The following week, Amina went on maternity leave. Robert was now my regular partner in the booth and we quickly grew accustomed to each other. He was kind, and seemed to understand that these new circumstances would require an adjustment on my part. At the end of our first day working together he accompanied me down to the lobby and warned me to pace myself. The trial will last for many more months. You have to think of it as a marathon. We had reached the entrance and he paused to help me pull on my coat. Months, I said, as I fastened the buttons and tied a scarf around my neck. I could hear the disbelief in my voice, although I already knew how long the trial could last. He patted me on the shoulder. Not to sound patronizing, he said, but you will get used to it. It becomes normal.
He was right. As soon as the following week, I noticed that the extremity of the trial—its content and language, the physical demands of being in the booth—had started to recede. I was less depleted at the end of each day, despite the fact that by this point in the trial we were mired in technicalities, the sessions dragged on for hours of testimony that were mind-numbingly precise and rarely resolved into an obvious advantage for either the prosecution or the defense.
I also came to understand, over the course of those sessions in the courtroom, how disciplined the former president really was. The polo neck and chinos were replaced by the tailored suit and with it came a somber, even dignified, mien. I understood then the tremendous will that powered the man. Unlike the lawyers and on occasion judges, his face never betrayed him. Instead, he wore the same expression throughout the proceedings, one of keen but impersonal interest. He maintained the affect of a star debater on a university team, somebody who was looking for openings, who took note of everything, a man who conceded nothing and had nothing to conceal. Not once did I see the sullen indifference that I had observed on the faces of other men on trial, that I had seen on his own face in the conference room, an expression that seemed to declare that whatever was taking place was of little interest, and guilt a foregone conclusion.
No, he was nothing like the man I saw in the conference room—although perhaps I had always known that this person, this polished and ruthless competitor, lurked inside the more impulsive character I encountered in those meetings. During this period, he did not take the stand, and yet each gesture he made was highly calculated. Upon entering the courtroom, he would look up at the public gallery, at his audience, and nod in acknowledgment of his supporters, of which there were still many, so many that I wondered whether they had traveled to The Hague to be there, and how they could afford the money and the time to stay in the city for weeks on end, what kind of life they were living in this rainy place.
Then his gaze would travel across the gallery, over to the interpreters’ booths, where I was sitting. He would look directly at me, through the glass window, and nod. As if to recognize the work that I performed, as if to demonstrate the level of his civility and consideration. This became routine, but the first time it happened it was so unexpected that it felt unreal, as if he had ruptured some fourth wall. Robert made a small, startled movement and I felt myself growing hot. Down in the courtroom, Kees craned his neck to look up at the booths. I hesitated and then nodded awkwardly in return, I didn’t know what the etiquette was in such matters. The former president then began speaking to a junior member of his defense counsel. Still seated, I looked over and saw that some of the supporters in the public gallery were now looking curiously in my direction, the gesture had not gone unnoticed. On the courtroom floor, Kees returned to his papers, slowly shaking his head.
From then on, the former president never failed to acknowledge me, both at the start of each session and then again at the end. In those first days in Chamber I, I was certain that I would never grow accustomed to this moment of recognition, the meaning of which remained unclear to me. Was it mere politesse or was it something more sinister, more calculating and exploitative? But then as Robert had told me, it became normal. We would nod to each other and then we would look away and carry on.
Over the course of those long hours in the booth, I sometimes had the unpleasant sensation that of all the people in the room below, of all the people in the city itself, the former president was the person I knew best. In those moments, out of what I can only describe as an excess of imagination, he became the person whose perspective I occupied. I flinched when the proceedings seemed to go against him, I felt quiet relief when they moved in his direction. It was disquieting in the extreme, like being placed inside a body I had no desire to occupy. I was repulsed, to find myself so permeable. With increasing frequency, I avoided looking down into the courtroom, I concentrated on the notes on the page before me, on the words being spoken into my earpiece. And yet he was always there, sitting to one side of the courtroom, unavoidable and inescapable.