At the time, I heard these low voices but didn’t make much of them. I was too little to be interested in war and all that. Once, at the edge of the field, I heard farmworkers taking a break under a tree, day laborers from Ruhengeri. They started talking about Papa’s misdeeds. I secretly pricked up my ears. They spoke of Papa but also of his colleagues and prison. They discussed how the Rwandans had risen up against each other. That evening, I asked Mama about it. She replied that Papa was being punished, since he was in prison. She couldn’t find her way to a simple explanation why. In any case, it didn’t excite my curiosity. In Kiganwa, almost all the papas were in prison—not a single word was said against them. We children waited; things went smoothly.
Then Papa left Rilima. He told us about the terrible flight to Congo, the confessions at the trial, and the presidential pardon. He never tired of talking about God. He explained the evil tricks that Satan plays on people. As I said, I was too little to ask questions. Basically, I heard about it like a story whose details are too frightening to want to know. Have I visited the marshes? We often go down there to farm the wet silt during the dry season or to gather grass for the urwagwa. We never discuss the expeditions. It isn’t something we think about.
I have a good friend whom I trust named Twisimane. He lives next door, and his papa wore the pink prisoner’s uniform. We understand each other; we talk about life on the hill. We listen to “hype music” on his radio because we don’t have internet. We don’t go dancing with girls because there are no places to dance, except in Nyamata. We sometimes mix with the boys and girls our age. Do we mention the killings of ’94? No, or if we do, only by accident. We don’t see any good from discussing them, except to complain about Papa’s absence or the hardships of poverty. With the Tutsis I know, I haven’t been willing to bring them up. We get along by avoiding all that.
I gave up the classroom. When I earn a little money from the urwagwa, it isn’t enough for fun in Nyamata. I don’t come across survivor families in Kiganwa. In Nyarunazi or in Kibungo, nothing intimate is shared between ethnicities. I think the young people on both sides have suffered. We have faced painful obstacles. Nothing from ’94 has fallen down the memory hole. No chance of slipping away from it. Young Tutsis think of those they have lost. The teachers lecture them to consider forgiveness. Young Hutus think of what they have lost, too; they have to appear humble and compassionate. Out of convenience, we steer clear of each other.
* * *
I HAVE NEVER spoken with Ernestine’s brothers. I’m too young to approach them. Would I even find a word to say? They might want to show me how angry they are. I leave it in the hands of silence. Obviously, the situation upsets me. Do I know if my papa’s punishment is fair? I don’t know enough of the details, except for what people say. Before, I was intimidated, and I didn’t ask Papa a single question. Now that age has whet my curiosity, Papa has been taken away again and I don’t have the opportunity to question him anymore.
Asking Mama might hurt her feelings. Women aren’t made like men for those kinds of killings; they don’t raise the machete. They stew over their sorrows more than men and fall silent. If Papa leaves Rilima, I plan to ask him questions. I hope that he provides answers that a son can accept, otherwise it will be harmful and make me unhappy. That’s understandable, isn’t it? Before, I was fine with what I heard at school. Now that people gossip about Ernestine’s murder, I have to glean information about my family. My dreams fill me with panic at night. Terrible visions pass before my eyes. Like what? Men hurtling through the bush, a bloody brawl inside a church. When I wake up, I reel off prayers without the time to catch my breath. I beg God to protect my loved ones against illness. I plead for my papa’s freedom and for reconciliation between neighbors. A genocide stirs religious belief: people rouse their faith to protect themselves from disaster.
THE PARENTS
MOTHER COURAGE
When I invite her for our first meeting, at a restaurant at the bus station, Jacqueline Mukamana orders a chicken served with fried bananas and one or two Primus beers. With her elegant fingers, she meticulously savors the meal, especially since she also feeds little bites of it to her baby, leaving behind only a licked-clean carcass on her plate. When we meet a second time, at the Coin des amis in Kanzenze, she makes do with half a chicken, taking the other half home in a doggy bag, having coaxed the last drop of beer from the bottles left on the table. This is because, since her husband’s return to Rilima, the Bunani family has had to go without meat and beer. Although destitution has yet to befall them, it is knocking at their door.
Jacqueline lives in Kiganwa, near Kibungo. We take the route from Kanzenze, then turn right onto a road so rocky and broken that not a single bicycle ventures the climb. The road follows a ridge overlooking two deep valleys to the right and the left, each the paradise of myriads of songbirds. One valley rushes steeply down to the motionless river below; the second slopes gently toward other, smaller valleys, graced with the colors of the bush and the banana groves, through which shepherds lead their herds. Kiganwa includes about fifty earth-and-sheet-metal houses, among which are a grocery store and a cabaret. The latter belongs to Jacqueline.
Every morning at dawn, as the drowsy family emerges into the courtyard, as women begin to bustle around the stove, as young girls wash up with the hose before donning their school uniforms, Jacqueline leaves the house. Wearing a muddy pagne, a T-shirt donated by an NGO, and a scarf wrapped tightly around her hair, she carries her tools over her shoulder. Her son Jean-Damascène picks up his tools and catches up with her. Joining a stream of neighbors, they take the river path that snakes toward the field. Their land, a bright ocher in the fresh morning light, is plowed, cleared of scrub, and carefully lined with furrows. It seems a huge expanse for only two pairs of arms, which, none too brawny to begin with, are away at the market on Wednesdays, at church on Sundays, and in Rilima on visiting days. Because of their absences, the mother and son have fallen behind, as can be seen with a quick glance at the neighboring fields, where rows of seedlings are already staked. In the banana grove, broken branches dangle, exhausted trees still need to be replaced, and a layer of gray leaves suffocates the soil.
Jacqueline attacks the earth with a hoe. If all goes well, they will have planted the beans a few days ahead of the first rains. Jean-Damascène looks up at the sky, whose pale-blue hue can only mean a scorching heat to come. He hesitates, then reaches for the hoe again. A hole, three seeds, a hole, three seeds, along a hundred-yard furrow at the end of which they stop just long enough to mop their brows before setting off in the other direction. No words are exchanged between them, no breath wasted under the burning sun. At morning’s end, they walk one after the other back up the hill. With barely time to tidy up, they prepare the noon meal, the fodder for the pigs, and, of course, the jerry can of urwagwa to sell. Jacqueline doesn’t always find a few minutes to doze off in her hot bedroom; more often than not, she is back at work on the parcel by early afternoon.
The evening sun has already reddened the mountain ridge when she appears on the veranda to serve her drink. She wears a magnificent multicolor dress. She undoubtedly likes the flashy colors. The drinkers squeeze together on the benches. Candles are lit and jerry cans unstopped. The bottles are emptied and refilled; the chalumeau is passed around until late into the night. The men chat heartily as the family eats its evening meal in the courtyard behind them.
Of the twenty years since the genocide, Jacqueline has spent seven with her husband on their parcel and the others in the Kivu camp or at their home as a prisoner’s wife. In Rilima, Fulgence cheers her with his advice, but it comes at the price of exhausting journeys to the penitentiary, expensive visits to the prison commissary, and attorney’s fees for filing appeals. Unlike Marie-Chantal, Joseph-Désiré’s wife, Jacqueline, never complains. She will never be seen asking for aid or charity. Apart from the feeling of injustice that has haunted her since Fulgence’s last indictment, she never shows anger or resentment
over these trouble-filled years. Unlike Consolée, she neither blames nor criticizes her husband for what he has subjected them to. Does she lack the nerve? Deep down, what does she really think? How complicit was she, if she was complicit? Ever welcoming, cheerful, and discreet, she is impossible to read. She is a strangely courageous mother, resistant to hardship, stalwart in raising her family, loyal, mute, and stubborn through adversity. The dignity with which she accepts her fate is nothing short of moving.
Following their return from Congo to Kiganwa, an area mainly populated by Hutus, at least one man in every family ended up in prison. The years passed, the men were released and found their way back to the fields and the cabarets. Ernestine’s murder hit Jacqueline like a whirlwind that seems only to have devastated her parcel of land. Not a single customer has deserted her veranda, not a single insulting remark is made, but this time there is no one around to lend her a hand in the field or in the offices of the court authorities. The two boys are in the throes of adolescence, the little girl is at the age of persistent unanswered questions. It is a lonely time.
JACQUELINE MUKAMANA
HUTU FARMER
Mother of Idelphonse and Jean-Damascène
I am glad to go to the market when I have chicken or bananas to sell. Wednesdays are better because goods sell fast and we deal for higher prices. I meet old friends. As a woman without her husband, I can’t enter the cabaret for a Primus. We have a nice chat outside. What I make at the market I bring to Rilima the next day.
Visits are once or twice a month. My son takes me on his bicycle, or I rent a bike-taxi for the day. The ride lasts four hours. When I arrive, I buy things for my husband at the prison commissary, especially sugar, fritters, and milk. Then I squeeze in line. When Fulgence comes out, we exchange news. We talk about the worries of the parcel, which are never in short supply. That lasts five minutes.
The children’s education suffers because of Fulgence’s imprisonment. I struggle as well. Their papa’s authority is sorely missed, because children don’t respect a woman as much as a man. The boys always see themselves as stronger, even at a young age. They only fear their papa. My eldest son, Idelphonse, has become rebellious. We quarrel; we don’t understand each another. He no longer helps me hoe or sow the land. He goes off fishing in the evenings. If he traps a ten-kilo fish, he gets eight to ten thousand and drinks it all away. He buys himself Primus—he leaves nothing for his family, and he doesn’t think about his child.
The small house next door to ours? His little brother and I are building it with our own two hands. Idelphonse hasn’t picked up a single brick; he looks on and couldn’t care less. Since Fulgence returned to prison, Idelphonse has taken to drinking. He suddenly thought that he was the boss, that everything belonged to him, that he should be issuing orders. I don’t talk about it with Fulgence, so as not to make his situation worse. A son who lacks respect for his mother—Fulgence would bristle with anger. I keep quiet, but I feel responsible for the children. I try to show myself humble with the eldest son. I suffer in silence and I compensate with prayer. The two boys don’t quarrel; they avoid each other. Jean-Damascène stays to rest at home while the oldest hangs around in the cabarets. They don’t take the time to talk to each other. Each has his own way of thinking.
Sometimes Jean-Damascène says that he regrets not going back to school. He is fond of studying. That’s the truth. He thinks that diplomas alone can ease his worries. He sees his salvation slipping away. But he still gladly lends me a hand with all the work. He follows me down to the parcel in the mornings, hoe in hand. He takes part in the house chores without a fuss. He buys sorghum to distill the urwagwa. He sells the drink to the neighbors and shares the money.
* * *
IT BOTHERED ME that Fulgence had a hand in the killings. When we came back from Congo, the dirty looks followed me on the roads of Nyarunazi and sometimes all the way to Nyamata. What else can I say? Does a wife speak against her husband? I don’t know exactly how he got his machete mixed up in the expeditions, since the wives were supposed to keep quiet at home. He followed his peers with good cheer, everyone knows it, and they put him in prison for seven years. I have never heard the boys grumble about their papa. They learned that he wasn’t the only one to get his blade wet. They didn’t ask me how serious the suspicions were. But Idelphonse knew the details. Everyone talked about it. On our hill, only the dead avoided prison. When the men weren’t hurling accusations at one another at the cabaret, they went in for mockery instead. The wives jabbered. The children picked up on the rumors, and they shared their thoughts on the sly. Idelphonse, despite his young age, brought home plenty of gossip from the cabaret. He never failed to tell Jean-Damascène. Myself, to try to reassure them, I told them, “Walk straight ahead and don’t listen to the hateful words. Be brave. You children, you can visit your papa at the penitentiary. He hasn’t been killed, his health is strong, he has advice to give. That’s extraordinary luck that not all children have.”
Fulgence admitted his misdeeds like so many others, and the judge sentenced him harshly. Twelve years in prison is a big thing. Then he received the presidential pardon. After his release in January 2003, he brought the children together and explained the consequences of the war. How the flames were fanned, the way people killed one another, why so many Tutsis perished in the papyrus without proper burials. Why the Hutus had to race to escape to Congo.
But certain truths are harmful in our situation. Words must be doubly cautious for children’s ears. When you reveal too many details to a child who goes on to repeat them, they can turn into very serious accusations. An adolescent understands why secrets must be kept. A little child has no idea; he is liable to start talking about unimaginable crimes. It’s scary. Me, I told them about the poverty in the camps, the plastic-sheet tents we lived in, how Idelphonse was born in a completely unhealthy place. Fear tested the children. They prayed for those things never to happen again. Little by little, our anxieties left us. Fulgence and I cleared the land. We brought a boy and a girl into the world. It was twice the joy. Misfortune began to forget us. We expanded the parcel to the wet edge of the marsh and took up raising livestock, like the Tutsis. The urwagwa business prospered. We stopped thinking about the past.
Then the gaçaça courts came. We trembled like everyone else. Fulgence wanted the judges to see that he was cooperative. His voice never grumbled. He answered questions straightforwardly, he repeated his confessions and added details, and he admitted his offense. Those who heard him appeared satisfied. Fulgence came away from the tree of judgment without being charged. No one hurled insults, no one jeered. No one imagined that Ernestine’s little brother would come to speak about his sister.
Do I believe Fulgence capable of the horrible crimes committed against Ernestine? The wife in me answers no. Blood used to give him such a fright that he couldn’t cut a goat without his hands trembling. So, to slice open the lady’s belly with his blade—would he even have tried? As I told you, if he had become a butcher like the others at the Nyamata church, I would have noticed that night in our bedroom.
Children don’t doubt like adults—they take what they hear. They can accept it. I don’t know where their certainty lies. In Kiganwa, everyone rushed to judgment. The children were rattled—a new calamity had swept down upon them. They didn’t ask questions, except for the little girl. She is only six years old but already the smartest. She is at the top of the class all by herself. She gets terribly angry with her schoolmates if they make fun of her papa. Every night in her dreams she sees him leaving prison; she talks in her sleep. She asks sophisticated questions. The children were beginning to discuss things aloud when they learned that the man called Emmanuel, the colleague who testified against their papa, had fled to Uganda. They were shocked. How can you trust an accuser who hides? They are angry that Fulgence wasn’t heard by the judges, that the other men from the group argued among themselves. They suspect that there were jealousies at work and unfair interpretations. M
e, I say encouraging words, I promise them a positive outcome. What do I tell them? “If Fulgence was involved like they say, let his punishment serve as an example, but then they have to provide us with legitimate proof in exchange.” It calms them down a bit.
Thanks to God, the children pray fervently for his release. Even the oldest one, who has taken to the bottle, isn’t too distracted to pray. Misfortune has made them more faithful believers.
MAMA NEMA’S VERANDA
Tonight, Sylvère is the first to climb the steps of Mama Nema’s veranda. He picks a white plastic chair facing the hillside. He has just walked the entire length of main street from his work at the district offices. Mama Nema comes out of her courtyard to swap neighborhood news with him as she lights the candles on the tables. She hands him an Amstel and takes advantage of one last respite to return to her stove. The sun traces a pink streak low in the sky, announcing its imminent plunge beneath the horizon. Soon darkness will envelop the road—or is it a lane? Who knows what to call this steep path that runs from the covered market, along the soccer field, to the top of Kayumba hill. In any case, the route’s ruts and cracks, as much as its precipitous ascent, discourage even small trucks from making the climb, all of them except Chicago’s van, of course, which nothing can keep away.
What a pleasure it is to chat with Sylvère before the evening rush. His apocalyptic irony, whose humor sometimes tends to the grotesque, had once shocked me as it does others. Fairly quickly, however, I learned to read in his chronic skepticism a form of benevolent dismay. The mixture derives, no doubt, from the disillusionment of a Tutsi child, born in a hovel in Maranyundo, whose school smarts early on caught the keen eyes of church recruiters. A brilliant student, he was enlisted with his friend Gonzalve to study theology at Swiss and Canadian universities, where they were saved from the machetes. The two clergymen, whose futures destined them for the elite, abandoned their religious vocation immediately after the killings, returned to Rwanda, and rolled up their sleeves amid the devastation of Nyamata. Sylvère was in charge of a primary school when I first met him at Marie-Louise’s place. Today, he is one of the district’s most influential senior civil servants and a party executive, although he is still his old self when he enters the cabaret, with the same blunt, and slightly Jesuitical, sense of ridicule.
Blood Papa Page 11