Have I forgotten to tell you about Daniel? Our tall, dark and handsome local expert and official link to a wealth of Rwandan talent? Not surprisingly, he is a very popular actor on a well-loved local TV show – and in some places women actually pointed, giggled and downright blushed when they recognized him (in some cases, approaching him to gush and blink their eyelashes a lot…) He possesses an irresistible mischievous charm, and it was hard for all of us to say goodbye to him. He made some of our most difficult moments into joyous fits – I recall, on one particularly long and grueling van ride, Daniel attempting to teach Steve the Kinyarwandan for every filthy phrase imaginable, and laughing himself silly – to the point of tears. I’m laughing right now just thinking about it. With such a disarmingly elegant accented English! And in a great suit! O Daniel… If ever there’s a casting call for an African James Bond, absolutely no contest.
Daniel’s role in this project was ambassadorial, much like Ayub’s, but their styles couldn’t have been more different. Daniel’s youthful mock-cockiness was both endearing and hilarious. (While his sister Queen was recording vocals he kept insisting that HIS voice was really quite special, and wouldn’t we like to record a real singer?) He was the much-needed levity, creator of the easy camaraderie that sustained us – he was that rare and special substance – social glue. Wise Ayub on the other hand, carried the ‘old-soul’ gravitas of a revered monk. He provided the needed seriousness of an elder whose very presence reminded us of the moment’s sanctity – life’s sanctity, love’s sanctity. Daniel’s smile flashed – but Ayub’s smile arose, like dawn, like the filaments in a toaster slowly becoming brilliant glowing orange. When he spoke to you, he spoke softly and looked at you deeply, with his total attention. I had the sense that Ayuub had made his peace with life, and that that was a long and harrowing journey fraught with agonizing loss and brushes with the darkest, most terrifying aspects of humankind. When I first met him, I knew I was in the presence of a great man.
(from Part 1) "… I was immediately struck by the warmth and wisdom in his eyes. Later in the week he left a message for me with one of the assistants – his instructions were “tell her the old man wants to make sure she goes outside tonight to look at the moon and stars.” Ah. Ayub is going to teach me something powerful, I am certain of it."
We’ve had almost two weeks to emotionally prepare for this last excursion to the Nyarubuye Church. This will be the site of our music video for Amazing Grace, featuring Queen, the choir, and local singers and dancers.
We had already seen and heard so much on the trip thus far, so I thought I would be able to handle this. But nothing could have prepared me for our tour guide. He was very little – just shy of 5 years old – when the church massacre occurred, and I don’t think any of his family survived. In my experience most teenage boys, no matter how surly or tough or cool they try to seem, will always yield to humour when pressed – there is a threshold, and the really great high school teachers can get them to cross it. But all traces of levity had vanished in this young man. He seemed (and this is the only word that seems to come close) empty. Something about him was just absent. There was a distance – a remote-ness in his eyes. I realized I was looking at someone who never got to be a boy. His childhood had been wrenched from him so brutally that something in his spirit had just snapped.
For weeks prior to the explosion of killing, the orchestrators of the genocide were recruiting and training militia. Everyone knew what was unfolding – apparently it was all over the radio and in the newspapers. Keep in mind this is a densely populated country – so this militia consisted of neighbours, friends, relatives. How could the people have believed that their countrymen would soon turn into such savage, merciless killers? Frightened Tutsis were already fleeing into the forests and to the borders. When some of them pleaded with a local mayor for help, he suggested they seek refuge in the Nyarubuye church. Shortly thereafter, the mayor brought soldiers and henchmen to that very church, armed them, and told them to kill everyone. First they ordered the terrified group to separate into Tutsis and Hutus – commanding one group to take their shirts off. Then they gave weapons to the non-Tutsi side and told them to kill the others – their friends, with whom they had been hiding and praying – or be killed. Sick and sadistic games like these were commonplace. In the chaos that erupted, Tutsis were identifiable because they had been forced to take off their shirts. But it didn’t matter – no one in the church was spared. Before the killers rested in the evening from the day’s slaughter, they were said to have cut the Achilles tendons of any survivors so that they could not escape. They would then feast on cows stolen from their murdered victims, and drink all night – a hellish, orgiastic wallowing in evil reminiscent of Apocalypse Now. From some of the stories our guide relayed, I think it’s safe to say that these men had gone completely insane. And the following day, they would begin anew. For several days, this madness ensued. At this church alone, just over 25,000 people were tortured, brutalized and murdered. Thousands of bodies that were later discovered in the outlying areas are also buried here.
Our guide spoke of the unfathomable atrocities that happened there with the kind of resigned, blunted, horror I have seen in interviews with Viet Nam vets and Holocaust survivors. He held up the various weapons and described them: “these poles they used to rape the women in front of their husbands and children until they bled to death”.
He showed us things that we couldn’t even begin to comprehend: “this is an outdoor wood-burning oven where one of the leaders cooked the hearts of his victims”. Sentences like these were coming out of this teenager’s mouth, and he had probably said them a hundred times on a hundred other tours. He then took us past the most horrible sight I have ever beheld – long tables with rows and rows of neatly aligned human skulls. Some were bashed and cracked, others had gaping holes. There were tables full of leg bones, small children’s skulls with evidence of extreme trauma. Seeing those little delicate, miraculous things – with perfect eye holes and rows for teeth – and thinking about the sheer complexity and wonder that is a human body, it made my very soul shudder to think of someone striking the head of a three-year old so hard as to crush it. Never mind my soul – it’s the soul of the world we are feeling when empathy wounds us like this. Collectively we are something, and brutality and hatred are most certainly contrary to it…
We were led outside the halls of bones and artifacts to the grounds where the guide described more horror : any stragglers from the forests or those fleeing the city who thought the church might be a safe haven, were drawn into the slaughter. Ayuub spoke “I was at a similar church with a group of others keeping vigil, looking among the dead for the bodies of our loved ones.” He was looking for his mother – he said he knew he could recognize his mother by her unmistakable feet. "There were three pits – one of skeletons, one of miscellaneous bones, and one of just dust and ashes. They were looking at the skeletons when suddenly they heard the militia coming. They leapt into the bushes and Ayuub said he saw them take out their machine guns and open fire on the pits of corpses.
“I thought, my God – how many times can you kill a person? It was blood-chilling, the hatred.” I was so startled to hear this from him – I hadn’t even considered that Ayuub could have witnessed something like that, or had come so close to death. Darcy tells me he has even scarier stories, and yet, there was never any bitterness or torment in his voice. He was so gentle and kind and soft-spoken.
At the end we stood around our guide in the baking late afternoon sun. He did not smile. The tour was finished, and did we have any questions for him? After a long silence I asked Ayuub what had been in my throat for the last two hours – I couldn’t construct the sentence carefully or think about it at all, I just genuinely needed to know – “How does he deal with this?”
He scratched his head and looked down. Ayuub listened compassionately to his words and translated for us: "He says ’It’s something that requires a lot of strength. And simply, I have no choice.’ "
At the end of the day, I felt that this young man was the tragedy of the genocide. He was the trampled innocence, the drowned joy, and the ruined faith in human goodness. He was the giant hole left. He had seen pure evil, and the vacancy in his voice was proof enough that because of that glimpse, something had been irretrievably lost.
I should also mention that Ayuub is a father of three. He was visibly moved by this young man’s demeanor. Darcy told me later that in addition to working on films that have brought the story of the genocide to the world (including Hotel Rwanda) Ayuub works with an organization that connects orphaned children with their surviving relatives. He takes hundreds of photographs of scared little kids’ faces, and finds the families to take them in. Sainthood… yes.
