Blood Papa by Jean Hatzfeld

Author:Jean Hatzfeld
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

THE PARENTS

MOTHER COURAGE

When I invite her for our first meeting, at a restaurant at the bus station, Jacqueline Mukamana orders a chicken served with fried bananas and one or two Primus beers. With her elegant fingers, she meticulously savors the meal, especially since she also feeds little bites of it to her baby, leaving behind only a licked-clean carcass on her plate. When we meet a second time, at the Coin des amis in Kanzenze, she makes do with half a chicken, taking the other half home in a doggy bag, having coaxed the last drop of beer from the bottles left on the table. This is because, since her husband’s return to Rilima, the Bunani family has had to go without meat and beer. Although destitution has yet to befall them, it is knocking at their door.

Jacqueline lives in Kiganwa, near Kibungo. We take the route from Kanzenze, then turn right onto a road so rocky and broken that not a single bicycle ventures the climb. The road follows a ridge overlooking two deep valleys to the right and the left, each the paradise of myriads of songbirds. One valley rushes steeply down to the motionless river below; the second slopes gently toward other, smaller valleys, graced with the colors of the bush and the banana groves, through which shepherds lead their herds. Kiganwa includes about fifty earth-and-sheet-metal houses, among which are a grocery store and a cabaret. The latter belongs to Jacqueline.

Every morning at dawn, as the drowsy family emerges into the courtyard, as women begin to bustle around the stove, as young girls wash up with the hose before donning their school uniforms, Jacqueline leaves the house. Wearing a muddy pagne, a T-shirt donated by an NGO, and a scarf wrapped tightly around her hair, she carries her tools over her shoulder. Her son Jean-Damascène picks up his tools and catches up with her. Joining a stream of neighbors, they take the river path that snakes toward the field. Their land, a bright ocher in the fresh morning light, is plowed, cleared of scrub, and carefully lined with furrows. It seems a huge expanse for only two pairs of arms, which, none too brawny to begin with, are away at the market on Wednesdays, at church on Sundays, and in Rilima on visiting days. Because of their absences, the mother and son have fallen behind, as can be seen with a quick glance at the neighboring fields, where rows of seedlings are already staked. In the banana grove, broken branches dangle, exhausted trees still need to be replaced, and a layer of gray leaves suffocates the soil.

Jacqueline attacks the earth with a hoe. If all goes well, they will have planted the beans a few days ahead of the first rains. Jean-Damascène looks up at the sky, whose pale-blue hue can only mean a scorching heat to come. He hesitates, then reaches for the hoe again. A hole, three seeds, a hole, three seeds, along a hundred-yard

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