FULGENCE: The more we saw people die, the less we thought about their lives, the less we talked about their deaths. And the more we got used to enjoying it. And the more we told ourselves, deep inside, that since we knew how to do it, we really should do it down to the very last one. This final viewpoint seemed natural amid the uproar and the shouting, but it went without saying.
ALPHONSE: We slogged through the marshes with a crowd of people to kill. The mud came up to our ankles, sometimes to our knees. The sun hammered our skulls. The papyrus tore our shirts and the skin beneath. Colleagues were watching us. If they saw trembling, they sneered and called us cowards. If they saw hesitation, they grew angry and accused us of treachery. If they saw generosity, they scolded and called us old women. They were quick to abuse us.
In that situation, the jeering of colleagues is awful to overcome if it gets around your neighborhood. It is just the same in school or in the cabaret, but more serious in the marshes. This taunting is a poison in life. You try to protect yourself from it, of course. So you join the camp of the ones doing it. When the killings begin, you find it easier to ply the machete than to be stabbed by ridicule and contempt. This truth is impossible to understand for anyone who was not there beside us.
That is what I want to say. In the tumult of killings, stepping
aside is not viable for a person, since that person would then find only his neighbors’ backs to talk to about ordinary concerns. Being alone is too risky for us. So the person jumps up at the signal and takes part, even if the price is the bloody work you know.
ÉLIE: Ever since independence, the intimidators were always fiddling around with the idea of killing, taking care never to say it outright. For example, when they announced, “There’s not enough land in this country for two ethnic groups, and neither one will leave, so it is up to the Hutus to solve the problem,” that meant what could not be said.
The intimidators did not want any trouble, above all from pointless talk about what they were up to. We felt there wouldn’t be anything left to talk about when it was over and done with. Basically, we agreed to go for it without speaking of it. What we were doing seemed less unnatural to us if we didn’t have to say it. And there are still words we do not want to pronounce, even among colleagues.
PANCRACE: Killings of that kind are hungry for death, not for life, as with wild animals. Such killings feed on everyone they see, they are never satisfied; as long as there is still someone left, they spur you on until the last of the last. That is why they do without words. Except for ridiculous words, obviously. On the radio we’d hear that the inkotanyi had tails or pointy ears; even if no one believed it, it did us good to hear it. Those were not very nice jokes, but we laughed anyway. It was better than hearing nothing at all.
ÉLIE: No one can admit the whole sad truth, not now, not ever. No one can speak all the precise words of his misdeeds without damning himself in other people’s eyes. And that’s too grim. But
without fear of seeming more punishable, a small number are beginning to recount some ugly bits and pieces, to do penance for the blood they splattered. Those few are clearing a path of sincerity. It is a big thing.
On the hills or in prison, truth offers every participant a share. The survivors have the largest share because of what they endured, that’s normal. The Tutsi wives who were saved, the international cameramen, the soldiers have shares. But if the offenders’ share is missing, the revelations about those killings will go around in circles forever. The offenders know more than the basic facts they remember, more than the details about how things were managed. They have secrets in their souls.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: The whole time the killings went on, I never heard the word genocide. It reached our ears only through the voices of international reporters and humanitarian officials, first on the road into exile—but we did not know what the word meant—and then in the camps in Congo.
This is a truth: among ourselves, we never said that word. Many did not even know the meaning of genocide. It was of no use. And yet if we were getting up every morning to go hunting, even when we were tired or had other work left unfinished, it was certainly because we thought we had to kill them all. People knew what job they were doing without needing to name it.
ADALBERT: Genocide is not an idea common to wars and battles. It is an idea the authorities have—to rid themselves of a danger once and for all. A convenient idea that need not be named or encouraged, except with the usual malicious outbursts. It’s a quite ordinary idea when it flies from word to word, sometimes from joke to joke; it becomes extraordinary when it is caught on the tips of machetes.
This idea does not die with the killings, not after victory, not after defeat. It can be salvaged by future authorities for another destiny. But how can you kill an idea, used so extraordinarily, if you do not know how to kill its word, which can recall it to life? Killing enemies, killing offenders, killing neighbors—that you can understand. Killing ideas and words—that is beyond intelligence, a farmer’s intelligence, anyway.
PIO: At the start of a genocide, there is a cause, a reason, and people who find it worthwhile. The cause does not drift around there by accident; it’s even fine-tuned by the intimidators: the desire to win the game for good. But the people it tempts are the ones who just happen to live there. And I was there, at home, when the temptation came calling. I’m not saying I was forced by Satan and the like. Through greed and obedience I found the cause worthwhile, and I ran down to the marshes. But if I had been born in Tanzania or in France, I would have been far away from the commotion and dirty bloodshed.
Simple people cannot resist a temptation like that, not without biblical rescue, not on the hills, anyway. Why? Because of the beautiful words of complete success. They win you over. Afterward the temptation cannot go to prison, so they imprison the people. And the temptation can certainly show up just as dreadful further along.
When someone sees what is in his own best interest come right up to him, and his colleagues as well, he loses no more time in waiting and hesitation, he no longer considers feelings, no longer hears pleas for mercy. He sees Evil in the form of Good and is content with it. He thinks of all he will gain for himself and his family until the end of his days. He follows his own best interest into the swamps.
Afterward he cleans himself of filthy mud and blood the way
he downs a Primus. That is what I did. I’m not saying I am not at fault. But I am punished both for my mistake and for my unlucky fate.
IGNACE: It was kill or be killed. Each morning there were those who had to die and those who had to kill. Anyone who spoke out against the killings was killed, even for a murmur. Anyone who slipped away slowed down the killings of his colleagues, and he had to hide until he was found out and penalized. In the end, what you call genocide is killings that offer only one option.
ADALBERT: Agriculture is something you cannot hurry; it follows its seasons. The killings, on the contrary, they followed our whims. You want more, you strike more, you shed more blood, you take more. And what is more—if it’s a genocide, you know you will take everything for good, except for the quarreling, the transgressions, and all those other bad words you leave behind in the arms of death.
LÉOPORD: I can give you endless details about the killings. But when you ask me to tell you my thoughts during those awkward moments … I don’t know what to reply.
The killings were very well arranged, they seemed profitable to us. We were obedient and encouraged in a propitious new situation. We started, we got used to it, we were satisfied. The farmer going down to his field wonders along the way whether he should plant beans or corn. The teacher going to his school debates which lesson he will pull out for his class. The mechanic chooses the engine part he is going to clean. But the killer in the marshes is not bothered by personal questions. He puts great effort into his work. He follows his colleagues and chases his victims.
He counts his riches. Many of our thoughts were empty, and they left no memories behind.
IGNACE: We called them “cockroaches,” an insect that chews up clothing and nests in it, so you have to squash them hard to get rid of them. We didn’t want any more Tutsis on the land. We imagined an existence without them. At first, we favored getting rid of them without actually killing them. If they had agreed to leave—for Burundi or other likely destinations—they could have gone and saved their lives. And we wouldn’t have piled up the fatalities of the massacres. But they couldn’t imagine living there without their ancient traditions and their herds of cows. That pushed us toward the machetes.
The Tutsis had accepted so many killings without ever protesting, they had waited for death or bad blows so often without raising their voices, that in a certain way we thought deep down they were fated to die, here and now, all together. We thought that since this job was meeting no opposition, it was because it really had to be done. That idea helped us not to think about the job. Afterward we learned what it was called. But among us here in prison, we don’t use that word.
JEAN-BAPTISTE: After the plane crash, we talked from group to group about wiping out the Tutsis. But to me, the words didn’t ring true, I was thinking only about doing some killing soon. The evening of the massacre in the church, the seriousness of it overturned everything: I understood that words and deeds had come together. The deeds now promised to be definitive, and the words useless.
You could feel uneasy about the activity waiting for you in the marshes. But you whispered, This job is going to be completely
finished, and if I don’t contribute my share, I will seem a defeatist afterward, and that’s too penalizing. So you followed close on your colleagues’ heels, you did it without a word, and after a while you got used to it and you joked around like before. But speaking true words about that situation, that is risky no matter what.
JEAN: “For a little boy who zigzagged among those bloody ambushes, there is nothing to be gained by speaking of it one way or another. The words he will use about what he did will play a mean trick on him, in his mind or someone else’s. The lower his age and the higher his voice at the time of the killings, the more serious his words have become. People will say of him, This boy has seen too deep an evil; he will denounce a transgressor; he has dirtied his arm where he should not have gone; and what he is saying will torment those around him. He will not make a proper adult, so from now on he must stay one step aside.
“Therefore, truly, silence alone can help him.”
FULGENCE: That massacre, we did not speak of it beforehand because it was the business of the intimidators and was being prepared outside of earshot. We did not speak of it during, since there were better things to do. And now they tell us we have to speak of everything. Of what, since we are the last ones to have to talk about it? Of what we saw? Why us, since everyone saw the same thing? Why not ask our compatriots who stand around gaping at their banana trees in blissful contemplation? Tell what we did in detail? What use is that, except to be even more penalized? Tell the why of it? What for, since we never found out what was being schemed on the sly?
Most amazing of all is that no one ever bothered to explain
the why of our killings to us properly beforehand, and no one is going to do it now. Except to count off years of prison for us.
CLÉMENTINE: “The wives of the killers never talk about the genocide. They never mention this word among themselves. It no more exists than the repentance that goes with it. These women say they regret the absence of their men, the poverty that awaits them each morning, and the bad words that have spread throughout the region—as if these things were natural calamities.
“They pray, they sing, they deny, and not only because they are afraid. They feel more furious than guilty. They are more miserable over the unkept promises of their husbands than over the complaints and accusations of the survivors. They keep silent, swindled on all sides.”
PIO: Killing Tutsis … I never even thought about it when we lived in neighborly harmony. Even pushing and shoving or trading harsh words didn’t seem right to me. But when everyone began getting out their machetes at the same time, I did so too, without delay. I had only to do as my colleagues did and think of the advantages. Especially since we knew they were going to leave the world of the living for all time.
When you receive firm orders, promises of long-term benefits, and you feel well backed up by colleagues, the wickedness of killing until your arm falls off is all one to you. I mean, you naturally feel pulled along by all those opinions and their fine words.
A genocide—that seems extraordinary to someone who arrives afterward, like you, but for someone who got himself muddled up by the intimidators’ big words and the joyful shouts of his colleagues, it seemed like a normal activity.
LÉOPORD: When the Tutsis were caught, many died without a word. In Rwanda people say “die like a lamb in the Bible.” Of course in Rwanda there are no sheep, so we have never heard their cry.
It sometimes touched us painfully that they awaited death in silence. Evenings, we would ask over and over, “Why no protest from these people who are about to leave? Why do they not beg for mercy?”
The organizers claimed that the Tutsis felt guilty for the sin of being Tutsi. Some interahamwe kept saying they felt responsible for the misfortunes they had brought upon us.
Well, I knew that was not true. The Tutsis were not asking for anything in those fatal moments because they no longer believed in words. They had no more faith in crying out, like frightened animals, for example, howling to be heard above the mortal blows. An overpowering sorrow was carrying those people away. They felt so abandoned they did not even open their mouths.