two occupying the same calendar, the same city, the same air.

She walked to the tram stop. She did not take the tram. She walked past the tram stop and she continued walking — past the government buildings, past the embassies, past the residential streets with their neat houses and their neat gardens, past the boulevard that led to the beach.

She walked to the beach. She descended the stairs. She stood on the sand.

The North Sea was gray. The North Sea was always gray. The gray was the same gray — the same gray it had been in March when the trial began, the same gray it would be in May when the trial continued, the same gray it had been when she arrived in The Hague twelve years ago and the same gray it would be when she left, if she left, the gray the North Sea's constant, the gray the one thing that did not change in translation.

She stood at the water line. The waves came to her feet and retreated and came again. The rhythm of the waves was the rhythm of testimony — the witness speaks, the interpreter translates, the silence follows, the witness speaks again. The rhythm was in her now. The rhythm was in her body. The rhythm would be there tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, the rhythm the sponge's rhythm, the rhythm of absorption and retention and the particular silence that followed, the silence that was not empty but full.

She stood at the water line and she did not run. She stood. She stood and the sea was gray and the wind was from the north and the testimony was over and the witness was gone and the trial would continue and other witnesses would come and other testimonies would be spoken and other translations would be made and other weights would settle in the sponge and the sponge would hold them.

And between the witness's speaking and the court's hearing, between the Lingala and the English, between the testimony and the record, between the speaking and the silence — there was Amara, the translator, the bridge, the sponge, the voice, the carrying.

The translator's silence. The space that held everything the translation carried and everything the translation could not carry. The silence that was not empty but full. The silence that was the cost of the bridge.

The silence that made the bridge possible.