Blood Papa Read online

  Mama went down alone to clear the plot of brush. She started planting what to eat. The Tutsi neighbors glared at us, of course, and many hurled threats. The way to school could be full of dread. It was risking shame to get too close to a prisoner’s kid. It wasn’t easy going to Nyarunazi or Kibungo. We dodged stones as well as insults. When trouble lurked, we walked behind the bushes, following in each other’s steps. Sometimes, when we couldn’t avoid going through the center of Nyarunazi, survivors pitted children against each other. Their words made war between us. I had to put up with it—I couldn’t very well change papas.

  When neighbors talked about Congo at evening gatherings, the little one that I was perked up his ears. I might even ask them for details. If the questions seemed valid, and not too demanding, the neighbors offered answers. This was in the evening. Later, in the black of night, my childish imagination would lead me back to the commotion of the camp and frighten me in the midst of machetes with a dance of threatening faces. It all happened in another world. Then I waited for the faces to return from where they’d come.

  Like any child deprived of his papa, I wanted to know why mine wasn’t coming home. Mama said a few words about the killings, but she didn’t explain my papa’s captivity. I listened carefully to the rumors. The first thing I heard was that a lot of people had been cut in Ntarama, in Kibungo, and everywhere else. I followed the radio programs. I listened to tearful music and commentaries. I went with a cousin to visit the memorial.

  The marshes, though, never. I don’t have a single colleague whom I’d dare suggest it to. I haven’t had the opportunity to go with someone meticulous with the facts. I lack a decent education to talk about the genocide openly with friends. In Kiganwa, we barely mention it; we don’t have the curiosity or the time. We make passing remarks about what we hear on the radio, and rumors are all one gets from casual conversations, at the cabaret, or on the way to work. But families share nothing of their private thoughts. At school, they teach the extermination. The lessons are meant to be general, emptied of accusations. Among Tutsi schoolmates, though, there’s no hide-and-seek. They attack you if you set about talking like that.

  The truth has found its place as I’ve left childhood behind. Now I’m familiar with the history I hear during the commemorations. But as I said, it’s different with explanations in the family. I’ve questioned Mama about Papa. She said that he’s the only one who can provide satisfactory answers about the genocide. She refuses to answer in his place. She’s a loyal wife. She’s not spendthrift or blameworthy. She fears the traditional anger a husband feels when confronted with a bad wife; she refuses to make his imprisonment worse. She never gets angry with him.

  In Rilima, Papa received a sentence of twelve years; he stayed for seven. I don’t know if the punishment makes up for his misdeeds. How could I know? When he left in 2003, he didn’t explain things directly; he didn’t address his wrongdoing. He told us that he had acknowledged sins of genocide at his trial, that he had received a pardon in return. Sometimes he told us about his prisoner routine, about his duties and chores, how he and his colleagues had gotten through those years in prison. Then he described the miracle of his release.

  Still, he never sat me down on a bench in the yard to share his opinion of the killings with me. He returned to running the parcel and the cabaret without bothering about explanations. He showed himself to be a remarkable farmer again. The house’s veranda, he built that. He planted a banana grove, he distilled his renowned urwagwa. It’s impossible to figure out the thoughts of a father after he has spent seven years in prison. Before the killings, people said he was very devout. He read from the Bible wearing the deacon’s robe, and he preached as the priest’s replacement at less important masses. After he was freed, he didn’t miss church a single Sunday. But it’s hard to know now if he prays with any fervor.

  I felt some frustration, of course. It’s complicated having a papa who has just left prison. Shortly after that, in 2010, I went to sit in the grass at the gaçaça courts. I listened to the trials without flinching. We heard a lot of unexpected information. One acquaintance would accuse another, “You were in an expedition that Sunday. I saw you in the marshes below Nyarunazi.” Or, “You’re the one who struck my sister with your machete. Everyone saw you.” The witnesses’ accounts poured out. People accused the criminals; we learned who had done wrong on which day in which place. I heard my papa answer questions and listened to him describe several of his expeditions. It was agonizing.

  When the trials ended, I was wary of learning more. I only wanted to hear the facts from my papa’s lips. I’m not sure now—it’s a bit confused. Maybe I just wasn’t curious anymore. A child doesn’t want to hear everything his papa has to say. In any case, on the last day of the gaçaça, they gave him a life sentence because of the business with Ernestine and her baby boy. They tied him up and took him to Rilima right there and then.

  A PILE OF CASSAVA

  With keen precision, her hand drives the blade into the cassava bulb, picks the bulb up with the blade, and drops it in her other hand to strip the cassava bare in a few quick cuts. Two last chops lop off the ends, and the fat root is tossed atop the pile. In Claudine’s hand the machete whirls in an unbroken rhythm even as she chats with a visitor or lectures a child on the other side of the hedge. One senses that her skill runs in the family, a dexterity handed down from her mother or grandmother before their deaths. Her legs outstretched, her back set against a low stone wall, she sits on a cloth facing two pyramidal piles. The entire season’s harvest will pass beneath her blade—between the shrinking pile of brown cassava and the rising pile of peeled, white bulbs—before being hauled off to the mill.

  Claudine speaks in her distinctive low voice. She poses questions about Parisian life, the height of the buildings, the climate in France. She asks for news about my mama and her health, and she wonders about my siblings’ work. She is curious about all the traveling that journalists do. Don’t they get tired of gathering such chaotic news? How do they eat so far from home? Do they find wives in every country? She is also one of the few people who inquire about my books.

  Her foot is giving her trouble; its arch looks dreadfully swollen. The exams she had at the hospital in Kigali failed to reveal anything conclusive enough for the doctors to diagnose the ailment. The healer near Ntarama, whom she has consulted since childhood, attempted several remedies before confessing her bewilderment. “It’s the poison of jealousy,” says Claudine. “There’s no shortage of it around here.”

  The construction site behind her may very well be the cause of the jealousy. On the spot of her old adobe dwelling, still the standard in the mudugudu, rise the roughcast-cement walls of a home like those now found in Nyamata. The windows await windowpanes; the house frame stands ready to support a V-shaped roof and a ceiling for insulation. She and her husband, Damascène Bizima, had a stroke of luck when the new asphalt road leading to the future airport in Kigali arrived alongside their property, a strip of which Damascène sold to developers at a premium price. The couple is also building a hut for a mudugudu grocery in a corner of their yard and, at the opposite end, a pen for their cow as well as the goats that will soon be joining them. As Claudine remarks, “Good fortune was passing on the road and made a stop for us.”

  We are waiting for Nadine. Damascène was hostile to our initial interview three days earlier, a position he justified by relating his fear that the narrative of certain episodes from Nadine’s life might prove harmful to the entire family. More than he lets on at first, he has plainly been stung by the mockery to which they have been subjected in recent years. This explains why he had put Nadine on her guard, although he did so to such an extent that she said almost nothing during our first conversation. Fortunately, Claudine intervened. She doesn’t share Damascène’s anxiety, doubtless thanks to her past experience with my books; she knows that a story published in France has no effect on the rumors here. She also no doubt believes that her daughter, by te
lling her story to a sympathetic stranger, may be able to express what she tends to fixate on in silence, that talking to me will encourage Nadine to open up about “her roots,” which, as Claudine puts it, “got tangled up in sorrow.” In convincing her husband to allow us to speak one-on-one, Claudine displayed both diplomacy and a touch of guile. Most important, she put her daughter’s mind at ease.

  Nadine finally arrives. She has donned a cherry-red sheath dress and matching turban for the occasion. She pauses a moment, hesitating in the doorway. We give her a round of applause. She turns in place, kisses her mother, who leaves the room with Damascène, and settles comfortably in an armchair. She was four years old in the photograph published in Life Laid Bare. Because she spoke neither English nor French, I saw her grow up over the years without really speaking to her. She is now the eldest child of a lovely family. With an air of nonchalance and a mischievous smile, she knows that she is a beautiful girl whose curves hold the gaze of the boys from the mudugudu as well as those from her class. But what is most striking is how similar her deep voice is to her mother’s.

  NADINE UMUTESI

  SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD

  Daughter of Claudine Kayitesi, Tutsi survivor

  This red dress I’m wearing, I chose it myself. My mama took me to the boutique called Mama Codé, where the lady showed off all the dresses to us. It was a big thing. I picked the red one, Mama approved, and afterward Papa admired my choice. We all had a bit of fun. Sometimes people tease me that I am a beautiful girl. That makes me happy. It’s a good sign. Can being pleasing bring me luck? I think so, anyway.

  My name is Nadine Umutesi; I don’t know what it means. I am seventeen years old, the oldest child, with three brothers, and no sister for the moment. As a little girl, I lived with my mama, Claudine, just the two of us. She would bring me with her to our field, and while she raised the hoe I would entertain myself on a mat spread out in the shadow of a tree. When I was older, I played with the other children brought to the fields like me. I remember Berthe and her children. Together we formed a family where no male voice could be heard. Later on, Mama married Papa. He showed himself to be kind, like a papa, and we loved each other like a family. My childhood went by happily because I wasn’t clever enough yet to understand that pitfalls were lurking around me.

  My papa’s name is Damascène; he works at the Ntarama Health Center. My mama farms our plot of land beside the asphalt road. I don’t know where I was born. It was in Congo, anyway, in the Masisi region, where, people tell me, the famous Karisimbi volcano rumbles. That’s where my mama was dragged off to. When she returned from Congo, I lived my youngest years near the Kanzenze bus stop, in the adobe house at the top of the way—you know, where your friend took the photos. In 2003, we left to live here in the mudugudu, which put us closer to our plot. That’s a good thing, although it is farther from where I go to school, at Nelson Mandela. I am in my second year of secondary school.

  * * *

  IT ALL STARTED in primary school. When the teachers would ask for my father’s name, I would answer, Damascène Bizima. There was one teacher who contradicted me in front of the class; he claimed that I was a liar. Then a second one. The two of them said he wasn’t my real papa. They were show-offs, of course, who wanted to be mean. They enjoyed making the students laugh and bringing chaos to our family. Among us, it’s a custom to intimidate the unlucky ones.

  I put up with the taunts because there were no worries, no danger at home. I didn’t notice anything abnormal in my parents. They got on well, and they seemed happy with their daughter. I was looked after with loving care. Then one day, an ill-boding neighbor stopped me at our gate. He told me why my papa wasn’t the real one. It was an extraordinary surprise. I had always looked on Damascène as my papa regardless of the rumors. I was very confused.

  I mustered the courage to ask my mother for the truth. In her sweetest voice, she spoke into my eyes. She told me that during the genocide, women were sometimes made pregnant by savage men. She herself was violated by an interahamwe who forced her to follow him all the way to Congo. He made her his servant. That’s how I was born. Ever since I found out, I feel caught in a kind of uneasiness; I feel trapped by a sense of something like disgust. But I accepted the news as it was, because Papa continued to provide me with a papa’s love, as if he hadn’t heard a thing. I kept my composure, and I continue to see him as my true papa.

  Before the revelation, I was already aware of the genocide through radio programs. It was during the Week of Mourning. The neighbors discussed it, especially the ones getting on in age. They recalled what had happened to them. I heard how Tutsis had been cut by Hutus. They were so racked with hunger that they ate raw cassava even though they knew it was bad for their stomach. A lady described how she became so bloated from eating it that she couldn’t move from under the papyrus for three days. They prayed for rain to fall hard and fast because then the killers would ignore them and turn instead to looting houses—especially the sheet metal roofs they were so greedy for. The neighbors would share their memories once a year, which isn’t so much.

  The genocide was something we avoided at home, except maybe when my back was turned. In class, there were no quarrels between kids. I was too naive to understand completely. I didn’t suspect a thing. It was after the revelation that I asked to be told. One night the family was together—Papa, Mama, and I—and Mama explained the killings and everything that happened in detail. I was twelve years old. She revealed what she had seen personally; she described her mama sliced with a machete. They numbered seven in her family; two of them survived. I don’t know much about my lost uncles and aunts.

  Above all, Claudine offered me her memories of my grandmother. She seemed a kindly woman, and Claudine and the other children loved her dearly. She was never mean; she looked upon her offspring and neighbors with caring eyes. She knew fairy tales, and she pushed her children in school despite the poverty they endured. In Damascène’s family, his papa and mama were cut in Kanzenze. His whole family died around there. I don’t know how—I’m not sure of the details because the family was so large.

  I have peered far into the darkness of the genocide. I have continued to ask question after question either about Claudine or about her family. About the origin of the killings, about how people hid in the papyrus before the sun came out, how they crept through the water surrounded by mosquitoes, eating raw food when they gathered at night, and how they managed to survive while most others were cut. I have been to the Ntarama memorial, although I am not at all interested in going into the marshes. Basically, I don’t want to know things that are too tangible. Eating with muddy hands, sleeping in filth, living in clothes torn off by thorns—all of that upsets me. I am keener to learn about Congo because the criminals brought my mama there. I crave specifics. I look forward to taking a trip to Congo later on. I would like to examine the landscape of the place where I took my first breath. That’s understandable, right?

  My papa gives his full support to what my mama says, but she alone explains the genocide. When she talks, I don’t see any trouble on her face. I think she conceals it. She speaks in her beautiful voice, which you know because you ask her so many questions you jot down in your notebooks. She sidesteps the everyday details of life in Congo, but otherwise she speaks without zigzags. When she’s vague in a description, I ask her to clarify. I avoid interrupting her with questions that might make her suffer. I know she has been hurt. Hearing the truth seems less essential than stifling certain dreadful secrets. It helps me adjust to the obstacles in my life.

  * * *

  I GET UP at six o’clock, I wash, and I go down to the roadside. If no kindhearted driver gives me a lift to the bus stop, I call a bike-taxi on my mobile, which is a three-hundred-franc ride. I’m back home at 3:30 in the afternoon.

  I enjoy myself at school, even if we don’t have anything to eat for lunch. I get grades that bode well for my passing the national exam later on. I am refining my skills on the comput
er—my school has fourteen of them. We learn word processing, we listen to music, we check out websites, we try to find incredible stories to surprise ourselves with. Myself, I steer clear of the worst of them. I look at Facebook, although not very much. In class, you can be punished for it. I have to use a friend’s smartphone to open my page. I play soccer on a really excellent team, with practices three times a week. On defense is where I earn the accolades. The number five jersey brings out my best—or the number six, in the midfield, when the coaches ask me to, because I can handle the running and love to launch attacks like the Dutch. I see friends on the field and we find times to chitchat.

  Once back home, I eat immediately. There’s no noon lunch, as I said. Afterward, I prepare the evening food and study for school. I see my close friends before the evening meal. We talk a lot, we joke and tease each other; laughing like girls never gets old. Sometimes we share class notes and homework. I nod off at nine o’clock. On the weekends, I prepare the morning tea and do the housecleaning. Afterward, it’s up to me to make the noon and evening meals alongside Mama. I don’t work on the parcel, not even spading. I lend a hand with weeding only after unexpected rains. Claudine keeps me from the fatigue of farming. She insists that I not spoil my strength in the field. Only when the cowherd is away will I mind a cow and its calf with a staff in the pastures, or sometimes I bring grass to the cowshed. It isn’t very far.