An Ordinary Man

by Paul Rusesabagina

  “I have been asked to evacuate the hotel, ” I told him.

  “The plan has been changed and this is why I’m here, ” he said.

  I knew then that one of my phone calls had worked. This colonel had been sent over to help me. I told him that the order had been given by a lieutenant and that it was a very bad order that could have terrible repercussions for the Rwandan government. There would be killing outside that would shock the conscience of the world community.

  The short colonel nodded, with an unfocused look in his eyes, and said that he would take care of the situation. I found out later that he had been sent over by the chief of the police, General Ndindiliyimana. His rank carried the day. The militia and the soldiers were immediately dispersed and the evacuation order was called off. The lieutenant, who I later learned was the nephew of a top génocidaire, had stolen away.

  I thanked the colonel profusely.

  “Sir, you have saved lives today, ” I told him.

  “I am only doing my job, ” he told me curtly, and walked away.

  I knew this peace was fragile, and so I decided to switch from ass kissing to bluster. What I was about to try was a serious risk, but I saw it as the only way to insure that an invasion could be prevented for at least the next few days. I paced around for a few minutes, took a deep breath, and then telephoned the Diplomates Hotel and asked for Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, one of the leaders of the genocide, who was staying in Room 205.

  “Colonel, ” I said in my most officious voice, “I am sorry to disturb you. I have received an order from the Ministry of Defense to close down the Mille Collines, and as the general manager of all Sabena properties in Rwanda, I must therefore also close the Diplomates.”

  I could practically hear his veins bulging on the other end of the phone.

  “Who has given such orders?!” he screamed at me.

  “I do not know; they were relayed through a lieutenant. He said his name was Mageza.”

  “If you try to close this hotel, we will break down the doors to get back inside.”

  “If you want, you can do that, but it is my duty and obligation to close down all the Sabena hotels in Rwanda, ” I told him. “I didn’t want to take you by surprise. I only want you to have enough time to pack your things.”

  He was silent for a minute.

  “Well, that order has now changed.”

  This is what I was waiting to hear. But I decided to press my advantage even further. Sometimes, when you have a man temporarily on the ropes, it is better to secure all the concessions you can. I tried to forget I was talking to a man who could have squashed me like a bug. We had known each other slightly before the genocide, but we had little in common, and there was no pretense of either of us doing any favors. I think he must have been afraid of the French. I felt very much like a small boy whacking a vicious dog with a stick-and getting away with it.

  “Colonel, we can come to a compromise, ” I told him, as if I was the one who had the power to dictate terms. “I will not close the Diplomates. But I need water over here. Can you please send us back the water truck you took away from the Mille Collines?”

  “Yes, yes, ” he said impatiently.

  “There is another thing, ” I told him. “There are a group of people staying in the manager’s house of the Diplomates. They are valuable employees. We need them over here. Can you please see that they arrive at the Mille Collines safely?”

  I think this was the first he knew that there even was a manager’s cottage, let alone that a group of my neighbors had been staying there this whole time, right under the noses of the génocidaires. They had been kept fed by a courageous bellboy.

  Bagosora didn’t waste any more time. “Yes, fine, good-bye, ” he said, and hung up.

  Within the hour a red Toyota pickup pulled up to the Mille Collines. Inside were the neighbors I had not seen since the day their lives were purchased with francs from the hotel safe. A truck also arrived to refill our swimming pool and we had fresh water to drink for the first time in weeks. It was courtesy of one of the vilest proponents of genocide that Central Africa has ever seen. Somewhere I could hear my father laughing.

  NINE

  ONE OF THE MOST HONEST CONVERSATIONS I had during the genocide happened near the end of it.

  General Augustin Bizimungu, the Army chief of staff, came to see me in my room. It was one of the few times in those few months that I didn’t need anything from him. Neither did he want anything from me. And we drank and talked for several hours.

  He looked awful. There were folds of darkened skin hanging under his eyes. He seemed to have aged twenty years since the time before the killing started. We talked about the rebel army advancing from the east. They had been making slow but steady progress toward Kigali aiming to link up with their detachment dug in at the parliament building. RPF leader Paul Kagame had fewer troops but while in exile he had instilled an impressive level of discipline and commitment into his army. Not for nothing was the international press calling him “the Napoleon of Africa.”

  There was now some talk of a swap between the warring armies: The rebels would release the Hutu refugees in Amahoro Stadium if the Rwandan Army would let the people inside the hotel go over to the rebel side. These discussions filled me with hope, but they also terrified me. Getting free from the constant threat of slaughter seemed like a kind of heaven, but to label the hotel as a rebel prize seemed incredibly dangerous. I was afraid it would only boost our attractiveness as a target for the doped-up militias, who were a law unto themselves and followed the orders of the Army only when they felt like it. Bizimungu slumped in his chair as we talked, his drink barely touched beside him.

  “Listen, general, ” I finally said. “You are now the leader of a bunch of killers and looters and rapists. Are you sure you can win?”

  His reply astonished me.

  “Paul, I am a soldier, ” he said. “We lost this war a long time ago.”

  Perhaps he had an inkling of what would be in store for him: a human rights tribunal and lifetime imprisonment in a jail cell. Or perhaps he had grown tired of all the murders around him. I am not certain what he was thinking then, but I saw that he could no longer hide the aura of defeat around him and his soldiers. I also knew that we were drawing near to the end of the war.

  The restoration of a sane world was something I had dreamed about. I would likely die in the transition from chaos back to order, but at least it would all be over.

  On May 3, the United Nations attempted to evacuate the Hotel Mille Collines.

  The Army and the rebels had struck a deal: A few dozen refugees from the stadium would be swapped for an equal number of refugees from the hotel. They would be taken to the airport and whisked out of the country.

  There was a terrible catch for us, though. Only those refugees who could secure invitations from people living abroad would be allowed to leave the hotel. This seemed very unfair to me. As a practical matter those people most likely to have overseas contacts were the rich and the powerful. The Tutsi and moderate Hutu peasants we had with us had virtually no chance of leaving. But these were the conditions that had been negotiated by the armies and I was in no position to argue. This rule, I think, came from the African love of bureaucracy and process. Even in the best of times there were many senseless permissions that had to be acquired to get anything done, and this culture of paperwork did not change even during the genocide. By that point, however, my friends and I had become specialists in the art of forgery, and we created fake letters for a number of those who had no overseas friends.

  This put me in an awkward position, for I happened to be one of those privileged few who could legitimately arrange for transport out of the country for me and my family. Out. There seemed to be no more seductive concept: out of this phantasmagoria of knives and blood, out of the dark rooms that smelled like feces and sweat, out of this entire pointless conflict and the idiotic life-or-death ethnic definitions and away from the power-drunk fool
s with their empty smiles and machetes and into a safe place of clean sheets and air-conditioning and warm baths and no worry about anything at all that mattered. Out.

  I could have it. I could have it tomorrow.

  But I could not. I really could not. I knew that if I took this opportunity to leave I would be removing one of the only remaining barriers in between the militias and the guests. Nobody here would be left to present themselves-however flimsily-as a middleman standing in between the killers and the refugees. Nobody else had those years of favors and free drinks to cash in. I could donate my black binder to somebody else, but it would be useless to them. If I left and people were killed I would never be at peace. My food would never taste good again; I could never enjoy my freedom. It would be as though I had killed those people myself. The refugees had even come to me and said, “Listen, Paul. We are told you are leaving tomorrow. Please let us know so that we can go to the roof of the hotel and jump because we cannot bear to be tortured with machetes.”

  But one thing I did for myself: I used my contacts with the Sabena Corporation to secure invitations out for my whole family. I was not so courageous a man that I could bear to see my family in danger any longer. I sincerely hoped that I would not be depriving anybody more needy through this action, but it was what I felt was the best choice under terrible circumstances. If I saw my wife or children murdered when I knew I once had the chance to see them to safety my life would be ruined. This was the most painful decision I have ever made in my life. I had decided to stay and face whatever would come.

  Beyond this I had no control over who would be staying or leaving. This was a profound relief, because I did not want to have that decision over life or possible death. On May 2, I, with the refugee committee, presented a list to the United Nations soldiers of all those refugees who had obtained invitations via my fax telephone. Handing over that list made me extremely uncomfortable. To begin with, the whole idea of lists now had an evil connotation in Rwanda. We suspected that by handing over such a list, we would be informing the militias who was leaving and who was staying. This could have put their lives in danger. But I had no choice but to deliver the required list. All I could do was hope that the UN would not let it leak to the killers.

  Around midnight, I found my wife and children awake in our room. I previously had not had the courage to tell them I would not be going with them in the evacuation, but the time had arrived. I pretended my children were asleep and not listening and I told my wife, “I had made a different decision. I am remaining with the refugees. You are leaving.”

  Everyone then raised their voices and talked as if they were one person.

  “What about you? You keep talking about us.”

  “Listen. I am the only person here who can negotiate with these killers outside.”

  “But how can you stay?”

  “If people inside this hotel are killed, I will never be able to sleep again. I’ll be a prisoner of my own conscience.

  “Please, ” I told them. “Please accept and go.”

  The next day, at approximately 5:30 P. M., I saw my wife and children off at the roundabout in front of the hotel. They and the other fortunate guests were loaded into UN trucks while I watched from under the canopy near the door. I even helped them climb inside. I tried to be almost casual about it, telling them I would see them soon, as if they were off to the grocery store, but inside my heart was breaking. I said nothing special, nothing climactic, because that would have upset everybody, me most of all. I watched the first truck go by, and then the second. In Rwandan culture it is never acceptable for a man to cry, but I came very close that evening. I made it through those awful minutes the same way I made it through the entire genocide: by losing myself in the details of work.

  I was then forty years old. Everything I had in life was pulling away in those trucks, and it was my decision to stay and face probable execution. I knew that I was taking all the responsibility now. That gave me a little peace.

  Out in the front courtyard, many people had their transistor radios turned on RTLM, and I heard the names of my wife and children being read aloud, along with the other refugees who had just pulled away. “The cockroaches are escaping, ” said the announcer. “Stop all the cockroaches from leaving the Mille Collines. Put up roadblocks. Do your work. Do not leave the grave half full.”

  The list had leaked. Somebody from the hate radio had apparently stolen it or bought it from the United Nations or the Rwandan Army. I even saw a correspondent from RTLM standing in the parking lot.

  There are no good words to describe what it is like to hear an execution order broadcast for your own family, and to know that you played a role in putting them in death’s hands. Their beautiful names-Tatiana, Tresor, Roger, Lys, Diane-were a profanity in that announcer’s mouth. I felt as if he was raping them with his voice. I hated him, hated RTLM, hated the genocidal power brokers, hated the stench of the hotel, hated the dank hallways, and hated the pride I once had in my country and my job. I hated that I was utterly powerless to save my family. I wanted to follow the jeeps in my own car, but the roadblocks would surely catch me alone and I would die like the other eight hundred thousand. All I could do was frantically work the phones.

  When she was able to speak again Tatiana told me what happened.

  The first convoy of sixty-three refugees was escorted by eight soldiers wearing the blue helmets of the UN. They were stopped at a roadblock two kilometers away from the hotel, at a place called Cyimicanga, where some men from the Interahamwe were standing alongside a few observers from the Rwandan Army. All the evacuees in the trucks were ordered out onto the roadside dirt. The street boys at the barricades had been given Kalashnikovs, and one of them fired an opening shot into the dirt near the feet of a refugee named Immaculate. It also happened to come perilously close to a soldier. A second shot struck and killed a member of the Presidential Guard.

  “They are going to kill us!” somebody screamed, and that caused the militia to get even angrier. They used their rifle butts to start beating the refugees. Men were slugged in the gut, women were slapped across the face, children were kicked. A few used their machetes to cut open the skin on the forearms of some of the captives: It was the usual sick prelude to a total dismemberment. My wife was worked over particularly hard; she was thrown into a truck with a back so twisted she could barely move.

  The UN soldiers, meanwhile, were disorganized. Some were bravely trying to insert themselves between the militia and their intended victims, but my wife told me the Bangladeshis put their hands in the air like stick-up victims. It would have been almost funny if it hadn’t been such a signal for the militia to do as they pleased. This fiasco at the roadblock would have made a perfect metaphor for the ineptitude of the UN, but the last two months in Rwanda had created so many of those images that they hardly seemed worthy of note anymore.

  My son Roger was approached by a boy he had known from school, a former classmate and friend. “Give me your shoes, you cockroach, ” said the boy.

  Roger obeyed without protest and gave over his tennis shoes to his old friend, who was now a killer with a machete. They had once played soccer together. I suppose it was an echo of the meaningless gulf that had opened that day in 1973 between myself and my best friend, Gerard. My son was now experiencing much the same thing, only now he was the unlucky one.

  Ah Rwanda, why?

  The only thing that saved the caravan was the bitter argument between the Army and the militia. They were beginning to open fire on each other. Some of the UN soldiers saw their chance. They picked up the refugees in the dirt, threw them into the trucks like lumber, and roared off back toward the Mille Collines before the militia could regroup.

  I ran out to the roundabout to meet them coming back and found my wife lying in a puddle of blood on the floor of one of the trucks. She was moaning slightly.

  “Can you move?” I asked. She shook her head.

  I was nearly blind with a red whirling of
fury and relief and fright, but I had a job to do and I forced myself to stay in control. We took the wounded off the trucks and led them back into the hotel they had thought they were escaping. We called for Dr. Gasasira and another doctor named Josue, who began to bandage up the cuts imediately. The Mille Collines was full of people screaming and crying and hugging one another. I took Tatiana up to our room, 126, and made sure she was resting on the bed. Her eyes were blank with shock. The children were unhurt but completely quiet.

  Once I was sure that our wounded were all being tended to, I rushed to my office. There was no time to spare. We needed more protection immediately. It was now clear that the government and the militias knew the identities of many of the high-profile refugees we were hiding. They might not chance an all-out invasion of the Mille Collines, but they might begin a series of individual assassinations. I was terrified that their bloodlust had been aroused beyond the point of control. I had already taken the precaution of finding an outdated guest list to give to any killer who might come asking for it at the reception desk. I had also ordered the room numbers pried off the doors to further confuse anyone who came in here looking for a specific target. But more protection was crucial. I called everyone I knew who was still alive. And then I called them again, insisting we have more policemen posted outside.

  It seems strange to say, but it was a relief to be doing something, even if it seemed like I was getting nowhere. It was one big extended Rwandan no from all my military friends and, of course, the UN. Not until our last night in the hotel was I finally given five Tunisian soldiers from the UN contingent to safeguard the parking lot, and by then it was too late to make a difference.

  We did not have long to rest. On the morning of May 13 at 10 A. M. I was visited in my office by a Rwandan Army intelligence agent named Lieutenant Iradakunda. I had known him only slightly, but my impression had been that he was a less than loyal supporter of the ongoing genocide. My suspicions were confirmed when he took me aside to a quiet area.