Running the Rift (52 page)

T
HE HUT WAS
smaller than Jean Patrick had remembered. “Welcome,” Mukabera said. The children tethered the goat to a tree and tumbled in front of him through the doorway. Jean Patrick ducked through the narrow opening into the dank smoke, walls smudged with its residue. The children touched his track pants and giggled.

Jean Patrick took off his shoes, and they grabbed at the laces. “They're for running. Hold them,” he said. “They feel like air in your hands.” He tied the laces together and looped them over their upturned palms. They shrieked with joy.

A woman and two small children squatted on the floor, shelling beans, a pale tapestry of blues, pinks, and purples spread before them. The woman stood, wiped her hand on her ragged pagne, and held it out to him. Although a rough, young beauty shone through, she moved with the fatigue and stiffness of a grandmother.

“Olivette, it's Jean Patrick. He's come home.”

“How can it be?” Olivette cried out. Then she placed an arm across her body as if hiding nakedness. “Yes—I see now—it really is.” She bit her lip in shyness, a gesture Jean Patrick recalled with one more pang of loss. “Thanks to God,” she said.

Mukabera came in with a thermos and three chipped cups ringed in pink roses. She poured tea and gave a cup to Jean Patrick. With a shock he saw this was his mother's tea set, the one she had cradled on the journey from Gihundwe to Gashirabwoba. The cup that now warmed his hands might be the same one he had held on the morning of any special occasion. He took a sip. The tea was little more than water, and the milk had soured.

“We're so sorry for what happened,” Mukabera said. Olivette nodded. The spoiled milk churned in Jean Patrick's stomach. “Your uncle was a good man, strong and brave. Your mother and your aunt were my good friends—ego ko Mana, how we slaved together in the fields. Slaved and laughed.”

This word
was,
his family relegated to the past tense. Mukabera gestured toward her daughter. “Olivette's husband died in the camps in Congo. And Simon, gone from cancer. We had to sell the cows and the goats, most of the chickens, to pay for the operations, but they didn't work.”

Was this God's wrath? His retribution? Jean Patrick couldn't make himself care. The smallest child wobbled over and fell into his lap. She seized his jacket with both hands and rubbed the silky fabric against her cheek, kicking her feet with delight. Her unbridled joy brought him back into life. He tickled her under the chin, and her laugh was a tiny bell.

“That's Simon's daughter,” Olivette said. “After Simon died, her mama went to Congo and left her behind, with us.”

“Probably my son did bad things, but he was in Kigali,” Mukabera said. “He wasn't one of them.”

The soot-black walls, the cookhouse smoke that came inside, the damp earth: all closed in on him. Somehow he managed to finish his tea. Then he pulled a handful of franc notes from the money belt inside his track pants. He was too spent to think about conversion rates. It could have been five or fifty dollars. Mukabera gasped and pressed her hands together in a supplicant's gesture of thanks. “May God bless you, always.”

“And you,” he replied.

They escorted him as far as his family land, Mukabera and Olivette leading the way as mist turned once more to drizzle, a sad susurration. The procession of children clung to his hands. They stopped beneath the ghost of the cypress fence, in the overgrown grass, and Mukabera planted her stick in the mud. “My husband was lucky he died young. He never lived to see this.” She spread her arms wide and gathered into them the pearled light, the silence and waste of the countryside.

Jean Patrick knew she spoke not only of the poverty of her family and of Rwanda, but of the terrible choice her husband would have had to make in 1994. How much easier it would have been if invading armies from a hostile land had done this instead of neighbor against neighbor. He clasped her hands and wished her well one last time.

“Nkwifurije amahoro,” she called. She turned back toward her home.

“Yego. Amahoro.” Peace. He was still watching them, cleaning his hands on his jacket, when he stepped backward across a vine and fell. His palm hit something sharp. He uncovered it and saw it was a triangular piece of bone. A cow's sacrum, he thought at first. He hefted it in his hand; the angles were wrong for a cow. On his knees in the wet earth he dug, scooping red clay with his fingers. He uncovered a femur, a fragment of pelvis, a piece of a skull. He gathered together the calcified pearls of teeth.

Gently he turned the remains over, searching for some identifying mark, some unique blemish to reveal to him whom he held. There was a small scrap of cloth still attached to the femur, a tuft of hair on the skull, but nothing told him, Yes, this is my uncle, my aunt, my brother. The bones held faintly the same musky odor he had recognized in Murambi. For some minutes he squatted there and took the scent into himself as if taking his family into his blood. Now he fully understood what Bea had meant when she said it was like breathing her country into her lungs.

Jean Patrick wanted to say a prayer. For a moment, none came to his mind, but then he remembered Papa's favorite verse from Ecclesiastes 9:10, the one he hadn't been able to bring himself to finish beside his father's coffin.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.”

He recited the verse as he dug out a hollow as best he could and carefully placed the bones inside it. The teeth, he guarded in his palm. He let their last words pass through his flesh and into his heart.

It is love, the teeth told him, that resurrects life from death. Leave us here. Turn your head to the living.

Jean Patrick placed the teeth beside the bones, pressing them into the earth like seeds. He covered them over, hilling the grave, and made a cairn of stones so he could find it again. There must be some official process, but he couldn't think about that now. Mukabera would guard the site until he and Roger returned to lay his family properly to rest.

But now it was time he headed back. Bea was waiting.

I am honored beyond belief to have been selected by Barbara Kingsolver for the Bellwether Prize, and I am grateful to her for her devotion to fiction in support of social change. Akil Pinckney, National Writers United Service Organization administrator, was always kind and patient, and his assistance proved invaluable. My editor, Kathy Pories, has been teacher, listener, guide, and so much more. My copy editor, Rachel Careau, brought my words to a careful polish. I am thankful to everyone at Algonquin for their kindness, their time, and their hard work, especially Ina Stern, Sarah Rose Nordgren, and Megan Fishmann. Special thanks to managing editor Brunson Hoole for his patience with my never-ending changes. My agent, Daniel Lazar, has given me great advice and lots of book wisdom.

When I first started to write this book, I found Dr. Alexandre Kimenyi's Web site. I wrote to him, and he immediately wrote back, and that was the start of a long and dear friendship with him and with his wife, Mathilde Mukantabana. This book would never have come to be if it weren't for their time, advice, mentorship, and love. Both Kimenyi and Mathilde have worked tirelessly to educate the world about genocide and to make this world a place in which genocide will never happen again. Kimenyi died suddenly on June 11, 2010. His passing leaves a void in many lives, but his work lives on in all of us. VCCA gave me a beautiful place to complete my final draft and the time in which to do it. Mark Bizimana shared his life with me, answered all my questions, and taught me that hope is always possible. Patrick Nduwimana, eight-hundred-meter runner for the Burundi Olympic team, taught me to love the eight-hundred-meter race, which I never thought possible. Jean Nganji provided advice, translation help, personal stories, and laughter when I most needed it. Euthalie Nyirabega was my Rwandan rock. She gave me
sustenance and wisdom and introduced me to urwagwa. Tate—Julienne Nkundabiga—and Sophie Kantengwa made me feel welcome in their home. Beatrice Ufutingabire lent her name to my character and made sure that the women I wrote about were strong. Derick Burleson wrote the book of poetry that started me on this path and was kind enough to let me share the incident of McDonald's in Kigali. Rosamond Carr nurtured my body and my spirit. Her death in 2006 left a hole in the world. The children of her Imbabazi orphanage gave me inspiration and love. I spent many hours traversing Rwanda with Danny Bizimana, and I am grateful for his driving, his stories, and his company. His wife, Kayitesi Médiatrice, gave freely of her hospitality and taught me to eat ugali with my fingers. Jean Marie Kiguge took me to Nyamata, even though it was difficult. Noheli Twagiramungu read my work and helped me with my Kinyarwanda. Thank you to Uwamahoro Jean Claude, who guided me through the difficult trails in Nyungwe Forest. While researching this book, I relied heavily on the exhaustive work of Alison Des Forges. I am grateful for her book and for her personal communications. She, too, left this world before her time. For Rwandan customs and oral history, I relied on the Web site
Gakondo: The Royal Myths,
by Rose-Marie Mukarutabana, as well as scholarly texts by Dr. Alexandre Kimenyi. Quotations from
Kangura
and RTLM came from
Leave None to Tell the Story
and the
Genocide Archive Rwanda.
Commander Tom Coulter taught me about grenades, RPGs, and combat tactics. Thank you to Mary Brown, Barrie Ryan, and Gayle Brandeis, who read my drafts with care and attention, and to Emmanuel Sigauke, who believed in me enough to publish a chapter of this novel. Thanks to Maureen and Noheli Odenwald for opening doors, and to my adopted family, Halima Kasimu and Jaffar Mugaza, for opening their arms and their hearts to me. Thanks to my mentors at Antioch: Frank Gaspar, Dana Johnson, and Susan Taylor Chehak. To Meg Files, my first fiction teacher, and to Lorian Hemingway, who first put a red #1 on my writing, I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude. And to my husband, Dan Coulter, who has walked with me no matter how hard and steep the journey.

The following books were invaluable to me in my research:

Leave None to Tell the Story
, Alison Des Forges, a publication of Human Rights Watch

Ejo,
Derick Burleson

Shake Hands with the Devil,
Roméo Dallaire

Life Laid Bare
and
Machete Season,
Jean Hatzfeld

Season of Blood,
Fergal Keane

Resisting Genocide, Bisesero, April–June 1994,
a publication of African Rights

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda,
Philip Gourevitch

The Shadow of Imana,
Véronique Tadjo

Left to Tell,
Immaculée Ilibagiza

Nyiragongo: The Forbidden Volcano,
Haroun Tazieff

Justice on the Grass: Three Rwandan Journalists, Their Trial for War Crimes, and a Nation's Quest for Redemption,
Dina Temple-Rasten

Murambi, the Book of Bones: A Novel,
Boubacar Boris Diop

Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda,
Lee Ann Fujii