The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2022 - 22

" Your Story
Is Your Weapon "
Interpreting for Immigrants
in the Wake of Trauma
By Judith Small
Being aware of how words sound in our ears when we hear them-
of how words feel in our bodies when we speak them-can provide a
powerful physical counterweight to the undertow of suffering tugging
at our attention, and tugging down our boundaries, as we interpret.
I
had been interpreting for
Ahmed1
for almost two
years when one day his
words dried up. As an asylum
seeker fleeing Algeria in
2007, he had already come
through a lot. An escalating
series of death threats from
Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb had culminated-
late one night, as he was
closing out the register at
his restaurant-in four
men spilling out of an SUV,
headlights glaring, guns
blazing. Ahmed had narrowly
escaped his attackers
through a safety door leading
upstairs to his apartment.
But because Al Qaeda's reach
extended far beyond his city,
he was forced to flee Algeria.
I was helping Ahmed
prepare for his immigration
court hearing. As a senior
corporate paralegal at Orrick,
a large international law
firm with an extensive pro
bono practice, I served on the
Volunteer Interpreters' Panel
of the Lawyers' Committee
for Civil Rights of the San
Francisco Bay Area, but I also
worked with Orrick attorneys
as part of Ahmed's legal team.
I had dual roles then, as
an interpreter and advocate.
Ahmed's attorneys had asked
me to work with him, one
on one, a few days before
the hearing, to practice
his testimony in French as
it had been scrupulously
developed in meetings. Both
22 The ATA Chronicle | September/October 2022
emotionally and legally
compelling, his story was
based solidly on persecution
for religious and political
beliefs as a non-observant
Muslim opposed to terrorism.
Turning Memories
into Testimony
Yet like many asylum
seekers-traumatized
by an initial catastrophic
event whose effects are
compounded when an
individual is uprooted from
family and community-
Ahmed found it hard
to align the swirl of his
splintered memories with
the precise chronology
required to convince a judge.
As we practiced, he froze
periodically into stretches
of silence, or stumbled over
actions he had recounted
easily before.
I had come to know
Ahmed well. I knew that the
gunmen's shots had both
terrified and shamed him,
this successful business
owner, loving husband, and
father of two young children.
The restaurant boarded
over, his family crowded in
with relatives, Ahmed was
alone and barely scraping by,
stocking shelves in a city on
the other side of the world.
" This is hard, " he said
finally. " Sometimes it all gets
jumbled up in my head. "
" I know, " I said. " It's really
hard. Remember, though,
when the terrorists were
shooting, you had no choice
but to run. Now it's different.
When you tell your story, it's
where you stand your ground
and strike back. "
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The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2022

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