An Ordinary Man

Everyone then raised their voices and talked as if they were one person.

“What about you? You keep talking about us.”

“Listen. I am the only person here who can negotiate with these killers outside.”

“But how can you stay?”

“If people inside this hotel are killed, I will never be able to sleep again. I’ll be a prisoner of my own conscience.

“Please, ” I told them. “Please accept and go.”

The next day, at approximately 5:30 P. M., I saw my wife and children off at the roundabout in front of the hotel. They and the other fortunate guests were loaded into UN trucks while I watched from under the canopy near the door. I even helped them climb inside. I tried to be almost casual about it, telling them I would see them soon, as if they were off to the grocery store, but inside my heart was breaking. I said nothing special, nothing climactic, because that would have upset everybody, me most of all. I watched the first truck go by, and then the second. In Rwandan culture it is never acceptable for a man to cry, but I came very close that evening. I made it through those awful minutes the same way I made it through the entire genocide: by losing myself in the details of work.

I was then forty years old. Everything I had in life was pulling away in those trucks, and it was my decision to stay and face probable execution. I knew that I was taking all the responsibility now. That gave me a little peace.

Out in the front courtyard, many people had their transistor radios turned on RTLM, and I heard the names of my wife and children being read aloud, along with the other refugees who had just pulled away. “The cockroaches are escaping, ” said the a

The list had leaked. Somebody from the hate radio had apparently stolen it or bought it from the United Nations or the Rwandan Army. I even saw a correspondent from RTLM standing in the parking lot.

There are no good words to describe what it is like to hear an execution order broadcast for your own family, and to know that you played a role in putting them in death’s hands. Their beautiful names-Tatiana, Tresor, Roger, Lys, Diane-were a profanity in that a

When she was able to speak again Tatiana told me what happened.

The first convoy of sixty-three refugees was escorted by eight soldiers wearing the blue helmets of the UN. They were stopped at a roadblock two kilometers away from the hotel, at a place called Cyimicanga, where some men from the Interahamwe were standing alongside a few observers from the Rwandan Army. All the evacuees in the trucks were ordered out onto the roadside dirt. The street boys at the barricades had been given Kalashnikovs, and one of them fired an opening shot into the dirt near the feet of a refugee named Immaculate. It also happened to come perilously close to a soldier. A second shot struck and killed a member of the Presidential Guard.

“They are going to kill us!” somebody screamed, and that caused the militia to get even angrier. They used their rifle butts to start beating the refugees. Men were slugged in the gut, women were slapped across the face, children were kicked. A few used their machetes to cut open the skin on the forearms of some of the captives: It was the usual sick prelude to a total dismemberment. My wife was worked over particularly hard; she was thrown into a truck with a back so twisted she could barely move.

The UN soldiers, meanwhile, were disorganized. Some were bravely trying to insert themselves between the militia and their intended victims, but my wife told me the Bangladeshis put their hands in the air like stick-up victims. It would have been almost fu

My son Roger was approached by a boy he had known from school, a former classmate and friend. “Give me your shoes, you cockroach, ” said the boy.

Roger obeyed without protest and gave over his te

Ah Rwanda, why?

The only thing that saved the caravan was the bitter argument between the Army and the militia. They were begi

I ran out to the roundabout to meet them coming back and found my wife lying in a puddle of blood on the floor of one of the trucks. She was moaning slightly.

“Can you move?” I asked. She shook her head.

I was nearly blind with a red whirling of fury and relief and fright, but I had a job to do and I forced myself to stay in control. We took the wounded off the trucks and led them back into the hotel they had thought they were escaping. We called for Dr. Gasasira and another doctor named Josue, who began to bandage up the cuts imediately. The Mille Collines was full of people screaming and crying and hugging one another. I took Tatiana up to our room, 126, and made sure she was resting on the bed. Her eyes were blank with shock. The children were unhurt but completely quiet.

Once I was sure that our wounded were all being tended to, I rushed to my office. There was no time to spare. We needed more protection immediately. It was now clear that the government and the militias knew the identities of many of the high-profile refugees we were hiding. They might not chance an all-out invasion of the Mille Collines, but they might begin a series of individual assassinations. I was terrified that their bloodlust had been aroused beyond the point of control. I had already taken the precaution of finding an outdated guest list to give to any killer who might come asking for it at the reception desk. I had also ordered the room numbers pried off the doors to further confuse anyone who came in here looking for a specific target. But more protection was crucial. I called everyone I knew who was still alive. And then I called them again, insisting we have more policemen posted outside.

It seems strange to say, but it was a relief to be doing something, even if it seemed like I was getting nowhere. It was one big extended Rwandan no from all my military friends and, of course, the UN. Not until our last night in the hotel was I finally given five Tunisian soldiers from the UN contingent to safeguard the parking lot, and by then it was too late to make a difference.

We did not have long to rest. On the morning of May 13 at 10 A. M. I was visited in my office by a Rwandan Army intelligence agent named Lieutenant Iradakunda. I had known him only slightly, but my impression had been that he was a less than loyal supporter of the ongoing genocide. My suspicions were confirmed when he took me aside to a quiet area.

“Listen, Paul, ” he said. “We are going to attack you today at 4:00 P. M.”