Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (19 page)

Pastor Murinzi was shocked by my outburst (and so were the ladies—their eyes opened wide in disbelief as they watched me challenge the man who held their lives in his hands). He waved at me to be quiet—then he told me that guns had also been found in the church of Father Clement, the kindly old priest I’d asked to make me a nun when I was a child. Father Clement was the gentlest soul I’d ever met. He was a lifelong vegetarian because he couldn’t stand to see an animal hurt; he was also repulsed by violence and hated guns. The pastor’s claims were such obvious lies that I had to challenge him.

“Did you see any of these weapons, Pastor?”

“No . . . but I heard about them from important people. They’re honest and wouldn’t lie.”

I couldn’t believe that it was possible for an educated man to be so naive, especially with what was happening in the country. “So, you have no proof of the things you accuse my father of?”

He took a blank piece of paper out of his pocket and said that it was the type of paper RPF rebels gave to people who donated guns and money. “It was found at your house,” he said, waving it in front of me as if he were holding a smoking gun.

“It’s just a blank piece of paper.”

“But it’s the kind of blank paper that the rebels use.”

I couldn’t stand talking to him anymore. “Well, if that’s the kind of evidence you use to condemn a man, then I can understand why killing comes so easily to people around here.”

The pastor stuffed the little piece of paper back into his pocket and turned to leave.

“Wait,” I called to him. “Do you have a Bible you could lend me? I forgot mine at home.”

He seemed embarrassed—he knew my home was a charred ruin—and agreed to bring me one. I was grateful . . . I needed to cleanse my mind with God’s beautiful words.

The other ladies looked at me as though I’d lost my senses. They thought that I’d needlessly, recklessly challenged the pastor’s patience and authority. Maybe I had, but I didn’t care. I felt obligated to defend my father, and at that moment, the pastor seemed more like a jailer than a savior.

Besides, the fact that Pastor Murinzi felt comfortable speaking ill of Dad was a pretty good indication that he thought our days were numbered. Rwandans are intensely private and secretive people who keep their emotions to themselves—the pastor would never have bared his feelings to me if he thought that I would survive the holocaust and meet him again one day as an equal.

I WAS PRAYING TO RID MYSELF OF MY NEGATIVE ANGER when Pastor Murinzi turned on the radio in his bedroom.

The new president of Rwanda was speaking, and our ears perked up when we heard him say the name of our home province, Kibuye. His voice was exuberant—could it be that the war was over? Would we finally be able to leave the bathroom and go find our families? The six of us looked at each other eagerly, thinking that we were going to hear some good news at last. But our hopes were smashed as we listened in horror.

“I want to personally congratulate the hardworking Hutus of Kibuye for their excellent work,” the president said. “More of our Tutsi enemies have been killed in Kibuye than in any other province.”

I felt sick. Did the world not see the madness that had seized this country? Was no one going to come and help us?

The president was so pleased with the “good work” being done in Kibuye that he promised to send thousands of dollars to buy food and beer so that the killers could celebrate properly: “After you finish the job and all the enemies are dead, we will live in paradise. We will no longer have to compete for jobs with cockroaches. With no little cockroaches, there will be plenty of space for Hutu children in our schools.” It must have been a live broadcast, because we could hear people clapping and cheering.

“You have been doing fine work in Kibuye—almost all our enemies are dead. But we must kill them all. Let’s finish the job!”

We looked at each other in despair. Could he really mean that almost
all
the Tutsis in our area were dead? There were more than a quarter million Tutsis in Kibuye . . . how could this be? What about our families? Where were my parents and Vianney and Augustine? Oh, where was my sweet Damascene? I asked God if He was testing me—and once again, I put my hands together to pray. Yet it was difficult to find my quiet place to talk to God while the devil was screaming in my ears.

After the president’s broadcast, we heard voices through the window, one of which belonged to my old friend Janet. She was standing in the yard on the other side of the bathroom wall, and she was talking about me. “Immaculée?” she said. “Nobody has found her yet. I thought that she was a friend of mine, but she was a liar. She just pretended to like me to trick me into feeling safe. She knew that her father was planning to kill my family . . . I really don’t care if they find her and kill her.”

Oh, God, what next?
I wondered.
How could Janet say such things?
I knew that she’d been upset when I saw her last, but I figured that it must be her father’s influence and the stress of the war. But here she was, my oldest and dearest friend, saying that she didn’t care if I lived or died.

Hearing Janet renounce me made me feel so terribly lonely that I desperately needed to talk to a friend. I wished that I were back in my dorm, laughing with Sarah and Clementine, or unburdening my sorrows to them while they held my hands and comforted me.

The devil must have been eavesdropping on my thoughts because no sooner had I heard Janet deny my friendship than another report came across the pastor’s radio—this one announced the death of hundreds of students on my campus. It was a massacre.

“We have scorched the earth in Butare . . . we have killed more than 500 snakes and their Hutu traitor friends at the university,” the announcer bragged.

It pained me to think of all my university friends, many of whom had been close friends since high school. I knew for certain that a lot of them had stayed on campus over the Easter holiday. I thought about all those lovely girls that I’d laughed with, cried with, and prayed with . . . and all the dreams we shared about growing up, falling in love, and having families. We were sure that we’d be friends for life—now their lives were over, extinguished. I prayed that they hadn’t been tortured. Then I realized that I would have been with them if I hadn’t received my father’s beautiful letter pleading with me to come home for the holidays.

My heart ached. Had I lost
everyone
I’d ever loved? I closed my eyes and prayed for God to show me a sign that He was with me. He was the only One I had left, the One I could trust. But instead of a sign, I heard a cry for help.

“Pastor Murinzi, thank God you’re here! Please, you must help me. They’re coming for me . . . they’re coming to kill me!”

I recognized the woman’s voice: It was Sony, an elderly widow whose husband had been murdered in the 1973 killing spree. She was a kind old woman who always greeted me when I got off the bus from school with fruit and little presents for my brothers. She was like a grandma to me, and I wanted to stand up and shout to her to come and hide with us.

But then I heard the pastor say: “Get away from here. I can’t hide Tutsis, I’m sorry. You can’t come in here.”

“Have mercy on me, Pastor, please. You are a man of God—please spare my life . . . I won’t tell anyone. I’ll be quiet. I don’t want to die, Pastor. I’m just an old lady, I’ve done no one any harm.”

“You are an enemy of the country, and I can’t shelter you. I am a good Hutu, so leave.” And he slammed the front door.

In the distance I could hear the killers singing their hunting song as they approached the house. Poor Sony began to scream again. I could see her in my mind, hobbling away on her cane and bowed legs—she wouldn’t get very far before the killers caught up with her.

I wanted to cry, but no tears came. My heart was hardening to the constant onslaught of sorrows. I didn’t even feel anger toward the pastor. Perhaps the killers were very close when Sony arrived and he had no choice but to turn her away.

I closed my eyes and asked God to receive Sony’s kind soul and make sure that there was a place in heaven for her. Then I once again asked Him for a sign that He was watching over us.

The pastor opened the door and, without saying a word, handed me the Bible I’d asked for earlier.

I opened it immediately and looked down at Psalm 91:

This I declare, that He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; He is my God, and I am trusting Him. For He rescues you from every trap and protects you from the fatal plague. He will shield you with His wings! They will shelter you. His faithful promises are your armor. Now you don’t need to be afraid of the dark any more, nor fear the dangers of the day; nor dread the plagues of darkness, nor disasters in the morning.

Though a thousand fall at my side, though ten thousand are dying around me, the evil will not touch me.

CHAPTER 13

A Gathering of Orphans

M
ore than a month passed, and we thought that we’d never see the sky again. The killers came and went as they pleased, arriving unannounced at the pastor’s door at all hours of the day or night. It could be a few dozen or a few hundred of them—they came when they were ordered to, when they received a tip, or if they grew bored and wanted to hunt for new Tutsis to torture or kill. But they always came, and we knew that they’d keep on coming until they found us, or until they lost the war.

The news reports on the pastor’s radio were bleak: Government leaders had turned every single Rwandan radio station into a propaganda death machine. The announcers told Hutus everywhere that it was their duty to kill Tutsis on sight, no questions asked. And the country was still completely shut down to ensure that work didn’t interfere with killing. When some farmers complained that their crops were dying, a government official announced over the radio that if someone had to take a day off from killing to tend to their fields, then they must arm themselves while they worked.

“You must not let your guard down! These Tutsi snakes are hiding in the grass and bushes,” he said. “So make sure that you have your machete ready to chop the snakes in half. Better yet, take your gun and shoot them! If you don’t have a gun, the government will bring you one. If you’re working your field and spot a Tutsi woman in the bushes breast-feeding her baby, don’t waste a golden opportunity: Pick up your gun, shoot her, and return to work, knowing that you did your duty. But don’t forget to kill the baby—the child of a snake is a snake, so kill it, too!”

The local officials handed out machetes at the village gas station while the militia went door-to-door delivering guns and grenades. In fact, one night when Pastor Murinzi came to give us our food, he sported a rifle slung across his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning to shoot you,” he said, waving the gun in front of him. “Some government soldiers came by today and gave this to me. If I’d refused to take it, they’d have accused me of being a moderate and shot me.” He turned the weapon over in his hand before slinging it back over his shoulder, promising, “I won’t use it unless absolutely necessary.”

It seemed that every Hutu in Rwanda had a gun or machete, along with orders to use them on Tutsis—and no one in the world was lifting a finger to stop them. We knew from radio reports that help was
not
on its way, and I couldn’t understand how other countries, especially the so-called civilized ones in the West, could turn their backs on us. They knew that we were being massacred, yet they did nothing.

The UN had even withdrawn its peacekeeping force shortly after the killing began. However, Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN peacekeepers, refused to obey his orders to leave and remained with a couple hundred soldiers. He was a brave and moral man, but he was also alone in a sea of killers. We heard him often on the radio begging for someone,
anyone,
to send troops to Rwanda to stop the slaughter, but no one listened to him. Belgium, our country’s former colonial ruler, had been the first to pull its soldiers out of the country; meanwhile, the United States wouldn’t even acknowledge that the genocide was happening! It was impossible for them not to know that our politicians wouldn’t stop the killing until every Tutsi man, woman, and child was dead. Anybody could hear what they planned to do—what they were doing—by tuning in to any radio station.

Sometimes the pastor would tell us details of the official genocide plans that weren’t included in the radio broadcasts. “Once the Tutsis are all dead, they’re going to make it look like they never existed. They will erase every trace of them,” he told us matter-of-factly. “The government officials I know in town have orders to destroy all Tutsi documents. They’ve already burned most of the school and work records and have moved on to the birth, marriage, and death certificates. It’s the same in every town and village: The orders are to make sure that not even a single Tutsi footprint is left on Rwandan soil.”

The only good news we heard was about the war. The Hutu government kept reporting that it was killing all the rebel Tutsi soldiers in the RPF, but then we’d hear on the BBC and other foreign stations that in some parts of the country, the RPF was winning the war. Sometimes we’d hear RPF leader Paul Kagame encouraging Tutsis not to lose faith because the rebels were fighting to save them. He was a hero to us, although we knew that the rebels were fighting around Kigali and farther north—a long way from Mataba. Kagame’s words didn’t change our situation, but they did give us a little hope that Tutsi soldiers might rescue us one day.