A Thousand Sisters

by Lisa Shannon

  I follow the majors down a narrow winding path, between a few compounds lined with tropical-plant fences and around a couple of blind corners, then I get my first glimpse of the valley. Some long-buried belief comes into play, lulling me into a sense of security: Bad things happen only on cold and stormy nights with howling, ominous winds. Or in dead-of-Africa-night, during the silent hours that one might expect to be filled with panic and bloodshed.

  Bad things can’t possibly happen during the day—or in a place—like this. I look over the valley and see that Kaniola is nothing like I’ve pictured. “It’s so beautiful,” I say, stunned.

  Major Vikram concurs. “Too beautiful.”

  Yes, Major Vikram, it is too beautiful. These aren’t the small undulating hills of Rwanda, but broad, grand hills with room to breathe. Some are solid, saturated green; others are dotted with round, thatch-roofed mud huts or shaggy igloo-shaped straw huts that might be mistaken for haystacks. I see banana patches. Tidy, sweet rows of cabbages. Sunflowers. Water flowing in gentle streams. Voices of children drifting in the breeze. Birds, who apparently failed to read the memo titled Kaniola: Very, Very Dangerous Place, chirp away. The Kaniola valley is mythic-pretty.

  Major Kaycee points across a valley to the hills, or perhaps the mountains, just beyond. “That is the hamlet which was attacked. Maybe a twenty-minute walk.”

  If you were born here, you wouldn’t want to leave. In fact, I don’t know if I want to leave. I wonder what a little African compound on the cusp of Kaniola goes for these days. Do they have building codes? Would the village elders allow a permanent structure? Would they welcome a foreigner among them? We’d have to carry supplies in on this path to the far side of the valley, to those grass-covered hills, where I could have a compound all my own, perched on a tiny hilltop. I could grow old and someday say, “I had a farm in Africa . . .”

  “You see those forested areas, those small patches?” asks Major Vikram, gesturing at the ridgeline on the far side of the valley. “The Interahamwe is that side. It’s from those hills that Interahamwe come across and attack villagers.”

  Oh, right. Those Who Kill Together. Never mind.

  Yet it is still impossible to imagine anything bad happening on this quiet, lovely Sunday afternoon in this pristine African countryside. My tension drains away, the soft breeze and sun luring me into a familiar stillness that masquerades as calm. Like the stillness of a room after the respirator has been shut off. Or the calm that descends when you’re staring into the eyes of a sociopath and he doesn’t look crazy. Or the peace I was feeling on a sunny, early autumn morning in Manhattan, after my first summer with Ted, before he rushed up the stairs to our loft, steaming coffee and toasted bagels in hand, and burst in the door to announce that the World Trade Center was on fire. I had suited up for my daily run down the West Side Highway; I planned to run to my turn-around spot, the World Trade Center. But I was feeling lazy, and Ted had gone to pick up breakfast, so I blew off the run. We scrambled to our roof with a clear view of the North Tower’s gaping hole. My first thought spilled out, unfiltered: “That doesn’t look like a coffee pot fire.” Without commentary, without a newscaster framing the event’s significance, we didn’t know what was happening. An hour later, with naked eyes, I saw the North Tower fall. From two miles up the West Side Highway, it simply looked like a cloud of smoke. And then nothing.

  Major Vikram and I fill the space with loud chitchat, as though we’re hanging out at a local pub. We chat about Oprah. Debate the varieties of bananas that grow in North India. I pitch him a long-buried screenplay idea, about a man searching for his daughter, who disappeared in Major Vikram’s Himalayan home state.

  I talk about running. “I’m out of shape! I haven’t been able to run here.”

  Major Vikram asks innocently, “Why?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure it’s safe,” says the white girl going for a casual Sunday stroll next to Interahamwe territory.

  “Don’t worry about safety.”

  We both laugh. Don’t worry about safety.

  A woman passes us; she’s wearing a bright green African dress, with her hair done and full makeup. I look her in the eye, “Jambo, Habari!”

  She looks at me and nods, “Bonjour.”

  As we walk down this path into the valley, passing villagers, there is no “I’ve been touched by terror” evidence like I saw in Manhattan on September 11; I remember seeing a dazed bike messenger walking through Union Square, his dreadlocks caked in ash. Here, everyone looks clean and neat. We pass a tall guy, so thin, in a blazer that squares off his hollow frame. Then comes a slim older man in pressed, belted khakis, a blue oxford shirt, and lace-up dress shoes. Wait, isn’t that the uniform for the legislative aids who grab quick power lunches on Pennsylvania Avenue before heading back to a long afternoon on Capitol Hill?

  This is officially odd. What’s the deal with the well-groomed people of Kaniola? Then I remember: It’s Sunday. They’re dressed for church.

  Generose comes to mind. What is the first thing she said to her children after her home was attacked, burned to the ground, and her family assassinated in her front yard? Thank God. I’m alive.

  A group of young women sees us and steps to the edge of the path, doing their best to avoid us. Major Kaycee calls a command to Maurice. “Papa, ask them if they know about those incidents of the ladies kidnapped.”

  Maurice approaches them in his mild-mannered way and speaks in a soft voice. The major shouts from behind him, “Ask any of them!”

  Before Maurice can finish, the Major asks another local and calls out, “Okay! They are up there.”

  The girls watch suspiciously, as we continue up the path. Only months later, when I review the video, will I see that one of the girls we were looking for was among them—tense, trying to be inconspicuous, hoping her friends don’t rat her out.

  After hiking for a half hour we are in the middle of the valley. I am waiting for the majors outside a compound when I hear children’s voices whispering behind me. I look over my shoulder to discover six wide-eyed children, all in ratty, soiled clothing. I turn my camera on them and they inexplicably flinch and step back.

  I flip the viewfinder and call them back so I can show them their photo. They smile, shy but intrigued. “See what beautiful smiles you have,” I say. They giggle and cover their mouths, duck behind one another, and peek out to smile at themselves in the viewfinder.

  We enter the compound; a guarded older woman, around sixty, greets us. In New York or Paris, I’m sure her bone structure, cropped silver hair, and thin frame could win her a place as a catalog model. “This woman is their grandmother; we are going to her daughter’s house,” Major Kaycee says, then he turns to her and asks, “How far is it? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Are the girls there?”

  He is measuring the investment they’ve made already in what they thought would be a quick walk. I’m not sure any of us thought it would be this far, especially in the direction of the hills. No one knows if the girls are home. But questions of security aside, I don’t want to turn back.

  I pipe up, “We’ll walk. It’s okay.”

  We get directions and set out with the troop of children, who serve as our new guides, in tow. Major Vikram pulls the UN badge from his pocket and clips it to the front of his pants, on broad display. One of our newly adopted guides, a little boy, waddles and flops in a grown-up’s long-sleeve sweatshirt. Barefoot, he’s stepping in time with Major Kaycee, following him the way a child clings to his daddy’s leg in a crowd, moving as fast as he can, trying to stay in the thick of the manly men.

  Major Vikram turns and sizes him up. The UN translator stops the boy and tells him to go home, but the child is anxious to prove himself essential by showing us the way.

  As we round another bend, Major Vikram points back toward the road. “Can you see on that hilltop something, something, something?” It is a small collection of tents on the far side of the road, perhaps a mile from our hill, away from the forest.
He adds, “That is the mobile unit, the base for opposing security. For the protection of local people.”

  “How long has it been there?” I ask.

  “Two weeks.”

  “Do they patrol over here?”

  “No.”

  I miss the cue completely. Of course they don’t patrol here. They don’t patrol where the attacks happen most often because it’s too dangerous.

  A group of young girls clustered under a big, rainbow-colored umbrella, their ages ranging from five to ten, walks toward us on the path. Some have babies on their backs and each wears a Sunday-best dress with lace trim.

  They slow to a stop, trying to place the large African man in camouflage fatigues. The tallest among them takes her little sister’s hand and leads them off the trail, her eyes tracking the major and Major Vikram. I recognize that look. It’s the same frozen, nowhere-to-hide stare I saw on the streets of the West Village late on the morning of September 11, when a low-flying government plane passed by. Strangers stopped cold and stared into each other’s eyes, as though to ask, “Shouldn’t we duck and cover?”

  Major Vikram greets the girls as they pass us. They step off the trail, onto a patch of grass, poised to run. I approach them, which alerts them to my presence for the first time. They spot the camera and scatter, lugging the babies on their backs.

  It finally dawns on me. They think the camera is a gun. I flip the viewfinder over and call them in my cheeriest, most soothing babysitter voice. “It’s a camera! Do you want to see a picture of yourself ?”

  They approach cautiously, perhaps relieved, but too startled for quick smiles.

  They relax for a moment when they see themselves on the mini-viewfinder screen. I ask them, “Did you think it was a gun?” As the Swahili word “gun” crosses Maurice’s lips, their slow-growing smiles instantly drop. The children duck and run again. It’s not funny or cute. There will be no warming it up now, so I wave goodbye and move on.

  We hike toward the forest. Toward the Interahamwe. We wind our way up narrow paths on hillsides, and reach the top, only to recognize we have many more hills to go. I notice a hilltop church with a rusty corrugated metal roof. Banana leaves rustle in the wind. I do not notice the slow, creeping tension, or the cue from my UN escorts who ask, “Are you sure you want to go there?”

  A family spots us and ducks behind bushes, watching us suspiciously. Normally, Jambo means “Hello,” and is followed by the response Jambo sana, which means “Very hello.” Somewhere between the road and this ridgeline, the translation has changed. As I muster up my chirpiest voice, Jambo now means “Relax! We’re not here to kill you!”

  As they pause, slowly stand up to check us out, even smile, and call back, “Jambo sana!” now means “Thank God!” Make that “Very thank God!”

  We are much closer to the forest now. It creeps down the hills. Trees are now distinguishable in detail as we follow the last ridgeline running along this valley.

  We pass a villager who stands to the side of the path with a haunting look. In an ash-gray sports jacket and pants, he stands with his arms at his side, watching, like an intern standing at attention in a concentration camp.

  On a nearby path, two girls, both maybe six years old, with shaved heads and ragged little oversize frocks, see the camera and drop to the ground. One of them makes a run for it, her little body tearing down the hill for safety. Where did she learn this routine? She slows down, hides behind bananas, looks back to check on her friend. She sees the camera pointed at her. Terrified, she disappears. Her friend runs after her at top barefoot speed.

  On the other side of the hill, a woman minds her fields. Hers may be the first angry face I’ve seen here; she is seriously annoyed that the camera is pointed at her. She puts down her hoe, stands up, and glares, as if to say, “What the hell are you looking at?”

  “Is that it there? Is that where we are going?” I ask, pointing to a cluster of round mud huts with cone tops, and cabbage patches perched on top of a small hill butted right up to forest. The Forest, that is. I’m trying to sound casual as I ask Maurice again, “So, this is the spot?”

  Major Vikram and Major Kaycee are equally disoriented, squabbling with each other and the translator. “No, no, no. . . .”

  “Are we going this way or that way?”

  “It must be up there, beyond those bushes. . . .”

  We’ve been hiking for an hour and something has turned. Suddenly, we all know we’ve gone too far and are tempting fate. We’re all thinking it must be just beyond the next corner. Even the idle talk with Major Vikram fades. My attempts at small talk fall flat. Major Vikram has other things on his mind, and making fun of myself for being out of shape, or my banal talk of the benefits of exercise, seems far less funny than it did an hour ago. Conversation circles around variations of “Oh my God, it’s so close.”

  “It’s no wonder they’ve had problems if they live that close.”

  “It’s so near to the jungle.”

  “Yeah. Really near.”

  “You see, Lisa, if they are coming from this place. . . .”

  “Anyone can come. . . .”

  “It’s so close.”

  I hear children playing. In the distance, in an open field at the top of the hill, a group of boys are playing soccer next to a wooden shack that looks like it’s about to fall over. They see us and stop, stand at attention, and stare. A young man, maybe twenty, in an African-print, oxford-style shirt and baseball cap approaches and talks with the major. He is the girls’ brother.

  Major Vikram points to the compound, now in view. “Do you see that prominent V of the hills and sky? They live just there. This is the house.”

  The translator points back towards the main road and village. “He says all of the girls are back there at church.”

  “What do we do?” Major Kaycee asks me, then adds, “I think we go to see the sisters in the church. That’s plenty.”

  It’s not plenty for me.

  If there is a point where numbness becomes dangerous, when lack of emotion trickles into lack of logic—a point when you leave your hand on a burning stove—then we have officially entered that terrain. I have been relying on the majors to pull the parachute string and tell me when we had crossed into the too dangerous zone. But the last thing any UN major wants is to be proven cowardly in front of a young woman. Who has a camera. They did not account for my tear-my-life-to-shreds impulsiveness. Nor did I. We have no business being here. But since we’ve come all this way. . . .

  We finally reach our destination: the very last hut in the very last hamlet before Interahamwe territory. We enter the spotless compound—it’s the kind of third world clean that comes from having nothing, the lack of garbage or clutter perhaps due to the fact anything of value has long since been taken. Major Kaycee takes careful notes on his official UN pad, as Maurice translates the girls’ brother’s account of what happened that night.

  “It was Wednesday night when the Interahamwe came from the mountains. They woke us. There were six of them; three stayed with me and my wife and three others went to the next house. They took three hens, three goats, maize flour, and my two sisters. My arm was hurt with their gun, but I escaped and ran to inform the neighbors and nearby soldiers.

  “The soldiers immediately came here and fired only one bullet, but the Rastas [yet another Congolese militia] escaped. More soldiers came and we followed them into the forest, up the mountain. We tracked them to where we guessed they were keeping the women, in the Rasta camp. They were speaking in Rwandan.”

  This strikes me as odd. Why were the Rasta speaking Rwandan?

  “We spotted my sisters. We commanded them to get behind us. Then we saw the other girl. Immediately there was the intervention of the Interahamwe. There was exchange of bullets.”

  Exchange of bullets. What a lovely understatement for “it erupted into full-on gun battle.”

  “After some minutes exchanging bullets, the Interahamwe ran away. The soldiers took th
e three women, maize flour, and goats. We ran all the way back home.”

  “How long were they with the militia?” I ask.

  “Twelve hours.”

  I look around the compound, noting an empty metal feeding trough but no animals. I hear Major Kaycee ask Maurice, “How did you know they were Rasta, not Interahamwe?”

  I circle back around. “Yeah, that’s a good question.”

  “Because they were speaking in Rwandan and they are taller than Congolese,” Maurice translates.

  In unison, both majors and I say, “They were Interahamwe.”

  Maurice retreats; he’s been caught. Purposely mistranslating? Major Kaycee invites his translator to step in. Maurice looks me in the eye, knowing he’s been called out for his blatant editorializing. It’s the first moment in five and half weeks I’ve been angry with him. The brother continues, “Even the soldiers we were with said it was FDLR, not Rasta.”

  I wander around the compound and enter the simple straw hut; inside, a fire pit is lined with logs. Straw is strewn around for comfort.

  Outside again, a sweet-faced child stands in front of me, smiling with warm eyes, leaning against the fence, wearing flaming red. The hills are just beyond her. So here it is, the mythical “forest.” A two-minute walk away.

  I scan the trees, wondering if I could throw a stone or spit a cherry that far. Who might be staring back at me? Does my pale skin stand out, bright like a traffic light, against the lush, green landscape? If they see me here, what might it cost this family? Does the Interahamwe operate using the simple equations that rule life in the Bukavu slums: Muzungu = Money = Attack?

  I rejoin the others, trying to encourage the brother. “Tell him he is a hero!”

  The brother is still, with his arms folded, casting his eyes to the ground. He nods, allowing a slight smile of acknowledgement to leak out. He bites his lip with embarrassment.

  After the long trek back to the road accompanied by the girls’ brother, we load into our respective SUVs and drive up the road to park outside what in Africa qualifies as a mega-church. The one institution left standing, it is maybe three stories high and marks the center of Kaniola. We wait a long time for the brother to haul his sisters out of the service. Finally, as church is letting out, the brother runs back out to the car. The girls are embarrassed and don’t want to attract attention to themselves. It hadn’t occurred to me they would not want to be seen, in front of the whole village, being picked up after church by vehicles boldly marked UN. This would, effectively, mark them as “Raped Women.”