If he did not have the stomach to do this then I think he should have made a spectacle out of resigning in protest of his hopeless job description. This, too, would have drawn some outrage to what was shaping up to be the most rapid genocide in world history. That he stayed in his job like a good soldier was a signal of a trust that the UN strategy of nonengagement was going to be a workable policy even though it appears despicable in retrospect.
In my opinion the UN was not just useless during the genocide. It was worse than useless. It would have been better off for us if they did not exist at all, because it allowed the world to think that something was being done, that some parental figure was minding the store. It created a fatal illusion of safety. Rwanda was left with a little more than five hundred poorly trained UN soldiers who weren’t even authorized to draw their weapons to stop a child from being sacrificed right in front of them. A total withdrawal would have been preferable to this farce.
The grounds of the Mille Collines were surrounded by a fence of bamboo and wire. It was about six feet high and intended by the architect to provide a visual sense of a snug compound, all the better for nervous foreign visitors to feel like their hotel was an island of safety embedded in the street grid of Kigali. If you pushed on the fence hard enough it would fall over. It provided an illusion of protection, nothing more.
From the corridor windows of the west wing, and from some of the room balconies, you could see over the top of this fence and also through the gaps. There were figures passing back and forth all day long on the other side, like backstage players making shadows on a curtain. Most were carrying spears and machetes. Some stopped to peer at us through the fence before moving on.
All the refugees, including my wife and children, were terrified of these shadows behind the bamboo. Tatiana’s family was living in a small town near the city of Butare, where the killings had not yet started but were imminent. She was terrified for them, terrified for herself and our children and me, and I cannot say I blame her. Everyone in the hotel felt a similar sense of dread. I felt terribly exposed here, but I did not see an alternative. If we left it would be a sign to the killers that the Mille Collines was being surrendered. Besides, where else could we go? Nowhere in Rwanda was safe.
This belief of mine was the subject of a bitter fight between us. My wife confronted me in the parking lot and insisted we drive to safety in my home area of Murama. To back up her argument she enlisted my friend Aloise Karasankwavu, an executive with the Commercial Bank who was also in fear of his life. He was a persuasive speaker, and we jousted.
“In all of history there has never been a war brought to that little town, ” he told me. And in a sense he was right-at least in my own memory. The uprisings of 1959 and 1973 had created a lot of prejudice in my hometown, but they had never resulted in massacres. But there was no guarantee that blood wasn’t being spilled there right now, without our knowledge.
“My friend, the whole country has gone mad, ” I told him. “Do you think Murama will be spared?”
“You are being misled by the Europeans, Paul. Even the mwami used to bring his cows there for safekeeping during times of trouble. Throughout history it has always been a refuge.”
“Aloise, even if that were true, how do you think you are going to get there? By flying? There are hundreds of roadblocks out there. You will be stopped and possibly killed.”
I looked at my wife, whose eyes were red and miserable. I only wished we had stayed in Brussels a week ago. I wanted to go to Murama as badly as she did-I still had brothers and sisters living there and I was tremendously worried for them-but I knew it would be risking death to go out onto the roads.
I am not necessarily proud of what I did next, but it happened. I lost my temper.
“Listen, ” I told her, “you have a driver’s license. You know how to drive.”
I held out the keys to the Suzuki jeep.
“Take these, ” I told her. “You go to Murama.”
She looked back at me with furious eyes. We loved each other fiercely, but she was a Tutsi and I was a Hutu. This trivia of ancestry had never mattered the slightest bit in our marriage, but it mattered to the killers around us, and I loathed Rwanda more than I ever had before because of it. Once again I hated myself for being a lucky Hutu. Many years before Tatiana’s father had taken the precaution of changing the whole family’s identification cards to read “Hutu, ” but she might have been recognized by someone at a roadblock. We both knew this.
I was, of course, not going to surrender the keys to my wife under any circumstances. I only wanted to make a point. But it was a harsh one, and perhaps too harsh. I was trying to highlight our need to stay where we were and wait for the bloodletting to stop. But my wife was hurt by my words.
Aloise later took his wife and children and hitched a ride out of town, trying to get to Murama. He did not make five kilometers. The militia forced them all out of the car and separated him from his family. Amazingly, nobody was killed. Aloise went on foot to the village of Nyanza, and later on to Murama.
I would learn it was extremely fortunate that we decided not to leave the capital.
The Mille Collines grew more and more crowded. The rumor had spread through town that the hotel was a safe haven from the killers. This was far from the truth, but hope becomes a kind of insanity in times of trouble. Those cunning or lucky enough to dodge the roadblocks were welcomed inside, even though the hotel stood every chance of becoming a killing zone without warning.
We charged no money for rooms. All the usual rules were irrelevant; we were now more of a refugee camp than a hotel. To take cash away from anyone would also be to strip them of money they might need to bribe their way out of being murdered. Some guests of mine who were wealthy came to me with a proposal that they would sign a letter of guarantee promising to pay Sabena when the trouble was over, and I accepted this. But nobody was asked for money.
One exception to this rule was liquor. Those who could afford it were allowed to buy cocktails and bottles of beer-never invite a man without one, even in a crisis-and I used the proceeds to help buy food. It was one way of passing the hat. I also asked my bosses at Sabena to send me more cash and they were able to smuggle two hundred thousand Rwandan francs to me with the help of a humanitarian organization that I should not name here. Room, however, was our greatest asset, and one that could not have a price tag attached. I guarded it closely and had to fight for it on one occasion. I have already mentioned my battle with the reception staff. One of them-Jacques, my problem employee-had taken it upon himself to live in the manager’s apartment with his girlfriend. They were in there alone, and wasting crucial space. Other recalcitrant employees had followed his example and were claiming the choicest suites for themselves. In my mind, nobody had this prerogative. We needed to conserve and share everything we had, and that included the most precious thing we had to offer.