The Passing

The Translator's Silence

Chapter 19: The Passing

The corridor between the interpretation booths and the cafeteria was one hundred and fifty meters of gray carpet under fluorescent light, a distance Amara walked multiple times each day, a distance her body knew the way it knew the distance of the morning run — not as a number but as a duration, the duration approximately three minutes at the pace she walked between sessions, the pace unhurried but deliberate, the pace of a woman who had thirty minutes before the next rotation and who used the thirty minutes to leave the booth, to walk, to buy rooibos tea from the cafeteria's hot-beverage station, to stand in the cafeteria with the tea warming her hands and the corridor's fluorescent light replacing the booth's enclosed warmth with the building's institutional openness, the openness not spacious but functional, the corridor wide enough for two people to pass without touching, narrow enough that passing required acknowledgment — a nod, a step aside, the small choreographies of institutional proximity.

She left the booth at 11:17 AM on a Wednesday in June, the midpoint of the trial, the midpoint marked not by any ceremony or notation but by the calendar's arithmetic — the trial had begun in March, would conclude its evidentiary phase in September, and June was the middle, the meridian, the place on the timeline where the testimony was half given and half remaining, the half given already inside the sponge and the half remaining still in the witnesses' mouths, still in the languages Amara would translate, still in the future that the trial's schedule administered.

She walked the corridor. The gray carpet absorbed her footsteps. The fluorescent tubes above cast their particular light — not warm, not cold, the light of no particular time of day, the light that made the corridor timeless in the way that all institutional corridors were timeless, the time inside the building regulated by the clock and the schedule rather than by the sun. Amara walked beneath the fluorescent light and she thought about nothing, which was not the same as the absence of thought but was the deliberate suspension of the particular thought that the booth required — the linguistic thought, the translation thought, the thought that held two languages simultaneously and that needed rest the way a muscle needed rest between contractions.

She passed the defense team's consultation room. The door was closed. Behind the door, she knew, the defense lawyers were preparing for the afternoon session — reviewing documents, discussing strategy, the particular labor of defending a man accused of crimes against humanity, the labor conducted in French and in the legal vocabulary of international criminal law, the vocabulary the same vocabulary the prosecution used, the same words serving both sides, the words neutral, the neutrality the language's service to the law, the law requiring that the same words be available to the accuser and the accused.

She passed the prosecution's offices. The door was open. Inside, a paralegal was working at a desk, papers arranged in stacks, the stacks the physical evidence of three years of investigation compressed into the administrative architecture of the trial. The paralegal did not look up. The not-looking-up was the institutional norm — the corridor was a transit space, a space of passage, and the people in the offices along the corridor treated the corridor's traffic the way the residents of a busy street treated the street's traffic, with the particular inattention that familiarity produced.

She reached the elevator bank. She pressed the button for the ground floor. The elevator arrived. She entered. She pressed the button. The elevator descended.

The ground floor was the building's public level — the lobby with its flags and its marble and its institutional grandeur, the grandeur designed to communicate the court's authority to the visitors who entered through the main doors, the authority expressed architecturally, the architecture saying: this is a place where justice is administered, this is a place of consequence, this is a place where the world's worst crimes are judged by the world's appointed judges in proceedings conducted in the world's languages. Amara did not enter the lobby. She turned left from the elevator and walked the ground-floor corridor toward the cafeteria, a corridor that was identical to the second-floor corridor — the same gray carpet, the same fluorescent light, the same numbered doors — the sameness the building's consistency, the building uniform in its interior the way the court was uniform in its procedures, the uniformity a form of reliability, the reliability necessary for an institution that processed the unreliable testimony of traumatized witnesses and converted it into the reliable record of judicial proceedings.

She was halfway down the ground-floor corridor when she saw him.

Mukiza was walking toward her. He was walking between two ICC security officers, one ahead and one behind, the formation the standard escort formation for an accused person being moved through the building's corridors between the detention unit and the courtroom, the movement a daily transit, the transit conducted through the building's back corridors to minimize contact between the accused and the court's staff and visitors, the minimization a security protocol, the protocol designed to protect both the accused and the people the accused might encounter, the protection mutual, the mutuality a feature of the court's architecture, the architecture protecting everyone from everyone.

But this corridor was not a back corridor. This corridor was the ground-floor corridor that connected the elevator bank to the cafeteria, a corridor that interpreters used multiple times daily, a corridor that was not designated for accused transit but that was, on this Wednesday in June, being used for accused transit because the usual transit corridor was being repaired — Amara had seen the notice that morning, a printed sheet taped to the elevator door, "Corridor B closed for maintenance, alternate route in effect" — and the alternate route was this corridor, the cafeteria corridor, the corridor where Amara was now walking toward the cafeteria and where Mukiza was now walking toward the elevator bank, the two of them approaching each other at the pace of institutional walking, the pace unhurried, the distance between them closing.

She recognized him immediately. She recognized him the way she recognized all the accused persons she had translated for — not as a person she had met but as a person she had watched through one-way glass, a person whose face she knew from the particular angle of the booth's view, the face seen from above and to the left, the face familiar in the way that a face seen daily for four months became familiar, the familiarity one-directional, the familiarity asymmetric, Amara knowing Mukiza's face and Mukiza not knowing Amara's face, the asymmetry the booth's architecture, the one-way glass producing a one-way familiarity.

He was wearing the dark gray suit. The white shirt. The burgundy tie. The suit was the suit of the courtroom, the suit his lawyers had chosen, the suit that said: this man is a professional, a former military officer, a person of standing, the suit communicating respectability the way a uniform communicated authority, the suit the civilian version of the uniform, the uniform the thing Mukiza had worn when the orders were given, the orders that the prosecution said had produced the massacre, the orders that the testimony described, the orders that Amara translated.

The security officers flanked him. Their faces were professional — attentive, neutral, the faces of people performing a routine duty, the duty the escorting of a person from one part of the building to another, the escorting conducted with the particular professionalism of ICC security officers, who were trained to treat the accused with dignity and to maintain security simultaneously, the dignity and the security not contradictions but complementary requirements, the requirements the court's expression of its values, the values that distinguished the ICC from the tribunals and the courts that did not treat the accused with dignity, that did not maintain the presumption of innocence in their corridors and their holding cells.

Amara continued walking. The distance between them was now ten meters. Nine. Eight. She walked on the right side of the corridor. Mukiza and his escort walked on the left. The corridor was wide enough for them to pass without proximity, the width adequate, the width the standard width of an ICC corridor, the width designed for the passage of people who might include accused persons and court staff and interpreters and the assorted human traffic of an international criminal court.

Seven meters. Six.

Mukiza looked at her.

The looking was not deliberate — it was the automatic looking that one person directed at another person encountered in a corridor, the looking the body's reflex, the eyes registering the approaching person, the registration the brain's security function, the function ancient, the function identifying the approaching body as threat or non-threat, the identification taking a fraction of a second, the fraction sufficient for the brain to categorize the approaching person as a woman, middle-aged, dark-skinned, wearing professional clothes, walking toward the cafeteria, non-threat, the categorization complete, the looking complete, the looking that should have been the end of the encounter.

But the looking continued. Mukiza's eyes remained on Amara's face. The looking extended beyond the reflex, beyond the categorization, into a duration that was noticeable — not long, not a stare, but longer than the automatic glance, the duration perhaps two seconds, the two seconds a departure from the norm of corridor glancing, the departure small but perceptible, the perceptibility the thing Amara registered as the distance between them closed to five meters, four meters, three meters.

He looked at her and in the looking there was something — not the recognition of the first encounter, not the unnamed flicker she had seen in March at the junction between the main corridor and the detention wing. That first glance had carried the quality of accident, of breach, of two systems (the booth's invisibility and the corridor's visibility) colliding. This glance was different. This glance was tired.

Mukiza looked tired. The observation arrived in Amara's mind with the directness of a translation that required no processing, the source and the target the same — the man looked tired. The tiredness was visible in the particular way the face had changed since March, the change subtle but present, the change the kind of change visible only to a person who had studied the face daily through one-way glass for four months, the studying the booth's particular knowledge, the knowledge accumulated through observation, through the professional attention that the interpreter directed at the accused as part of the translation's context. The tiredness was in the skin beneath his eyes, which was darker than it had been in March, the darkness not illness but depletion, the depletion the trial's depletion, the trial depleting everyone it touched — the witnesses, the lawyers, the judges, the interpreter, and the accused.

The accused was being depleted by his trial. The thought was simple and the thought had not occurred to Amara before, the not-occurring a feature of the booth's architecture, the architecture placing the accused below and to the right, the placement producing a view that was consistent, unchanging, the view showing the same angle of the same face in the same dock, the consistency preventing the kind of comparison that change required, the comparison requiring two views of the same face from the same angle at different times, the times producing the difference, the difference the evidence of change.

But the corridor provided the comparison. The corridor provided the second view — the horizontal view, the eye-level view, the view that the booth's elevation did not permit. And the second view showed what the first view had not: Mukiza had aged. Not years but months, the months the trial's months, the months visible in the face the way the months were visible in the carpet's wear, the wear the evidence of use, the use the trial's use of the man it was trying.

Three meters. Two.

They passed each other. The passing took less than a second. Amara walked on the right. Mukiza walked on the left, flanked by his security officers. They passed the way people passed in corridors — the bodies angled slightly, the shoulders not quite turning, the passage a negotiation of space conducted automatically by the body's spatial awareness, the awareness directing the body to maintain distance, to avoid contact, the distance maintained, the contact avoided.

But in the passing, something else. The security officer behind Mukiza — the officer walking at the rear of the formation — placed his hand briefly on Mukiza's back. The hand was not a push and not a restraint and not a correction. The hand was a guidance, a gentle direction, the hand saying: this way, through here, the corridor turning, the hand communicating the route through touch, the touch brief, professional, the touch the touch of a person who had escorted this man daily for four months and who had developed, through the daily escorting, a working relationship with the man he escorted, the relationship not friendship and not sympathy but the particular rapport that developed between any two people who spent time together in institutional proximity, the rapport the human residue of the professional function.

The hand on the back. Amara saw it. She saw it in the fraction of a second of the passing, the seeing peripheral, the seeing the kind of seeing that the eye performed without the mind's instruction, the eye registering the hand on the back the way the eye registered all movement in the visual field, the registration automatic, the registration producing an image that the mind processed after the seeing was complete.

Amara walked past. She did not slow. She did not turn. She continued toward the cafeteria at the same pace. But the pace was different from the pace she had maintained after the first encounter in March, the March pace the pace of a woman whose body had been disrupted by the glance, the body processing the encounter the way the body processed testimony — receiving, converting, storing. This pace was steady. This pace was the pace of a woman who had passed the accused before and who knew what the passing felt like and who had accommodated the feeling into the body's repertoire, the repertoire expanded, the expansion the body's adaptation to the trial's particular demands.

But inside her body, the shift was different from the March shift. The March shift had been large — a redistribution of the internal architecture, the architecture tilting, the tilt produced by the shock of being seen by the man whose voice she carried. This shift was not large. This shift was not about the seeing. Mukiza had seen her before and the seeing had been absorbed, accommodated, the accommodation the three months between March and June, the three months the body's processing time, the processing converting the first encounter from a shock into a fact, the fact the knowledge that the accused had seen the interpreter's face, the knowledge absorbed.

This shift was about the tiredness. This shift was about the hand on the back.

Amara reached the cafeteria. She selected rooibos tea. The machine dispensed it into the white paper cup. She held the cup. She stood by the window. The cafeteria's window looked out over the ICC's grounds — the manicured lawn, the parking lot, the road that led to the highway, the view institutional, the Dutch landscape managed even in the court's grounds.

She thought about the tiredness. She thought about the face she had seen in the corridor — the face that was the same face she watched daily through the one-way glass and that was, in the corridor's horizontal light, a different face, the difference the tiredness, the tiredness visible in the corridor and invisible in the courtroom, the invisibility the composure, the composure hiding the tiredness the way the booth's glass hid the interpreter, the hiding the trial's mechanism, the mechanism requiring that the accused appear composed and the interpreter appear invisible, both requirements the court's architecture, the architecture demanding the concealment of the human behind the function.

But the corridor had revealed the human. The corridor had shown her the tiredness and the tiredness was human and the humanness was the thing that unsettled her, the unsettling different from the March unsettling, the March unsettling the shock of being seen, of the asymmetry collapsing, of the face and the voice meeting outside the glass. This unsettling was not about Amara. This unsettling was about Mukiza. This unsettling was the recognition that the man who ordered the massacre of three hundred and forty people was tired from the trial that judged him for the massacre, the tiredness the body's response to seven months of sitting in a dock and hearing witnesses describe what his forces had done, the tiredness the accused's version of the sponge, the accused absorbing the trial the way the interpreter absorbed the testimony, the absorption depleting, the depletion visible in the corridor, invisible in the courtroom.

And the hand on the back. The security officer's hand. The gentleness of the hand. The gentleness was the thing that complicated, because the gentleness said that the man who escorted Mukiza daily had developed toward Mukiza the ordinary human response of familiarity, the familiarity producing gentleness, the gentleness not endorsement and not forgiveness but the body's automatic softening toward a person with whom one spent time, the softening the human animal's response to proximity, the response older than language, older than law, the response the body's own protocol, the protocol that said: this person is near me and the nearness has produced a knowledge and the knowledge has produced a gentleness and the gentleness is not a judgment but a fact.

The gentleness complicated because the gentleness was the thing the booth did not show. The booth showed the accused in the dock — composed, contained, the headphones on, the face arranged. The booth did not show the accused in the corridor — tired, escorted, guided by a gentle hand on the back. The booth showed the function. The corridor showed the person. And Amara, having seen both, carried both — the function and the person, the composed face and the tired face, the accused in the dock and the man in the corridor.

The carrying was not sympathy. Amara was precise about this. The carrying was not the softening that the security officer had developed, the softening of proximity. The carrying was the interpreter's particular burden — the burden of seeing more than the record contained, of knowing more than the translation carried, of holding in the sponge the things the booth showed and the things the corridor showed and the things that neither showed, the things that existed only in the between, only in the space where the interpreter lived.

Amara drank the tea. The tea was warm. The warmth was the ordinary warmth of a beverage consumed in a cafeteria, the warmth domestic, the warmth the opposite of the corridor's encounter, the warmth a return to the ordinary, the ordinary a refuge, the refuge the rooibos tea, the tea the ritual, the ritual the structure, the structure the thing that held the between in place.

She finished the tea. She discarded the cup. She left the cafeteria. She walked the corridor — the same corridor, the same gray carpet, the same fluorescent light. The corridor was empty now. Mukiza and his escort had passed through, had reached the elevator, had ascended to the courtroom level, had entered the courtroom through the side door, had returned to the dock where the headphones waited and the trial continued.

Amara walked the corridor to the elevator. She pressed the button. She ascended. She walked the second-floor corridor to the booth. She opened the door. The door clicked behind her.

She sat in the left chair. She put on her headphones. She pressed the microphone button. The red light.

The trial resumed. The testimony continued. A witness spoke. Amara translated.

Her voice entered the headphones. Her voice entered the courtroom. Her voice entered the accused's ears through the relay, through the French, through the chain of translation that connected the witness's mouth to the accused's ears.

Mukiza sat in the dock. He wore his headphones. He heard the translation. His face was composed — the composure restored, the tiredness hidden, the courtroom's architecture doing its work, the work the concealment of the human behind the function, the accused behind the composure, the interpreter behind the glass.

But Amara, looking through the glass, could see the tiredness now. She could see it beneath the composure the way she could hear the marrow beneath the bone of the legal language, the seeing a kind of translation, the translation converting the composed surface into the tired interior, the conversion Amara's particular skill, the skill not linguistic but observational, the observation the booth's gift, the booth providing twelve years of watching faces through glass, the watching producing a competence, the competence the reading of the concealed.

She translated the testimony. The testimony continued. The bridge carried. And in the carrying, alongside the testimony's weight, was the new weight — the weight of the tiredness, the weight of the hand on the back, the weight of the accused's humanness, the humanness not a revelation (she had always known the accused was human; the training said so, the protocol assumed so, the presumption of innocence required so) but an observation, the observation made in a corridor on a Wednesday in June, the observation settling into the sponge beside the testimony, beside the first encounter's shock, beside the Lingala and the English and the relay and the bridge.

The first encounter had taught her that the accused could see her. The second encounter taught her that the accused could be tired. The first was about the glass failing. The second was about the person behind the glass — both glasses, the booth's and the composure's, the two glasses the trial's two concealments, the concealments necessary, the concealments the architecture, the architecture serving the translation and the justice and the fiction that kept the booth from being a cage.

The corridor between them — the gray carpet, the fluorescent light, the hundred and fifty meters — was the space where the concealments failed, where the interpreter saw the accused and the accused saw the interpreter and both were, for the duration of the passing, human. The corridor was the between. And the between was where the truth lived — the truth of the tiredness and the truth of the testimony, the two truths held in the same sponge, the sponge not choosing, the sponge holding, the holding the silence, the silence the translator's home.

The translation continued. The silence held.