I often browse sites about the genocide. It turns out that they aren’t very informative. I don’t linger very long. I am mostly interested in pictures. I am always eager for images of the genocide; my little girl’s memory let them all fade away, so for me, they never grow old. I feel sorry for people who can’t look at pictures to really understand the killings. Future generations won’t have these shocking images to fight against forgetting. Don’t the photos violate the victims’ privacy? I can’t say they don’t. Too bad if sensitive people feel offended that someone might see them in a shameful situation. Me, too—I might be seen full of fright in my hiding place, or see my first papa cut and thrown alive into a common grave. Don’t the photographs do an injustice to the women who hiked up their pagnes to their waists to run faster? The humiliation obviously adds to the pain of the memory. But I’m certain that photos refute more strongly than ceremonies the negationist words of people who aren’t the least bit disgusted by the killings. That’s my opinion.
* * *
MY NAME IS Ange Uwase. I don’t exactly know what it means; it’s pretty complicated. Born in Kigali, nineteen years ago, one year before the genocide. Afterward, I grew up in Nyamata, first in a small adobe home in Gasenga, a worthless, dingy neighborhood, if I may say so, then in this brick house in Kayumba. My first papa was killed during the genocide. My other papa’s name is Innocent Rwililiza; he teaches in Nyamata. He’s the one my mama chose to start a second family with. Her name is Épiphanie Kayitesi. She works a bit at the preschool, a lot on our land, and at home, of course.
I think the genocide was never very far from my childhood ears. I have always lived with this commotion. From the age of five, maybe before, I knew that people had been mistreated in a terrible event, but the words flew past without landing. When family acquaintances talked about it, or when my parents brought it up, I could see they were badly shaken. It set me to trembling, I kept my distance. The words frightened me too much for me to try to picture what they meant. The words drove me away. I refused to listen even when it was in secret, the way children usually like to listen to their parents’ private conversations.
In primary school, we youngsters didn’t speak about the genocide very much, and only in timid words. Who had lost their papas, their mamas, or their grandparents; who had no help, who was having a breakdown. We related all our worries without pressing too hard. There weren’t any quarrels yet. It was in the last year of primary school that our teacher began history lessons. We didn’t dare ask him many questions. We were too nervous to contradict him. Some students were interested in delving more deeply into things, others stayed silent—they kept to the side, as if they were sulking. Trouble snuck among the school benches without the teacher noticing.
We spoke about the genocide in our family. It was in the evenings, when everyone was settled in and the questions came thick and fast. Mama and Papa kept certain parts of the story out because of our age. When I was thirteen, I had the courage to ask more probing questions. I saved them for my mama. I always craved more details about my fate because I myself escaped the machete as an infant. In fact, I suffered during the genocide without knowing it. When did I first get this idea? I haven’t got a single memory from that time. But as far back as I could remember, I had always been bothered by something pretty significant that had supposedly happened to me. Mama answered my questions very well, with no hesitation. She told me how the two of us lived in a hiding place in Kigali after my first papa’s death, about the Arab neighbors who hid me during the day, where we took refuge at dusk, and how the fear returned every morning. Innocent told me about being hunted in the Kayumba forest. He didn’t mention every detail, only the most vivid ones for our education.
At times, we feel comfortable enough to speak about it at home. My brothers and sister get their curiosity piqued because they were born later. Our parents recount their experiences without beating about the bush. They say they want to transmit the true story of the Tutsis to our generation. Immaculée sometimes asks me personal questions even though she knows that I was a little baby at the time. If I know, I answer honestly. Things are calm in our living room. We exchange questions and explanations. Papa doesn’t care if he divulges survivors’ shameful secrets: he speaks in direct words of their filthy nakedness, of the children abandoned during their parents’ flight, of the ladies raped in front of people’s eyes. Our conversations aren’t rushed. I can talk about it with Mama for an entire day. I am curious about all the stories and to learn the details of people’s existence during the killings and how they escaped. I want to know the most unforgettable moments, how people constantly helped each other, their nighttime prayers together, the silence in their hiding places. I am always looking to pick up new information. The story of the marshes, the hunts in the forests, the hideout in Kigali. There’s no end to my questions.
Have I gone up to the Kayumba forest where my papa fled? No, and I haven’t visited the house of our Arab neighbors in Kigali, either. I keep from visiting those places, as well as the memorials. I keep away from public ceremonies. I avoid the hubbub of the crowds. I am afraid of the fainting spells, the people weeping, the dramatic gestures.
My brothers and sister and I talk openly. That hardly ever happens among young people. Sometimes it happens with friends by accident. What I mean is, if a person is suddenly in the grip of a crisis, we go off to the side to share our experiences and express our feelings. It’s a way of bringing out before the others’ eyes a bit of what each of us has been through. But we avoid going too deeply into private matters. With the children of the other ethnicity—I am thinking of girlfriends from school—we pass over all that, except during memorial visits. In that case, on the walk there, you choose careful words so as not to upset the other person.
I have Hutu girlfriends at school. Not one has ever come up to me to ask a simple question about how my family escaped the killings or about the existence I myself have had to endure. Why not? I think I know. Young Hutus know the details of the genocide. They learned them at school, they have listened to some of the radio programs. They have heard the melancholy songs. But they shy away from the questions they ought to ask their parents. The facts come out in fits and starts at home. They are afraid of learning what their parents’ involvement was, or they know the reason their papa was put in prison, but they have never heard their families confirm it. There are some who pretend to be ignorant but really know everything.
I know some young Hutus who reject the hate that slips into their families’ explanations. They put their trust in the teachers. Even so, they show less enthusiasm for information than the children of survivors. Their parents curb their curiosity. When they are together in the evenings, are those parents capable of describing how they plied the machete, or of divulging the darkest secrets of a neighbor’s death in the marshes? If so, is a Hutu child then capable of treating his father as someone wicked? No one has ever heard of such a thing.
Resentment unites the two camps of young Hutus and Tutsis, not a hunger for the truth. Young Hutus hate their schoolmates, whom they suspect of favoritism. A few of them are bold enough to say in front of everyone: “I’m going to be pulled out of school because there aren’t enough hands to work our land, while you get special privileges. The FARG pays the minervals at American schools so you can graduate without getting dirt on your hands.” Their Tutsi classmates answer back: “You, you live surrounded by your family’s strong arms, while orphans raise the hoe because the machetes cut their papas in the papyrus. They plow the earth for their brothers’ and sisters’ food. And on Sundays after church they have no one to visit because their family perished beneath the blades.” School life quells their anger but not their suspicions. Distrust lurks behind their friendly greetings; it never gives way. If poverty drives Hutus or Tutsis from school, they long for revenge. It’s understandable.
I don’t see the future as risky or chaotic, though. The farmers’ machetes no longer frighten anyone because peop
le have gladly benefited from the policy of national reconciliation. Even still, while Hutus tend to appear kind, and to present an encouraging face, Tutsis continue to lecture their children to stay on their guard. I don’t know how many generations we will go through before young Tutsis and Hutus can laugh together in sincere friendship. I mean, without fearing a sudden awkwardness. Essentially, the future depends on God’s will.
* * *
NEITHER MAMA’S COURAGE nor her luck saved me; it was God’s mercy. It’s written in the Holy Scriptures that He created mankind. He has counted out the days of each of our lives. Mama survived because it wasn’t her time to go to heaven; my first papa was cut because he was called to go. Neither of them had done more good or more bad. I’m a faithful believer. In Nyamata, I pray at the Presbyterian church. At school, I go to the Catholic church because it is a Catholic school. I find God just as easily among Protestants as among Catholics. The genocide has no influence on my faith. Innocent people were killed, children suffered, poor people were cut, and yet it wasn’t due to God’s negligence. Nothing like that happens by accident or as punishment, or for want of love. Certain people had to die. God knew it because He knows everything.
Why didn’t He reach out a helping hand, why didn’t He strike the killers with lighting to stop them? It’s a question that everyone asks themselves. I often wonder. The question is part of God’s mystery. I survived thanks to God, while other innocent children were cut. It reinforces my faith in Him. I have heard that in terrible moments survivors renounced their faith. I can understand how they turned their backs on God. Questioning His existence is common sense when you are in the forest fleeing the machete from morning to night. Those believers really were trapped, pleading, their hands reaching out for help or a merciful sign that never came. There were some who begged to die as Christians, to kneel on dry land and say a short prayer, without being allowed even that much. Others chose to take refuge in churches, where slaughter awaited them, and still others were traumatized by the behavior of ringleader priests. Their anger is legitimate, and I could never condemn it.
In my heart of hearts, it isn’t something I share, because then the questions it raises end up tormenting me. Faith doesn’t reassure. It doesn’t soothe the anguish of having nearly been exterminated. The church isn’t there to make us forget such an extraordinary event. Believing in God to find some relief—that isn’t something that lasts. I honestly think that God saved me. Many survivors believe the same. Many Hutus believe that God helped them return alive from their exodus in order to begin a new life in peace. We pray. I sing in the choir at church and at school. I sing very well. Singing brings me joy. Exuberant guitars sweep us along behind synthesizers and drums. That offers hope, anyway.
HANGING AROUND ON MAIN STREET
Everyone is in a panic this morning at Marie-Chantal’s. The faces are solemn, attending the lamentations of the mistress of the house as she beseeches heaven for help. She denounces the wide range of evil spirits that have persecuted her over the years. Her daughter Fabiola does her best to calm Marie-Chantal down as inquisitive neighbors observe the drama from behind the hedgerow. Last night the family cow disappeared, its halter left lying at the foot of a tree. Someone had to have heard it galloping off. Certain of those present thought the cow must have returned to the rancher who sold it to her, but one of Marie-Chantal’s sons comes back empty-handed. He sets out again, this time with his brother, to scour the bush. Others insist that a curse must have driven the cow mad. But why the curse? Still others maintain that the apparent disappearance is merely meant to cover up a death due to negligence. (The one cow that each family receives as part of Rwanda’s agricultural reforms isn’t replaced in the case of mistreatment.) The most suspicious among them say that the animal was probably sold.
Nothing ever goes well in this house. Two days earlier it was a problem with one of her sons, who had to be taken to the clinic with severe stomach pains. Had he been poisoned? Not long before that, sheet metal broke off their roof during a rainstorm. No one in Nyamata complains more than Marie-Chantal. This has been going on for quite some time—since the end of the genocide.
She had married a teacher from a good family, a tall, strong, cheerful man who swiftly climbed the ranks of Habyarimana’s organization to become head of the party’s youth movement. She grew a taste for life among Gatare’s notables. She gloated over the timorous glances people cast at the wife of the interahamwe chief, Joseph-Désiré Bitero. She was seen strutting around during the killings, in the streets and at the maternity hospital where she worked. But then disaster hit. In less time than it takes to describe, she found herself barefoot on the road to the Congolese camps. And once she returned from exile, there she was: the wife of a horrible bastard, a woman who had shamelessly exploited her position. She was obliged to move to an adobe hut and take up the hoe to feed her children.
Nowadays, no one loiters at the church as much as Marie-Chantal in her bid for the priest’s pity. She faithfully frequents local charities, bemoans her misery in the clinic courtyard, and collects all the public assistance she can at the district offices. She wears her poverty on her clothes, a poverty verging on destitution. It would be an understatement to say that she remains ignorant of the discreet elegance of the poor as they go, dignity intact, to the market or a ceremony. She drags out her misfortune with the brazenness of someone incapable of sparing a thought for the women around her, including those women whose husbands were cut down in the marshes.
Her daughter Fabiola doesn’t follow in her footsteps. One hardly ever sees them together in central Nyamata. Instead, with her timid gait, she tries to fade into the background, even though she feels compassion for her mother and is quick to say so. She stands by Marie-Chantal, and clearly feels deeply grateful to her for having raised her through adversity.
The attitude of her son, Fabrice, makes it difficult to gauge his feelings. He doesn’t complain, never rebels, and asks for nothing. He makes himself scarce. Expelled from school, because, he says, tuition was too expensive for them at the time, he now refuses to join in farming the family land. At most he might lend a hand weeding or at harvesttime. He leaves the house early in the morning and returns only to eat at night. He is trying to make a go of it in Kigali, where he sometimes spends several weeks whenever he scrapes together enough to pay for the ticket. Otherwise, he wanders Nyamata. He doesn’t have the money for a Primus in the big cabarets like Heaven, Heroes, or Red Lion, where young people his age meet. He doesn’t care enough for urwagwa to be enticed by the dive bars. He hangs around on the main street dressed in his American shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. He shoots the breeze, takes on odd jobs here and there, and shows real grit, especially in restaurant work, where hiring comes just as fast as firing because the owners, often Tutsis, presumably don’t cut him many breaks. He sometimes goes to Nyamata’s concert venue or, more accurately, its dimly lit den, where, in sauna-like humidity, sports fans gather to watch the English Premier League. Fabrice loves soccer, although soccer hasn’t exactly reciprocated. On Sundays, he meets colleagues at the field when Bugesera FC has a match. With his powerful legs, exceptional quickness on the wing, nimble dribbling, and deft left foot, he probably would have had enough talent to be a standout for the Bugesera club, earning bonuses and savoring the applause, had he been able to participate in practice. He makes do playing intervillage matches in the Kanazi meadows.
He was five years old at the time of the killings, an age when childhood memories become engraved. Although he spent all his time closed up with his family in the yard of their house in Gatare, it is unfortunate that he keeps his memories to himself. He prefers to talk about the escape to Congo. What he remembers of it is quite surprising. He visits his father every month, but they never have more than five minutes to talk. It is difficult to know what he thinks of his father’s role as head of the interahamwe, or how he feels, for example, when someone mentions his actions in leading the attack at the church. How does h
e make sense of his father’s negationist self-defense at Rilima? Not once during our conversations does he reveal a hint of complicity with or reproach for his father. He is trying to draw out a thread among his childhood memories, something to hang on to from a time when his life was, to say the least, turned upside down. Like all other young Hutus, he has trouble understanding why others might be interested.
FABRICE TUYISHIMIRE
TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD
Son of Joseph-Désiré Bitero, Hutu prisoner
What I especially remember from the time of the genocide is that we no longer went to school. In the beginning, my parents brought us to the nursery. Then the guns began to crackle and we stopped. I stayed in the yard all day. I was happy enough. There was my mama, my grandmama, and my sister Fabiola, who was just a little girl. The truck would pull up with colleagues and honk, and Papa cracked jokes with us before he climbed in. He seemed cheerful as usual.
We lived in Gatare, in the teachers’ neighborhood. It was the first brick building. Tall trees shaded the yard. I don’t know anymore what we grew, but flowery hedges and banana trees, anyway. The war raged elsewhere. We didn’t know much about it because we were little, except for hearing the racket of honking and shouting. Nothing frightened us, no danger lurked. We enjoyed our time as a family. Do I remember what the adults said about the situation? No, we children played outside. It really was peaceful.
One lasting memory is the frantic escape later on. We bolted from home. I obviously remember that. It was nothing but shouts and screams, each one louder than the next. The mamas stuffed their bundles full, the men took down the houses’ sheet metal. We rushed off, loaded with the kitchen utensils and all the supplies our backs could carry. The animals we managed to round up we pressed into a few scanty herds. We took our place in the crush of people and walked all day long. Escapees followed the line of vehicles, others disappeared in the bush. At night, we stopped in small groups and broke firewood to eat warm food. We slept in abandoned streets or in fields—it was up to the fatigue.
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