The headset weighed a hundred and twenty grams. Nadia knew because she had weighed it once, on the kitchen scale at the hotel, out of curiosity, because simultaneous-interpretation headsets felt heavier than a hundred and twenty grams after six hours of translating and she wanted to know if the weight was real or in her head. A hundred and twenty grams. The weight was in her head.

Nadia was thirty-seven. Born in Tehran. Studied in London. Lived in Geneva. Iranian passport, Swiss rent. The language at home was Farsi. The language at work was English. The language of her dreams changed with the month. She had been translating from English to Farsi since 2014. Oil conferences in Vienna. Nuclear summits in Geneva. Security Council meetings in New York. Once she had translated a sentence a minister had said. Another minister had not said it. The difference between the two sentences was a war. Nadia lived in the difference. Every translation was a room with two languages inside. A glass wall in the middle. Nadia lived in the glass wall. Since April 11 the room had been in Islamabad, at the Serena Hotel. The two languages: the English of the American vice president, the Farsi of the president of the Iranian parliament. The glass wall was the interpreter's booth on the second floor. Two metres by one and a half. The microphone. The headset. A glass of water. A pen. The pen was for notes. Nadia did not take notes. She listened in one language, spoke the other. The delay between hearing and speaking was three seconds. Three seconds: the time the brain needed to receive a sentence in English, take it apart, put it back together in Farsi, send it to the mouth. In three seconds a ceasefire proposal became a ceasefire proposal in another language. With a different weight. A different temperature. A different history inside the words.

The vice president spoke a slow English. The sentences were short. The verbs were in the present tense. The present was the tense of negotiation. "We are prepared to extend." Nadia translated: the English present became a Farsi present that was not the same present, because the present tense in Farsi carries a shade of continuity that English does not have. In Farsi the present says something has been going on and will go on. It lingers. "We are prepared" in Farsi sounded like something that had started before. That would continue after. Not like a decision taken now. Nadia knew this. She did not correct it. Translating is not correcting. Translating is carrying the weight of a sentence from one language to another without dropping it. The headset pressed against Nadia's ears while she translated the present tense. A hundred and twenty grams. After two hours the same weight. After four hours a different weight. The warm plastic against the skin. The compressed padding. The weight did not change. What changed was the head under the headset.

The president of the Iranian parliament spoke a formal Farsi. The sentences were long. The verbs were in the conditional. The conditional was the tense of Iranian diplomacy. Nadia translated the conditional into an English conditional that was weaker, because in English the conditional is a mood, not a tense. It states a hypothesis, clean and closed. In Farsi the conditional opens a door and leaves it ajar. "We would consider" was not the same thing as what the Iranian had said. It was the closest thing. Nadia lived in the closest thing. The place where two languages touch without touching. Where a word weighs one thing in one language, something else in the other. The translator holds the two weights in balance with a three-second delay. The headset pressed. The hours passed. The hundred and twenty grams stayed the same. The weight did not.

After six hours of balance the head weighs more than the headset. The two languages blend. Sometimes Nadia thought in Farsi while speaking English. Sometimes she thought in English while speaking Farsi. Sometimes she thought in no language at all. The brain was just a corridor between two doors. The headset weighed a hundred and twenty grams. The glass of water was half full. The pen was on the table. The booth had a small window facing the corridor. Security personnel walked past in the corridor. They spoke Urdu. Nadia did not speak Urdu. The corridor was in a language Nadia did not understand. The booth was in two languages Nadia understood. Between the corridor and the booth was the booth door. Closed. Nadia was inside. The two languages were inside. The corridor was outside. The ceasefire was inside. The war was outside. The delay was three seconds. In three seconds the world changed language. In three seconds the world stayed the same. The headset weighed a hundred and twenty grams. At seven in the evening Nadia took it off. She set it on the table. A hundred and twenty grams returned to the table. The room emptied. The two languages left with the people who spoke them. The microphone off. The glass empty. The pen on the table. The headset on the table.