The Defendant's Voice

The Translator's Silence

Chapter 30: The Defendant's Voice

Mukiza spoke.

He had been silent for seven months. Seven months of sitting in the dock with his headphones on and his face composed and his hands in his lap, seven months of hearing the testimony and the arguments and the procedural exchanges without speaking, the silence the accused's prerogative — the right to remain silent, the right codified in the Rome Statute and in every criminal justice system, the right the protection against self-incrimination, the right that Mukiza had exercised throughout the trial, the exercising a strategy or a choice or a discipline, the exercising the silence, the silence his.

He spoke at the sentencing hearing. The sentencing hearing was the trial's final proceeding — the proceeding that followed the verdict, that translated the finding of guilty into a number of years, the years the punishment, the punishment the court's response to the crime, the response proportional, the proportion the judges' determination, the determination the last act of the trial that had occupied seven months of the court's calendar and thirteen years of Amara's career.

The sentencing hearing was in December. The courtroom was the same courtroom — the same judges' bench, the same prosecution table, the same defense table, the same dock, the same gallery. But the courtroom felt different, the way a room felt different after a verdict, the verdict having changed the room's atmosphere the way a weather change altered the atmosphere of a landscape — the same mountains, the same trees, the same river, but the light different, the air different, the feeling different. The room had rendered its judgment. The room had said guilty. The room was now the room of the convicted, and the room's atmosphere was the atmosphere of consequence.

Mukiza entered through the side door. The security officers. The dark gray suit. But the walk was different — the walk no longer the walk of the accused, the walk now the walk of the convicted, the stride the same military stride but carrying a different weight, the weight the verdict, the verdict in the body the way the testimony was in the body, the verdict a physical thing, a thing the body carried, the carrying visible in the shoulders, in the spine, in the particular angle of the head, the angle different from the angle of the trial, the angle the angle of a man who had been found guilty of crimes against humanity and who was about to be sentenced.

He sat in the dock. He put on his headphones. He selected the French channel.

Amara was in the booth. Left chair. Headphones. Microphone. The red light waiting. Kwesi beside her. The morning the same morning routine — the run, the shower, the dress, the tram, the corridor, the booth, the door clicking behind her. The routine the same. The proceeding different.

The prosecution presented its sentencing submissions. Devaux stood and argued for the maximum sentence — life imprisonment, the prosecution said, the gravity of the crimes warranting the most severe punishment available under the Rome Statute, the gravity measured in the number of dead and the nature of the violence and the systematic character of the attacks and the position of command that Mukiza had occupied, the position making him the architect rather than the instrument, the architect bearing the greater responsibility.

Amara translated the prosecution's argument. She translated "life imprisonment" — emprisonnement a vie in Devaux's French, life imprisonment in Amara's English, the phrase crossing the bridge, the phrase carrying the weight of the maximum, the maximum the prosecution's demand, the demand translated with the neutrality the protocol required.

The defense presented its sentencing submissions. Laporte stood and argued for a lesser sentence — not a denial of guilt, the verdict having settled the question of guilt, but an argument for mitigation, for factors that the court should consider in determining the number of years, the factors including Mukiza's cooperation with the court, his lack of prior convictions, the contested nature of the chain of command, the complexity of the conflict. Laporte argued for twenty years. Amara translated twenty years with the same neutrality she had translated life imprisonment.

Then Judge Okonjo asked whether the convicted person wished to address the court.

The question was standard. The Rome Statute provided the convicted person with the right to make a statement before sentencing, the statement the accused's last opportunity to speak before the court determined the punishment, the opportunity the law's acknowledgment that the person being sentenced was a person, was a human being with a voice, and that the voice had a right to be heard even after the verdict, even after the finding of guilt, even after the court had concluded that the person had committed crimes against humanity.

Laporte leaned toward Mukiza. The leaning was visible through the glass — the defense counsel inclining toward his client, the inclination the posture of consultation, the consultation brief, the consultation the last private exchange between the lawyer and the convicted man before the convicted man decided whether to speak.

Mukiza nodded. The nod was small — a lowering and raising of the head, the movement brief, the movement the same movement that Pascal Mukendi made in the corridor, the nod the universal gesture of affirmation, the gesture saying yes, the yes the decision to speak, the decision the breaking of seven months of silence.

Laporte stood. He said, in French: "The convicted person wishes to address the court."

Judge Okonjo nodded. He said: "The court will hear the convicted person."

Mukiza stood. He stood in the dock — stood the way he had sat, with the military bearing, the spine straight, the shoulders back, the posture the posture of a man who had commanded soldiers and who commanded himself still, the command visible in the body even now, even in the dock, even after the verdict. He stood and he removed his headphones — removed them and placed them on the dock's barrier, the removing a significant act, the act saying: I am not listening now, I am speaking, the speaking requires the removing of the device that made me a listener, the removing the transition from the passive to the active, from the hearing to the speaking.

He spoke in French.

His French entered Amara's headphones. The French was the French she had heard throughout the trial — the French of the judges, the French of the prosecutors, the French of the defense counsel, the French that was the court's working language, the language in which the proceedings were conducted and the arguments were made and the verdict was pronounced. But this French was different. This French was Mukiza's French — the French of a Congolese military officer, the French of a man educated in the DRC's military academy, the French of eastern Congo, the French that carried the particular cadence and vocabulary and accent of a French speaker from a specific place with a specific history, the specificity the thing that made every speaker's French different from every other speaker's French, the specificity the voice's fingerprint.

Amara had never translated Mukiza's voice. In seven months of trial, she had translated the prosecutors and the defense counsel and the judges and the fourteen witnesses, but she had never translated the accused, because the accused had not spoken. The accused had been silent. The accused had exercised his right to remain silent, and the exercise had meant that Amara's relationship to Mukiza's voice was the relationship of the unseen to the unheard — she behind the glass, he behind the silence, the glass and the silence two forms of the same separation, the separation the booth's architecture and the accused's strategy.

Now the silence was breaking. Now the voice was speaking. Now the French was entering Amara's headphones and the French was Mukiza's and the French required translation.

She pressed the microphone button. The red light. She was live. The bridge was open.

Mukiza spoke slowly. He spoke with the deliberation of a person who had been silent for seven months and who was choosing his words with the care that seven months of listening had cultivated, the listening having given him time to prepare, to formulate, to construct the statement he was now delivering, the statement the product of seven months of silence, the silence the gestation, the statement the birth.

He said that he wished to address the families of the victims. He said this in French, and Amara translated it into English: "The convicted person states that he wishes to address the families of the victims."

The gallery stirred. The stirring was visible — bodies shifting, heads lifting, the particular alertness that a room exhibited when the person at its center addressed it directly, the addressing a turning-toward, the room's attention reorienting from the judges' bench to the dock, from the court's authority to the convicted man's voice.

He said that the events in Kisangani Province were a tragedy. He said that the loss of life was a tragedy. He said these things in French, and the French was measured, careful, the words selected, the selection visible in the pace, in the pauses between phrases, in the deliberation that marked each sentence.

Amara translated. She translated with the fidelity the protocol required — the same fidelity she had given the witnesses, the same accuracy, the same neutrality, the same preservation of register and tone and content. The fidelity was not a choice. The fidelity was the protocol. The protocol required that every speaker in the courtroom be translated with equal accuracy, the equality the principle, the principle blind to the speaker's identity, the identity irrelevant to the translation, the translation treating all voices equally — the witness's voice and the prosecutor's voice and the defense counsel's voice and the convicted man's voice all translated with the same skill and the same care and the same neutrality.

The bridge did not choose its traffic. The bridge carried whatever crossed it. The bridge was structural, was architectural, was the span between two languages, and the span carried the words regardless of who spoke them, regardless of what the words contained, regardless of whether the translator agreed or disagreed with the content of the words, the agreement and the disagreement irrelevant, the irrelevance the neutrality, the neutrality the fiction, the fiction the mercy.

Mukiza continued. He said that he had served his country. He said that the conflict in eastern Congo was complex, was the product of decades of instability, was the result of forces larger than any individual. He said these things and the saying was not an apology and not a denial and not a justification but something else — something that existed in the space between these categories, something that the legal framework did not easily contain, something that the trial's binary (guilty or not guilty) did not capture, the something the human complexity that the law simplified in order to function, the simplification necessary, the simplification the law's tool, the tool effective but reductive.

Amara translated the complexity. She translated it with the precision the protocol required, the precision the same precision she had brought to the testimony of Witness 247, the same precision she had brought to the prosecution's closing argument, the same precision she had brought to the defense's closing argument. The precision was constant. The precision did not vary with the speaker. The precision was the bridge's structural integrity, the integrity maintained regardless of the traffic, the traffic varying but the bridge constant.

And the translation was accurate. The translation carried Mukiza's words from his French to the court's English with the fidelity that the protocol demanded. The translation did not add. The translation did not subtract. The translation did not modify, adjust, improve, clarify, or explain. The translation was the window — transparent, the French visible through the English, the English preserving the French's content and register and tone, the preservation the translator's skill.

But the sponge. The sponge was absorbing Mukiza's voice the way the sponge had absorbed the witnesses' voices, the absorption automatic, involuntary, the sponge not choosing what it absorbed any more than the bridge chose what it carried. The sponge absorbed the convicted man's French the way it had absorbed Witness 247's Lingala — through the headphones, through the ears, through the neural pathways that processed language, the pathways not distinguishing between the testimony of the victim and the statement of the perpetrator, the pathways processing all language equally, the equality the mechanism's design, the mechanism designed for language, not for judgment.

Mukiza's voice was in her now. The voice that had ordered the attacks — the prosecution had proven this, the court had found this, the verdict had established this — the voice that had spoken the commands that had produced the massacre, the voice was in her headphones and in her ears and in the space between the ears and the mouth, the space where the translation happened, the space where the sponge absorbed. The voice was joining the other voices — joining the fourteen witnesses, joining the prosecution, joining the defense, joining all the voices the trial had produced, the voices accumulating in the sponge, the sponge holding all of them, the holding indiscriminate, the sponge not sorting, not categorizing, the sponge holding the victim and the perpetrator in the same interior space, the space the between, the space the silence.

Mukiza said that he accepted the court's verdict. He said this directly — the sentence short, declarative, the sentence the closest thing to an acknowledgment that the statement contained, the acknowledgment not an admission of guilt (the verdict had established guilt beyond the accused's acceptance or rejection) but an acceptance of the court's authority, the authority the thing Mukiza conceded, the concession the statement's center.

Amara translated: "The convicted person states that he accepts the court's verdict."

The sentence crossed the bridge. The sentence arrived in the English channel. The sentence entered the headphones of the judges and the lawyers and the gallery and the journalists. The sentence was received.

Mukiza sat down. He sat in the dock and he picked up his headphones and he put them on and he returned to the posture he had maintained for seven months — the composed posture, the arranged face, the hands in the lap, the silence. The speaking was over. The silence resumed. The seven months of silence had been interrupted by three minutes of speaking, and the three minutes were over, and the silence returned, and the return was the silence's nature, the silence always returning, the silence the default, the silence the condition.

Judge Okonjo received the statement. He nodded — a judicial nod, the nod the court's acknowledgment that the convicted person had spoken and that the court had heard. The nod was a mirror of the nod that Okonjo had given to each witness at the conclusion of their testimony — the same gesture, the same acknowledgment, the gesture applied equally to the witness and the convicted, the equality the court's principle, the principle the equal dignity of all persons before the court, the dignity not diminished by the verdict, the dignity constitutional, inalienable, the dignity the thing the court protected even as the court punished.

The sentencing continued. The judges deliberated briefly — the deliberation conducted not behind closed doors but in a whispered consultation at the bench, the consultation lasting four minutes, the four minutes the time required for the three judges to confirm the sentence they had already determined, the determination made before the hearing, the hearing the formality, the formality the procedure, the procedure the court's way of ensuring that the sentence was delivered with the thoroughness and the gravity the occasion required.

Judge Okonjo pronounced the sentence. Twenty-five years' imprisonment. The number entered Amara's headphones in the judge's English and exited her mouth in the same English and the translation was not a translation but a carrying, the English-to-English not requiring conversion but requiring the interpreter's voice, the voice the channel, the channel delivering the sentence to the headphones.

The hearing concluded. The courtroom emptied. Mukiza was escorted from the dock — the last time, the last walk through the side door, the last passage through the cross-corridor to the detention unit, the detention now the sentence, the sentence twenty-five years, the years beginning.

Amara turned off her microphone. She removed her headphones. She sat in the booth.

She sat with Mukiza's voice. The voice was in the sponge now, alongside the other voices, the voice the newest addition to the accumulation, the accumulation the sponge's content, the content the trial's total verbal output absorbed by one interpreter over seven months and now complete, the completion the sentencing hearing's conclusion, the conclusion the last word spoken and the last word translated and the last word absorbed.

She thought about the fidelity. She thought about having translated Mukiza's statement with the same fidelity she had translated Witness 247's testimony. The same skill. The same care. The same neutrality. The same bridge. The fidelity was the same because the protocol was the same, because the protocol did not distinguish between speakers, because the protocol governed the output regardless of the input, the output neutral, the output accurate, the output faithful.

The fidelity was the bridge's integrity. The bridge carried the witness and the convicted man across the same span, in the same structure, with the same engineering. The bridge did not favor one direction over another. The bridge did not carry the witness's words more carefully than the convicted man's words. The bridge was the bridge — structural, neutral, the neutrality not moral but architectural, the architecture the booth, the booth the space where all voices were translated with equal fidelity.

And the fidelity was the cost. The cost was the sponge holding Mukiza's voice alongside Witness 247's voice, the two voices in the same interior space, the perpetrator and the victim sharing the space that was the interpreter's body, the sharing not chosen but imposed by the work, the work requiring that all voices be received and translated and absorbed, the absorption the sponge's function, the function indiscriminate.

The indiscriminate absorption was the booth's particular cruelty and the booth's particular justice. The cruelty was that the interpreter could not choose what to absorb, could not filter, could not reject the convicted man's voice while accepting the witness's voice, the absorption automatic, the automation the mechanism, the mechanism not consulting the interpreter's preference or the interpreter's morality or the interpreter's heart. The justice was that the indiscriminate absorption was the condition of the equal fidelity, the equal fidelity the condition of the fair trial, the fair trial the condition of the justice the court existed to provide. The interpreter's indiscriminate absorption made the court's equal treatment possible. The sponge's holding of all voices made the bridge's carrying of all voices possible. The cost to the interpreter was the condition of the justice for the parties.

Amara sat in the booth and she thought about this. She thought about being the vessel that held both the victim's testimony and the perpetrator's statement, the vessel not choosing, the vessel holding, the holding the work, the work the silence, the silence holding all of it.

She stood. She gathered her satchel. She walked to the door. The door clicked. The corridor. The gray carpet. The fluorescent lights.

She walked past the cross-corridor. The cross-corridor was empty. Mukiza had been escorted to the detention unit. The detention unit would hold him for twenty-five years. The cross-corridor would carry other accused persons, other convicted persons, other walks between the courtroom and the cells. The corridor would continue.

She walked to the exit. She walked through the lobby. She walked past the flags. She walked into the December air. The air was cold. The sky was gray. The gray was the same gray.

She walked to the tram stop. She waited. The tram came. She boarded. She sat by the window. The tram carried her home.

In her flat, she stood at the kitchen counter. She looked at the blue notebook. She opened it. She picked up the pen.

She wrote in Twi. She wrote about Mukiza's voice. She wrote about the fidelity. She wrote about the bridge that did not choose its traffic and the sponge that did not choose what it absorbed and the translator who did not choose but carried, carried everything, carried the witness and the convicted in the same body, in the same silence, in the same between.

She wrote. The Twi received the writing. The notebook received the Twi. The kitchen counter held the notebook. The flat held the kitchen. The city held the flat. The silence held them all.

The defendant's voice. The translator's fidelity. The bridge's traffic.

The silence held them all.