To my huge surprise things became quiet for a few weeks after that. Once again my premonitions of my death were mistaken. We still saw the killers moving on the sidewalks behind the bamboo, but there were no invasions and no random violence. No more missiles were fired. We counted down the days until May 26, when the United Nations, the Army and the rebels wanted to make a second try at an evacuation. This time they would send us not to the airport but to a hill behind the rebel lines.
My friends made several attempts to convince me to sign up for it. No way, I said. There were hundreds of refugees who would not be evacuated and they still needed my protection, for the same reasons I had cited when I refused to go along with the first evacuation. And this time I would not allow Tatiana and the kids to go either. I did not trust the UN. My wife was now able to sit up in bed, and even walk around a bit, but she was shaken and frail and frightened of every bump in the hallway. I also felt that even if they got out safely it would be a sign to the Interahamwe that I trusted the rebels to take better care of my wife and children. That would be pushing things far too far. I had been skating on paper-thin ice for so long, but even my oldest friends in the highest ranks of the Army would not be able to stomach that sign of treachery. They would not be there to help when the militias came in. Their continuing friendship was my one lifeline, even though it was as thin as a sewing thread.
“But these thugs know you are the one who has been protecting everybody, ” said Odette. “They will surely kill you.”
“I would never be able to face myself again if anybody dies, ” I told her. “And if my wife and my children go with you they will see that I have taken a side. They will not hesitate to come kill me.”
The night before the evacuation four families gathered in Room 126. We were all old friends. In the room were: Odette and Jean-Baptiste and their four children; John Bosco Karangura and his three children; journalist Edward Mutsinzi and his wife and child; and Tatiana and me and our four children.
We were going to do a pacte de sang-a blood oath. It is one of the most powerful bonds you can form with someone in Rwanda. It is the same igihango game I played as a boy, except the stakes are higher and the friendship is not a secret one. You are supposed to cut yourself in the stomach along with your friend and drink the other person’s blood from your hands. Few people took that physical step anymore, not since the advent of AIDS, but you could still make a verbal pledge. Other than the promise you made to marry somebody, it was the most solemn vow you could make.
“Listen to me, ” said Jean-Baptiste. “Listen to me all the children here. Look around. You see all the adults in here. We have decided from here onward to become brothers and sisters. If your parents should be killed, then the adults in the room tonight, then they become your parents. Get away from danger and find them if you can. Everyone in here has promised to raise the orphans as their own children. And if all the adults should be killed, then the oldest child will take care of everyone.”
We did not cut our bellies and mix our blood, but we all sipped from a glass of red wine as a symbol of the promise we had made. We all stood up, many of us crying, and shook hands. There were bitter tears in the room that night, but also love. We had been through a sea of fire and we clung to one another, not knowing if we would ever see one another again or even be breathing after the next twelve hours. I am a hotel manager and I don’t usually think in terms of such finalities, so I can only say that when death is all around and life is draining away by the second, that is when humanity can be so sweet and so fine.
The evacuation started much like the first, with stony good-byes that did not match the emotion of the previous night. I watched my friends pull away and went back inside. This convoy was much better organized than the first, and the militias had been ordered to keep their distance. Several hundred were moved out that day, leaving the Mille Collines still jammed with people, but feeling oddly empty.
“Most of the traitors have gone to join the cockroaches, ” said the radio. But the threat never stopped. On June 17, early in the morning, the killings flared up at the Sainte Famille Church, which was barely half a kilometer away from us, just down the hill. It is one of Kigali ’s premier Catholic churches, and was a major site of refuge. There were at the entrance to the hotel dozens of people snatched inside its redbrick walls. The RPF had staged a daring rescue one night, leaving those left behind vulnerable to attack. From the roof I could see the crowds of militias circling like insects around a light. I was afraid the violence would inevitably spill over on the hotel. After two and a half months of nonstop slaughter this was the one place in Kigali where nobody had died. It was, for that reason, a kind of trophy.
During this particular crisis I finally blew my cool. It happened when I was talking in the lobby with the mayor of Kigali, a man I had known for years. He was also a colonel in the Army and someone in a position to help us.
“The militia are killing people at Sainte Famille Church, ” I told him. “Surely they will also kill refugees here. I want soldiers with a lot of strength here to protect us.”
“Paul, I tell you I cannot spare any more police to help you. It is not possible.”
“Do you not understand the situation here? This is what has just happened. You can see it all from my roof if you want. The militia has attacked innocent civilians. It will happen again.”
“There is nothing I can do.”
“Listen, my friend” I said, feeling my anger welling up inside. Anybody who knows me will tell you that when I start to call a person “my friend” it usually means I am feeling the opposite.
“Listen to me now, ” I repeated. “One day all this will be over, and on that day you and I will have to face history. What will they say about us? Are you willing to say that you denied protection when it mattered and that innocent people died because of it? Are you sure this is the answer you want to give history?”
I don’t know what made me choose those particular words. As a failed pastor I suppose I should have invoked God, as in, Listen, my friend, when we die we will have to give an account to heaven. But somehow it seemed more appropriate to remind him of history’s indelible record.
I have told you that Rwandans have a special ear for their own history; we take it seriously in a way that few other nations do. It is what caused us to pick up arms against ourselves and kill each other. Perhaps this registered with my friend the mayor. In any case, he was offended by what I had said. He turned away without another word and stalked out of the Mille Collines. He left me standing alone and frightened. I worried that I had lost a key friend, and my friends were all that were keeping us alive.
That same day, at noon, I had an appointment to see General Bizimungu, who was at the Diplomates. It was one of the few times I ventured outside the grounds of the Mille Collines since I had arrived there nearly seventy days earlier. The trip was only five minutes long but it wound past the heaps of corpses and bloodstains on the road that seemed like natural parts of the scenery now. I met the general in the lobby and took him immediately down to the wine cellar, where I knew there would be some remaining stocks of Bordeaux and Côtes du Rhône or something else I could give him. It was now my habit. If I survived the genocide, I thought ruefully, it would be a long time before I could interact with anyone in a position of power without feeling the urge to stockpile a favor with him.
We talked about the war and he repeated the mournful prediction that he had made in my hotel room. The government was losing. They could hold the lines temporarily, but their supplies were running low. The rebels had too much momentum and superior military. They would be flooding into Kigali before long and would perhaps put all the leadership on trial for war crimes. But in the midst of all the murder and insanity, the government of Rwanda had continued to do business as if everything was functioning normally.