Commemoration of 30 years of the Tutsi genocide | Thirty years of tumbling with misfortune

“We must say the words, say and not give up our daily attempt to overthrow misfortune. »

Misty eyes greeted these words from the Franco-Rwandan writer Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, taken from the luminous collection Overturn misfortune (Memory of inkwell). The author, a survivor of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, read extracts during a recent talk at the Maison de la lettres de Québec on the occasion of the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the genocide. A moving evening dedicated to the duty of memory of literature in which I was invited to participate as an author, descendant of survivors of the Armenian genocide, having explored the same themes in my novel Manam.

“These are Beata’s words. And at the same time, these are our words too,” Jean-Bosco Kayonga, president of the Rwandan Community of Quebec and himself a survivor of the genocide, told me.

By rebuilding his life in Quebec, he sought to distance himself from his traumatic past, he confides. Which doesn’t stop this past from haunting him.

“There is not a day that passes without this spring of ashes and blood bursting into our minds or destroying our sleep,” writes Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, evoking this genocide which, before “eyes wide closed of the world”, caused a million deaths between April and July 1994.

The most difficult is the month of April, underlines Angélique Nyinawintore, a member of the Rwandan community in Quebec. The month it all started.

“When April 7 comes, it seems like everything starts again in my head,” she says, recounting the horror she witnessed.

While she was in Butare, the hometown of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, Angélique was able to survive under the corpses, by hiding.

“What gives us relief during the month of April is getting together and talking,” she says.

To the question “What is the point of writing after such a tragedy”, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse often responds by quoting an American poet: “Because somewhere in the world there is someone whose grief has the exact shape of your words¹. »

The author says she herself found words in the writings of Holocaust survivors that had the exact form of her loneliness.

She hopes that her writings can in turn act as a balm for other survivors. May it help them to repair their wounded memory, to reclaim their own history and to ensure that it continues to be written.

During her visit to Quebec, the writer saw her wish come true by meeting Maximeizere, 31, who, like her, is a child of the humanitarian convoy whose story she tells in a masterful book (The convoy) which I spoke to you about recently². Tell you the emotion that ran through the room when they held each other close, like a big sister finding her little brother, 30 years later… Survivors who came alive, survivors of the same convoy, at 11 000 km of their misfortune.

Maximeizere Kayitana, alias Maxime, who now lives in Quebec, was 1 year and 4 months old when the genocide made him an orphan. He was adopted by Angélique’s family, whom he considers his aunt.

Unlike Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, who was 15 years old during their rescue operation, he has no memory of it. “I just know the stories that my aunts in Quebec and my aunt in Ottawa told me. »

Angélique remembers that Maxime was a child who had been waited for a long time by his parents. When he was born, more than six years after their marriage, it was the greatest joy in the world for them. He was the apple of their eye. The slightest cold became a state affair. Without even consulting each other, the parents each showed up with medicine for their beloved son.

When the genocide took place, Maxime’s father went to Kigali, thinking of making a quick return trip. There was never a return. As for his mother, she hid with Maxime in Butare, a town in the south of the country which, it was believed, would be spared by the genocidaires. She wasn’t.

Maxime and his mother were attacked by Hutu militiamen. “They threw them in a mass grave. Except the little one wasn’t dead. He stayed there one night. The next morning, neighbors looking out the window saw a child still trying to cling to his mother,” says Angélique.

A Hutu night guard decided to take the child on his back to try to save him. He and his wife tried to take care of him for several days. But as he was seriously injured in the head and legs, it was mission impossible.

“The blows caused his head to start to swell. They didn’t know what else to do. They couldn’t take him to the hospital because he was a child who could easily be identified as Tutsi. »

They then heard about humanitarian workers trying to evacuate hundreds of children gathered in an orphanage to Burundi. They decided to drop off little Maxime there. A friend of Beata, Claire, aka Fifi, who was then 17 and now lives in Ottawa, took care of him.

This is how Maxime was sent to Burundi. The day after the genocide, Angélique’s father went looking for him and brought him back to Rwanda. The child that Angélique had known was no longer the same. “To my memory, Maxime was a child who walked. He no longer walked. We had to take him in our arms. He was seriously ill. He was malnourished and very dehydrated. »

Despite everything, Maxime, who was able to rebuild his life in Quebec with his adoptive parents, Solange Uwanyiligira and Alphonse Mutemberezi, considers himself lucky in his misfortune. “I had a normal life despite my after-effects. »

With the complicity of Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, who will send him photos of the convoy that his investigation allowed him to recover, he hopes to reweave his broken memory and learn more about this forgotten rescue operation.

“It’s as if I’m piecing together pieces of my memory left and right…”

Above all, he hopes that we will not forget either the courageous people who saved his life or the survivors who continue, against all odds, to “bring misfortune to the children of the next day”.

1. These are the words of Sean Thomas Dougherty’s poem “Why Bother.” “Because right now / There is someone / Out there with / A wound in the exact shape / Of your words. »

2. Read the column “What can save us”