The Deliberation

The Translator's Silence

Chapter 23: The Deliberation

The judges retired on a Friday in October. Judge Okonjo announced the adjournment at 4:47 PM, the time recorded in the transcript, the transcript recording this final procedural act the way it had recorded every procedural act of the seven months preceding it — with the precision of a court that understood that its authority rested on the completeness of its record, the record the proof that the proceedings had been conducted according to the rules, the rules the foundation, the foundation the legitimacy, the legitimacy the thing that distinguished the ICC from the tribunals that preceded it and from the violence it judged.

The judges stood. The courtroom stood. The standing was the protocol's choreography, the standing that preceded the judges' departure, the departure through the door behind the bench, the door closing, the closing the beginning of the deliberation, the deliberation the private work of three judicial minds considering seven months of evidence and testimony and argument and arriving, through a process that the public did not see and the record did not capture, at the word — guilty or not guilty — the word that would end the trial.

Amara stood in the booth. She stood because the courtroom stood. She stood with her headphones in her hand and her microphone off and the red light dark and the particular awareness that this standing was different from the hundreds of standings that had preceded it during the trial, the standing at the beginning and end of each session, the standing the protocol's punctuation, the standing marking the transition from the judges' absence to the judges' presence and back. This standing was the last standing. This standing was the trial's physical conclusion — the bodies rising for the last time, the standing the body's farewell to the proceeding, the farewell conducted in the protocol's language, which was the language of the body, the standing and the sitting the physical vocabulary of the court's sessions.

The courtroom emptied. The lawyers gathered their papers. Devaux placed her files in her briefcase with the particular order of a prosecutor whose work was complete and whose case was now in the judges' hands. Laporte gathered his single page and placed it in his jacket pocket, the pocket receiving the page the way the judges' chambers were receiving the case, the receiving the beginning of the holding, the holding the deliberation. The gallery emptied — the family members standing, removing their headphones, the headphones placed on the seat-backs the way Amara placed her headphones on their hooks, the placing the gesture of conclusion, the conclusion the end of the hearing, the hearing finished, the headphones no longer needed because there was nothing more to hear.

Mukiza was escorted from the dock. The security officers flanked him. He walked through the side door. He walked to the detention unit. He would wait there — wait for the deliberation to conclude, wait for the verdict, wait in the particular condition of an accused person whose trial was over and whose fate was being decided by three people in a room he could not enter, the waiting the accused's condition, the condition the court's design, the design separating the accused from the judging, the separation the principle of justice, the principle that the judging was conducted without the accused's presence, the absence the condition of the deliberation's integrity.

Amara sat down. The courtroom was empty. She sat in the left chair in the dark booth — the lights still on but the equipment off, the console dormant, the headphones in her hand. She sat in the booth and she looked through the glass at the empty courtroom and she understood that the booth's purpose had concluded. The booth had served the trial for seven months. The booth had carried the testimony from the witnesses' languages to the court's languages. The booth had been the bridge. And now the bridge had no traffic. The bridge was closed. The bridge would reopen for the verdict — one more session, the session brief, the session the reading of the judgment, the reading requiring translation, the translation the last act — but between now and the verdict the bridge was empty, was resting, was the span without the crossing.

She placed the headphones on the hooks. She stood. She gathered her satchel. She walked to the door. The click. The corridor. The elevator. The lobby. The exit. The air.

The air was October. The air was the same October air that had carried the closing arguments earlier that day, the air unchanged by the adjournment, the air indifferent to the court's schedule, the seasons operating on their own calendar, the calendar independent of the trial's calendar, the independence the seasons' reminder that the world continued while the court deliberated, that the trees changed color and the temperature dropped and the days shortened regardless of whether the judges had reached a verdict.

She went home. She entered the flat. She stood at the window. The North Sea was its gray line, the gray darker now with the October evening, the October evening arriving earlier than the June evening, the earlier arrival the season's contraction, the days shortening, the shortening the Dutch autumn's particular quality, the quality the diminishment of light, the light withdrawing the way the court had withdrawn, the court withdrawing into the chambers the way the light withdrew behind the horizon.

On Monday she went to the ICC. The building was open. The interpretation department was functioning — other trials were in progress, other cases requiring translation, the ICC's docket continuous, the continuity the institution's nature, the institution not pausing because one trial had entered deliberation, the institution proceeding with the other trials, the other cases, the other testimonies, the other languages. Amara was assigned to a different case — a preliminary hearing, a case from the Central African Republic, the case requiring French-to-English interpretation, the interpretation routine, the hearing procedural, the content administrative rather than testimonial, the content the legal machinery of a case in its early stages, the machinery operating in the particular vocabulary of motions and submissions and the court's preliminary procedures.

She sat in a different booth. Not the Mukiza trial booth — that booth was dark, would remain dark until the verdict — but another booth, Booth 3, the same configuration, the same equipment, the same glass, the same view of a courtroom, a different courtroom, a different case, different lawyers, different judges, a different accused. The sameness of the equipment and the difference of the case produced a dissonance — the body sitting in the familiar posture, the hands in the familiar position, the headphones on the familiar ears, but the voice in the headphones different, the French different, the case different, the content different, the content the particular content of a preliminary hearing rather than the particular content of a testimony about a massacre.

The dissonance was the deliberation's effect. The deliberation had removed Amara from the Mukiza trial and placed her in another trial and the placement was routine — the interpretation department rotating its staff according to the court's needs, the needs determining the assignments, the assignments the professional's schedule. But the removal felt like an amputation. The word arrived in Amara's mind during the preliminary hearing, the word arriving between sentences of the French that she was translating into English, the word arriving in the gap between the source and the target, the word amputation, the word not chosen but received, the word the eighth language's contribution, the eighth language the language of the between, the language speaking without permission.

Amputation. The removal of the Mukiza trial from her daily life. The removal of the booth — the specific booth, the booth where she had sat for seven months, the booth where the headphones had carried Witness 247's Lingala directly to her ears. The removal of the testimony, the testimony no longer arriving, the testimony complete, the testimony in the record. The removal of the daily encounter with the particular content of the Mukiza trial — the massacre, the villages, the chain of command, the cross-examination, the Lingala and the English and the relay and the bridge. The removal total. The removal sudden. The removal the deliberation's gift, the gift unwanted, the gift the silence.

She translated the preliminary hearing. She translated it competently, accurately, with the neutrality the protocol required. She translated it and the translation was the work and the work was the same work and the work was entirely different work, the difference not in the skill but in the weight, the weight of the preliminary hearing negligible compared to the weight of the Mukiza trial, the negligible weight the particular weightlessness of a case in its procedural phase, the phase producing language that was legal rather than testimonial, the language clean, the language without marrow, the language all bone.

The hearing ended. She removed her headphones. She sat in Booth 3. She sat in the booth that was not her booth and she thought about the booth that was her booth and she felt the particular sensation of a person sitting in a space that was familiar in its configuration and unfamiliar in its meaning, the configuration the booth's universal configuration and the meaning the particular meaning of each booth, each booth acquiring the meaning of the trial it served, the meaning the residue, the residue the sponge's contribution to the architecture, the sponge depositing meaning into the glass and the chair and the console the way sediment deposited into a riverbed.

She left the booth. She walked the corridor to the second floor. She walked to the Mukiza trial's booth. The booth was dark. The door was unlocked — the booths were not secured during recesses, the security unnecessary because the equipment was institutional and the booth contained nothing of value, nothing that theft or tampering could compromise. She opened the door. She entered. She did not turn on the light.

She stood in the dark booth. The glass looked onto the empty courtroom — the Mukiza trial's courtroom, Courtroom 1, the courtroom where the testimony had been given and the arguments had been made and the translation had been performed. The courtroom was dark, the lights off, the courtroom in its own recess, its own deliberation, the courtroom waiting the way the judges were waiting, the judges waiting for their reasoning to reach its conclusion and the courtroom waiting for the judges to return and the booth waiting for the interpreter to return and the waiting the shared condition, the condition the deliberation, the deliberation the pause in which the entire trial held its breath.

She stood in the dark booth for five minutes. She stood without headphones, without the microphone, without the equipment. She stood as a body in a dark space that contained the residue of seven months of translation, the residue invisible, the residue not in the glass or the chair or the console but in the body that stood in the space, the body Amara's body, the body the sponge, the sponge containing what the booth had processed, the containment the body's function, the function continuing even when the booth's function had paused.

She left the booth. She walked the corridor. She took the elevator to the ground floor. She exited the building.

She walked. She did not walk to the tram stop. She walked past the tram stop, past the ICC's gates, onto the street that led away from the court, the street a public street, the street connecting the court to the city, the connection the geography, the geography placing the court within the city the way the court placed the trial within the law, the placement the structure, the structure the architecture of justice conducted in a city, the city The Hague, The Hague the city of peace, the city of the Peace Palace, the city that had chosen to be the geography of international justice.

She walked to the Peace Palace. The walk was twenty minutes — twenty minutes from the ICC to the Peace Palace, the distance the distance between two buildings that served the same principle, the principle the resolution of disputes through law rather than through violence, the principle the aspiration, the aspiration housed in the buildings, the buildings the principle's architecture, the architecture the brick and the glass and the gardens that contained the aspiration.

The Peace Palace was closed to visitors that afternoon. She stood outside the gate. She looked at the building — the red brick, the tower, the gardens, the particular grandeur of a building constructed in 1913 to house the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the building older than the ICC by nearly a century, the building the ancestor, the ICC the descendant, the two buildings connected by the principle that the ancestor had articulated and the descendant had inherited, the inheritance the progression, the progression from arbitration to prosecution, from the resolution of disputes between states to the prosecution of individuals for crimes against humanity.

She stood outside the Peace Palace and she thought about the deliberation. She thought about the three judges in their chambers — Judge Okonjo, Judge Herrera, Judge Tanaka — the three minds considering the evidence, the testimony, the arguments, the three minds working in the languages they shared without the intermediary of the booth, the minds communicating directly, the directness the deliberation's particular quality, the quality the absence of translation, the absence the first absence in seven months, the first time the trial's content was being processed without passing through an interpreter's body.

The absence was the silence. Not the translator's silence — not the silence that Amara carried, the silence of the sponge and the between and the carrying. The absence was the court's silence, the silence of the deliberation, the silence in which the verdict was formed. And the two silences — Amara's silence and the court's silence — existed simultaneously, the two silences parallel, the two silences produced by the same event, the event the adjournment, the adjournment producing the court's withdrawal into its chambers and the interpreter's withdrawal from the booth, the two withdrawals the same withdrawal experienced differently, the court withdrawing to decide and the interpreter withdrawing to wait.

She turned from the Peace Palace. She walked through the city. She walked the Lange Voorhout, the avenue with its double row of lime trees, the trees bare in October, the bare branches the autumn's architecture, the architecture skeletal, the skeleton the tree's structure revealed by the leaves' departure, the departure seasonal, the departure the cycle, the cycle continuing while the court deliberated. She walked past the Mauritshuis, past the Binnenhof, past the lake, the lake gray in the October light, the gray the city's color, the color matching the North Sea's gray, the two grays the city's palette, the palette the visual equivalent of the deliberation's silence, the silence gray, the gray the color of waiting.

She sat in a cafe on the Plein, the square near the parliament buildings. She ordered coffee. She sat at a table by the window and she looked at the square and she listened to the sounds of the cafe — the coffee machine, the conversations, the particular ambient sound of a Dutch cafe on a Monday afternoon, the sound the sound of ordinary life, the sound the sound that filled the space where the testimony's sound had been.

She listened. She listened to the conversations — Dutch, mostly, and English, and some German, the languages the cafe's languages, the languages the languages of The Hague's international population, the population multilingual, the multilingualism the city's character. She listened and the listening was different from the booth's listening — the booth's listening active, purposeful, the listening that captured and converted and transmitted; the cafe's listening passive, purposeless, the listening that received without processing, the listening of a person sitting in a cafe and hearing the sounds around her without the obligation to translate them.

The purposelessness was the deliberation's condition. Amara's professional purpose — the translation, the bridge, the carrying — was suspended. The suspension was the deliberation's effect on the interpreter, the effect the removal of purpose, the purpose the translation, the translation suspended because the deliberation was conducted without translation, the judges deliberating in the languages they shared, the sharing making the interpreter unnecessary, the unnecessariness the interpreter's condition during the deliberation.

She sat in the cafe and she experienced the unnecessariness. The experience was unfamiliar — twelve years of professional necessity, twelve years of being needed, twelve years of the booth requiring her presence and the trial requiring her voice and the testimony requiring her translation, twelve years of the particular necessity of the interpreter, the necessity the thing that justified the booth's existence and the interpreter's existence within the booth. And now the necessity was suspended. And the suspension felt like the quiet of her own thoughts, the quiet she noticed because the quiet was unusual, the usual condition the presence of Lingala in her ears and English in her mouth and the two languages operating simultaneously and the simultaneity the mind's condition during working hours, the condition the dual presence, the presence the necessity.

The quiet of her own thoughts. She noticed the quiet. She noticed that the thoughts in her head were monolingual — English, her thinking language, the language she thought in when she was not translating, the language of her interior life, the language that was not Lingala and not French and not Twi and not any of the other languages she carried but the particular English that was hers, the English of her education and her professional life and her inner monologue, the inner monologue the thing that was hers and not the court's, the monologue the one language that the booth did not employ.

She sat in the cafe and she thought in English and the thinking was quiet and the quiet was the deliberation's gift, the gift the silence, the silence the absence of Lingala, the absence the first sustained absence in seven months, the absence producing the quiet, the quiet the condition of a mind that was not translating, the mind at rest, the rest the deliberation's gift to the interpreter.

But the rest was not comfortable. The rest was the discomfort of a body accustomed to labor and suddenly idle, the idleness the particular idleness of a specialist whose specialty was not required, the specialist sitting in a cafe while the specialty waited in a dark booth in a building twenty minutes away, the waiting the specialty's condition, the condition the deliberation, the deliberation the cause of the waiting.

She finished the coffee. She paid. She left the cafe. She walked to the tram stop. She took the tram home.

The days continued. The deliberation continued. The judges behind closed doors. The booth dark. The interpreter assigned to other cases, other hearings, the assignments routine, the assignments the professional's life during another trial's deliberation. She translated other proceedings. She sat in other booths. She carried other testimonies. The carrying lighter, the weight different, the difference the particular difference between the Mukiza trial's weight and other trials' weight, the Mukiza trial's weight the weight of the direct translation and the seven months and the fourteen witnesses and Witness 247's four days, the weight specific, the weight irreplaceable, the weight Amara's.

She ran the beach in the mornings. She ran in the October cold, the cold the autumn's assertion, the assertion physical, the cold on her face and her hands and her legs, the cold the season's language, the language the opposite of the courtroom's temperature-controlled neutrality, the cold partial, the cold the coast's partisanship, the coast not neutral, the coast cold, the coldness the coast's honesty.

She walked The Hague in the evenings. She walked the streets she had walked for twelve years. She walked past the embassy row, past the government buildings, past the residential streets. She walked and the walking was the deliberation's walking, the walking of a person waiting for something that she could not influence and could not predict and could not translate, the waiting the walking's condition, the condition the deliberation's effect on the body, the body walking because the body could not sit still while the waiting continued, the walking the body's response to the waiting.

And in the walking and the running and the sitting in cafes and the translating of other cases, the silence accumulated. Not the testimony's silence — not the silence that the testimony produced, the silence of the sponge and the carrying and the between. A different silence. The deliberation's silence. The silence of waiting for the word — guilty or not guilty — the word that would conclude the trial, the word that would be spoken by Judge Okonjo in a courtroom where Amara would sit in the booth with her headphones on and her microphone live and the red light on and the word would enter her ears and she would translate it and the translation would be the last act of the bridge and the bridge would close and the trial would be over.

The word was forming. Somewhere in the judges' chambers, the word was forming — forming out of the evidence and the testimony and the arguments and the law, the forming the deliberation, the deliberation the process, the process invisible, the process the judicial mind at work, the mind considering, weighing, the weighing the judicial equivalent of the interpreter's carrying, the judges carrying the evidence the way Amara carried the testimony, the carrying the weight, the weight the responsibility, the responsibility the role, the role assigned by the court's architecture, the architecture assigning the carrying to the judges and the interpreter and the witnesses and the accused and the gallery, each carrying their portion, each carrying in their particular way.

And Amara waited. She waited the way a translator waited for the next sentence — attentive, ready, the waiting not passive but active, the active waiting the professional's waiting, the waiting that was also a preparation, the preparation for the verdict, for the last session, for the booth's last act, for the translation of the word that would end the trial.

The translator waited. The deliberation continued. The silence held.

And the city of peace held them both — the court's silence and the translator's silence, the two silences parallel, the two silences produced by the same trial and the same testimony and the same seven months, the seven months concluded, the verdict forming, the word approaching, the word that would break the silence and that the translator would carry across the bridge one last time.

The waiting. The walking. The silence. The between.

The translator's silence held them all.