ADALBERT: It was possible not to kill a neighbor or someone who appealed for pity, gratitude, or recognition, but it was not possible to save that person. You could agree together on a dodge, decide on a trick of that sort. But it was of no use to the dead person. For example, a man finding someone with whom he had popped many a Primus in friendship might turn aside, but someone else would come along behind and take care of it. In any case, in our group, that never happened.
FULGENCE: You could spare a person you owed an old favor to, or who had given you a cow, but there was always someone bringing up the rear who was out to kill. Luck did not exempt a single Tutsi in the marshes. What had to be done was done under all circumstances. You knew it, and in the end you did not dare go against that truth.
PIO: Advancing as a team, we would run into a scramble of fugitives hiding in the papyrus and the muck, so it was not easy to recognize neighbors. If by misfortune I caught sight of an acquaintance, like a soccer comrade, for example, a pang pinched my heart, and I left him to a nearby colleague. But I had to do this quietly, I could not reveal my good heart.
Anyone who hesitated to kill because of feelings of sadness absolutely had to watch his mouth, to say nothing about the reason for his reticence, for fear of being accused of complicity. In
any case, those feelings did not last long—they managed to be forgotten.
ALPHONSE: We killed everything we tracked down in the papyrus. We had no reason to choose, to expect or fear anyone in particular. We were cutters of acquaintances, cutters of neighbors, just plain cutters.
Today some name acquaintances they supposedly spared, because they know these are no longer living to contradict them. They tell the tales to attract the favor of suffering families, they invent rescues to ease their return. We joke about those fake stratagems.
ÉLIE: We were forbidden to choose among men and women, babies and oldsters—everyone had to be slaughtered by the end. Time was hurrying us on, the job pulled us along, and the intimidators kept saying, “Anyone who lowers his machete because of somebody he knows, he is spoiling the willingness of his colleagues.”
Anyway, someone who avoided the fatal gesture before a good acquaintance did it out of kindness to himself, not to his acquaintance, because he knew it brought no mercy to the other person, who’d be struck down anyhow. Quite the contrary, the victim might wind up cut more cruelly, for having slowed up the job for a moment.
FULGENCE: It was possible not to bloody your arms when faced with an acquaintance, but it didn’t save the victim’s life. The acquaintance would be cut anyway by the next one along. If you avoided a neighbor, that person might be cut more slowly, and you could be fined if you were seen avoiding the victim. Nobody won in the end. It soon became useless to try to spare a neighbor’s
life. Just one time I saw someone spared: a tall girl taken away by a colleague for shared convenience; not long afterward, a few days at most, she was condemned and thrown into a ditch.
PANCRACE: Since the Tutsis were scattered in the depths of the bush and the marshes, it was hard to leave in the morning with an idea of whom you would find. You took what the papyrus offered.
Still, some people tried to kill one person in particular. You could tell this obsessed them, to be first at the finding. They searched as if they were sniffing around, then got steamed up when they failed. Maybe because of some old falling out, maybe just for fun. Maybe most often so as to get, that very evening, a well-placed field coveted for a long time. Someone who brought proof of an important cutting—a well-known person, or somebody very fast, for example—might be rewarded by a first claim on the victim’s land. But usually we hunted without such thoughts.
IGNACE: Anyway, the authorities never gave us any orders to look for some acquaintance as a priority. In the papyrus, we had to strike all we found, because we didn’t know in advance what we’d find. No one was to monopolize anyone else’s time to get personal victims for himself. At every opportunity, you killed.
LÉOPORD: Our Tutsi neighbors, we knew they were guilty of no misdoing, but we thought all Tutsis at fault for our constant troubles. We no longer looked at them one by one; we no longer stopped to recognize them as they had been, not even as colleagues. They had become a threat greater than all we had experienced together, more important than our way of seeing things in the community. That’s how we reasoned and how we killed at the time.
ALPHONSE: The leader would repeat, “Kill everyone except the Tutsi women properly possessed by Hutu husbands, if these show exemplary behavior in the killings.” Which explains why some Tutsi women—for example Jean-Baptiste’s wife—were spared with the knowledge of their neighbors. But on the contrary, a Tutsi husband of a Hutu woman had to be killed as a top priority, with his wife and their children too, if she made any protest.
ÉLIE: A Tutsi wife, you could try to save her. You offered a cow to the leader and a radio or the like to the organizers, then you handed out small payments of money to those who were prowling around your house. But that wasn’t even worth trying if you did not want to cooperate.
A Tutsi husband you couldn’t bargain for; he was at the head of the list. If his wife began to argue, she was struck right away, and they cut her husband while she watched, to discourage her. If she kept on, she’d be cut herself with her children.
ADALBERT: Someone who wanted to save his Tutsi wife was required to show great enthusiasm in the killings. Someone who behaved weakly or timidly knew it was all over for his wife. Grousing or idleness doomed her.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: I know the case of a Hutu boy who fled into the marshes with the Tutsis. After two or three weeks they pointed out to him that he was Hutu and so could be saved. He left the marshes and was not attacked. He had spent so much time with Tutsis in his early childhood that he was a bit mixed up. His mind no longer knew how to draw the proper line between the ethnic groups. Afterward he did not get involved in the killings. That is the sole exception. The only able-bodied person not forced to
raise the machete, even coming along behind. It was clear his mind was overwhelmed, and he was not penalized.
FULGENCE: It was much better to kill strangers than acquaintances, because acquaintances had time to stab you with an intense look before receiving the blows. A look from a stranger pierced your mind or memory less easily.
MARIE-CHANTAL: “For a woman, it was unthinkable to hide an acquaintance, even if you had been close to her since childhood, even if she gave you small sums of money. When the news got around of a concealed survivor, you had to give her up without delay to your neighbors. You might even be forced to kill her with your own hands. So it did not save her, besides lasting a few days longer for nothing, and it obliged you to do the most sickening work of the men.”
INNOCENT: “I had quite a dear friend to whom I had given a cow. He was a very well-off merchant, obliging, most cordial in every circumstance. Formerly he had asked me to give extensive supplementary instruction to his son to help him pass the national examination. I would come, I would teach, I felt quite at ease at his house, as if in my own home. He and his wife would invite my wife and me to share meals, drinks, and little gifts.
“The day of the killings, I naturally thought of him. I sent to ask him to hide my child. He did not come to his door. He sent word through his houseboy that no one should step inside his courtyard, that there was no longer room in his home for the slightest memory of a friendship.
“Recently, I saw him again several times in prison here, while I was with you. We exchanged traditional embraces of greeting. He behaved kindly, as before. He told me, ‘Innocent, you are a
little brother to me. You saved your life, and I rejoice in that. But if the situation returned, I would do the same. With such a fate, there is no choice.’”
FRANCINE: “There are killers who whispered the names of acquaintances as they lifted up the papyrus, promising them protection. But it was a simple ruse to encourage them to rise from their watery hiding place, to cut them without the trouble of a search. It was very dangerous to be discovered by an acquaintance, because he could make you suffer for the show of it.”
BERTHE: “Before, I knew that a man could kill another man, because it happens all the time. Now I know that even the person with whom you’ve shared food, or with whom you’ve slept, even he can kill you with no trouble. The closest neighbor can turn out to be the most horrible. An evil person can kill you with his teeth: that is what I have learned since the genocide, and my eyes no longer gaze the same on the face of the world.”