The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World (29 page)

For nearly 12 hours, we sat together, with nothing to sustain us but sto ries and tea. Each woman recounted experiences filled with horror and tragedy and the deepest grief imaginable. My head pounded, and I didn't know what to do with the feelings inside me. Finally, I asked how they could sit together and listen to one another's stories across ethnic lines. Didn't it generate rage? One's husband may have murdered another's-or another's son, for all they knew. Where did they find room for forgiveness?

One woman responded quietly, "We listen to one another and look into one another's eyes and we see suffering. It is that suffering that binds us. It is that suffering that reminds us that we are all human."

Her words resonated. In recognizing their humanity, I felt strengthened in my own.

NO ONE ESCAPED SUFFERING. Every Rwandan not only sawor committed-horrendous acts, but everyone lost someone and, with that, part of their hearts. Hutus like Liliane, who were never targeted and never participated in the violence, still live with the shadows of shame and guilt. But so many ordinary Rwandans demonstrated the extraordinary courage and spirit that bode well for the country's future.

The first time I saw Liliane after the genocide, she seemed burdened with an almost unbearable depression. Honorata had suffered unimaginably, but she was already finding an inner peace that grew through the years, living in her former home and taking part in a survivors' group.

Liliane had been renting a small house in a slum ever since she and her family returned from the refugee camp to discover a Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) soldier occupying her house. Whereas Honorata's home was filled with light, the darkness of Liliane's rented place, by contrast, was appalling. Its center consisted of a meager living room, not bigger than 8 feet by 10, furnished with a small wooden table surrounded by a bench and three chairs. The concrete walls were riddled with cracks like river lines on a map and painted an ugly industrial green. The plain cement floor was so damaged in places that dirt pushed through the gray. A picture of a white Jesus Christ with a crown of thorns hung on the wall, and a plastic rosary was taped to another. A single naked bulb hung overhead, and the lack of air was suffocating.

Liliane's husband, Julien, was a doctor who continued working in the city's hospital through most of the genocide. Liliane remained at home, afraid to walk the streets, pregnant with twins and caring for their 5year-old son, Augustin. She hid a close friend along with her friend's husband and young child in their house for weeks until it became too dangerous and the young family fled (the husband was killed, but the wife and child survived).

Toward the end of June 1994, the RPF took over the capital, and like most Hutus, Liliane and her family drove toward Goma, where a million refugees would quickly gather. On the first night, they reached Gisenyi, where Julien had worked for years in the hospital; Liliane went into labor 8 weeks early.

She gave birth in the middle of the night. By morning, one of the twins had died. The other, weighing less than 2 pounds, was so fragile that her skin could not be washed with water. In the midst of all the killings, the couple buried the dead child, mourning her short life in a way that countless children thrown into rivers or bashed with machetes and clubs would never be acknowledged.

They stayed at the hospital for nearly 3 weeks until the RPF took over Gisenyi, and then they fled to Goma. Privilege allowed them to find a hotel outside the massive refugee camps, at least for a few weeks until they'd spent the last of their money. With cholera killing thousands every day, Liliane was terrified to bring her baby to the camp, but she ultimately had no choice. She and Julien waited nearly 10 months before naming her Valerie and also giving her a Kinyarwanda name meaning Pearl, because there was nothing more valuable to them.

For 2 years, they remained in the refugee camps. It was bearable for Liliane because a village system emerged nearly overnight, with schools and clinics and even makeshift streets to give a sense of order and community. Family was close by, and she had managed to bring her photographs when she and Julien rushed from Kigali. "I looked at them over and over, remembering that life could be different."

Still, the Interahamwe ruled the camps with terror and brutality. "Right behind us were four small houses where a group of young men lived. They were maybe 16 to 25 years old. All had been in the army and none were married. It kept us living constantly in fear that something terrible could happen again."

In November 1996 Liliane's family joined more than a million people returning to Rwanda in a quiet, orderly procession. Most were terrified about what might happen to them next-what awaited them in a place they no longer knew. The refugees carried everything they owned in suitcases and baskets. They were a million ordinary people caught up in a genocide, penniless, walking for weeks, sometimes months, to return to a country where they were not wanted. Tens of thousands never made it back, including Liliane's mother.

On the first day, Liliane walked nearly 20 hours, with just water and sugar to sustain her, her 7-year-old son, and her 2-year-old daughter. She persisted by focusing obsessively on their house in Kigali, praying that it would still be there when they returned. She and Julien had bought it 6 months before the genocide and had already repaid a third of their debt. The house represented home and stability-everything.

Once in Kigali, she headed directly to her house, not knowing what she would find. Before reaching it, she encountered a friend who told her to turn back: "There's a soldier from Uganda living there. They are killing people who try to get their houses back. Just wait."

She could think of nowhere else to go. Without food or drink or stopping for the night, she turned with her children and retraced her steps all the way back to Gisenyi, about a 4-hour drive away. Though it wasn't home, Julien could find a job there in the hospital where he'd worked before-and there they had a better chance of finding another house.

Obsessed with getting her house back, Liliane stayed only a few months in Gisenyi before deciding to return to her home in Kigali, despite the grave risk she believed she was taking. But Liliane had titleproof of ownership-and President Kagame had promised that titled housing would be returned. She would bet her life on this.

RETURNING TO KIGALI CAME with a big price tag in the beginning: Liliane and the children had no choice but to move into a slum. Julien would remain in Gisenyi for the time being. The poor condition of Liliane's temporary quarters finally pushed her to find the courage to approach the soldier living in her old house. She walked slowly to the familiar house, knocked on the gate, and found herself standing in front of an imposing soldier dressed in fatigues. She took a deep breath, tried not to think about the women who'd been hacked to death, and told him her story.

He listened.

He refused to leave but agreed to pay her rent-not enough to cover their mortgage payments, but it was a start. She thanked him and then went home to thank God.

Nothing happened: The soldier never paid a franc, nor did he leave.

More visits, more negotiations; nothing changed. Liliane and Julien reached a point where they could no longer afford the mortgage on their home while also renting one in the slum. She began visiting the soldier weekly, each time asking him to leave.

One morning, she arrived to an empty house. The soldier had disappeared, taking everything that wasn't nailed down-every piece of furniture, every curtain, every picture on the wall. The stench in the empty, filthy house was nearly unbearable, but 5 years after leaving it, it was hers again.

A year after I first saw Liliane in the slum, I returned to visit her in the house she and Julien had so cherished. The house was by now light and airy and had three bedrooms-one for her and Julien, another for the children, and a third for her sister and her sister's child. Liliane had turned a fourth bedroom into a chapel to honor the deal made with God. The room contained an altar, a Bible, and several cushions to protect the family's knees while they performed their nightly prayers of thanks.

As it turned out, the soldier who had squatted in her house moved nearby, and Liliane's children would sometimes play with his. "There is no reason to hold anger against another person," she told me. "Too many of us have died over small conflicts. It is time to heal. I have my home now and I am grateful. Why should I bear a grudge?"

As she told me her story, she emphasized that refugee camps equalized everyone because of the terrible conditions in which they all lived. "There is so much to do in this country," she said. "So much healing, so much rebuilding"

In their own ways, women like Honorata and Liliane demonstrate daily an endurance and a capacity to dream that could change the shape of the world if only the world would open its arms to them.

CHAPTER 11

THE COST OF SILENCE

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

-MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

f Honorata's story is one of rebirth, then Agnes's is one of a soul's weakening, a dive into darkness. Agnes was groomed to be a leader from the time she was a young university student studying law. For most of her life, she worked on issues of social justice, first as a judge and then as one of the first women on the African continent to serve in her country's parliament. Just months prior to the genocide, she was working to form a political party with moderate views, one that would have been inclusive of all ethnic groups. But somehow, she ended her career as a high-profile prisoner charged with crimes of genocide.

I wanted to understand her story. I had known her and worked with her on issues of social justice. She had been a woman of enormous potential, a pioneer in the women's movement, a role model for African women. Though I'd questioned her integrity while she was at Duterimbere, it was inexplicable to me that Agnes could end up a leader of such a cruel and murderous regime. If she could become part of a killing machine, then the capacity for evil was more common than uncommon. I'd read Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, but I'd never imagined I might actually know someone who could help lead a systematic effort to destroy an entire ethnic group.

I visited Agnes twice after the genocide, both times in Kigali's massive Central Prison. Built in 1930 by Belgian colonialists, the prison is a red brick fortress with a green metal door located at the edge of the city, about 100 yards away from the main road, at the top of a hillside. With its red, red brick, it resembles an old factory from the Industrial Revolution.

If you walk far enough down the road in front of the prison, you can see green fields sloping downward to a verdant valley, rolling gently, then soaring upward into soft hills and a glorious sweep of sky, suggesting a sense of freedom and possibility. Originally built for 2,000 inmates, the Central Prison held more than four times its capacity 5 years after the genocide: 7,800 men and 600 women. There were few toilets, and the prisoners were fed only one soupy meal a day. I was told the men took turns sleeping, as there was insufficient room for everyone to lie down at once. Both men and women had been sleeping this way for up to 5 years at that time.

I arrived at the prison on a Friday-visiting day. Thousands of people, mostly women and children, had come from throughout the city and neighboring areas, some walking 5 or 6 hours, carrying baskets of food for their loved ones in the prison. The visitors were required to wait in the yard outside until they were permitted to see the prisoners, who depended on this food for their survival. The enormous toll all the preparation and travel took on the visitors was evident in their tired, weathered faces. The women wore colorful dresses and often carried babies on their backs, but waited motionlessly, staring with vacant eyes. Some sat quietly on the cracked dirt and nursed their children. Others murmured quietly among themselves.

This mass of women separated from the men inside represented one of the most severe social dislocations in the country. Every Friday more than 150,000 women and children brought food to approximately 120,000 prisoners in various Rwandan prisons. The women whose husbands served years in those prisons were like widows themselves in many ways, struggling to raise a family with no one to help them generate income or cultivate the fields. This loss of productivity in a country already devastated by war was staggering.

On the day of my visit, all of us waiting were kept at a distance of about 100 feet from the empty prison yard by a makeshift barrier, a thick rope tied to two poles. Three guards dressed in blue escorted two pinkclad male prisoners, one wearing green high-top sneakers and a red beret; the other, in yellow flip-flops, carrying three shiny new machetes wrapped in plastic. The five men laughed like old friends.

One of the guards approached me and took me to the director's office, then led me farther, to a small room with a single window covered by a pink curtain. I stood there alone, waiting and looking across the yard at a huge green door, wondering what lay on the other side.