by Gaël Faye
Maman returned from Rwanda on the day term started again. It was just after a lockdown. The route to school was littered with burned-out cars, blocks of stone obstructing our way, and melted tires, some of which were still steaming. Whenever there was a body by the side of the road, Papa ordered us not to look.
The principal of our school, accompanied by gendarmes from the French embassy, assembled everyone in the main playground to update us on the new security measures. The bougainvillea bushes surrounding the school had been replaced with a high brick wall to keep out the stray bullets, which sometimes lodged themselves in the classrooms.
A sense of intense anxiety descended on the city. The grown-ups were afraid that new dangers were just around the corner. They worried the situation would deteriorate, just as it had in Rwanda. And so, increasingly, we barricaded ourselves in, as the season of violence led to a boom in metal fencing, guards, alarms, barriers, security metal detectors, and barbed wire: all the reassuring paraphernalia to persuade us we could push back the violence, keep it at bay. We were living in a limbo that was neither peace nor war. The values we had grown up with no longer held sway. Feeling unsafe was as commonplace as hunger, thirst, or heat. Blood and fury rubbed shoulders with our everyday actions.
One day, during rush hour, I witnessed the lynching of a man in front of the central post office. Papa was in the car, having sent me to collect the mail from our PO box. I was keeping my fingers crossed for some news from Laure. Just then, three young guys walked in front of me and suddenly attacked a man, for no apparent reason. They stoned him. Two police officers watched the scene without moving from their corner of the street. Passersby paused for a moment, taking advantage of the free entertainment. One of the three attackers went to fetch a huge block of stone from under a frangipani, where the cigarette and chewing-gum sellers usually sat. Just as the victim was struggling to his feet, the boulder came crashing down on his head. His body crumpled onto the tarmac. His chest rose three times under his shirt, in rapid succession. He was searching for air. Then nothing. The attackers left, as calmly as they had arrived, and the passersby went on their way, avoiding the corpse much as they might have walked around a traffic cone. The entire city was bustling, going about its business, shopping and continuing with its daily grind. Traffic was heavy, minibuses blasted their horns, street vendors touted bags of water and peanuts, there were sweethearts hoping to find love letters in their PO boxes, a child bought white roses for his sick mother, a woman sold tins of tomato concentrate, a teenager emerged from the barber’s with the latest style and, for some time now, men had been able to kill other men with absolute impunity, under the same midday sun as before.
* * *
—
We were sitting around our table when Jacques’s car pulled up at the house. Maman stepped out of the Range Rover. It had been two months since we’d last had any news from her. She was unrecognizable. Emaciated. A pagne was crudely tied around her waist, a brownish shirt swamped her upper body and her bare feet were coated in filth. She was no longer the young, elegant, sophisticated city-dweller that we knew: she looked like a mud-caked peasant returning from her field of beans. Ana bounded down the steps and threw herself into her arms, but Maman was so unsteady she nearly keeled over backward.
I saw how gaunt she had become, there were dark rings around her yellowed eyes and her skin was withered. Her open shirt collar revealed discolored patches on her body. She had grown old.
“I found Yvonne in Bukavu,” said Jacques. “I was on my way to Buja and I came across her by chance, on the outskirts of the city.”
Jacques didn’t dare look at Maman. It was as if she disgusted him. He kept on talking to offload his sense of embarrassment, while pouring himself glass after glass of whiskey. The heat was causing large drops of sweat to form on his brow. He mopped his face repeatedly with a thick handkerchief.
“Bukavu is a goddamn shambles at the best of times, but you wouldn’t believe your eyes now, Michel, it’s beyond the unthinkable. A human dumping ground. Market stalls of misery every square centimeter. A hundred thousand refugees in the streets. Total gridlock. Not a scrap of pavement left. And the flow of human traffic continues, they arrive in their thousands every day. It’s a mass exodus. Rwanda is bleeding into us: two million women, children, old people, goats, and Interahamwe, and then, alongside those Hutu paramilitaries, come the officers of the former Rwandan army, as well as ministers, bankers, priests, cripples, the innocent, the guilty, and I’m leaving plenty out here…There’s everything humanity has to offer, from ordinary people to the big bastards. They’ve left behind scavenging dogs, amputated cows, and a million dead on the hillside, to come to our country and help themselves to famine and cholera. You’ve got to wonder how the Kivu region will get back on its feet after this God-awful fuck-up!”
Prothé was serving Maman beef with potato purée, when Ana asked the question that had been troubling all of us:
“Did you find Auntie Eusébie and the cousins?”
Maman shook her head. We were waiting for her answer, but she said nothing. I wanted to ask the same question about Pacifique, but Papa signaled to me to wait a while. Maman chewed her food slowly, like a sick old man. With weary movements, she picked up her glass of water and took small sips. She kneaded the soft part of the bread and rolled it into tiny balls, which she placed methodically in front of her plate. She didn’t look at us, she was concentrating on the food. When she belched noisily, we all stopped to stare at her, even Prothé, who was beginning to clear the table. She carried on as if nothing had happened, taking another sip of water and then swallowing a morsel of bread. This behavior, this demeanor…it couldn’t be her…Papa wanted to make some kind of contact, but didn’t know how to without rushing her. In the end, Maman spoke of her own accord, in a slow, calm voice, the way she used to tell me stories to lull me to sleep when I was a little boy:
“I reached Kigali on the fifth of July. The city had just been liberated by the RPF. All along the road, a never-ending line of corpses littered the ground. I could hear sporadic gunfire. The RPF soldiers were killing hordes of dogs that had been feeding on human flesh for three months. Survivors with dazed eyes roamed the streets. I arrived in front of Aunt Eusébie’s gate. It was open. When I stepped onto her land, I wanted to turn back because of the smell. Somehow, I found the courage to go on. In the living room there were three children on the floor. I came across the fourth body, Christian, in the hallway. I recognized him from the Cameroonian football shirt he was wearing. I searched everywhere for Aunt Eusébie. No sign. And nobody could help me. I was alone. I had to bury the children in the garden by myself. I stayed in that house for a week. I kept thinking that Aunt Eusébie would come home eventually. When she still didn’t return, I decided to set off in search of Pacifique. I knew that his first instinct would be to go to Gitarama to find Jeanne. I reached her house to discover that it had been looted, but there was no sign of Jeanne or her family. The next day, an RPF soldier informed me that Pacifique was in prison. They wouldn’t let me see him when I arrived there. I went back for three consecutive days. On the morning of the fourth day, one of the wardens led me behind the prison, to a football pitch, on the edge of a banana plantation. Some RPF soldiers were keeping guard. Pacifique was sprawled on the grass. He had just been shot. The warden told me how, when he’d got to Gitarama, Pacifique had discovered that his entire family-in-law, together with his wife, had been murdered in their backyard. Some Tutsi neighbors, who had escaped the massacre, accused a group of Hutus, still in town, of committing the crime. Pacifique found them in the main square. One of the men in the group was wearing Jeanne’s father’s hat. A woman wore the flowery dress Pacifique had given Jeanne for their engagement. My brother felt himself come undone. He emptied his gun into those four people. He was immediately court-martialed and condemned to death. When I tracked down Mamie and Rosalie in Butare, I lied to them. I said that Pacifique had falle
n in battle, for the country, for us, for our return. They could never have accepted the idea that he had been killed by his own. An acquaintance, who had made her way back from Zaire, told us she thought she’d spotted Aunt Eusébie in a camp, toward Bukavu. So I took to the road again and spent a month trying to find her. I kept walking, farther and farther. I wandered into refugee camps. I was nearly killed dozens of times when they guessed that I was Tutsi. By some miracle, Jacques recognized me by the roadside, when I had lost all hope of finding Aunt Eusébie.”
Maman fell quiet. Papa’s eyes were closed, his head flung backward, and Ana was sobbing in his arms.
“Africa, what a waste!” cursed Jacques, pouring himself another stiff glass of whiskey.
I ran to shut myself in my bedroom.
25
I had a chigoe flea in the sole of my foot, from walking outside without shoes. Prothé brought over a small stool and rested my heel on it, while Donatien used a lighter to burn the end of a needle.
“You’re not going to cry, are you, Gaby?” asked Donatien.
“Oh no, Monsieur Gabriel is a man, now!” Prothé teased kind-heartedly.
“Be gentle, Donatien!” I yelped, as Papa’s foreman approached with the glowing red needle.
He removed the larva at the first go. The pain was bad, but bearable.
“Will you look at the size of this grub? I’m going to disinfect the wound and, after that, you must promise me not to walk around barefoot anymore. Not even in the house!”
Donatien dabbed my foot with antiseptic and Prothé checked that I didn’t have any more parasites. I watched these two men taking care of me as tenderly as if they were my mother. The war was ravaging their neighborhood, but they came to work almost every day and their fear and dread never showed.
“Is it true that the army has killed people where you live, in Kamenge?” I asked.
Donatien lowered my foot carefully onto the stool. Prothé came over to sit next to him, folding his arms as he watched the black kites circling in the sky.
“Yes, that is what’s happening,” Donatien began, sounding tired. “Kamenge is the seat of all the violence in this city. Every night, we go to sleep on burning embers and we see flames rising above the country, flames so high they mask the stars we loved to gaze on. And when morning comes, we’re surprised to find that we’re still here, that we can hear the cockerel crowing and see the light on the hills. I wasn’t a fully-grown man when I left the Zaire of my parents and fled our wretched village. I found a corner of paradise in Bujumbura, the city that became my own. I lived my best years in Kamenge, without realizing it, because I was always thinking about the next day, hoping that tomorrow would be better than yesterday. Happiness is something you only see in the rear-view mirror. The next day? Look at it. Here it is. Slaughtering hope, making the horizon futile, crushing dreams. I prayed for us, Gaby, I prayed as often as I could. The more I prayed, the more God abandoned us, and the more faith I had in his strength. God makes us undergo these ordeals so we can prove to him that we don’t doubt him. It’s as if he’s telling us that great love relies on trust. We shouldn’t doubt the beauty of things, not even under a torturing sky. If you aren’t surprised by the cockerel’s crow or the light above the mountain ridge, if you don’t believe in the goodness of your soul, then you’re not striving anymore, and it’s as if you were already dead.”
“Tomorrow, the sun will rise and we shall try again,” Prothé concluded.
All three of us fell silent, lost in our somber thoughts, at which point Gino appeared.
“Gaby, get over here! There’s something I have to show you.”
My best friend was agitated. He pulled me off my stool and started running ahead of me. I hobbled along behind him, no questions asked. I made my way up our street as fast as I could, arriving at his house completely out of breath. Francis and Armand were sitting at the kitchen table. Gino walked over to the fridge. From the living room, we could hear the clickety-clack of his father’s typewriter.
“Right, now you’ve got to open the freezer,” Gino told us, looking at Armand and me.
Francis was clearly in on the game: his knowing glance to Gino made me fear the worst. Armand tugged on the freezer handle. Not realizing what it was at first, I picked up one of two objects.
“Shit! A grenade!”
I immediately put it down again, closing the door and retreating to the back of the room.
“Guess how much we got both grenades for?” said Gino, too excited to wait for our answer. “Five thousand! Francis knew the guy from ‘The Invincibles.’ He explained that we were taking care of Kinanira, and he cut us a deal. Normally, it’s twice as expensive.”
“Holy shit, Gino, you’ve got fucking grenades in your fridge!” said Armand. “Are you out of your mind?”
“What’s your problem?” asked Francis, seizing him by the collar.
“You lot are insane!” Armand panicked. “You’ve gone and bought grenades, you’re storing them next to a fillet of frozen beef, and you’re asking me if I’ve got a problem?”
“Shut it, Armand, my father might hear us. Let’s go to the hideout.”
Gino took the grenades out of the freezer, stuffed them into a plastic bag, and we trooped off to the Combi. Once we were inside the wreck, Francis removed both explosives from the bag, to hide them in the storage space under the rear banquette. When I lifted up the seat, I spotted a telescope.
“What’s that doing here?” I asked him.
“I’ve got a buyer. With the money we make on this, we’ll be able to save up for a Kalashnikov. You can get them second-hand from Jabe market.”
“A Kalashnikov?” said Armand. “Why not an Iranian atomic bomb, while we’re at it?”
“I recognize that telescope, it belongs to Madame Economopoulos. Did you steal it from her?”
“Don’t give us grief, Gaby,” said Francis. “Nobody gives a shit about that old cow. She won’t even notice it’s missing, with all that junk she’s got piled up at her place.”
“You have to give it back to her straightaway!” I said. “She’s a friend, and I don’t want you stealing from her.”
“Spare us the guilt trip,” said Gino. “You were happy enough to steal mangoes from her garden and then sell them back to her. You conned the Greek lady, too.”
“That was before! And anyway, it’s not the same with mangoes…”
I tried to grab hold of the telescope, but Gino pushed me backward. When I lunged for him again, Francis caught me from behind and got me in a hammerlock.
“Let me go! I don’t want to hang out with you guys anymore. What’s happened to you, Gino? I don’t recognize you these days. D’you have any idea what you’re doing? Or what you’re turning into?”
My voice was trembling and I was crying with anger.
“Gaby, this is war,” said Gino, sounding exasperated. “We’re protecting our street, because if we don’t, they’ll kill us. When are you going to understand? What world are you living in?”
“We’re just a bunch of kids. Nobody’s asking us to fight, or steal, or have enemies.”
“Our enemies are already here. They’re called the Hutu and those savages won’t think twice about killing a bunch of kids. Look what they did to your cousins, in Rwanda. We’re not safe. We’ve got to learn how to defend ourselves and fight back. What are you going to do when they enter our street? Offer them mangoes?”
“I’m neither Hutu nor Tutsi,” I replied. “Those are not my stories. You’re my friends because I love you, not because you’re from one ethnic group or another. I don’t want anything to do with all that!”
While we were arguing, far off, up in the hills, we could hear the AMX-10 tanks firing. Over time, I had learned to recognize their notes in the musical stave of war that surrounded us. There were evenings when the noise of weapons b
lended into the birdsong or the call of the muezzin, and I found such beauty in this peculiar soundscape that I forgot myself entirely.
26
Maman had been living with us since her return. She slept in our bedroom, on a mattress at the foot of my bed, and spent her days on the covered terrace with a faraway look in her eyes. She didn’t want to see anybody and wasn’t strong enough to go back to work. Papa said she needed time to recover from everything she’d been through.
She rose late. We heard the water running in the bathroom for hours. Then she would make her way over to the sofa on the barza and sit there, motionless, staring at a nest of potter wasps in the ceiling. If one of us passed by, she would ask for a beer, but she refused to eat meals with us. Ana would prepare her a plate, which she placed on a stool in front of her. Maman didn’t eat, she picked at her food. Come nightfall, she remained on the terrace, alone in the dark. She went to bed late, after we had already been asleep for some time. I learned to accept her condition when I stopped searching for the mother I had known before. Genocide is an oil slick: those who don’t drown in it are polluted for life.
Sometimes, arriving back from Madame Economopoulos’s house with a pile of books under my arm, I would sit next to Maman and read to her. I tried to find stories that weren’t too cheerful, so as not to remind her of the good life we had lost, but I didn’t want them to be too sad, either, and risk stirring up her grief, that swamp of unspeakable things festering inside her. When I closed my book, she would glance absently in my direction. I had become a stranger to her, and I would flee the terrace, terrified by the emptiness in her eyes.
Late one night, as she was coming into our bedroom, she banged her foot against a chair and I woke up. I saw her shadow staggering in the dark. She was groping her way toward Ana’s side of the room. Once she was by my sister’s bedside, she leaned over and whispered: “Ana?”