Small Country

by Gaël Faye

“Gaby, put your father on the line.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “What?”

  She stopped short. I could hear the sound of her breathing.

  “I’m on my way.”

  Just as on the day after the coup, there was nobody about on our land. No Prothé, no Donatien, not even the watchman. Everyone had vanished. Maman rushed over on her motorbike. She was still wearing her helmet as she climbed the steps to our terrace, four at a time, to take Ana and me in her arms. There was something manic about Maman’s gestures. She brewed some tea in the kitchen and then came to sit down in the living room. She was holding her cup in both hands, blowing on the fragrant steam.

  “Does your father often leave you alone?”

  I blurted out no at the same time as Ana said yes.

  “Papa wasn’t here on the night of the coup, either.” Ana was getting even now.

  “Bastard!” exclaimed Maman.

  When Papa finally showed up and walked into the living room, he didn’t say hello to anybody. But he looked astonished to find Maman sitting on the sofa.

  “What are you doing here, Yvonne?”

  “Aren’t you ashamed of leaving your children alone all night?”

  “Okay, I get it…So you want to pick a fight? Really? Just remember, you’re the one who left the family home, so you’re hardly in a position to criticize.”

  Maman closed her eyes. She stared at the floor and kept sniffing, until she finally wiped her nose on her shirtsleeve. Papa glared at her, ready to do battle. When she looked up, her eyes were red from crying.

  “The presidents of Burundi and Rwanda were killed last night,” she said. “The plane they were traveling in was shot down over Kigali.”

  Papa collapsed into a chair. Stunned.

  “Jeanne and Pacifique aren’t answering the phone. Neither is Aunt Eusébie. I need your help, Michel.”

  The situation in Bujumbura remained calm, despite the attack and the death of the new president having been announced. Papa contacted the gendarmes at the French embassy while Maman tried desperately to reach her family in Rwanda. Toward the end of the afternoon, Aunt Eusébie finally picked up. Papa listened in on their telephone conversation using the earpiece.

  “Yvonne,” Aunt Eusébie called out. “Yvonne, is that you? No, things are not okay at all. We heard the airplane exploding yesterday evening. A few minutes later, on the radio, they announced the death of the president, accusing Tutsis of being responsible for the assassination. The Hutu population has been called to take up arms in retaliation. I think it’s clear this was their signal to eliminate us. They’ve wasted no time in setting up roadblocks all over the place. And now the militia and the presidential guard are crisscrossing the city, rounding up people in the different districts, entering the homes of Tutsis and any opposing Hutus, massacring whole families, sparing nobody. Our neighbors and their children were killed this morning, at dawn, right here, on the other side of the fence. It was horrendous, oh my God…We witnessed their agony, and there was nothing we could do about it. We’re terrified, lying on the floor, inside the house. We can hear machine-gun fire all around us. What on earth can I do, alone with my four children? What’s going to happen to us, Yvonne? And my contact at the United Nations isn’t answering. I’m not holding out much hope…” she faltered.

  “Don’t say that, Eusébie!” urged Maman, trying to reassure her as best she could. “I’m here with Michel, we’ll get through to the French embassy in Kigali. Don’t worry. I’m sure Pacifique is already on his way to rescue you. If you can, try to shelter at Sainte-Famille: killers don’t attack churches. Remember the pogroms of ’63 and ’64? That’s how we survived, they didn’t dare desecrate the sanctuaries…”

  “It’s impossible. The neighborhood is surrounded. I can’t risk going outside with the children. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to pray with them, then I’ll hide them in the false ceiling, and after that I’ll go in search of help. But I’d rather say goodbye now. It’s better that way. We have little chance of making it, this time. They hate us too much. They want to finish us off once and for all. They’ve been talking about wiping us out for thirty years. And the time has come for them to execute their plan. There’s no pity left in their hearts. We’re already dead and buried. We will be the last of the Tutsi. After us, I’m begging you, create a new country. I must leave you now. Adieu, my sister, adieu…Live for us…I shall carry your love with me…”

  When Maman replaced the handset she was terror-stricken, her teeth were chattering and her hands shaking. Papa held her in his arms to soothe her. She quickly recovered her composure and asked Papa to dial another number, then another and another…

  For days and nights they took it in turns on the telephone, trying to reach the United Nations, as well as the French and Belgian embassies.

  “We’re only evacuating Westerners,” came the cold response on the other end of the line.

  “And their dogs and cats, too!” Maman shouted back, enraged.

  In the course of the hours, days, and weeks that followed, news reached us from Rwanda that confirmed what Pacifique had predicted a few weeks earlier. Throughout the country, the Tutsi were being systematically and methodically massacred, liquidated, eliminated.

  * * *

  —

  Maman had stopped eating. She had stopped sleeping. At night, she slipped quietly out of bed. I could hear her picking up the phone in the living room. Dialing the numbers of Jeanne and Aunt Eusébie for the thousandth time. In the morning, I would find her asleep on the sofa, the handset next to her ear, ringing on empty.

  Each day, the list of the dead grew longer: Rwanda had become a vast hunting ground in which the Tutsi were the prey. Human beings guilty of being born, guilty of being. Vermin in the eyes of the killers, cockroaches to be crushed. Maman felt helpless and useless. Despite all her determination and energy, she failed to save a single person. She was a bystander to the disappearance of her people, of her family, and there was nothing she could do about it. She was losing the ground from under her feet and becoming distant from us, as well as from herself, eaten away at from the inside. Her face had aged, heavy shadows outlined her eyes and wrinkles furrowed her brow.

  The curtains at home were permanently drawn. We were living in an endless night. The radio reverberated noisily through the large dark rooms, broadcasting distress cries, calls for help and intolerable suffering in the midst of sports results, stock-market news and the kind of minor political stories that keep the world spinning.

  In Rwanda, this thing that wasn’t war lasted three long months. I can’t remember what we did during that period. I have no recollection of school, or my friends, or our daily life. At home, the four of us were back together again, but a giant black hole had swallowed us up, along with our memories. From April to July 1994, at a distance and between four walls, next to a telephone and a radio, we lived through the genocide that was being perpetrated in Rwanda.

  The first news reached us at the beginning of June. Pacifique called Mamie’s house. He was alive. He had no news of anyone. But he knew that his army, the RPF, was going to seize Gitarama and that he would be at Jeanne’s within the week. This information restored a little of our hope. Maman managed to locate some distant relatives and a few friends. Their stories were always terrible and their survival nothing less than a miracle.

  The RPF was gaining ground. The Rwandan armed forces were being pushed back: along with the genocidal government, they had fled the capital. The French army had launched a vast humanitarian operation called “Turquoise” to put a stop to the genocide and secure part of the country. Maman said it was a final dirty trick by France, which was coming to the aid of its Hutu allies.

  In July, the RPF finally arrived in Kigali. Maman, Mamie, and Rosalie left immediately for Rwanda, in search of Aunt Eusébie, her children, Jeanne,
Pacifique, our family, and friends. Three generations were returning to their country after thirty years of exile. They had dreamed about this return, especially old Rosalie. She wanted to end her days in the land of her ancestors. But the Rwanda of milk and honey had disappeared. It was now a mass grave, open to the skies.

  23

  The school year was approaching its end. In Bujumbura, the first departures linked to the country’s political situation were underway. The twins’ father had decided to return to France, for good: the news dropped like a guillotine blade, from one day to the next. We said our goodbyes in front of the gates to their house, and their car sped off in a cloud of dust. It all happened too fast, so Francis had the idea of taking a taxi to the airport. We arrived just before the twins were due to board. We hugged each other. I made them promise to write to me. They swore they would, “In God’s name!”

  The twins left a void behind them. The first few times we met up in the Combi, on our patch of wasteland, the laughter was missing from Armand’s jokes and from our afternoon stories. More than anything, the twins’ departure made more space for Francis. From then on, all we did was talk. We would sit for hours on the Combi’s banquette, listening to an old Peter Tosh cassette, smoking cheap cigarettes, and necking beers and Fantas that Francis bought us at the kiosk. Whenever I suggested going fishing, or a river trip or mango-picking, everyone told me to get lost: they were kids’ games and we were too old for them now.

  “Gotta find ourselves a proper name,” said Gino.

  “We already have one! The Kinanira Boyz.”

  “Pathetic!” sneered Gino and Francis.

  “You came up with it, Gino,” I pointed out, feeling aggrieved.

  “Look, whatever, we’re done with ‘crews’ and ‘bands of brothers,’ ” said Francis. “What we’re talking about now is a gang. Buja is a city of gangs, like Los Angeles or New York. There’s one for every ’hood. In Bwiza, it’s ‘The Diehards,’ in Ngagara it’s ‘The Invincibles,’ in Buyenzi it’s ‘The Six Garages…’ ”

  “Yeah, yeah, and there’s the ‘Chicago Bulls’ and the ‘Raw Dogs,’ ” said Gino, like he was starting to rap.

  “We’re going to be the gang for Kinanira,” said Francis, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Let me explain how it works. Gangs are armed and they have structures, with a hierarchy and everything. They man the roadblocks during lockdowns. Everyone respects them. Even the soldiers leave them alone.”

  “Yeah, but we won’t be taking part in lockdowns, right, guys?” asked Armand.

  “Gotta protect the, ’hood,” replied Gino.

  “Listen up, my friend, with a dad like mine,” Armand grinned, “if I go out during lockdown it won’t just be the city that gets locked down.”

  “Chill out, we won’t man the roadblocks straightaway,” said Francis, who was clearly starting to think of himself as our leader. “I just want us to be on good terms with ‘The Invincibles’ who block the Muha bridge. Gotta show them we’re with them, lend them a hand from time to time—that way we can move around the ’hood without any hassle, and they’ll protect us if we need it.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with those murderers,” I pointed out. “The only thing they know about is killing poor houseboys on their way home from work.”

  “They kill Hutus, Gaby, and the Hutu kill us!” replied Gino. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, get it? It’s even in the Bible.”

  “Bible? Never heard of it! But I know that Ndombolo song: ‘Eye for an eye, Blood for a blud! Hundred percent! Oh! Oh! Oh!’ ”

  “Stop it, Armand!” I objected. “There’s nothing funny about this.”

  “Have you seen what they’ve done to our families in Rwanda, Gaby?” Gino went on. “If we don’t protect ourselves, they’ll kill us, just like they killed my mother.”

  Francis was blowing smoke-rings above our heads. Armand stopped clowning about. I wanted to tell Gino that he was mistaken, that he was making generalizations, that if we took revenge every time, then the war would never end, but I was caught off-guard because he had just revealed the truth about his mother. His grief outweighed his reason, I told myself. Suffering is a wildcard in the game of debate, it wipes the floor with all other arguments. Looked at one way, it has an unfair advantage.

  “Gino’s right. Nobody can be neutral in war!” said Francis, with that know-it-all way of his that got right up my nose.

  “You can talk, you’re from Zaire!” Armand burst out laughing.

  “Yeah, I’m from Zaire, but I’m a Zairean Tutsi.”

  “Get that, you learn something new every day!”

  “They call us the Banyamulenge.”

  “Never heard of them,” said Armand.

  “What if we don’t want to choose a side?” I asked.

  “You don’t have a choice, everyone belongs to one camp or the other,” said Gino, with a hostile grin.

  I was bored by these discussions and by the violence that seemed to fascinate Francis and Gino. I made up my mind not to visit the hideout so often. I even started avoiding my friends with their war obsession. I needed to breathe, to take a break. For the first time in my life I felt suffocated by our dead-end street, where my worries went round in circles.

  * * *

  —

  One afternoon, I ran into Madame Economopoulos in front of her bougainvillea hedge. We exchanged a few words about the tropical weather, and before I knew it she had invited me into her house for a glass of barbadine juice. In her grand salon my gaze was immediately drawn to her wood-paneled library, whose shelves lined one of the walls. I’d never seen so many books in one place. Floor to ceiling.

  “Have you read all those books?” I asked her.

  “Yes. I’ve even read some of them many times over. They’re the great loves of my life. They make me laugh and weep and question and reflect on things. They allow me to escape from myself. They’ve changed me, they’ve made me a different person.”

  “A book can change us?”

  “Of course a book can change you. It can even change your life. It’s like falling in love. And you never know when such an encounter might happen. You should beware of books, they’re sleeping genies.”

  I ran my fingers along the shelves, stroking the different textures of those spines. Silently, I mouthed the names of the titles. Madame Economopoulos watched me without saying anything, but when I hovered over one particular book, intrigued by its title, she encouraged me.

  “Take it, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

  That evening, before going to bed, I borrowed a torch from one of the drawers in Papa’s writing desk. Under the sheets, I began to read the novel: it was the story of an old fisherman, a small boy, a large fish, and a shiver of sharks. While I read, my bed was transformed into a boat, I could hear the waves splashing against my mattress, I could smell the air of the open sea and feel the wind blowing into the sails of my sheets.

  The next day, I returned the book to Madame Economopoulos.

  “Have you finished it already? Bravo, Gabriel! I shall lend you another one.”

  The following night, I heard swords clashing, horses galloping, the swish of chevaliers’ capes, the rustle of a princess’s lace dress.

  Another day, I was in a cramped room with a teenage girl and her family, in a ruined wartime city. Over her shoulder, she let me read the thoughts she was inscribing in her diary. She wrote about her fears, her dreams, her loves, and her life before. I felt as if she could have been writing about me, as if I could have written those lines.

  Each time I returned a book, Madame Economopoulos wanted to know what I’d thought of it. I wondered why it mattered to her. At first, I would give her a brief outline of the story, as well as listing a few important events, the names of the places and protagonists. I could see that she enjoyed this and, above all, I wanted to be su
re that she would lend me another book, so that I could disappear into my bedroom and devour it.

  But as time went on, I started to tell her about how the book had made me feel, about the questions it had prompted me to ask, and about my opinion of the author and the characters. It was my way of savoring the book and prolonging the story. I fell into the habit of visiting her every afternoon. Thanks to my reading, I had broken free from the limits of our street and was able to breathe again; the world seemed bigger now, extending beyond the fences that encouraged us to turn in on ourselves, huddled up with our fears. I didn’t go to the hideout anymore, I didn’t want to see my friends or listen to them talking about the war, lockdowns, Hutus, and Tutsis. Instead, I would sit with Madame Economopoulos in her garden, beneath a jacaranda tree. She served tea and warm biscuits at her wrought-iron table. For hours at a time we discussed the books that she pressed into my hands. I discovered that I could talk about all sorts of things buried inside me that I’d been unaware of before. In that haven of greenery I learned to express my tastes, my desires, my way of seeing and responding to the world. Madame Economopoulos made me more confident in myself, she never judged me and she had a gift for listening and reassuring me. After we had talked about a book at length, and just as the afternoon was disappearing with the setting sun, we would stroll through her garden like a pair of unlikely lovers. I felt as if we were walking beneath the vaulting of a church, and the birdsong was a murmuring of prayers. We lingered in front of the wild orchids, or edged our way between the hibiscus hedges and the aerial roots of the rubber fig tree. Madame Economopoulos’s flowerbeds were sumptuous feasts for the sunbirds as well as for the neighborhood bees. I collected dried leaves from under the trees to make into bookmarks. We walked at our leisure, almost in slow motion, allowing our feet to trail through the plump grass as if to hold back time, while, out on our street, little by little, night fell.

  24