to an otherwise dreary life. It
was like being in the Boy Scouts or a soccer club, only there was a popular enemy to hate and a lot of built-up frustration
to vent. The boys were also hungry and full of the restlessness of youth. It was easy to get them to follow any orders imaginable.
The groundwork for the genocide went even deeper. In the fall of 1992 mayors in each of Rwanda’s hundred little communes were
asked by the president’s political party to compile lists of people—understood to be Tutsis and people who were threatening
to Habyarimana—who had left the country recently or who had children who had left. The implication was that these people had
joined the ranks of the RPF. These lists could then be used to identify “security threats” in times of emergency. Tutsis throughout
the country suspected their names were being entered into secret ledgers. Many tried without success to have their identity
cards relabeled so that they would appear to be Hutu.
I used to be in the habit of stopping off at a bar near my home after work and buying a round for some of my friends from
the old Gitwe days. One afternoon when I wasn’t there, a man wearing the uniform of a soldier tossed a grenade in the door
and sped off on a motorcycle. The bar was destroyed. I started going straight home after that. The minister of public works,
Félicien Gatabazi, was gunned down by thugs as he was entering his house. A taxi driver witnessed the assassination; she was
shot as a precaution the next day. Her name was Emerita and she had been one of the freelance drivers who competed for fares
in the parking lot of the Hotel Mille Collines. At least one hundred other innocent people would be killed in this fashion
by the increasingly violent teenagers of the Interahamwe and also rebel soldiers who had infiltrated Kigali. People didn’t want to stand at bus stops or taxi stations anymore because
the crowds were targets for grenade throwers.
A scary incident happened on the road. My wife, Tatiana, was driving our son to school when she was forced off the road by
a man in a military jeep. He walked over to her door, took off his sunglasses, and bid her to roll down her window.
“Do you know me?” he asked.
“No, ” said my wife.
“My name is Étincelles, ” he said. It was the French word for “explosions, ” apparently his nom de guerre.
He went on: “Madam, we know your home. We know you have three big German shepherds in the yard for protection, as well as
two gate guards. The Youth of the Democratic Republic Movement has said they plan to kidnap you. They will be trying to get
ransom money from your husband. So I am telling you, if anybody should try to pull you over, don’t stop. Keep driving, even
if you have to run somebody over. Do it for your own safety. I am telling you all of this because I come from the same part
of the country as your husband and I don’t want to see any harm come to you.”
When my wife told me about this I searched my memory for anyone from my village who might be calling himself Étincelles. I
couldn’t think of who it might be. To this day I have no idea if this was an actual kidnap plot or just an attempt to scare
us. Regardless, we no longer felt comfortable living at home after that, and so I moved us all into a guest suite at the Diplo-mates.
It felt awful to be governed by fear, but these were very dangerous times. I did not want anybody coming through my windows.
Life went on, even in the surreal twilight of that spring. At nights on the terrace I would share beers with the leaders of
the militia movement, trying to keep quiet as I heard them talking of events in the neighboring country of Burundi. The president
there, Melchior Ndadaye, had been assassinated by Tutsi officers in his own army. A series of reprisal killings followed.
The international community had little to say about these massacres. Was it true the Tutsi were
was like being in the Boy Scouts or a soccer club, only there was a popular enemy to hate and a lot of built-up frustration
to vent. The boys were also hungry and full of the restlessness of youth. It was easy to get them to follow any orders imaginable.
The groundwork for the genocide went even deeper. In the fall of 1992 mayors in each of Rwanda’s hundred little communes were
asked by the president’s political party to compile lists of people—understood to be Tutsis and people who were threatening
to Habyarimana—who had left the country recently or who had children who had left. The implication was that these people had
joined the ranks of the RPF. These lists could then be used to identify “security threats” in times of emergency. Tutsis throughout
the country suspected their names were being entered into secret ledgers. Many tried without success to have their identity
cards relabeled so that they would appear to be Hutu.
I used to be in the habit of stopping off at a bar near my home after work and buying a round for some of my friends from
the old Gitwe days. One afternoon when I wasn’t there, a man wearing the uniform of a soldier tossed a grenade in the door
and sped off on a motorcycle. The bar was destroyed. I started going straight home after that. The minister of public works,
Félicien Gatabazi, was gunned down by thugs as he was entering his house. A taxi driver witnessed the assassination; she was
shot as a precaution the next day. Her name was Emerita and she had been one of the freelance drivers who competed for fares
in the parking lot of the Hotel Mille Collines. At least one hundred other innocent people would be killed in this fashion
by the increasingly violent teenagers of the Interahamwe and also rebel soldiers who had infiltrated Kigali. People didn’t want to stand at bus stops or taxi stations anymore because
the crowds were targets for grenade throwers.
A scary incident happened on the road. My wife, Tatiana, was driving our son to school when she was forced off the road by
a man in a military jeep. He walked over to her door, took off his sunglasses, and bid her to roll down her window.
“Do you know me?” he asked.
“No, ” said my wife.
“My name is Étincelles, ” he said. It was the French word for “explosions, ” apparently his nom de guerre.
He went on: “Madam, we know your home. We know you have three big German shepherds in the yard for protection, as well as
two gate guards. The Youth of the Democratic Republic Movement has said they plan to kidnap you. They will be trying to get
ransom money from your husband. So I am telling you, if anybody should try to pull you over, don’t stop. Keep driving, even
if you have to run somebody over. Do it for your own safety. I am telling you all of this because I come from the same part
of the country as your husband and I don’t want to see any harm come to you.”
When my wife told me about this I searched my memory for anyone from my village who might be calling himself Étincelles. I
couldn’t think of who it might be. To this day I have no idea if this was an actual kidnap plot or just an attempt to scare
us. Regardless, we no longer felt comfortable living at home after that, and so I moved us all into a guest suite at the Diplo-mates.
It felt awful to be governed by fear, but these were very dangerous times. I did not want anybody coming through my windows.
Life went on, even in the surreal twilight of that spring. At nights on the terrace I would share beers with the leaders of
the militia movement, trying to keep quiet as I heard them talking of events in the neighboring country of Burundi. The president
there, Melchior Ndadaye, had been assassinated by Tutsi officers in his own army. A series of reprisal killings followed.
The international community had little to say about these massacres. Was it true the Tutsi were
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