(72) Justice in da buff, by Azouz Begag - (5) Establishment of the truth

Justice in da buff

   by Azouz Begag

   (5) Establishment of the truth

Here, in the North, everything has to be written. It was a whole new world for me. In the country where my cultural references come from, eloquence matters. Spoken words are more powerful than the written ones. For the act of marriage, old men of the spouses? families meet round the table and, using words, make the match. Then words are the characteristics of a sacred ritual. They are literally rooted in the mind of the person who says them and the one who hears them.

          I am a dreamer. My country is a place where the youngsters who get married only think about love and nothing else. A country where don't need paper, but just water, when the words are pronounced. Magical words echo through the borders of generations. And they last. I often ask myself why in the North, people make prenuptial agreements?

I found the answer: to protect themselves. They are scared. Scared of the future, of what they will become. They're getting married, yes, but what if one day they don't love each other anymore? Who will get the fridge, the washing machine, the savings? The car? The kids? Then you call a solicitor.  As far as my marriage goes, I never got to know which settlement was picked for us. I have never been interested in those things. I am off-settlement. To me, marriage and settlement don't match. I love, I marry, in Ernest Hemingway's passionate way. We talked about solicitors during the wedding. They invited a solicitor to my wedding! They asked me who was mine? I laughed. I didn't have any. To manage which assets? The three thousand franc retirement pension my father used to get during his lifetime?

          The culture shock took shape in the idea of time. They day I was getting married, I didn't want to think about the day I would get divorced. The day you come into the world, you don't think about the day you're going to die. When the weather is nice, I don't dread the cloud and the rain. But the justice system, solicitors, lawyers, judges, solemnly declare that even though it's great to be carried away by the heat of passion, and the youthful horses, still you shouldn't forget to protect your rear. To protect yourself. To guarantee. To secure. And for all those verbs, the words themselves are not enough. They ought to be written in a formal contract.

          It's amazing the extent to which Justice is based on formal written language, formulas, technical and obsolete words? Justice kills love the day she was born.

          In the North, safety is not to be trifled with. I am a dreamer. Dreams don't give a damn about the lack of safety. I was told a piece of my shirt was stuck in the mesh. My body slipped into the mudflat.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF TRUTH

          In the criminal courtroom I've been frequenting regularly for several days, for the first time of my life, what I find the most striking are the games (the looks between the judge, the prosecutor, the lawyers, the clerk and the defendant). Or the accused. The den of Justice is a telescoping place for meaningful looks, eloquent looks, alternating with the words  spoken between the one and the other. Mechanical words, that are procedural, implacable. Words of democracy, because everyone here is looking for one valuable thing: the establishment of truth. Justice has to be done. You meticulously analyze the facts. You classify the evidence. You study the argumentation of the accused, his counsel, the victim.

          An accused appear at the stand. A young man, alone. He didn't have a lawyer. He caused a car accident when he was drunk driving. He maintains he didn't drink that much. He swears he's telling the truth, that's it. He can't say anything else. Quite obviously, he is unable to find the words for a proper defence. He speaks fast, his voice sounds strangled, quivering. Behind his big round black glasses, the judge says to him those are not relevant arguments. He asks him to defend himself more seriously because there are heavy charges against him for which he will have to answer. The young man got flabbergasted, staring at the judge. He said once again that his spoken truth constituted his arguments, and then he stopped, floored, without speech. He has the feeling he defended himself by simply maintaining that: "it wasn't me".

          The judge grabbed his pen again, immerses himself in the file one more time, and passes the sentence: he conforms to the Public Prosecutor who demanded a suspended three month imprisonment and one year driving ban. The young man doesn't understand anything. He flies into a rage. He is told that it would be all, he might go. "This is not Justice, this"?

No matter how hard he can cry inside, there's nothing somebody could do for him. In the courthouse, the audience murmured a little to protest. "That's a bit much!", whispers a young man sitting next to me.

          Here you track the truth down. By all means: with the eyes, precise questions, deep silences. Most of the time, the accused tries to foil the judges? fierce questions, which are usually binary, he was told his answers would have big consequences on the sentence. So when the judge asked him how many glasses of alcohol he had before he took the wheel, he answered two or three, hesitating, nodded, stuttered. He probably had more, but he couldn't admit it. He swayed between the numbers, before he declared that, actually, he didn't remember, the events dated back to several months ago, sometimes several years and the memories faded away. The judge looked at him straight in the eye to see the truth. He ended up nodding along. He is used to this kind of blocked behaviour. He often must be frustrated to be unable to get it, this tremendous truth.

Sadly, the accused don't willingfully cooperate. He has the responsibility for settling without knowing everything, following his conviction.