Reverien Rurangwa, Genocide: My Stolen Rwanda. Reportage Press 2009. ISBN 9781906702021
Rwanda, April 1994. Reverien Rurangwa was 15 when he was hunted down by Hutu neighbours and witnessed the massacre of 43 members of his family. Missing an eye and a hand, Rurangwa lived to write this memoir from exile in Switzerland, where he still lives.
If it were fiction it would be easier to hold the book steady and marvel at the prose, but it is not fiction. The descriptions of what Rurangwa endured when he was mutilated and his family slaughtered, are spare and visceral. Sometimes, in this genre, trauma undermines narrative capacity but, in the tradition of Primo Levi, Rurangwa conveys and contemplates the horror he experienced without faltering. It is remarkable writing from a remarkable individual; his voice, clarity and determination to tell his story fuse grace and terror.
Catholic faith writhes at the centre of this book. During the minute long massacre his grandmother was murdered mid-prayer, various family members called to god for help, while the killers, fellow parishioners of the local church, struck their machetes until faith fell with precious bodies into a pile. Using terms like 'church cum abattoir' this book confronts many beliefs: in God, in humanity, in the UN, in the state, in family and community, but equally ignites belief in evil.
In the aftermath Rurangwa was protected by other Christians such as a Belgian missionary, Rwandan nuns who sheltered him from assassins, and ultimately his adopted Swiss father Luc, who guided and challenged him during many a crisis. No matter how much he is cared for, no matter how much surgery he undergoes to repair his mutilated body, abandonment remains:
'Since the genocide, I feel abandoned. Abandoned by my family — not that they can help it — and by those who should have defended me and protected me: international leaders, my own country's judiciary. Abandoned by other people's opinions. It is about being alive but dead, a solitary zombie.'
One of the most harrowing moments is when Rurangwa, having lost an arm and suffering vicious machete wounds, crawls around his village begging for someone to finish him off and kill him. The cruelty of those who drank beer and laughed at the boy crawling at their feet conveys the depravity, and abandonment, of that hell time.
The pressure to forgive is put upon Rurangwa by those around him, often by