Читать книгу From Red Earth - Denise Uwimana - Страница 14

6

Trouble

ON OCTOBER 1, 1990, an electric current pulsed through the land when radios announced that the Rwandan Patriotic Front had invaded from Uganda. The RPF was comprised mainly of Tutsi exiles and refugees who had fled Hutu violence in Rwanda in earlier decades. Successive governments had persecuted them in Uganda, yet they were arbitrarily denied reentry to Rwanda, year after year.

In a renewed attempt to return, the RPF invaded Rwanda this first of October, but the Hutu government, supported by French military aid, rebuffed them. Government leaders labeled them inyangarwanda, “people who hate Rwanda,” and inyenzi, “cockroaches.”

Three days later, radio broadcasts reported that the RPF had attacked the capital city, Kigali. This was fake news; Habyarimana’s forces had in fact stopped the invasion at the Uganda border. Cleverly contriving a link between the RPF and the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, the government spread the word that “inyenzi have infiltrated everywhere.”

Their fearmongering led to arrests throughout the country. Who would be next? With the tension building, Charles and I decided to fast and pray on Saturday, October 6. At two o’clock that afternoon, we were kneeling in our bedroom when the door flew open and two policemen burst in. They grabbed Charles, who gave me a desperate look as they hustled him away to their car and drove off.

Sick and hopeless, I lay down on our bed and wept. That evening I vomited, the beginning of stomach problems that plagued me for the next fourteen years.

That night, one of my husband’s colleagues phoned, urging me to flee the country. He had heard a rumor that the rebels – as Hutu called the RPF – were now attacking from nearby Burundi as well as from Uganda, implying worse troubles ahead. But what could I do? I could not simply take my one-year-old and disappear without knowing what was happening to Charles – or even where he was.

A commotion roused me at five o’clock the next morning. Peeking between the curtains, I saw two military trucks packed with soldiers, as well as several soldiers standing in the road with two-way radios. These were saying that Bugarama had been infiltrated by RPF – another false report.

“Where are inyenzi?” one shouted through a bullhorn as they moved slowly down the street.

During this Sunday morning, a company colleague came by for my husband’s office keys. He did not know where Charles was, but he offered to help me search. We first walked to Muganza to inquire at the local jail, but Charles was not there. Then we drove to the patrol offices at the Burundi and Congo borders; here too no one knew anything. I realized then that Charles had to be at the central prison in Cyangugu. Back at home, I could not concentrate. For my toddler’s sake, however, I fought my fears and tried to keep calm.

After the weekend, I learned that Charles was not the only Cimerwa employee to have been apprehended. At least six other prominent Tutsi had been arrested in the factory town.

That Monday, all Tutsi homes in Bugarama were searched for weapons. I hoped that since Charles had already been detained, our house would be bypassed. But a police car pulled up at my gate, and Bugarama’s mayor got out with a police officer and Sebatware, one of Cimerwa’s three directors. Entering, they told me my husband was being charged with sabotage. Since Charles was responsible for Cimerwa’s explosives, he was particularly suspect, they said – and they had come to search my house.

I opened the doors to all our rooms and cupboards, showing we had nothing to hide. The men confiscated several photos, plus the receipt for a used Land Rover Charles had bought. Before leaving, they arrested Dominique, a Hutu teenager who helped with chores around the house. They kept him in jail two weeks, trying to make him say that Charles had exchanged the Land Rover for dynamite. Dominique was beaten, but he never denounced my husband.

From the day of the search, Cimerwa directors posted a guard at my gate. Alphonse dropped by one morning to ask how I was coping. He was arrested as soon as he left my house and was jailed for two weeks. After that, people stopped coming to see me.

In a matter of days, my neighbors had become hostile. At work, almost no one talked to me. I had never felt so isolated. The whole town seemed permeated with suspicion. Bonafrida, a Tutsi nurse in Cimerwa’s clinic, told me that Hutu patients no longer trusted her to give them injections.

On Sunday evening, October 14, my phone rang. It was Sebatware. In his abrupt manner, he said that prosecutors in Cyangugu wanted to interrogate me. “Be ready in five minutes!” he ordered.

My mind went into a spin. What did they want? As I hastily pulled on some slacks beneath my kitenge, I tried to think what was best for Charles-Vital. Should I leave him with neighbors? But I might not come back … I decided to take him along.

As I lifted my sleeping one-year-old from his crib, the company vehicle pulled up outside. Throughout the thirty-five-mile trip, I battled anxiety: What were they doing to Charles? What would happen to our child? What would happen to me?

In Cyangugu, three prosecutors grilled me about friends, relatives, acquaintances – in this province, in the cement plant, and abroad. They quizzed me about people in the snapshots the mayor had confiscated, which magazines my father-in-law read, where my family was.… I answered all their questions. I had nothing to hide.

Before letting me go, they warned me to tell no one of this interrogation. If I did, they would be sure to learn of it, they said, and there would be “consequences.” Then they dismissed me. But I had no sense of relief as Charles-Vital and I were driven home through the dark, nor any feeling of security as I carried him into our empty house.

Toward the end of October, I went to the mayor’s office, requesting to visit my husband in prison. The mayor replied that I was not a Rwandan citizen and therefore had no rights in this country. Reminding him of my official permission to live and work in Rwanda, I again pleaded to visit Charles.

“No!” he yelled. “Get out of here!”

And this was the man who used to shoot hoops with Charles on Cimerwa’s basketball court, stopping by our house afterward to shower….

Defeated, I stood in the road outside the mayor’s office. Looking upward, I silently cried out, reminding Jesus how he had fled Bethlehem with his parents, though neither he nor they had done any wrong – this was how it felt being Tutsi in Rwanda.

Cement trucks drove past, coating me with dust. I remained rooted to the spot. A driver rolled down his window, offering a lift, but I dumbly shook my head.

Finally, I walked home and wept. Then I turned to the Bible. In the third chapter of Ezekiel, I read, “But I will make you as unyielding and hardened as they are. I will make your forehead like the hardest stone, harder than flint.” These words emboldened me to try again.

This time I approached Sebatware. Although I knew his callous character, I walked into the director’s office, putting my trust in God.

“You are not Rwandan!” Sebatware challenged when I entered. “Why did your parents leave this country?” He knew they had fled for political reasons, so I ignored his question, telling him instead that I wanted to visit Charles in Cyangugu Prison. His grim expression never softened, but he handed me a pass, granting freedom of movement on the company’s behalf. He also gave me use of a company car and driver.

Since I had the pass and the vehicle, I invited Oscar and Bonafrida to join me. Bonafrida’s husband, Silas, had been arrested, as had Consolée, Oscar’s wife. Consolée was pregnant at the time. She was later released to the hospital for the birth of their daughter, Ruth, but was then returned to prison.

We three made the trip to Cyangugu on Thursday, November 1. The road was so crowded with some kind of demonstration that our driver had to stop the car. The marchers were carrying tree trunks and shouting slogans. When we were able to make out their words, we realized this was a Hutu victory march celebrating the death, some weeks previous, of RPF leader Fred Rwigema. Carrying logs represented taking him to be buried. They were threatening to do the same to whoever might replace Rwigema; I heard Paul Kagame’s name, purposely mispronounced Kagome, meaning “bad man.”

Little did these demonstrators dream that Paul Kagame would not only lead the RPF to victory over their regime in less than four years, he would become Rwanda’s president for more than twenty.

We passed several checkpoints on the way to Cyangugu, but our car was always waved through, thanks to its Cimerwa logo. Everyone knew Cimerwa was run by extremist Hutu.

Seeing Charles was a shock. His head was shaved. In less than a month he had lost weight, his face had become haggard, and his skin had taken a strange whitish pallor. He was still wearing the denim jacket and jeans in which he had been arrested.

To encourage him, I described our little son’s latest achievements. Then I gave him a Bible and passed on my parents’ greeting, Isaiah 41:10, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”

Other than that, we could say little. Prison guards were writing down every sentence. We could only look at each other, letting our eyes say what words could not. Reluctantly I took leave of my husband, trying not to communicate my loneliness, which would only have increased his own.

On Friday morning, I returned the pass to Sebatware, who tore it up. He then summoned all Cimerwa employees to gather on the concrete outside the company health center. When everyone was assembled and silent, Sebatware announced that from now on, no loitering or discussion would be tolerated on the factory premises.

“Trust is a thing of the past!” he said, glowering around at the six hundred faces.

Bonafrida and I did not let this announcement deter us. We depended on conversation to buoy our spirits, since both our husbands were in prison, and we continued to speak whenever we met.

The next time Oscar and I visited our spouses, I asked a guard why certain Cimerwa Tutsi employees had been arrested. He told me to ask my boss. Oscar and I decided to approach the three top Cimerwa officials: Sebatware, the general director; Gasasira, the commercial director; and Casimir, the technical director. Bonafrida came with us.

We asked these three directors to intervene on behalf of our family members in prison. They replied that they could do nothing, claiming they were not responsible for the arrests. Bonafrida flared up at this, accusing Casimir of wanting her husband’s job for his brother-in-law. The directors promptly fired her and forced her to move back to eastern Rwanda with her two children, although her husband remained in prison in the southwest. Casimir’s brother-in-law was indeed given Silas’s job. I missed Bonafrida. I never saw her again.

By now it was December 1990, and the “Hutu Ten Commandments” had been published by Kangura, a widely read pro-regime magazine. Among its commandments, the document stated that the armed forces must consist exclusively of Hutu, that any Hutu man marrying a Tutsi was a traitor, and that no Hutu should employ Tutsi or even feel compassion toward them.

Annemarie was one of the only people I could still relate to at work; the others found ways to show their spite. A young colleague took away my office chair, telling me Tutsi had no right to sit anymore. Thankfully, the Chinese supervisor intervened and made him return my chair.

During this lonely period, I started keeping a journal. After my child was tucked into bed at night I found a measure of comfort in jotting down my fears and frustrations, my prayers, or any thoughts that stirred me while reading the Bible. Entries were random, because I would open to any page, date it, and start to write. I didn’t care that it was not chronological – the little book was for me alone to read, and I treasured it. I kept it hidden in a cupboard, where no one could probe its contents.

How I appreciated my little son’s companionship, although I worried about what the future held for him. He was a late talker, but he found other ways to communicate. He would toddle around me as I sat in the backyard, bringing me pebbles or taking my hand to show me something. In the evenings, I often held him on my lap and sang to him from my hymnal. He would “sing” along, making sounds – without words – on perfect pitch. I was astonished when he turned the pages to his favorite song. How did he recognize it?

In March 1991, Rwanda’s political climate improved somewhat. The wider world had noted that Tutsi were disappearing, and the Hutu government had to tread more carefully if it wanted a good international image.

I observed this shift when a lawyer came to investigate the arrests of Tutsi Cimerwa employees. Annemarie slid a sheet of carbon paper onto his clipboard, beneath his note-taking. Thus she and I learned that one of our supervisors – who was later responsible for many murders – made no claims against Charles or the other imprisoned Tutsi at this time.

I noticed, too, that people were no longer afraid to visit me at home. I welcomed the change in our community and at work, but, in hindsight, it gave me a false sense of safety. I was lulled into thinking life could return to normal.

After one of Annemarie’s frequent evening visits, I accompanied her to my front gate. Charles-Vital, as usual, was at my side, clinging to my hand. A man was stumbling down the road, obviously drunk. He veered in our direction, his eyes on my son.

Glancing at his wrist, as if checking the time, he said, “Hey, little guy! I come from Cyangugu. I just signed your father’s release papers.”

Then he turned to continue his zigzag course. Annemarie and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised at this bizarre encounter; neither of us had ever seen the man before. A few days later, on March 26, Charles was inexplicably released, after nearly six months in prison.

The evening of my husband’s homecoming, several friends came to our house, bringing food and drink for an impromptu party. Engrossed in conversation with one of them, Charles did not at first notice Charles-Vital banging his leg and singing, over and over, “Papa, Papa, Imana ishimwe cyane,” “Papa, Papa, give great praise to God!” – changing the words of a hymn to fit the occasion. Our child had never enunciated these words before.

Charles lifted him in a heartfelt hug. My heart was singing too as I watched them; we were a complete family. I hoped that our troubles were over – that now we could live happily ever after, as in my mother’s legends. We would serve the Lord together, leading the life I had envisioned at our wedding.

Despite our relief and pleasure, however, Charles seemed somewhat guarded. He shared few details of what he had endured in prison, beyond saying that he had been beaten. I did not press. I was sure he would tell me more once he had recovered – never guessing how brief our reunion would be.