An Ordinary Man

by Paul Rusesabagina

  So I went to their room and knocked.“I have two choices for you, ” I said. “Either you can move to smaller rooms or you can have some new neighbors.” After that I felt free to assign other refugees to sleep in the rooms they had been hogging for themselves. That put a quick end to their party. It also freed up yet more accommodations for those people who kept finding their way to the Mille Collines from the mayhem outside the fence. I resolved that nobody who could make it here would be turned away.

  I cannot say that life was normal inside that crowded building, but what I saw in there convinced me that ordinary human beings are born with an extraordinary ability to fight evil with decency. We had Hutu and Tutsi sleeping beside each other. Strangers on the floor, many of whom had witnessed their families being butchered, would sometime sleep spoon style just to feel the touch of another.

  We struggled to preserve routines. It helped keep us sane. The bishop from St. Michael’s parish, a man named Father Nicodem, was one of our guests and he started holding regular masses in the ballroom. There was no such thing as privacy, but occasionally the occupants of a room would clear out to give a husband and a wife some room to make love. Several women became pregnant during the genocide, a way of fighting death with life, I suppose.

  There was even a wedding. A seventeen-year-old girl was pregnant and her father was a very traditional Muslim who wanted nothing more than to see her married so the child would not be born outside wedlock. The bishop agreed to perform the sacrament in the ballroom. She was married right there to her boyfriend, and nobody thought to question the difference in faiths.

  I suppose it is natural to want a form of government, even in times of chaos (perhaps especially in times of chaos), and so five of the guests agreed to serve as a kind of high council to mediate disputes between the residents. I met regularly with them as a sort of chairman. You might have called the Hotel Mille Collines a kind of constitutional monarchy in those days, because I reserved the right to make all the final judgments on matters of day-to-day living. My kingship came not from a heavenly birthright but from the personnel department of the Sabena Corporation sent via fax from Brussels.

  In mid-April we lost our water and electricity. The killers had cut all of our utility lines in an attempt to make us uncomfortable. Perhaps they thought we would all drift away and then they could finish us off outside. It confirmed for me what I already knew-that they had designs to murder us-but it also gave me a bit of hope. The militia still did not want to risk an overt massacre at the hotel. We ran our emergency generator for a while with smuggled gasoline, but it eventually broke down, and so most of our time was spent in darkness.

  Life immediately became even harder. The absence of electric lights created a mood I can only describe as disintegrating. How secure those lights had somehow made us feel! Everybody knew the killers liked to do their work in the dark, and the darkness inside the hotel made it feel like a permanent midnight. The absence of light created a sense of decay around the world, which appeared to be running down on its axis, its center breaking apart into mindless pieces. Our last days would be spent in shadows.

  Each room held an average of eight frightened and brutalized people. They slept fitfully in the humid dark and often awoke to the sounds of a neighbor shouting or whimpering in a dream. There were mothers who cried out for sons who they would never see again, husbands who wept in secret for their disappeared wives. And though few people wanted to say it out loud, I think most shared my belief that we would all wind up dead ourselves when the militias outside finally decided to raid the Mille Collines. Those hotel rooms were like death-row prison cells, but we knew they were all that kept us from joining the ranks of the murdered for one more day. I worried there would be no more space, but we kept finding ways to fit more people inside our walls. I suppose it is like the story of the oil not running out in the Temple of Jerusalem. There was always more room. I think I would have ordered my guests to start lying on top of one another if it would have meant saving a few more lives. And I don’t think anybody inside the Mille Collines would have objected.

  That these people crammed together in the rancid half light, each nursing their own horrors, could endure such conditions and keep on fighting on the side of life is proof to me not just of the human capacity for endurance but also to the basic decency inside all people that comes out when death appears imminent. To me, that old saying about one’s life flashing before the eyes is really a love for all life in those final moments and not merely one’s own; a primal empathy for all people who are born and must taste death. We clung to one another while the violence escalated, and most of us did not lose faith that order would be restored. Whether we would be there to see it was a separate question. All we could do was wait in the dark, with militia spies coming in and going out at all hours, even sleeping among us like fellow refugees. Cats and mice were in the same cage.

  The loss of our utilities created another problem. Without water we would all start to dehydrate, forcing people to go out onto the streets rather than die of thirst. We had only a few days to figure out a solution. Every large compound in Rwanda -embassies, restaurants, and hotels-must have their own set of reserve water tanks built onto the property as an emergency supply. Ours were located directly under the basement. I went to check their levels several times a day and watched them steadily dropping. There was no way to get a fresh delivery.

  The solution came to me: We did have a reserve supply of water. In the swimming pool.

  This pool was, in some ways, the most important part of the Mille Collines. Built in 1973 when the hotel was still new, it was smaller than Olympic size, but it got a lot of use from our European guests who brought children. The logo of the hotel-five overlapping triangles that represented hills-was painted on the slope that led from the deep end to the shallow end. A very ordinary looking pool altogether, but it was the centerpiece of the back lawn, and it was surrounded with ten tables where waiters used to bring cocktails, peanuts, and bar food. This was where the power brokers of Kigali often came to have private conversations with each other in the evening. You never invite a man without a beer.

  Something about human nature compels us to draw close to the edge of water. I feel it myself even though I never saw the ocean-or even a lake of any size-until I was seventeen years old. I cannot explain it, but it is real. The tables near the pool were snapped up first, even by men who would not dream of taking a dip, and who may not have been able to swim. Those tables probably saw as much intrigue in the early 1990s as the courtyards of the doge’s palace in the heyday of Venice. In any case, that pool was now a tool of life.

  Here was the math. It held approximately seventy-eight thousand gallons. At the time, we had nearly eight hundred guests. If we limited each person to a gallon and a half a day for their washing and drinking needs we could last for a little longer than two months. A rationing system would have to be devised so that each person could be insured of receiving a fair share. So we began a twice-daily ritual: Every morning at 8:30 and every afternoon at 5:00 everyone was told to come down with the small plastic wastepaper bin from their room. They were allowed to dip it once into the pool water, which was already turning slightly yellow. In order to keep the water as clean as possible, we did not permit anyone to swim in it, or even to wade.

  The room toilets no longer flushed, and so we had to devise a method to get rid of waste. One of the guests discovered a trick, which was quickly broadcast to the hotel at large: If you poured the pool water into the commode it would still wash the feces and the urine down the pipes. The rooms began to smell a little worse, but at least there was no imminent sanitary emergency.

  As for food, we were well stocked at first. Before the massacres started Sabena had a limited partnership with its rival Air France on the question of catering meals for passengers. Because the hotel was the property of the airline their ready-to-eat meals were stored in the basement of the hotel. We did a count: There were approximately two t
housand trays. Those would be a limited luxury that we parceled out stingily. It was very strange, of course, to be dining on rosemary chicken and potatoes au gratin while young boys with machetes in hand peered at us over the bamboo fence.

  When the airline meals ran low we had to come up with an alternate plan. Even though there were senseless murders happening all over the country-more than five every minute-the marketplaces were still open. People still had to shop, even in the middle of a genocide. I sent the hotel accountant, a man named Belliad, out with a truck and some cash to get us sacks of corn and beans and bundles of firewood. We tried to acquire rice and potatoes, but they were unavailable. I then asked the kitchen staff to cook it up. Since they had no electricity to run the stoves and ovens we had to build a fire underneath the giant ficus tree on the lawn. Large pots of food were set in the blaze. We then served up this vegetable gruel in the large metal trays we had used for buffet-style meals on the lawn. We ate as a group twice a day, the hotel’s fine china balanced on our laps. If the pool was now a village well, the lawn was now our cookhouse.

  Now that was a sight! It used to be that we would use the back lawn to host weddings, conferences, and diplomatic receptions. I remembered nights out here with men in dark suits tailored in London and women in long silk dresses, holding cocktails in thin-stemmed glasses, their faces gently lit with the soft colors of Malibu lights and their laughter like the music of an opera libretto. Now our party was one of exhausted refugees in dirty clothes, some with machete wounds, many who had seen their friends turn into killers and their family turned into corpses, all lined up under the ficus tree for that simple act of eating that unconsciously signifies a small piece of hope, the willingness to store up fuel and keep living for another day.

  SEVEN

  WE LOST OUR PHONE SERVICE near the end of April. This was potentially disastrous. Without a phone my black binder would be nearly useless. I could no longer call in favors with the Army brass or the government.

  But then came a surprise. In 1987, when I was the assistant general manager, the Mille Collines received its first fax machine. We had to request an auxiliary phone line to support it, one that was not routed through the main switchboard. We had asked the technician to feed the fax line directly into the telephone grid of Kigali. This was a glitch I recalled when I was in the darkness of the secretary’s office on the day the phones were cut. I was moved to pick up the handset attached to the side of the fax. There was a dial tone humming back at me, as beautiful a sound as I could have imagined.

  I guarded this secret carefully. If the hard-liners in the military found out that I had a phone, they would send in their thugs to find it and rip it out. So I let only the refugee committee use it and instructed them to keep quiet. The news could reach the ears of some of my renegade employees, which would be just like telling the Interahamwe themselves. I took to locking the door of the secretary’s office whenever I was away so that unauthorized people could not wander in and discover my secret weapon. That phone was a lifeline.

  I started staying up late at night, often until 4:00 A. M., sending faxes to the Belgian Foreign Ministry, the White House, the United Nations, the Quai d’Orsay, the Peace Corps-whoever I thought might be able to help stop an attack against the hotel. I tried to make the faxes brief and direct and forceful. I described the lack of food, the militia roaming outside, the desperate struggle of refugees to get into the hotel, the constant rumors that we were about to be invaded. I pleaded with these governments and agencies for some kind of assistance and protection. These letters were usually followed by a direct appeal via the little phone handset on the side. But I often felt as though I was a man shouting into an empty room.

  One follow-up call to a White House staffer was typical. It was very late at night in Rwanda and the conversation went approximately like this:

  “Yes, hello, my name is Paul Rusesabagina. I am the manager of the Hotel Mille Collines in the capital of Rwanda. I sent a fax today to the number your secretary gave me. I was calling to see if you received it.”

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Roos… Roossuhbaggian. How did you get this number?”

  “I asked for you at the switchboard.”

  “I see. You’re calling from Rwanda?”

  “Yes, Rwanda.”

  “Yes, I remember the fax. I passed it along to a colleague of mine who handles foreign policy details. He will review it and get back to you.”

  “So you didn’t have a chance to read it? I was told you were the one to handle this matter.”

  “No, that wouldn’t be me. This has to be routed through proper channels. Have you also contacted the State Department or the embassy of the United States in Rwanda?”

  “Your embassy left the country on April 9.”

  “Yes, that’s right. I see.”

  “I was really hoping you could bring this up with President Clinton directly. The situation here is very bad.”

  “Well, as I have said, this has to be handled by the foreign policy staff. All I can say is that they will review the document and get back to you.”

  “Who on that staff has been given my letter?”

  “I can’t really say for sure. I’ve got another call coming in and I have to let you go.”

  To all the faxes and phone calls I made to the United States in those weeks, I never once received a reply. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I should have known a Rwandan no when I heard one.

  On April 26 Thomas Kamilindi, who was one of the city’s best journalists, gave a telephone interview to Radio France International in which he described the living conditions at the hotel, the lack of water, and the state of the ongoing genocide and civil war. He also described the rebel advance on the capital. The interview was intended for listeners in Paris and all over the French-speaking world, but it was also broadcast in Kigali.

  Apparently some of the génocidaires had torn themselves away from RTLM long enough to listen, because there was a death order out for Thomas within the half hour.

  Friends in the military urged him to sneak out of the hotel and find another place to hide, but I urged him not to leave. I had been in touch with General Bizimungu and General Dallaire about his situation. We had him switch rooms to fool any spies who might have known where he was staying. Some of the refugees were terribly unhappy with Thomas for focusing attention on the Mille Collines-they thought he only reminded the militia thugs that we were here, dancing just out of their reach. Some of the guests wanted to hand Thomas over as a kind of peace offering to the militia. I couldn’t decide if I found this idea abhorrent or laughable.

  A friend of Thomas’s was sent to the hotel that day to assassinate him. His name was Jean-Baptiste Iradukunda and he was with an Army intelligence unit. They had known each other since they were children. Thomas was smart enough to boldly step out into the corridor and meet his would-be killer face-to-face. They started to talk. I am convinced that had Thomas tried to cower-or worse, to run-that he would have been shot. It is so much easier to die anonymously; it is so much harder to kill someone after you have talked as one human being to another.

  “Listen, Thomas, ” said the solider after a while. “I have been sent to kill you. But I cannot. I am going to leave now. But somebody else will be coming later and they will not be as hesitant.”

  Immediately after Thomas gave the interview, an Army colonel called from the hotel entrance. He was a man I had known for a long time. I went out to say hello, and he wasted no time telling me what he was there to do.

  “Paul, I am here to pick up that dog!”

  “You are fighting against a dog, colonel?” I asked him with a small laugh. “Let’s go talk about this.”

  We went back to my office and I asked a chambermaid to bring us drinks. Sitting in the quiet, and without an audience to encourage him, I could already see that some of the rage had leaked away from his countenance. But he remained adamant: He was going to have the head of Thomas Kamilindi. The interview he had given was an ac
t of treason against the government of Rwanda and the Army.

  I began to think that the government leaders were most concerned that they had been embarrassed in front of their French patrons. That they should have cared about an interview describing people drinking from the swimming pool at a time when murder-by-machete was the law of the land tells you something about their mentality. But regardless, the execution order against Thomas was real and I resolved to save his life by any means I could.

  I tried flattery first.

  “Colonel, ” I began, “you are too high ranking an officer to be concerned with such a small matter. Thomas is a small man.”

  “I have orders, Paul.”

  “You have orders to kill a dog? That is an insulting job. Don’t you have boys in the militia who are supposed to do that kind of work?”

  “It is not a small matter. He is a traitor and must pay.”

  I could see that I was getting somewhere, but I switched my argument.

  “Listen, colonel. Let’s say you take that dog out with your own hands and kill him. You will have to live with that for the rest of your life. You did not hear this radio interview. You do not know what was said. You are proposing to take a man’s life without a trial.”

  “Paul, I have my orders. Where is he?”

  “Even if you were to order it done instead of doing it yourself, it would be the same blood on your hands.”

  It went on like this for quite some time. I don’t know why he kept talking to me. But the longer he sat there and sipped his Carlsberg the greater the odds were that Thomas was going to survive to see the sun go down.

  “Listen, ” I finally told him, after more than two hours had gone by, “this war has made everyone a little bit crazy. It is understandable. You are tired. You need to relax. I have some good red wine in the cellar. Let me bring you a carton. I will have it loaded into your jeep. Go home tonight and have a drink and we will talk more about this tomorrow, when we can come to a compromise.”