Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (22 page)

Writing that letter was an important step for me in developing my new outlook on life. In my mind I painted my rescuer as kind and caring, because that was the kind of person whom I wanted to rescue us. Someone had once told me that it was important to visualize what you want to happen in the future, because doing so could actually help make it come true. Well, thanks to God, I’d become a big believer in that philosophy.

God had planted a seed in my mind. He’d told me to learn English, and that practice was showing me that a rich and exciting life was waiting for me on the other side of the genocide. I knew that whatever I envisioned would come to pass if I had faith and visualized it with a pure heart and good intentions, and if it were something God thought was right for me. It was then that I realized I could dream and visualize my destiny. I vowed that I’d always dare to dream for what I wanted. And I would only dream for beautiful things like love, health, and peace, because that is the kind of beauty God wants for all His children.

IN EARLY JUNE, I CAME FACE-TO-FACE WITH MY PAST. My boyfriend, John, and I had been a serious couple for two years, and we’d even talked about getting married after I finished university. Although we’d had a pretty big falling-out before Easter (he’d embarrassed me by calling off an engagement party to formally introduce our families), I still thought that we’d patch things up.

We hadn’t been in touch since the killings began, but I thought about him often during my time in the bathroom, praying that he was safe and unhurt. Because he was Hutu, I knew that he was probably out of harm’s way and free to move around the countryside as he wanted. Many times I wondered if he was searching for me, trying to find out if I was dead or alive and hiding someplace, waiting for him to come to my rescue. Those questions, and a few others, were answered for me when I least expected it.

Late one morning we heard a big commotion at the front of the house. I automatically assumed that another search party of killers had arrived to hunt for us . . . but I quickly realized that this ruckus was different. We didn’t hear vile killing songs or the usual threats, cursing, and shouts of anger—instead, there was happiness in these voices, even joy. Arrivals at the house had always brought fear to my heart, but this time it brought tenderness and warmth. Amid the welcoming sounds of old friends reuniting, I heard John’s laughter, and my breath caught in my throat.

It turns out that he’d come down from Kigali with much of Pastor Murinzi’s extended family. Like thousands of Hutus, they were fleeing the capital as the rebel Tutsi soldiers pushed closer and closer to the city. Afraid of reprisal killings, they’d abandoned their homes and headed south, where there was no fighting. At least 40 of the pastor’s relatives, including John, planned to resettle in our village in the hopes that the war would pass them by.

I was so thrilled to know that my boyfriend was alive, healthy, and even in good spirits—it was exciting to think that we could soon actually see each other. I spent much of the day wondering if he knew that I was hiding in the house.

Very late that night, when everyone else was asleep, the pastor brought John to the bathroom. I was so happy to see him that I actually forgot where I was for a few minutes—and I hugged him so hard that I nearly passed out from the exertion. After weeks of communicating in whispers and sign language, I had trouble finding my voice to tell him how much I’d missed him and had prayed for him.

John stepped back quickly, looking me up and down before finally saying, “I can’t believe how skinny you are, Immaculée. Hugging you is like holding a bag of bones!”

I looked at him, laughing and crying at the same time. I was taken aback by his first words to me, though—I was hoping that he might tell me he loved me, or at least say how happy he was to see me alive.

“Well . . . you don’t have that great body anymore,” he went on, “but you still look good! I’ve been praying you’d still be alive and that no one had raped you. And here you are, alive and unraped!”

His words made me feel awkward; in fact, it was as if somebody else were saying them, not my boyfriend. He seemed different from when we’d last been together. He certainly
looked
different—he’d grown his hair out in a wild Afro style, and his face was hidden behind a shaggy beard. He explained that he hadn’t been able to find a barber because everything in the country was closed down while the genocide was being carried out.

Pastor Murinzi cut off our visit after a few minutes, saying that someone might overhear us. I wished that we could have stayed together longer and talked from the heart, but it wasn’t to be. John and I hugged one more time before the pastor closed the bathroom door.

I thanked God for keeping John alive and safe . . . but I soon found his presence in the house disturbing. He was free, living like a prince—walking outside, eating real food, sleeping in a bed with clean sheets, and even talking with his mother—while I was trapped like an animal. Every day I heard him through the bathroom window enjoying himself, laughing, telling stories, and making wisecracks while playing basketball with his Hutu friends. And he
knew
that I could hear him. I didn’t expect him to sit around and mope, but carrying on the way he did beneath the window of my bathroom prison seemed highly insensitive. He acted like he was on vacation, while people—my people—were being slaughtered all around him, and his girlfriend was being hunted by thugs and killers.

Sometimes when I listened to him having fun outside, I’d open my Bible and read the following:

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. (1 Cor. 13:4–8)

That
was the love I wanted, and I knew it was what God wanted each and every one of us to have.

John saw me once or twice after that first night, and I enjoyed the few minutes we had together. But the visits were too short and infrequent for us to share our thoughts and feelings—and God knows, I had a lot I wanted to share. He didn’t seem to make any effort to talk to me, to reach my heart even a little. I knew that it was difficult and dangerous for him to visit, especially with so many of the pastor’s Hutu relatives in the house, but still!

I remember pleading with him in one of our brief encounters: “Please, just take the time to write me a little note and send it with the pastor or Dusenge when they bring food at night. That’s all I need, John . . . just a few words to know that you’re thinking about me, that you still care how I am, and that you want to keep our love alive!”

He promised that he’d write, but he never did. The next time he came to see me, I used a few of our precious moments to chastise him. “Why didn’t you write to me like you promised? Do you realize what I’m going through?”

“Well, I know one thing—there are no other men looking at you, and that’s one less thing for me to worry about, right?”

With those words, John killed any love left between us. God gave us all the gift of love to share and nurture in one another. It is a precious gift, one that John had squandered.

CHAPTER 15

Unlikely Saviors

T
he first really good news I had in a while came when the killings were at their worst, and evil deeds had become the norm.

In mid-June, more than two months after we went into hiding, I overheard the pastor’s son Sembeba talking to some friends beneath the bathroom window. They were discussing recent killings in the neighborhood that they’d witnessed or had been told about firsthand, and the atrocities they described were among the worst I’d heard.

I thought I was going to vomit as one of the boys described unimaginable wickedness as casually as if he were talking about a soccer game: “They grabbed one mama, and all of them took turns with her. She was begging for them to take her children away, but they held her husband and her three little kids with machetes at their throats. They made them all watch while eight or nine of them raped her. When they finished with her, they killed the whole family.”

I cradled my head as they swapped horror stories. They talked about children who were deliberately left alive to suffer after their limbs had been chopped off, infants who were dashed against rocks, and HIV-positive soldiers being ordered to rape teenage girls to infect them with their disease.

There was so much more, but I covered my ears and silently pleaded,
Oh, God, if this is what is waiting for us, please take me into
Your loving arms now! Let me live in Paradise with You, not in the hell this
country has become.

Eventually the conversation outside turned from the crimes of war to the war itself. Some of the boys said that the government soldiers were getting beaten so badly that Kigali might soon fall to the rebels. They were all worried about what would happen to the Hutus if the rebels won the war.

Sembeba said he’d heard that France was sending troops to Rwanda. He and his friends all sounded relieved because France had very close ties with the Hutu government. The boys seemed to think that the French would help the government troops fight the rebel Tutsis and drive the RPF out of our country. If that were the case, the war would end, and the killers could complete their evil mission in no time.

At first I wasn’t sure how to feel about the arrival of French soldiers. Many people said that France’s military helped train the Interahamwe killers, so maybe the troops actually
were
coming to help the government complete the genocide.

But I couldn’t believe that would happen. No, if the French came to Rwanda, the rest of the world would be watching them. There would be TV cameras and reporters, which meant that the world would see the killings, the massacres, and the rapes. And if the people in the rich countries saw—
really
saw—what was happening with their own eyes, they’d
have
to do something. They’d have to stop the genocide . . . wouldn’t they?

I decided that even if they had helped train the killers, it was a good thing for the French to come, because any foreigner would bring attention to our plight. I prayed for the safe arrival of the troops and thanked God for sending them to us. It was true that, given their history in our country, the French were unlikely saviors. But one thing I’d come to embrace while in the bathroom was that God really did move in mysterious ways.

A few days later we heard a radio report about Operation Turquoise, which was France’s plan to send troops to Rwanda. Soldiers from several French-speaking countries would be setting up camp near Lake Kivu, which wasn’t that far from us.

Hutu officials threw a big welcoming ceremony at the airport when the troops landed in Goma, which is near the Rwandan border in the neighboring country of Zaire. We listened to the radio as a Hutu choir greeted the soldiers with a song written especially for the occasion. They praised the French and celebrated the long-standing, loving relationship between our two countries.

The pastor informed us that the ceremony proved that the French came to Rwanda to kill Tutsis, but I didn’t agree. I was sure that God was once again answering my prayers, this time by sending someone to rescue us. The United Nations had thrown its support behind the French plan, which was a good sign. And soon after they arrived, the French themselves announced their intentions on the radio: They said that they were in Rwanda to set up “safe havens” for Tutsi survivors; if Tutsis could reach their camps, the French soldiers would protect them.

“Thank You, God,” I whispered.

A few days later a French helicopter started circling our area. We were sure that they were looking for survivors—for
us—
and our hearts soared! From radio reports, I knew that the French were still too far away for us to reach them, and since the war wasn’t over, thousands of armed killers still roamed the countryside hunting Tutsis. But it was clear to me what we had to do.

The next time Pastor Murinzi brought us our table scraps, I spoke up. “I think that we should go stay with the French soldiers,” I informed him.

“That is a bad idea, Immaculée. You shouldn’t believe that they are here to help Tutsis—they would probably kill you as soon as they saw you,” he said, dismissing me with a wave of his hand.

“That doesn’t matter, Pastor. I would rather be shot quickly by a foreign soldier than give these Interahamwe killers the satisfaction of murdering me. Better to die cleanly at the hands of the French than to die after being abused and degraded by our tormentors.”

The pastor seemed shocked by what I’d said, and he told me that the other women and I should all stay in the bathroom and hope for the best. But then he noticed the seven others pointing at me and vigorously nodding their heads in agreement with my suggestion.

“I’d also rather go live in a refugee camp with the French than go to the forest to marry an Abashi tribesman,” I added, as the ladies kept nodding their heads. “The French will save us or they will kill us . . . either way, Pastor, I think we’d like to take our chances with them.”