Later, I sat at my desk with the file open before me. I felt a little self-conscious, I could hear Bettina’s words in my ear, her injunction to secrecy. But my colleagues were absorbed in their own work and I wanted to familiarize myself with the basics of the situation, the key dates and names and locations, though as Bettina herself had said, even this information was likely unnecessary for the purposes of this evening, for what would only be a brief encounter. I began reading. The accused was a member and then leader of an Islamist militant faction that had seized control of the capital only five years earlier. The faction had immediately enforced Sharia law in the occupied territory, banning music, forcing women to wear the burqa, and setting up religious tribunals. He was only the second jihadist to be detained by the Court, and many of the charges were based on the persecution of women—in this case, the forced marriage, repeated rape, and sexual enslavement of girls and women. There were also counts of torture and religious-based persecution, including the desecration of sacred graves.
The file included a small note to the effect that although the case was significant for being only the second to include among the charges persecution based on gender, the fact remained that the nationality of the accused would do little to counter the growing consensus that the Court suffered from a bias against African countries. I thought of the flyer and the demonstrators outside. Affixed to the file was a photograph of the accused. He was on the street, looking to one side as if aware that his image was being captured, his body in motion and his expression furtive. His face was partially concealed by a headscarf, but his eyes were extraordinarily piercing; the remainder of his features were tired and otherwise unremarkable.
I returned to my apartment after work, I thought I might try to sleep in the early part of the evening, I didn’t know how long I would be kept at the Detention Center, it might be a matter of minutes or hours. As Bettina had said, it was difficult to predict in what condition the accused would arrive, whether he would be in a state of shock or rage, whether he would be utterly silent or whether questions and accusations and counteraccusations would pour out of him, whether he would simply be tired from his journey, like a businessman disembarking a long-haul flight, or whether he would be in a state of physical collapse. I ate dinner and then rested fitfully, curled up on the bed with the duvet pulled over me. I was unable really to sleep, it was only early evening and the pending assignment weighed on me.
As I lay there, the day outside still carrying traces of light, the sound of the neighbors audible through the walls of my apartment, it was the photograph, the image of this man, that most troubled me. He did not look the way I expected, his face did not live up to the magnitude of the crimes I had read about in the dossier. It was not that he looked either innocent or guilty, it was more that his face was utterly without depth.
In a few hours, I would meet this man, who would then no longer be a name and a photograph, a list of actions and accusations, but a person in the world. I didn’t know if I was prepared for that, it seemed almost impossible to fathom—at some point he had crossed a boundary and his personhood had been hollowed out. Maybe the indeterminacy of the photograph was accurate, and was in fact preparing me for the nature of the encounter to come. I checked my phone, there were no messages. I thought of Adriaan, I closed my eyes and tried again to sleep.
* * *
—
I departed for the Detention Center a little before one in the morning. The streets were empty as the taxi pulled up to the curb. When I closed the door behind me and announced my destination, I saw the driver look up, I asked him if he knew where the building was and he nodded.
As we drove through the city in the direction of the dunes, he continued to watch me in the rearview mirror, as if speculating what function I served, perhaps I did not conform to his notion of how a lawyer, a judge, an official of the Court would appear. Maybe he imagined something entirely more sordid, given the late hour, maybe he thought I was a paid escort servicing one of the men detained in the center, it was not impossible. I looked down at what I was wearing, I was dressed conservatively enough, in what is usually described as “business casual”—but I had been told that this was exactly how escorts dressed, the ones that were not walking the street, the ones who were under considerable pressure to be discreet, who had famous and powerful clients, the kind of men who might conceivably be held in the Detention Center. I shifted my weight in the back of the taxi, pulling the hem of my skirt lower, I worried that I had dressed in a manner that was unintentionally provocative, the man had made me thoroughly self-conscious.
I was therefore relieved to arrive at the Detention Center, which sat on the edge of the city, not too far from the Court. In the dark of night it looked forbidding, there were high walls and CCTV cameras, it was a prison in all but name. I paid the taxi driver, who asked if I didn’t want him to wait, I blushed and said that I did not know how long I would be, and that I would call a taxi when I wanted to leave. He handed me his business card and said that he would be working all night, the gesture felt salacious and also a little sad, and I dropped the card into my pocket, feeling as if I needed to wash my hands. The car lingered as I pressed the buzzer, luckily the door opened at once. I passed through a medieval gatehouse and then through security, my bag was taken away and my passport examined.
I was handed a badge and told to wait, the guard indicated a row of plastic chairs. I clipped the badge to my jacket and sat down. The area—less a reception or lobby and more a corridor along which some chairs had been arranged—was clean and anonymous, I could have been waiting in any municipal building, at an American DMV, for example. This feeling only grew as the hour passed two in the morning, and then approached three, the sensation of waiting for a slow and truculent bureaucracy increasing, I had never been in this situation and yet, as my eyes grew bleary with fatigue, I felt exactly as if I had been here before, everything about the act of waiting had removed the specificity of the circumstances, I could no longer remember for whom I was waiting, only that I was waiting for someone who might never arrive, and that I might never leave this vestibule.
A little after three, the door behind me abruptly opened. I stood, a uniformed guard indicated that I should follow. My mouth was suddenly dry, we made our way down a series of harshly lit corridors and points of entry, the guard swiping cards and entering codes until we reached what appeared to be a cellblock. The doors were shut save one, through which I could see a number of Court officials. They were speaking in not especially quiet tones, their voices reverberating down the corridor, and I found myself worrying about the occupants in the other cells, whose sleep was surely being disrupted. As we reached the open cell, the officials greeted me courteously, with a brusque air of professional urgency. After I greeted them there was a pause during which no one said anything.
Finally, one of the officials cleared his throat. There had been some difficulty in persuading the accused to leave the plane, for a time he refused to get up from his seat. He had now arrived, the official added, he was on his way. I nodded, I wondered how the accused had issued his refusal, if it was in the manner of a toddler refusing to get out of a stroller, or if it was in the manner of a political protester refusing to abandon a site, or perhaps his legs had simply given out on him and he had found himself unable to stand. The space we had gathered in was somewhere between a cell and a dormitory room, with a single bed and a desk, and a toilet in one corner. Affixed to the wall was a flat-screen television. There was a large window at the far side of the room, lined with bars.
We heard the sound of the cellblock door opening in the distance and we turned at once. Despite the fatigue and the provisional nature of the setting, a ripple of expectation moved through the room. The door slammed shut and then we heard the sound of feet shuffling down the corridor and past the other cells, with what seemed incredible slowness. I was sure that the other detainees were awake and listening, perhaps remember
ing their own arrival at the Detention Center, the start of what was an indeterminate and therefore all the more painful state of waiting. The sound of footfalls grew louder, and then came to a halt and the accused appeared in the doorway of the cell.
He was accompanied by two guards, he was wearing traditional robes and looked so much older than in the photograph, which could not have been taken very long ago, that I felt an immediate and inexplicable tightening in my throat. He glared at each of us in turn, he stood with his mouth pursed, it was clear that he was disgusted with the situation. We stood in an uneasy cluster until one of the Court officials stepped forward, his expression awkward and even embarrassed. He hesitated and then looked at me and I moved closer to the accused. After another pause, the official at last began, his voice apologetic and uncertain. I am going to read you your rights.
I began interpreting immediately, angling my body toward the accused and speaking in a low voice into his ear. The man jerked his head away, as if irritated by a mosquito or some other airborne insect, he gave no sign whatsoever of listening. The official paused, I finished speaking a few moments later and then the official asked if he had any questions. I interpreted, the accused exhaled noisily and I trailed off, the words withering in the air. The accused began speaking rapidly in Arabic and as he continued, now looking angrily at the official and gesturing at the room around him—which was, I gathered from his tone and manner, evidently substandard or objectionable in some way—panic surged up inside me. I looked at the official, who was staring at me expectantly. I shook my head—I knew hardly any Arabic—and turned back to the accused.
Finally, the accused stared at me and asked—in French, which he spoke haltingly but I thought fluently—why he had not been provided with an Arabic language interpreter. I began to apologize, he interrupted—holding up one hand and now refusing to look at me, as if the mere sight of me were offensive, perhaps because I was the sole woman in the room or perhaps it was the sound of my French that was so problematic—and began speaking again in Arabic, his voice louder, almost bellicose. I could see that the Court officials were rattled and beginning to hold me responsible for the situation, it was obvious that I was failing at my assigned task, if through no clear fault of my own. The man needed to be read his rights in a language that he could understand, and which I did not appear to speak, and yet—because I did not know what else to do, and because the situation seemed to require that I do something—I began to recite the text again in my offending French, speaking over him and then asking at last if he had understood.
Do you understand? I repeated.
Yes, he said at last, in French.
Abruptly, he moved to the bed and sat down. I saw that he was exhausted. He lay down and closed his eyes and then in seconds—so quickly that it was almost beyond belief—was snoring as he slept on the bed. We watched him for a moment, and then one of the officials tilted his head toward the door and quietly we filed out of the room and the guard closed it behind us. The official looked at me and said, We will request someone who speaks Arabic. I nodded. I almost felt sorry for him, he said, shaking his head. I did not agree, I could not help but feel that we had been manipulated in some way—although to what end I could not say, the accused had achieved nothing by this little drama, and he of course had the right to an interpreter working in the language of his choice.
The official told me I could go, it was now—he looked at his watch—nearly four in the morning. I pulled on my coat and followed one of the uniformed guards down the maze of corridors and back through security. The guard called a taxi, which arrived very soon after. I sat in the car as we drove through the city, it was still completely dark outside, without a hint of dawn, the night appeared unceasing. We reached my apartment, I paid the driver, who waited until I had entered the building. Now at last there was a barely perceptible lightening of the sky, the sun would be up in a couple hours. I checked my messages, Adriaan had sent me a text some time ago, asking how I was, and then another asking what he might bring to Jana’s, if he could bring something more than a bottle of wine. I lay down without responding and fell asleep.
6.
I received another text from Adriaan later that morning. He thought he might bring food from the Indonesian restaurant around the corner from his apartment, to save Jana the trouble of cooking. I read the message and then curled back into bed. The arrival of these texts, their ordinary nature, had given me a sense of reassurance that I did not know I had needed. The tumult of the previous night had affected me more than I had understood.
This sensation was with me still when I later woke at noon. It was a Saturday, the Court would likely make the announcement on Monday, I would not be able to speak of last night’s events for at least a little longer. As I lay in bed, I wondered if the accused had woken from his sudden slumber—if slumber it was, and not merely the pretense of it—startled to find himself in such a strange and hostile place, having been in dreams transported elsewhere. If he’d had the overwhelming sensation that he was the wrong person in the wrong place. I realized that I’d felt some minor version of that myself, as I stood in the cell, unable to comprehend his words, unable to perform the task that had been assigned to me, as if caught in a case of mistaken identity.
I picked up my phone and responded to Adriaan’s text. I said that I thought that bringing food would be kind and much appreciated, I would let Jana know. He responded at once and said that he would see me there. I told him to call if he had any difficulty finding Jana’s apartment. But as it turned out, had Adriaan become lost on his way to dinner, had he stumbled down the wrong path or into harm’s way, had he called to ask if this was the correct route or if he had taken a wrong turn, I would not have been able to help him, I would not have even answered the phone. I had fallen asleep, in the manner of a narcoleptic—on the sofa, a book on my lap, my head flung back, my phone in the next room so that I could not have heard its ring. Had Adriaan called. But when I awoke, several minutes past eight in the evening, there were no missed calls or messages on my phone and it was already dark outside. I had been asleep for much of the afternoon.
I dressed hurriedly and sent messages to both Adriaan and Jana to say that I was running late. It was now dark, the streets full with the expectation of a night out. I took a taxi, I was already half an hour late and Adriaan would of course be on time. As the driver pulled into the full flow of traffic—it was unusually dense or seemed that way, perhaps because of my impatience, I was aware that Jana and Adriaan had been thrust together in circumstances more uncomfortable and intimate than intended—I leaned forward and peered out the window, it would take at least twenty minutes to reach Jana’s at this rate.
The traffic did not improve, by the time I arrived at Jana’s apartment it was nearly nine o’clock, and Adriaan had been there for an hour. You’re late, Jana said as she opened the door. Her tone was far from reproachful and she was smiling, she looked unusually relaxed. I was nonplussed by her appearance, she looked very different, so that I almost did not recognize her. She lingered before the door longer than was normal, as if to prevent me from entering, for a moment I thought there was something she needed to tell me. Behind her, I could see Adriaan standing in the kitchen, a glass of wine in hand. He was watching us with a curious expression, I wondered what Jana had been saying to him.
She finally said, Come in, and stepped back almost reluctantly. I looked at Adriaan again as I took off my coat and set down my bag, my expression quizzical, but he either didn’t notice or chose to ignore it, he came forward with his glass of wine and kissed me, his manner very natural. I was aware that Jana was watching, at the last moment I angled my cheek toward him and my mouth away, so that his kiss landed awkwardly. I felt my skin grow flushed. I’m sorry I’m late. He shrugged and said that it didn’t matter, he seemed amused, he was hovering over me in a way that felt oddly protective, and I wished again that I hadn’t been so delayed.
How have you two been getting along, I asked. They looked at each other and smiled, I was looking not at Adriaan but at Jana. She had put on lipstick and eye makeup, which she did not usually bother to do, and it might have been simply that I was not used to seeing her lips and eyes colored and delineated in this way, her features so emphatic. I realized, belatedly, that she had likely applied the makeup for Adriaan’s sake; certainly she had not done so for mine. I wondered then what it was like to be a man, so often surrounded by such deliberate features, more vivid than actual nature.
I looked at Jana, and then again at Adriaan. I saw that some intimacy had been established between them. It wasn’t surprising, in fact it was something that I should have predicted from the outset, they were both personable and even seductive people. I thought this must be the reason for Jana’s inexplicable transformation, in the end it couldn’t be put down to lipstick and mascara, that was only the physical manifestation of a more intangible shift. It suddenly occurred to me that they made sense as a couple, I thought that Gaby was probably a woman like Jana, confident and forthright, someone who was a mirror to Adriaan. Couples were often this way, even when the resemblance wasn’t there to begin with. Warily, I watched as Jana and Adriaan continued to look at each other, now much longer than seemed necessary. Jana was grinning foolishly, or so it appeared to me.
I felt a surge of jealousy. We did okay, Adriaan said, and his voice was casual. He turned to look at me, his gaze was warm and he was smiling, he did not seem as if he had anything to hide. She put me through the wringer but I’m fine, I survived. Although this sentence was spoken to me, and although Adriaan continued looking at me with his friendly and transparent gaze, I nonetheless experienced his words as further evidence of complicity between Jana and Adriaan. Jana was still looking at him and now she laughed too loudly, tossing her hair extravagantly, a gesture I was not familiar with, it was if she had remade herself entirely for the occasion.
Intimacies Page 5