Cockroaches by Scholastique Mukasonga

Author:Scholastique Mukasonga [Mukasonga, Scholastique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-914671-54-1
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2016-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

And then there were the vacations, the joy of going back home to my family, the party Gitagata would throw for the return of its “intellectuals.” I would dance with the girls who’d stayed in the village—how I loved to dance! Laughing, they would tell me all the village gossip, and I would tell them the news from the city. I would pick up the mattock again, alongside my mother. I wouldn’t miss the sorghum harvest. But before all that, there was a terrible ordeal to endure: crossing the big bridge over the Nyabarongo.

And so, on the first day of vacation, the three or four girls from Nyamata all set off together. We ran, we had to be there before dark. Sometimes we weren’t let out of school until after lunch, so instead of the main road home, through Kicukiro, we took a short cut that went straight to Gahanga. But for that we had to walk past the camp. We didn’t know what might happen if the soldiers asked for our ID cards. We took a thousand precautions to get by without being seen. Then we plunged into the valley, we climbed up Mburabuturo hill, we ran, we ran, we barreled down the slopes of the Gahanga sector toward the valley of the Nyabarongo, and we saw the big iron bridge, the reddish water, the papyrus plants in the swamps. We also saw the barricade at the bridge’s entrance, and the soldiers slumped in their chairs, the rifles between their legs, the beer bottles scattered at their feet.

They’d seen us coming. They knew who we were: we were Inyenzi from Nyamata. There was no point trying to hide our hair, trying to make ourselves inconspicuous: they were waiting for us. We scarcely dared to go on, but we had to cross the bridge. The soldiers were already snickering as they saw us timidly inching toward them. They shouted at us, “Inyenzis, lower your heads, don’t show your faces, don’t show your noses, we don’t want to see that, whatever you do don’t look us in the eye, come forward but keep your heads down, never forget, you’re Inyenzi.” We held out our papers, and the humiliations began. Depending on their mood or their fancies, they might spit in our faces, or kick us with their heavy boots, or strike us with their rifle butts. They dragged us to the bank of the Nyabarongo and forced us to look down into the muddy water, as red as if it had been tainted with blood: “Look closely,” they cried, “that’s where you’re going to end up, all you cockroaches, you Inyenzi, one day you’ll all be thrown into that water.”

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