Just before nightfall, Dominique emerges onto the veranda, staggering off the street at the end of a retiree’s trying day in the cabarets. Éphraïm arrives next, still sporting his boots after a lightning-fast inspection of his land as he left the office. Gonzalve, the very embodiment of calm, has just come from Bugesera’s high school. Emmanuel occasionally drops by. Chicago will roll in much later, despite the risks to his truck on his breakneck drive from Kigali. Innocent, moodier by day’s end, comes to badger or tease one or another of the men or to tell amusing stories, when he hasn’t opted instead for the solitude of a corner market closer to home.
Their group was once called the “circle of intellectuals,” at a time when people no longer dared to think. Devastated, Nyamata had few schools. An emergency administration operated out of several rooms in the district office building. Doctor Georges worked his miracles at the clinic, with its population of acquiescent patients. A handful of agricultural engineers and veterinarians still raced their motorcycles up and down the hills, to Kanazi in the south, to Kanzenze in the north, and to Kibungo or Kiganwa farther out in the west. They kept at it out of a sense of dignity. In the evenings, they convened to drink until they could drink no more, setting the world to rights with a humor that lacked in the world around them. They first pitched camp in Marie-Louise’s boutique. Among its piles of fabrics, basins, and flour sacks, they sipped their beers and enjoyed the not-so-maternal kindness of the establishment’s owner.
When Marie-Louise closed her place down, having already married off several customers along the way, the group migrated to Kayumba, where they discovered a different sort of motherly warmth at Mama Mwangera’s boutique, with its candlelit walls and dim fluorescent bulb. Tite went his own way, preferring the dive bars, particularly his wife’s, at the main intersection nearer to home. Théoneste was also lost, because he liked the verandas frequented by high-society types at Heaven. Jean, the public prosecutor, was transferred, and Doctor Georges passed away, taking his jokes and medical genius with him. Moved by the mysteries of migration, the friends then set out again to empty fresh bottles at another boutique at the end of the road.
They landed at Mama Nema’s. The proprietor, another handsome and kindhearted woman, welcomed them with loving arms, and they picked up where they left off. Night has fallen on the crowd of people climbing up the hillside. They disperse into courtyards, some of which are lit solely by a single brazier for the evening meal. Fires glow red at the market below as vendors cut prices on the last of the vegetables. Along the thickets, the shadows of cows driven by the silhouettes of cowherds stealthily return from grazing in the bush, a practice now banned by Rwanda’s land reforms. Mama Nema hauls out cases of beer with the help of her son. When there aren’t enough, the boy hustles down the hill on his bike for more. The friends comment on the latest of the day’s news.
Tonight, Emmanuel is describing his most recent agricultural experiments. Since he left his position with the district administration, he and John and other friends have embarked on a venture about which they are particularly enthusiastic: the restoration and renovation of former plantations—with olive and coffee trees and intensive pig farming. Then someone asks Emmanuel about the marriage whose negotiations he has agreed to undertake. As a scrupulous negotiator, and no less as a storyteller, he is very much in demand. The group discusses the families of the future bride and groom. Chicago turns up, teary-eyed, unsteady, with a beaming smile, after a hard day’s work in Kigali. Benoît arrives from his cowshed.
Innocent has suddenly picked a fight with a bewildered stranger. He presses his case with an orator’s rhetoric and a lawyer’s gesticulations. The audience is enjoying itself, listening for the one insight or remark in Innocent’s rhetorical flights they know will be worth remembering. He indulges in throes of anguish, never retreats before a provocation, and couldn’t care less about making people uncomfortable. Then, suddenly, he sits back down, chuckles as he rubs his head, and launches into a funny story about a Tutsi cow. Everyone laughs. Politics, of the kind that might prove unpleasant, are never mentioned, except, that is, when someone has exceeded the limit of inebriation—in which case all improprieties are forgiven.
They talk about their projects. They laugh about everything and make fun of one another. They discuss the genocide night after night. If a wave of sadness overtakes them, they wait for it to pass, bottle of beer in hand. Just now, Concessa, Gonzalve’s wife, enters discreetly. She whispers a knowing word in Mama Nema’s ear, then taps her husband, who is asleep in a chair, and takes him by the arm to lead him back home. On other nights, Dominique’s or Chicago’s wife will do the same.
In the darkness, the din from the hair salons disappears all at once. The crickets burst into a terrific evening racket. The moon outlines the black ridges of mountains to the west. The night firmament gradually appears above our heads, and the shooting stars streak with joy across the sky.
INNOCENT RWILILIZA
TUTSI TEACHER
Father of Ange and Immaculée
I teach political history at the secondary school. At the start of each academic year, the first question that any new student asks reveals their ethnicity. Hutu and Tutsi youngsters pose different questions about history—their concerns are completely unalike. Students aren’t anxious in the same way; they don’t use the same words. Young Hutus would just as well not talk about it if they could.
Government directives have banned the words “Hutu” and “Tutsi” from the Rwandan language. Every mention of ethnicity has vanished from official forms; civics has erased ethnic distinctions. Nevertheless, school curricula place a great deal of importance on the history of the Tutsi genocide—they use the term “Tutsi genocide”—and explain that one ethnicity attempted to exterminate the other. From there, even an infant can figure out which ethnicity raised the machete. Because children know from an early age the ethnicity they belong to by listening to their parents, they very quickly place their family within that history. We can’t continue to lie to students as we once did about something that has so disturbed their childhoods. When we do, children risk tuning everything out, even lessons on the different types of mammals or the course of a river.
You’ve already heard as much: the children of survivors reproach themselves nothing. Unlike many survivor parents, they feel blameless. They claim that nothing frightens them, they say they are untroubled. They don’t find it awkward to converse with those of their family who remain. But there are truths that they disguise, truths that they still can’t bring to light. They hide a terrible desire for vengeance. They hold it deep down inside along with the hate they feel for their families’ murderers and the rage they feel when poverty afflicts them. They keep these feelings from their parents in order not to worry them or to avoid a scolding. They turn away, even from the eyes of their closest friends, for fear of reproof. They obey the policy of reconciliation without a word, without betraying their innermost thoughts.
* * *
THIS WAS A big thing when I taught at Nelson Mandela Middle School in Kanzenze in the late 1990s. Hutu students didn’t dare walk through the classroom door because they were afraid of being harassed by their survivor classmates. We also saw survivor students trembling with fear because someone had left an anonymous note threatening to cut them down like their families had been. Their classmates were taking revenge for their papas’ imprisonment. We teachers had to keep a close eye. Children screamed or sulked. We had some who would disappear for three weeks, then suddenly return without a word. Some students refused to listen to the school adviser or psychologist if he belonged to the other ethnicity. Many of them couldn’t even think anymore because of the farming they did to feed their brothers and sisters or because of carrying supplies to Rilima. Others roamed around in search of cannabis or alcohol.
In the days after the genocide, no reasonable person could imagine that he wouldn’t be killed within the next ten years. The future was cut short. Twenty years have passe
d, and the neighbors of the two camps have grown accustomed to the idea of dying of old age or disease. They think twice about drowning their defeatism in drink. They have given up spending the night with any old acquaintance for fear of being alone or for something extra to eat. They are less devoted to their own despair. Hope for an ordinary life has returned, although no one understands the reason why. Their children are calmer because of it. They put the enmity they grew up with behind them, and they turn the pages of their schoolbooks in class. They sing about reconciliation. But they don’t forget any of the things they keep bottled up. Just like all the others, my own children keep quiet. But I know what is going on.
Survivor children conceal their fear as well. Jean-Damascène and certain other Hutu children blame the high cost of minervals. Quite often, though, they held the small sum they needed but backed away from school for fear of their schoolmates’ mean intentions. Sandra says that she isn’t afraid of the machetes anymore, that she walks through whatever neighborhood she likes. Then she adds that the looks of former prisoners frighten her. When survivor children keep repeating that nothing scares them anymore, isn’t it just a way of burying their fear?
What surprises me is that the children of the killers admit that their fathers’ crimes have made a mess of their lives—for example, Fabiola and Jean-Damascène—even if they are quick to point out that they don’t know exactly what their fathers did. They know, of course. Fabiola saw the long column of killers coming back from Rilima after the presidential pardon in 2003, without her papa and the other category-one criminals. But to say that her papa was in the front line of those plying the machete would mean accusing him of a crime. Maybe in a group of rowdy kids, one or another might have the nerve to call her father an imbecile. In front of an adult, never. In the last twenty years in the Bugesera, it’s unheard of. The wrongdoers’ children feel apprehensive everywhere. They dread putting their fathers in danger. Look at Fulgence: he was given a twelve-year sentence, then released after seven. He returns to his parcel for seven years as if nothing had happened. He sings the glories of forgiveness everywhere he is asked to speak; he returns to the prosperity of his drink business. Then one Sunday evening they take him back to prison for life. It strikes too much fear in a child.
Some children do feel humiliated by what they know of their parents. They are especially bothered by the defeat. We mustn’t forget: their parents just barely lost the battle for extermination, they gave up the leadership of the country they had held in their hands for more than thirty years. They left their possessions behind and sometimes coveted positions in the civil service when they fled. Captivity exhausted their strength. The children saw their parents scurrying back to their fields, humiliated, their shoulders stooped when they spoke to the authorities. Some felt resentment toward those who humbled and bent their parents in this way. In the children’s eyes, the punishment, more than justice, caused their misfortune. That’s why they have redoubled their efforts to regain their former prosperity. From the moment the sun comes up, they are out tilling the soil, sowing and harvesting, and carefully counting their sacks of crops hidden from prying eyes.
Young Hutus are also deceiving themselves when they say they would freely accept a Tutsi girlfriend or boyfriend. Can I see into their hearts? No, how could I? That said, how many mixed marriages have we seen on Saturdays in Nyamata? Not a single one, to my knowledge. In Kigali, things are different; it’s more chaotic. On the hills, the families know each other. They never turn their eyes from the stakes planted around their plots. They never forget inheritances.
* * *
AS FOR ME, growing up in the 1960s, I was haunted by the thought that my papa might be taken away or killed. It weighed on us constantly, because not a year went by without killings in the area. I experienced an unhappier childhood than my children. We were driven out of Ruhengeri and endured severe poverty in an adobe hut. We cleared a nearby piece of land to feed ourselves on sweet potatoes and beans. We wanted for everything but fear. We walked five kilometers to fetch water, five kilometers to go to school, and every encounter gave us a fright. My parents were always on the alert—they never smiled for more than a brief moment. If the neighbors shared urwagwa with us, it was very nearly a secret. The only recreation without risk: Sunday mass and my mama’s bedtime nursery rhymes. Despite all this, good fortune propelled me to the doors of the École normale supérieure. On the day of the entrance exams, I was worried that ethnic quotas would sabotage the results. We faced off, our heads bent over our tests in mutual suspicion. This daily anxiety never let up enough to allow happiness into my childhood.
Nowadays, the children say that they don’t consider themselves in danger. But children listen to their parents with keen ears. How could they fail to notice the fears burning in our memories?
SACKS OF BEANS AT ALPHONSE AND CONSOLÉE’S PLACE
In the past, a small road led from the main route to Alphonse Hitiyaremye and Consolée Murekatete’s place, but the road’s collapse has made it impassable even on foot. We now have to make the trip by way of Kibungo instead, turning off at the entrance to Nyarunazi. No matter: Nyarunazi is worth the detour, having surpassed Kibungo as the new center of business on the hill. In the market at night, women bargain in whispers in the glow of kerosene lamps. Early in the morning and throughout the day, one hears a string of choirs’ hymns under the lofty acacia trees, situated far from the temptations of the street. A long, colonnaded building has sprung up at the same time as the handsome homes of Nyamata’s nouveaux riches. A “saloon” displays its brand-new sign beside modest urwagwa bars. The weather grows hot in the middle of the afternoon and sweltering at dusk. Women attend to their sewing machines, chitchat at the market, or sing with their loving eyes fixed on the strutting preachers. Men drink in the street. Gone is the day, not so long ago, when one saw Tutsi cabarets at one end and Hutu at the other. After a day in the fields, people now drink freely with whoever passes the chalumeau along.
Eustache staggers down the street as he makes his way to greet me. A regular at the cabarets at this time of day, he offers me a very warm welcome. He deserves a Primus. Eustache is a friend from my first days in Rwanda, when he oversaw Nyamata’s public telephone. Indeed, he still asks me for news about the Depardon family, whose conversations he listened to when Raymond Depardon, the photographer whose work appears in Life Laid Bare, joined me in Nyamata, just as he overheard every other call before the advent of cell phones. This former post office manager is one of the rare Hutus alive whose conduct during the killings arouses no suspicion—many of the others were murdered. Among the exceptions were two veterinarians as well as the three Pentecostal farmhands who chose to join the Tutsis in the Kayumba forest rather than take up the machete. Strangely, they disappeared afterward, probably for Ruhengeri. Currently retired, Eustache farms his parcel every morning except on Sundays and drinks every day in the afternoon. He can sometimes be found, out of breath, his mind in a whirl of violent anger, in pursuit of a black goat—always the same goat, according to him—which has supposedly eloped with one of his new does. He generally returns home late at night on his splendid bicycle, which no doubt knows its way back to Nyamata, where his wife, who certainly knows her husband, is waiting up for him.
* * *
JUST OUTSIDE NYARUNAZI, after a stretch of scrubland, the road runs along a hillside beside a valley of lush banana groves sheltered from the sun by the steep topography. Such a landscape is difficult to imagine in the Bugesera. The trees are pruned, sometimes propped up under the weight of bananas. The palms appear a lustrous green; the ocher soil seems washed clean. We run into Pio and Josiane on their bicycles. The mileage covered by this pair of lovers is incredible. Yesterday, we passed them on the road to Ntarama. They were visiting an aunt to discuss the sale of their land prior to their move to the Mutara region. Two days earlier, we spotted them at the market, and shortly before that, at the clinic. Josiane, upset with me for previously revealing certain episodes fr
om their love affair, suggests we make peace. Before they leave, she even tries half-jokingly to negotiate royalties on certain unknown chapters of their story, probably thinking of the cost of their impending departure for the Mutara.
The route regains the blinding sun in Nyamabuye. Consolée, dripping wet and joyful in the middle of her courtyard, breaks off from threshing bean plants to open her home to us. Whatever the time of year, sacks of seeds and grain clutter her living room like a warehouse. She and her husband, Alphonse, labor to make up for lost time. Alphonse wasn’t able to return to his former business, but he has proved remarkably successful in developing their two plots of land. They are serious farmers. They have started to rear crossbred cows. They are experimenting with coffee and fruit trees. Their banana groves are radiant, their fields furrowed as straight as arrows. Thanks to their relentlessness, Alphonse and Consolée are less affected by the vicissitudes of the weather than other farmers are. While they were too late to save Jean-Pierre’s education, their eldest boy is pursuing his studies at the National University, their oldest girl has found a place in a sewing shop on Nyamata’s main street, and their little ones work hard at school.
In Rilima, at the time of my book Machete Season, Alphonse was the least reluctant of his gang to pay genuine attention to the answers he gave. During his imprisonment, Consolée was the only prisoner’s wife who dared to break the Hutu code of silence, who agreed to describe what life was like for the wives during the killings. It was she who told me one day: “Myself, I was afraid. I was obsessed by a divine malediction. I could plainly see that those unnatural killings would bring about a punishment from heaven, that all the blood was going to bring down damnation. I knew that God might step in at any moment like in the Bible. I thought about Egypt, Gomorrah, and the like.”
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