Wound

The word that most Rwandans use to describe to me the horrors that were left after the genocide is “wound.” The translation comes from the Kinyarwandan ibikomere which means a deep pain. But I have to say that I appreciate the use of wound in contextualizing such an atrocity. To me, a wound sounds like something corporal, something of the flesh that can be fixed with some of mama’s spit and stitches. Even the sound of the word seems destined to wholeness – with your mouth formed in a round soft circle.

But what deep wounds they are.

This morning I was told two stories of female survivors of the genocide. Such stories are not told, or heard, lightly. But nevertheless, they are relatively common to hear and then to share. Sometimes I feel like they are heavy bowling balls which, upon hearing their contents, one has to carry around until they find someone else to give it to temporarily. You literally heave with the effort of telling it and then passing it to the next person. The stories flesh out the specific horrors of the genocide. That it was not only “a genocide” but also 800,000 singular murders. The stories also demonstrate how the most common tools of the genocide were the machete and the rape. Many women and girls were murdered after being raped, but some went on to live and to give new life.

The first story I heard today was told on the radio by a young woman of 22. She had been 6 in 1994 when the Interhamwe raped her and her mother then murdered her mother as she stood next to her, holding her hand. When the little girl cried out in despair, only able to utter to her mother’s murderers that she was thirsty, the murderers slit her mother’s wrist and forced the young girl to drink her own mother’s dying blood. The second was a story of a young couple in love. They became engaged with plans to marry. But when the genocide began, the man told his fiancé to put on trousers to appear as a man so that they could escape through the night. But they were soon found and the young man was murdered while his fiancé was raped repeatedly. And then they raped her with the gun they had just used to murder her fiancé. Months later she realized she was pregnant.

Well, this woman raised the son she was forced to have. And she loved him. And she still does love him, 15 years later. That is the good news of the story.

But what about the bad news? The news that still bleeds and cries and scabs over and scars and aches with each memory? What mama's spit can possibly heal this wound?