Africa has nothing more to prove, because its riches are beyond compare. I admire African culture, its beauty. On the other hand, Africans don’t always appreciate one another as they should. They give in to harmful influences. That’s what I have learned in class, anyway. The teachers also say that, twenty years from now, Rwanda will be developed enough to take care of its entire population. We young people are going to have to choose how to live as neighbors—in other words, to choose between bitter words and mutual support. Our future? I don’t know. The threat of massacres hangs over the hills. But I still don’t believe in any curse.
Myself, in twenty years’ time, I hope to be a wife with a family that is very well provided for. Marriage is bound to be a bit awkward because of my papa. Who is going to take care of the dowry or walk with me arm in arm to the altar? I’ll be patient. It all depends on encounters one can’t predict. Still, I’m looking for a husband who offers love willingly, who doesn’t force, and who doesn’t prevent his wife from feeling modern: a man who is truly emancipated thanks to his understanding of the wider world, and more knowledgeable than farmers about new inventions. Catholic or Pentecostal, his religion makes no difference as long as he shows himself to be as heartfelt as other people in his beliefs. Anyway, a man who can tell good from evil, who won’t be tempted by the devil’s tricks. Also, a man who is well-to-do.
Could I marry a Tutsi boy? Being honest isn’t easy. Marriage demands a deep understanding between the two partners, and it means Hutu and Tutsi families living with what happened. In any case, personally, I want to sweep the past far away from my children’s innocent steps—no troubles to dampen their adolescent joy. I refuse to let them get tripped up by hurtful rumors. If I fall in love with a Tutsi boy, that would be fine with me. As things are, neither my mama nor my papa could possibly object. But how would the boy’s family react? They might complain, refuse to overcome the past, and give me dirty looks.
I definitely feel Hutu. Hutus feel uncomfortable with the name, but not me. People say that Hutus used to live together stalwart and proud before the genocide. They claimed to be the strongest. Now it’s the Tutsis’ turn to act that way. People say that Hutus used to farm the land as bold and skillful farmers while the taller Tutsis showed themselves especially shrewd in raising animals. Nowadays, “Hutu” and “Tutsi” are words that ring out “danger” to the ears; the terms have been banned in schools. But ethnicity was manipulated on all sides—yes, on all sides. We aren’t supposed to talk about ethnicity anymore, although no one is willing to give up their own. Can Hutus erase their Hutu misfortunes? Can Tutsis forget what they have had to endure because they are Tutsi? Future generations won’t forget a thing, in my opinion, however hard they try to put the past behind them. That’s why I’ve got nothing more to say on the subject. I call myself Rwandan, which is enough for me.
* * *
BASICALLY, in twenty years’ time, I would like to be living in Italy. I have heard that they live in peace and quiet, with no ethnicities or machetes. It’s a country with no greed and no religious wars, unlike everywhere else in the world. The Italians revere the pope, who watches over them with love from the balcony of Saint Peter’s. Good cheer infuses everything Italian—that would be a delight. Are the pizzas tasty? I don’t know. Anyway, I wouldn’t miss beans. If I’m lucky enough to find a good job there, I’ll get used to the way of life. They say that in Italy people outdo each other trying to be the most stylish.
FABRICE TUYISHIMIRE
TWENTY-TWO YEARS OLD
Son of Joseph-Désiré Bitero, Hutu prisoner
Twenty years from now, nothing will set me apart from others. I don’t know if people will forget about my father. Me, I’ll be a man like anyone else with no more worries than any of them. I’ll have a successful family. I would have no problem promising my love to a Tutsi girl as long as she doesn’t cut corners with the housework. Charm has nothing to do with family origins. If her parents expressed their disapproval, too bad for them. In any case, mine wouldn’t have a single angry word to say against our nuptials.
I don’t know yet about my profession. The family curse has put a school diploma out of reach. Now I want to get a license to drive a bus-taxi—or a truck, which is my preference. Unfortunately, the cost of the exam requires a small windfall. As I told you, I get by with odd jobs, but the money flows straight to the family. I haven’t put any under the mattress for the moment.
My hope is to be a long-distance truck driver. I dream of trips on asphalt roads that take me far away. Driving a truck would get me involved in the economic boom that has been transforming our country. I’d reap my little share of the profits. Twenty years from now, I don’t see myself rich the way I would have been without the misfortunes of the war, but I still see a man relatively well-to-do. That hope hasn’t left me. I cling to it come what may. I’ll live in Kanazi or Nyamata, or somewhere else if I earn more. I’ll drive long semi-trucks on routes all the way to Dar es Salaam or Mombasa. I’ll sleep with my bundle of things in the cab, I’ll bend my ear to the sounds of the engine, I’ll grease the U-joints. I’m fond of long-distance trucking. To Congo? Why not. I’m not afraid of returning to the Masisi, of transporting merchandise to Kisangani or all the way to the capital. I’m fond of Africa. We have a favorable climate without the ordeal of icy winters. On the internet, they show all kinds of cataclysms in the world. You see nuclear earthquakes in Japan, terrorism and the like. War is less of a threat in Africa. The land offers its riches for farming. It’s a gift for the inhabitants, even for people like me who turn to other things. Despite everything, we’re guided by an enviable fate.
* * *
WHEN WE WERE children, our mama would talk to us about our papa. She told us about our happy family before the war, how people appreciated him as a teacher, how his reputation spread throughout the district. She described the good life in Gatare. Does she lament the bad decisions? She doesn’t speak in that way. She doesn’t regret having stayed by my father’s side during the killings. She can’t imagine a wife in conflict with her husband. Whenever drought closes in, she takes to complaining about her lot. Sometimes her mind grows agitated, and she grumbles about Habyarimana’s machinations. Yet I have never heard her blame my father for getting involved. She feels the loneliness of a woman farming her parcel alone. She’s plagued by headaches, which sometimes force her to the clinic. She doesn’t hold Papa responsible. She repeats out loud that he never cut anyone with his blade.
If Papa is still in prison, it’s because he led the interahamwe in his van. But I still believe that the court went too far when it sentenced him to death. People say that reconciliation holds the future of the country in its hands. Twenty years in prison would have been fairer, then a pardon, like so many of his associates received, so that he could return to the love of his family. Would I like to say something about the charges against him? No, because I can’t know the truth without hearing it from him. How can a son swallow whole the words of those who accuse his father of raising his machete or firing his gun without listening to him first? My criticisms will have to wait for his explanations. I don’t go digging around in his past. Questioning neighbors or his old colleagues would be disrespectful. Only a father’s truth can convince the son. When someone has given you life, no one can harm him in your eyes as long as he is away.
When odd jobs earn me a little money, I rent a bicycle and I bring him news and hygiene products. Sometimes I take Fabiola or my mama along. It’s a forty-kilometer trip. Papa and I talk about family life, how things are going with all the difficulties in life. We count off the little brothers and sisters. He insists that we look over the schoolwork and scolds the ones who haven’t kept up. He encourages me to redouble my efforts. To find a well-paying job so that the family can live in a sturdier place than our earth-and-sheet-metal home. He shrugs if someone brings up the situation in Rwanda. He doesn’t mention his court case anymore. We exchange bits of news about acquaintances. He describes how he has
entrusted his fate to God, and he recommends that we put our trust wholeheartedly in Him, as he never fails to do each and every day. Sometimes we say nothing; we’re content simply looking at each other. There’s too much hubbub around us. Time presses.
If, by the grace of God, he’s freed, I’ll ask him questions. Maybe I’d explain to him that I’ve suffered the consequences of his past and that I’d like to know who the instigators of the killings were. How it was all planned out. Am I sure? No, it would all depend on how he is. Would I insist that he give me details? No, it might be repugnant to listen to. You get burned by touching certain wickedness. If he told me that he never killed, I’d accept his answer, because I don’t know a single neighbor who came forward with any proof of a murder that my father committed.
If my papa decided not to answer my questions, I would feel indignant inside. If he said that after having endured all these years in prison he no longer wanted to be mixed up in the past, I know it would disappoint me. I’m still eager to have certain truths. Would I contradict him? He’s the person I should venerate the most, after God. Can a son blame his father to the point of turning his back on him forever? When a child stands before his father, he feels too intimidated to sort out the good qualities from the bad, especially if that father has been held behind bars from the boy’s earliest years.
* * *
MY CHILDHOOD DIDN’T leave me carefree, like other children were. Anyway, my particular experiences have had only harmful consequences on my personality. I’m sure of it, I have gained nothing good from this, nothing to pass on to my descendants. I don’t know what kind of person I would have become. I would have gotten a school diploma. I would have been comfortable showing off among my friends. Bugesera FC would have handed me a jersey and cleats. I would have worn a smart gray suit to the wedding ceremonies that neighbors invited me to. Does being my father’s son now help me to choose a better path? Does it strengthen me to face the future? How could it possibly? There is nothing worth learning from this kind of experience. No, not a single useful lesson for the human spirit. Except for distrust and shame. Compared with ordinary children, I’ve come out of this without having gained a thing.
SANDRA ISIMBI
EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD
Daughter of Édith Uwanyiligira, Tutsi survivor
When I was a child, I was always happy to lend a hand with the housework. We never stopped singing in the courtyard. At night, we gathered around the table. Mama waited for each of us to describe our day. Then she asked us to correct what we hadn’t done right in the future and to seek forgiveness for those we had offended. She told us that we didn’t have to pray, but that we should do so whenever we liked, to give thanks to God, for example, for all that we had.
Myself, I like to pray early in the morning. Why? I don’t know. And at night in bed, to fall asleep like a little girl. Mama’s kindness has given me stability. I haven’t been plagued by disappointments or any terrible hardships. I have never felt the need for psychological support like so many other survivor children. As soon as Bertrand and I were big enough to head down the road to school, Mama began inviting all the little neighborhood children to play in our yard. They kept her entertained the whole day long and gave her comfort in her solitude. There was always a crowd of kids at our place.
Mama taught us to share everything. We were very, very joyful. If food was lacking, good cheer took its place. In the first years, we had no idea how much energy we demanded of her. It brought back her longing for Papa, who was no longer present, as he should have been, to add his strength to hers. But her will never wavered, and her mood was always bright. The children provoked her with the silly things they did, and she paid them back with laughter.
Everyone was fond of hearing her describe her childhood and her loving family, especially how alluring she was as a young girl. How, during vacations, her grandparents overflowed with the desire to spoil her. The celebrations for which she dolled herself up, the parties spent with girlfriends sharing embroidery, and all the tales that people told to please her. She recalled the innocent kisses with Papa, whom she had dearly loved since school, and their wedding as an elegant young bride and groom—and we laughed. We were glad to hear the joyful memories of a family the machetes hadn’t taken from us yet.
She talks about my papa in words of happiness, about his preferences, his manly quirks, his tall stature, his always-steady gestures, and his upright bearing, for which he was respected. I know that he showed himself to be strong and kind with his acquaintances. She doesn’t dwell on things; she recounts in passing. Occasionally, if we happen upon a soccer game, she describes how he played captain, for example, adding new details about his life, or their Sunday bike rides or walks in the forest. She doesn’t overdo it so as not to sharpen her regret.
I don’t know if the genocide has brought my mama and me closer. A genocide destroys everything, family ties included. Do survivor families have deeper bonds because of their shared experience? What bonds are there with those who are absent? A void divides the families who have suffered. The memory of the dead drives them apart. Each member feels lonelier than the next. At school, when I hear classmates describe vacations with their grandparents, it tears at my heart.
Grandchildren are only too happy to chat with their grandparents, who offer encouragement and kind advice. Grandparents tell tales from long ago, and they dote on you because you’re the delightful child they no longer have. At vacation time, I’m seized with sadness knowing that I have no family to welcome me elsewhere or to offer surprises to my eyes. Sometimes it’s the despair of not being able to play on my papa’s lap. The feeling doesn’t linger, though, because Mama chases it away. I have wanted for nothing that a mother can provide. She has understood me and given me all that I have needed. Mama is devout. She never gets angry without a reason, she doesn’t quarrel, and she spares no kindness toward visitors to her home. She lavishes advice on her children to help them solve their problems. Obviously, she can’t hide the obsessions of a survivor, but she puts on a very, very cheerful face. Laughter sweeps our family’s sadness away.
* * *
I AM TUTSI. My parents are Tutsi. I have inherited their ethnic understanding. They experienced Tutsi history starting with the pogroms of the 1960s. I belong to that history, and I’ll continue it whatever the authorities decide about ethnicities. I am both happy and unhappy about my ethnicity and I’ll explain why. It pains me because my people were hunted down like prey. My father was killed, my mother has suffered heartbreak and humiliation as a Tutsi. You take no pride in misfortunes unless you are the one giving chase. On the other hand, my ethnicity makes me glad because otherwise I’d have to be Hutu. I thank God that I didn’t inherit a wicked heart, a heart driving me to hunt Tutsis, to wade in mud past my knees, pushing me to seek their extermination. Being hunted is more humane than blackening your soul in the hunt.
I was born into a brutal life that children from peaceful countries will never know. How could my understanding of human nature be the same as theirs? In the past, ethnicities shared a carefree existence. Suspicion now lurks in everyone’s soul. Cutting down neighbors in front of their families is such an extraordinary act that it weighs on people’s minds forever. Such crimes are impossible to understand, so we keep on our guard. I don’t tremble in fear of being killed when I see Hutu neighbors; I’m not afraid of the machetes the farmers carry home from the fields. And yet I know that all the promises might not be kept. When people have lived in animal filth, the memory never leaves them. Neither the vicious hunters nor their victims are safe from the grudges that are quietly reemerging.
I see history as something chaotic because people tell it in different ways. One ethnicity chooses words that follow a straight line, the other zigzags. A Hutu papa can’t sit with his son to tell him about the people he carved up with his machete. He has every reason not to confess his actions, because the child would shudder at the thought of sleeping in the same home. Or the opposite woul
d happen: if the child is a boy, he would dream of imitating his papa out of a sense of pride, so that his papa would value and compliment him.
I plan on talking with my children without passing over any of the details of our fate. The barbaric incidents, too, if they ask me. You have to anticipate a child’s fear. You have to tell him about the past before he becomes suspicious of life. Not all survivors think so. Many shield their children from certain truths that they consider reprehensible—for example, surviving in place of a relative. They hope to prevent their children from telling their grandchildren. It’s a tricky business. If a child notices that too many things aren’t right around him, he is liable to go off sulking alone—if he has never met his grandmama, for example, or if he sees how sad his grandpapa is. If he notices sudden silences at family gatherings, he is liable to worry and behave badly. He might stop paying attention in class, neglect his chores, or smoke cannabis. To grow up feeling safe, you have to tell him. The worst thing for a child is hearing about his parents’ misfortunes or misdeeds from the neighbors’ lips. The child comes away distrustful, or disgusted. Suspicion breeds spite.
* * *
ILLNESS, THE DOCTORS SAY, was waiting for me at birth. Even still, I didn’t get the care I needed in time. That’s because of our dreadful existence during the killings, the frantic escape into the bush, and the miserable years that followed. I remember having terrible attacks when I was five years old. I had just started elementary school, and they kept at me through the end of every semester, meaning that I had to redo my first year. Mama put me in the care of traditional healers, but my illness fooled even them. We stood in line for visits at the clinic, and the doctors diagnosed the disease and prescribed nonstop medication. I was often hospitalized. I enrolled at a learning center whose classes worked better for me. I made it to high school with nothing worse than being a year behind.
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