You remember long hours of boredom, you were too old to be playing. You couldn’t dispel the images of horror from your memory. You didn’t need to hide anymore and, yet, when you’d only barely arrived in a new place you couldn’t stop yourself from checking for hiding-places that were likely to protect you. It had become second nature. You had a sharp eye for hidden closets, hollow pieces of furniture, makeshift shelters. You imagined that a manhunt could be announced at any moment. Just to be safe, you had already improvised several hiding-places. Compressing your body in a tight space, holding your breath, escaping from time had become your trademarks. But you never needed to hide. There was no threat hanging over you, on the contrary, everything was done to reassure you.
Your adoptive parents had increased their visits, you even came to recognize their footsteps in the hallway of the orphanage. They’d take you out for walks and bring you back at the end of the day. You’d started smiling at them without holding back. Your first words were said in a whisper, murmured without ever looking them in the eyes. Staring at them would have meant you were leaving it up to them, that you were becoming one of theirs. You still resisted, repressing those looks inside yourself. They were patient and made do with a few encouraging signs. You took several weeks before you showed your emotions through language, looks, and smiles. The day that happened you had opened your heart never to close it again. Your adoptive mother always congratulated you with each victory over yourself and would squeeze your hand in hers. That grip was worth more than any words could be. It was their patience that made you love them. Winter was coming to an end, you were watching the sky with greater hope, it was turning blue while until then it had been merely foggy.
The foster home had changed a lot, the other children were coming and going, from one house to another, from one life to another. The long hallway that led to the exit was the theater of their emotions. At first, they’d walk slowly, but then they’d run to meet their new parents again. At night you weren’t all together anymore; some had already been adopted, while others were trying out living with a family for a day or two, maybe three.
You went to spend two days with them. It was impossible for you to go there without your suitcase. They were surprised to see you carrying it in your right hand, but said nothing. Axelle had told them about this fetish, which had accompanied you everywhere throughout what you’d experienced.
Annie put her hand on your head and kissed the top of your skull, her husband wanted to carry the suitcase for you, but with just a look you discouraged him, your hand tightly clasping the old handle.
You lived together for two full days and nights. Everything went well, you were at ease, no longer afraid to look them in the eyes or to answer them. You even laughed uproariously once. You’d forgotten that hilarity was possible, your bursts of laughter generated waves inside your stomach. They admired your teeth, which were visible at last, your crinkled eyes, and your nostrils. When night fell, the guest bed was there, ready to welcome you, comfortable and snug. Lying down, you were watching your suitcase in the darkness, its buckles shining in the night. You got up on tiptoe, dragged it to the floor. Then you slipped the pillow and the quilt into the cubicle. Inside it, your legs sticking out of the corners, you slept as you had never done before. You hardly had time to see the door ajar, letting the thread of light from the hall draw a slanting line on the wall, a few inaudible whispers, and the creaking of a door being replaced by silence.
You slept well that night, and the following night, too. As if wrecked, at daybreak you stretched out on the bed for a few minutes, put the pillow and the quilt back where they belonged, and put away the suitcase in a corner of the room. Then you mussed up the sheets, hit the pillow with your fist to make them think you’d spent the night in your bed.
Their home became yours. You felt you were out of danger here. A kitchen closet could hold you completely, the inside of a cloth-covered pedestal table or the far end of a bathtub as well. You dug down into every corner, all the closed and empty spaces, to reassure yourself. Every one of these hiding-places was like a plan for survival in a world from which all savagery seemed to have disappeared.
Your suitcase was getting dusty, you’d wipe it with the back of your hand leaving one groove visible. Sleeping inside it was no longer possible, it took longer and longer for the aches and pains to go away in the morning. You adopted the bed, the family name, the eating habits: you took it all without having anything to give. That’s when the nightmares began, right when you were most relaxed. You’d wake up in a sweat, panic attacks would paralyze you for nights on end. Bringing your suitcase closer would calm you down, it stood very nearby, directly below your arm, accessible at any time during the night.
Annie would fall asleep on the floor, stroke your moist temples and make you drink glasses filled with cool water.
In the middle of the night thirst would increase, desiccate your throat, wither your tongue. You spent weeks quenching the thirst, which would return even more virulently despite the liters of water you’d sometimes drink straight down. You were afraid of your thirst the way one is afraid of one’s fear.
One night in the darkness of your room Annie murmured: ‘You won’t be thirsty anymore.’ What she meant was: all will be well, don’t worry.
Your daily routine as a student took over, it masked your story like a thick woolen blanket. Africa was barely touched upon in the curriculum, it was mostly a matter of colonies or development. The pyramid of the ages was the mirror of a somewhat aging society with a high birth rate. Rwanda never came up, the word was never pronounced. It was a country they knew was in the south of Africa, some situated it near the Atlantic, others confused it with Botswana. You grew, you grew a lot, your limbs grew longer, the first hair appeared on your face. You’d watch these changes anxiously, they distanced you from your childhood, your family, and your country of origin. Again and again you’d sing old traditional Rwandan songs, words would jump around, you’d mask the forgotten ones with a mutter; you were losing your mother tongue, Kinyarwanda, its tempo, its long and short vowels. The sharp, grave modulation of certain letters was gradually being erased to the benefit of your voice. And yet you persisted in recreating the lost stanzas of that popular old song. The refrain was still intact, you’d repeat it over and over, so you wouldn’t lose face.
The suitcase had lost its smell, had dried out because of the compressed air in the apartment. Relegated to a corner of your room, it no longer even attracted your gaze, it was part of the walls, the floor. Nothing remained of your early childhood, you recreated the face of your family, the interior of your dilapidated home, the boiling pot on top of the fire. Your mother would blow on the ladle with all her might. She’d smile when she saw all of you wolf down what was on your plates. Father didn’t smile, but his eyes were smiling.
Grandmother had almost no teeth left, she ate by herself in a corner of the room, her back to the window. Her grimaces to chew such tiny quantities had forced her to separate herself from the rest of you. You’d make fun without being unkind; but you couldn’t stay serious when faced with all that noise and those contortions. You never forgot her face, or her voice. She saved your life, it is thanks to her that you are here, and you’ve never stopped believing that she’s still protecting you. She watches over you, keeps you away from dangers and pitfalls. You’ve always felt her gaze upon you, her heavy-lidded eyes barely open.
One morning you covered the suitcase with an old sheet. You walked around it to be sure it was well wrapped. It was taking up too much space and gathering too much dust in your little room. You shrouded it the way one shrouds the dead. The old sheet was puckered at the corners and taut across its main surface. You took a long time staring at the wide hallway closet, when just below the ceiling an empty space became visible. You took a ladder, climbed the metal steps one by one and with some trouble pushed it into the tiny space, wedging its edges in so it would protrude as little as possible. Much later you understood th
at this approach revealed a crucial need to forget, to expunge.
In some way the suitcase was a memory of your suffering and, even though it had repeatedly protected you, you wanted to put it aside. You were grateful to know that it still existed but now you wanted to take your distance from it. One doesn’t stop in a hallway, all one does is pass through, in the morning and at night. You stopped looking up, too busy going out of or coming home to that passage. Once a month, with the greatest respect, Annie would dust off the forgotten article when you weren’t home. You no longer owned anything from your previous life, you were brand new and rootless. At night, as you went to bed, you gave it a tiny thought, your brain identified its presence, composing imaginary lines to communicate with it. You were connected but the bond had become extremely private. Yet, you and it had to breathe the same air, it was unthinkable that it should be moved to the basement, that dark spot, that vault of abandoned items. When you traveled, your family’s new luggage was rigid, resistant to any form of impact. You couldn’t help but think of your own, whose interior to your eyes was like a human body withered by hardship.
When you’d leave the apartment for a few days you’d close the door with a heavy heart, but the mere fact of knowing it was safe would calm you down. Entering the hallway again after days or weeks of absence restored a part of yourself.
Just before the events began, your father became aware of the impending threats to your family. He was seated, listening to the news on the radio. He studied his neighbors, inspecting the area around your house with squinted eyes. Grave, his senses on the alert like the old village sage who for several weeks had only had bad dreams. At dawn their interpretation wouldn’t herald anything good, on the contrary, it was the calm before the storm just as on the eve of a tragedy. Even your brothers and sister were not running around the house anymore, no longer dragging your grandmother’s wraps along in their stampedes, while she was always in danger of losing her balance.
You realize in retrospect that you never stopped observing them when they were alive, perhaps conscious that seeing them might be no more than a bit of luck that wouldn’t last. Even at the time you already had the feeling you were merely a spectator looking in at your people from the outside. Your senses were constantly being enriched by the shared life of every day, to your eyes ordinary things were extraordinary, their words and actions manifestations that were as mysterious as they were fascinating. You registered fleeting rituals randomly, your father’s worried looks, your mother’s uncompromising tirades that used to obscure the silences of your father. Your grandmother was standing, not in the least concerned with the pervading unrest. She had taken out her old suitcase from a hidden closet. She’d gotten busy cleaning it. In the village the anxiety was palpable, the men weren’t getting together to drink beer anymore. At home, silence reigned. The meal was consumed in total quiet, no argument exploded among the brothers, the little ones went to bed without balking, as did you. The lights were turned off earlier than usual. Your grandmother had turned in close to you, as she always did. You saw her eyes glisten in the dark like two mirrors, you pretended to be asleep, but you could tell she kept studying you. Every evening her night-time songs would lead you to a deep sleep. Her verses would grow softer in tone as your eyelids grew heavier and heavier. You felt protected by her gaze. That evening she was saying goodbye to you and you didn’t know it.
The following day when the sun was at its peak your village no longer contained a single Tutsi. Not one, except for you…
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
YASMINE GHATA was born in Paris in 1975, and is the author of three previous novels, the most famous of which is The Night of the Calligraphers (2004), based on the life of her paternal grandmother, that became a bestseller in France and was translated in 13 languages. She has received the Prince Pierre of Monaco Discovery Award, the Granzon Cavour Prize in Italy, and the Lebanese Kadmos Prize. Ms. Ghata is the daughter of the renowned Turkish-Lebanese poet, Vénus Khoury-Ghata. For a Long Time, Afraid of the Night was shortlisted for the Prix Patrimoines in 2016.
MARJOLIJN DE JAGER was born in Indonesia (1936), raised in The Netherlands, and residing in the USA since the age of 22, Marjolijn de Jager earned a PhD. in Romance Languages and Literatures from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1975. She translates from both the Dutch and the French. Francophone African literature, the women’s voices in particular, have a special place in her heart. Among her honors are an NEA grant, two NEH grants and, in 2011, the annually awarded ALA Distinguished Member Award received from the African Literature Association for scholarship, teaching, and translations of African Literature. For further information please see http://mdejager.com
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