Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (26 page)

I dropped to my knees and tried to hug Jeanne, but she avoided my touch and tried to hide her tears from me. “Oh, Immaculée, forgive me . . . I must look a fright. I have something in my eyes that’s making them water.”

I smiled, thinking that that’s exactly what my mother would have said in the same situation, embarrassed by her tears. “Jeanne, I’m so happy to see you.” I gently hugged her, then embraced each of the girls. The light slowly returned in their eyes, and tentative smiles crept across their faces.

I said a silent prayer for all of them, asking God to heal their hearts, and promised myself that I’d do everything I could to heal their bodies.

I sat down with them and we began a sad conversation, telling each other who in our family had been killed, and what each of us had been through. Jeanne lost three sons and her husband, while almost all of Esperance’s family had been killed. My wonderful grandparents had been murdered, and so had at least seven of my uncles. Soon we were all crying . . . I wondered if our tears would ever stop.

After we’d talked for an hour or so, Esperance handed me a letter. I had no idea how she’d managed to keep it safe and intact all those weeks in the forest. “Damascene found me while I was hiding and gave me this letter for you,” she said. “He was on his way to Zaire . . . but he didn’t make it.”

I took the letter from her hand and looked at the envelope, which was stained with teardrops. I turned and ran from my aunts and cousins—I couldn’t bear to be near anyone. Just hearing my brother’s name was enough to overwhelm me, and now I was holding the last words he had ever written me. Reading them would be like hearing him speak to me one last time.

CHAPTER 18

A Letter from Damascene

I
stood alone behind the school and opened Damascene’s letter. My heart ached as soon as I saw his quirky handwriting, remembering all the letters he’d written me during the years we were in school—letters that were never sentimental, but always filled with love and tenderness, encouragement and praise, sound advice and gentle chastisements, gossip and humor . . . so much humor. I sat down with my back against the schoolhouse wall and began to read.

May 6, 1994

Dear [Dad, Mom, Vianney, and] Immaculée,

It has been nearly a month since we were separated, and
we are all living a nightmare. Despite what the circumstances
suggest, I believe that a tribe can exterminate another tribe
only if it’s God’s will; maybe our lives are the price that must be
paid for Rwanda’s salvation. I am only certain about one thing: We will meet again—there is no doubt in my mind.

I’m going to try to get out of the country, but I don’t know
if I’ll make it. If they kill me along the way, you shouldn’t worry
about me; I have prayed enough . . . I am prepared for death. If
I do manage to make it out of Rwanda, I will contact you all as
soon as the peace returns. Bonn will tell you everything that has
happened to me. . . .

Damascene’s friend Bonn later told me that at this point in writing the letter, Damascene put down his pen, looked up at him, and said, “Bonn, I know that you’re my friend and have tried to spare my feelings, but now’s the time to tell me—has anyone in my family been killed?”

Bonn was Hutu, so he could travel freely during the genocide and find out which Tutsis had been murdered in the area. He’d kept my parents’ and Vianney’s death to himself because he’d cared for my brother so much and wanted to protect his feelings.

But when Damascene asked him directly, Bonn told him what he knew. He couldn’t bring himself to let Damascene finish writing the letter while believing everyone he loved was still alive. So Bonn told his friend that our dad, mom, and younger brother had been killed, and that I was the only one who might possibly be alive. Damascene cried for most of the day, which explains the teardrops that became a permanent part of his letter.

Before Damascene left to try to catch a boat across Lake Kivu, he took the letter out again and placed brackets around the words
Dad,
Mom,
and
Vianney,
and added these lines:

Immaculée, I beg you to be strong. I’ve just heard that
Mom, Dad, and Vianney have been killed. I will be in contact
with you as soon as possible.

Big hugs and kisses!

Your brother, who loves you very much!

It was the most painful thing I’d ever read. I ran my fingertips across the tear-stained words and knew that I’d never be able to read this letter without crying.

I DISCOVERED LATER THAT BONN, who will forever be a hero to me, tried to hide my brother in his house against his family’s wishes. He succeeded in keeping Damascene safe during the first days of the genocide by secretly stowing him beneath his bed. But when Bonn’s family found out what he was doing, they pressured him to turn Damascene over to the killers.

Unfortunately, one of Bonn’s uncles was Buhoro, my old teacher who loved to humiliate Tutsi children during ethnic roll call. Buhoro turned out to be one of the most rabid Hutu extremists in the country, and a vicious and prolific murderer—and when he became suspicious, Bonn knew that he absolutely had to get Damascene out of the house. Late one night he dug a pit at the far end of the family’s property and covered it up with wood and leaves. He got Damascene safely out of his bedroom and hid him in the hole only hours before the killers—who’d been tipped off by Buhoro—showed up to search the house.

At Buhoro’s insistence, the killers repeatedly searched Bonn’s house while Damascene hid in the hole for more than three weeks. But the killers were relentless—they monitored Bonn’s activities and eventually spotted him carrying food outside. Worried that they’d search the yard, Bonn and Damascene decided that my brother should head across Lake Kivu to Zaire. (Bonn knew a Hutu Good Samaritan, a fisherman who was using his boat to smuggle Tutsi refugees across the lake to safety.) He pulled Damascene out of the hole after midnight and they made their way to the lake, staying in the shadows, moving from bush to bush. But the journey took too long and they missed that night’s boat.

It was almost dawn, and Damascene didn’t want to risk the long hike back to Bonn’s house, so he stayed with Nsenge, a very good friend of his and Bonn’s who lived near the lake. Nsenge was a moderate Hutu who loved our family—my dad had even helped to pay school tuition for several of his brothers—so he was happy to hide Damascene for the day.

Nsenge’s brother Simoni was not as generous, however. He welcomed Damascene when he arrived at the house with smiles and friendship . . . but the next afternoon, while my brother slept and Nsenge was out arranging his boat passage, Simoni snuck out of the house, located a group of killers, and betrayed Damascene.

Before supper, Simoni woke my brother and offered to wash his clothes before he left for Zaire. Damascene stripped down to his underwear, and Simoni took his clothes (he later confessed that he’d wanted my brother to feel ashamed and humiliated before he died). After he’d taken the clothes, Simoni called Damascene into the living room, where dozens of killers were waiting for him. They fell on my brother, beating him mercilessly as they dragged him into the street. He was wearing nothing but his underpants.

One of the women who used to work at our house witnessed the whole thing and told me all the details of Damascene’s final hour. “Where is your pretty sister?” the killers had asked my brother. “Where is Immaculée? We’ve seen the bodies of the other cockroaches in your family, but we haven’t had our fun with her yet . . . where is she? Tell us and we’ll let you go; don’t tell us and we will spend all night killing you. Tell us where Immaculée is and you can walk away.”

Damascene looked at them through his broken, swollen face, and—as he had throughout my entire life—stood up for me: “Even if I knew where my beautiful sister was, I wouldn’t tell you. You will never find Immaculée . . . she’s smarter than all of you put together.”

They beat him with the handles of their machetes, taunting him: “Is she as smart as you? You have a master’s degree and we caught you, didn’t we? Now tell us where your sister is hiding!”

Damascene managed to get to his feet one more time, and then he smiled at the killers. His fearlessness confused them—they’d murdered many Tutsis and always enjoyed listening to their victims plead for their lives. Damascene’s composure robbed them of that pleasure.

Instead of negotiating or begging for mercy, he challenged them to kill him. “Go ahead,” he said. “What are you waiting for? Today is my day to go to God. I can feel Him all around us. He is watching, waiting to take me home. Go ahead—finish your work and send me to paradise. I pity you for killing people like it’s some kind of child’s game. Murder is no game: If you offend God, you will pay for your fun. The blood of the innocent people you cut down will follow you to your reckoning. But I am praying for you . . . I pray that you see the evil you’re doing and ask for God’s forgiveness before it’s too late.”

These were my brother’s last words. Although nothing will ever take away the pain of his brutal murder, I’m proud that he stood up to his killers and died with the same dignity that he lived with.

One of Simoni’s brothers, a Protestant pastor named Karera, scoffed at Damascene’s speech. “Does this boy think that he’s a preacher?
I
am the pastor around here, and I bless this killing. I bless you for ridding this country of another cockroach.” Then he looked at the killers and said, “What are you waiting for? Are you cowards? A cockroach is begging you to kill him—why do you stand there?
Kill him!
”

Karera shamed the killers into committing murder.

“You Tutsis have always acted so superior to us Hutus,” one of the young killers shouted in Damascene’s face as he raised his machete. “You think that you’re so much smarter than we are with your master’s degree? Well, I want to see what the brain of someone with a master’s degree looks like!”

He swung his blade down into my brother’s head, and he fell to his knees. Another killer stepped forward and, with a double swing of his machete, chopped off both of his arms. The first killer took another turn with his machete, this time slicing Damascene’s skull open and peering inside. Covered in my brother’s blood, he began prancing around the neighborhood, bragging that he’d seen a master’s degree inside someone’s brain.

I never allow myself to dwell on the details of Damascene’s murder. I think only of how he faced death, how he smiled before he died, and how he prayed for those who killed him. He was my heart, my brave brother, my sweet Damascene. . . .

Later I heard that one of the killers (a young man named Semahe, who had been schoolmates with Damascene) broke down and cried for days after the murder. He talked incessantly about all the things he and Damascene had done together, such as playing soccer, singing in the choir, and being altar boys. He was haunted by the kindness my brother had shown him and all the other boys they’d known. Semahe expressed his remorse to anyone who would listen.

“I will never kill again,” he said. “I will never get Damascene’s face out of my head. His words will burn in my heart forever. It was a sin to kill such a boy—it was a sin.”

CHAPTER 19

Camp Comfort

T
he French camp was an armed fort that kept Tutsis in and Hutus out. The soldiers parked eight tank-like armored vehicles in a semicircle in front of the school buildings, and the outer perimeter of the camp was patrolled day and night by at least 100 guards. We stayed inside the semicircle of armored vehicles with 30 soldiers who were assigned to protect us around the clock, and to escort us into the forest whenever nature called.