Inside the Hotel Rwanda by Edouard Kayihura

Author:Edouard Kayihura
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781937856731
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

19

RETURN TO THE MOONSCAPE

ON JULY 4, the RPF took the capital of Kigali, and on July 6 we were invited to go back into the city. The war there was over and the soldiers gathered us together and told us we needed to go back home. Most of us were hesitant to go back because of what we knew had been going on not too long ago. When people began going to Kigali and coming back safe and sound, we finally knew it was all right.

We had to figure out our own transportation in order to get there. Rubayiza and I were inseparable. Deus Kagiraneza, an RPF officer, gave us a ride into town. He had a big truck. What a change this was from when I made my way from my home to the Hotel des Mille Collines just three months before, and yet it seemed like a lifetime. No running through yards, hopping fences, and ducking into stores to avoid being seen by drunken murderers. Now I rode in a truck with a friendly and helpful military man, watching the sights as we drove, gradually allowing myself to feel relaxed, dreaming of what it might be like to be freer and more at ease than I had ever been as a Tutsi in Rwanda. For not a single day in my life had I been treated like anything but a second-class citizen in my home country—discriminated against, made to leap higher hurdles in order to be treated with proper dignity. But now, who knew? Who truly knew what the future might bring? From the vantage point of the inside of that truck, however, the prospects seemed limitless.

Back in the capital city, all we could see each mile were military men with camouflage uniforms and boots—RPF soldiers. All of them were friendly and willing to help. None of them asked us for ID; none of them asked if we were Tutsi or Hutu. None of them cared. They seemed weary of the fight and, seeing that we were unarmed and at peace, they treated us like fellow world citizens and nothing less.

For years, we had carried those cursed cards because the physical differences between Tutsi and Hutu are not so obvious. It would be similar to trying to tell Irish Americans from Italian Americans. Some people may fit into a physical stereotype, but just as many might not. Also, there were no immovable rules concerning intermarriage. Mix it up time and time again over many generations, and again—what were you? Hutu and Tutsi, during various times in our national history, even became more like social classes than ethnicities. Society could regard a person as one or the other, or that person could wake up one day and claim to be one or the other. It happened rarely and it was very risky, but it did happen. Some tried to hide their ethnicity when applying for employment and job opportunities, but they would be investigated. In your own neighborhood, everyone

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