Intimacies

by Katie Kitamura

In the case of this particular man, he was not only young and undeniably handsome—many of the men on trial were elderly, far past their prime, compelling but not in and of themselves physically impressive—but he had a dazzling air of command, even without the aid of the courtroom, it was easy to see why and how so many people had obeyed his orders. But it was not even this, Amina explained, it was the intimacy of the interpretation, she was interpreting for one man and one man alone, and when she spoke into the microphone, she was speaking to him. Of course, she had known when she accepted the post in The Hague that the substance of the Court would be darker than the United Nations, where she had previously been working. After all, the Court concerned itself exclusively with genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes. But she had not expected this kind of proximity: although she was never face-to-face with the accused and was always safely ensconced behind the glass-fronted interpreters’ booth, she was constantly aware that she and the accused were the only two people in the courtroom who understood the language she was speaking, his own counsel was made up of English barristers with no knowledge of either French or their client’s native tongue.