The Women

Sing at Dawn

Robert L. Fisher

          I could have whispered in the ear of any man, any ordinary man, but I chose to whisper in the ear of a madman, for hereabouts madmen are considered holy, in touch with the realm of spirits and gods; therefore, their words are given great weight and are taken as divine pronouncements and are believed. The madman’s words spread with the inevitability of night falling over the landscape. Soon men in government saw their opportunity. They began broadcasting the madman’s message over the radio. Men stood in knots, gathered around cheap radios, listening, panting, nodding assent, murmuring, then becoming angry, furious. Men one at a time left, only to return moments later with a machete or an iron bar. They continued to listen, fidgeting with their machetes, fingering their iron bars.

          These men began casting glances at their neighbors, at families they had grown up with, inspecting them for tell tale signs — the high, rounded forehead, the tall, slender body…

          The radios told them what to look for, told them the Tutsi planned to kill them in their sleep. The Tutsi were a state-within-a-state, lying in wait, secretly taking power, draining strength from the Hutu. Time was running out. They must be killed, everyone of them, the men and the women, the children, the old, another generation cannot be allowed to fester in the Hutu state.

          Women gathered up their scattered children, brought them indoors. Mothers wrapped their arms around their children. The mothers noticed how big their children’s eyes had become. The fathers stood by the doors like sentries.

          A knot of men roamed, armed and enraged, like vigilantes hunting for robbers. They came upon a lone man caught unawares. They surrounded him, started asking questions, focused on his high, round forehead. The first blow nearly severed his arm and he fell to his knees with a cry of fear and pain. He pleaded, bewildered. He knew his attackers as men from the village. He had seen them at the school where he waited with them for the children to come running out when the bell rang. He chatted and smoked with them. Now these same men were butchering him as they would a steer. They swore at him, accusing him of horrible plots. They called him a cockroach. The man watched in terror as his blood shot in gouts from his arteries. He grew faint, and in the soft earth of the village street saw a bird fly across the pool of blood next to his head, a reflection in his blood, and the last thing he ever would hear was their curses as they hacked at his numb body.

          Soldiers and police arrived, not to restore order, but to better organize the killing. As I knew it would, bloodlust infected the crowds and there was no turning back. The faint of heart melted into the mob and took courage and strength from the collective hysteria. They had all been granted a dispensation from reason and decency. Each man was a drop of water in a deluge, and their combined force was merciless and insatiable.

          I watched and waited. In a paradise that put Eden to shame, in the midst of huge flowers sweet with fragrance, in the tropical night bathed in moonlight, along shores of vast lakes and along the banks of wide rivers, in this land that the gods wept over when they bequeathed it to man, everywhere were mutilated corpses and burning villages. Blood flowed in the waters, the smell of blood overpowered the perfume of flowers, the boatmen rowed among corpses as among so many felled trees. Bodies washed ashore, bloated and naked.

          I waited. I remembered when the Rift Valley formed and volcanoes spewed their lava and ash. I watched Lake Kivu form. I saw fiery calderas shoot sparks into the night. I saw apes that stood upright, small and roving in bands. I saw them strike flints with rocks to make spear points. I remember the first spear-thrower, the first bow, the first poison-tipped arrow bringing down the antelope.

          Now the apes were taller, more intelligent, their tools useful and their weapons ever more lethal. They multiplied and covered the land like blight. They starved and fought, ate each other, and their numbers decreased. In peace they multiplied, grew too many, fought without cease. But now they killed in earnest. I await the revenge.

          They spilled over the borders, regrouped, rearmed, re-entered their displaced villages and killed in turn. Nothing would ever be the same again. The sulking Hutu formed bandit armies and ravaged and terrorized those who could not oppose them.

          I recognized him at once — the man in whose ear I would whisper. He had been educated in Paris, imbibing ideology and rhetoric. Now he was in his sprawling, chaotic homeland, bigger than Europe. He dreamed of being Napoleon, but in the camouflage-chic of Ché Guevara — green beret and large black-rimmed glasses, the medical student turned guerrilla, but with the smooth face of the city-boy, bookish and at home in the café. But I saw the gangster behind the glasses and fluent, reasonable talk. I knew he was out to loot the land and its resources, which he would extract with slave-labor.

          I whispered in his ear and he launched a coup, and when it failed he retreated to the roadless, forested, remote Rift Valley. Some of his pretences fell away, but not his ruthlessness.

          One of his men I chose. His name was Patrice Nkunde. Poorly educated, but not by choice. Young and strong, but despairing of ever having the life he dreamed of. A man of sympathy and values, but cowardly, a reluctant soldier.

          He kept his distance from his fellow-fighters. He was sickened by their bragging and stupidity, as well as by their imitation of American gangsta rappers: the do-rags, yellow and red and black, tight over their skulls, the bling-bling of gold chains, the senseless and ugly hand gestures and postures, the grabbing of their crotch, an archaic threat as primitive as goose-stepping, their drug-addled brains, their love of shooting heavy machine guns. He kept apart and hoped they would not notice him.

          The order came down to attack a village. The commander said it was “retaking territory from the enemy”, and that the villagers had cooperated with the enemy and therefore “they must be taught a lesson”. This was his soldiers’ dispensation.

          Patrice Nkunde rode off in the back of a pick-up truck equipped with a heavy machine gun and belts of ammunition. One soldier in a yellow do-rag held the grips of the gun as if its long barrel were an extension of his penis. The soldiers laughed, took swigs of whiskey. They laughed and licked their lips.

          They surrounded the village and opened fire. Those who were stunned by the noise and the fire fell immediately, riddled with gaping wounds. Everyone else fled inside their houses.

          Patrice Nkunde stood to the side, sickened. But I told him to speak, and his voice was the voice of command. The soldiers stopped in their tracks. His voice penetrated the din of gunfire. I told him the words to say. He rebelled. His mother had taught him to be polite and hardworking. He would not say the words.

          But I took control of his muscles, of his tongue and diaphragm, of his vocal cords, and the words came out: orders to set fire to the huts and drive out the people inside.

          The men obeyed, looking over their shoulders at Patrice Nkunde with surprise and admiration. The soldiers tossed torches and Molotov cocktails on the thatch rooves and waited.

          Patrice Nkunde tried to flee, but I controlled the muscles in his legs and he remained rooted to the spot. I set his facial muscles in a grimace. He wept, but I controlled his tear ducts and his eyes were dry. He wept inside.

          The coughing, choking villagers came streaming out of their burning homes. The women had draped folds of their long dresses over the children’s heads. Babies wailed.

          I gave Patrice Nkunde these words: Separate the men and line them up here. The soldiers obeyed and sensed a plan was in his mind. They waited in expectation, willing and confident.

          When I told Patrice Nkunde what to say next he sent prayers to the God of his French priest-teachers, but the words came out nevertheless. I moved his jaw and tongue and lips. I gave him the weight of a man used to command and immediate compliance.

          Patrice Nkunde organized his men into squads of ten. To each squad he assigned one woman. He told the men to rip the clothes from the women and stake them spread-eagled to the ground.

          The village men stood terrified, mute, still as statues. The older women held children in their arms. The soldiers prevented the women from hiding the wide eyes of the children. The village was silent, but for the crackling of flames in the thatch and for the screams and pleas of the women on the ground.

          I gave Patrice Nkunde an erection and made him kneel before a woman. I made him laugh at her appeals. And all the time he raped her he was silently praying to Jesus and especially to Mary to forgive him. He begged his victim to forgive him, but his words were locked in brain and I made his diaphragm expel scornful laughter.

          His performance made the soldiers erect and one by one the ten men raped and sodomized the helpless woman. They reveled in the power otherwise absent in their bleak, despairing lives.

          When they were finished I marched Patrice Nkunde toward the sobbing woman, lying in semen and blood and feces and urine. I controlled his legs and he walked, almost strutted toward her. I moved his arms and he took the AK-47 from his shoulder. I made him insert the muzzle in her vagina. His heart would have burst if I had not slowed its beating. Inside he wept and prayed for death. He recited in his desperation the Act of Contrition: Mon Dieu, j'ai un très grand regret de vous avoir offensé, parce que vous êtes infiniment bon, infiniment aimable, et que le péché vous déplait. Je prends la ferme résolution, avec le secours de votre sainte grâce, de ne plus vous offenser et de faire penitence. But I contracted the tendon of his trigger finger and a single round tore through her abdomen.

          The soldiers whooped and hurrahed. They patted Patrice Nkunde on the back. They passed him a bottle of whiskey. He felt the fiery liquid warm his blood. Inside he begged to awaken from this nightmare.

          That evening around the campfires the men drank and danced. Some captured women were forced to cook for them. Word reached the commander and he saw Patrice Nkunde as a soldier of mettle, and he was jealous.

          I reached inside Patrice Nkunde at dawn and pulled out his soul, leaving the shell of his body breathing and snoring by the dying fire.

          I put his soul under my arm, so to speak, like a parcel. Below, the sun was rising on the Rwandan shore of Lake Kivu and a flock of cranes came to life, their white the white of purity itself. They rose up from the reeds and swirled in a spiral, gaining altitude, and flew with languid grace north to the Blue Nile. Further out boatmen were extinguishing their torches and untangling their nets as they headed to the fish market at Goma. In the distance, at the north end of the lake, Mount Nyiragongo — Mother of the Spirit Gongo — smoked, and its red caldera slowly became invisible in the advancing sunlight.

          I saw my man at the hospital. He wore a white smock and his hair was pepper-and-salt.

          I put Patrice Nkunde’s soul in this doctor’s body. I froze his tongue and vocal cords and marched him in the fresh light to a group of women dressed in golden fabrics. They competed with the sun for glory. They wore flowing robes and traditional headdresses, all in bands of golden hues. On their periphery nurses in crisp white uniforms stood in attendance. They were young and dauntless.

          I gave Patrice Nkunde words, which he spoke with all the easy confidence of a prophet. The women were all the victims of mass rape. They had walked or ridden in crammed trucks from the territories of the warlords. In their villages their husbands had abandoned them, partly from the public shame of standing by helplessly as their wives were repeatedly raped, sodomized and their vaginas penetrated with tree branches, broken bottles and gun shots; and partly from the sense that their wives had been permanently defiled, had been sullied with a stain that nothing could purify. In addition, the villagers shunned the women for the smell resulting from incontinence. The women wrapped yards of cloth around their loins and walked alone on hot, dusty roads to this hospital, where the surgeons did their best to repair the damage.

          Patrice Nkunde addressed the women, but inside he burned with a shame as hot as hellfire. I whispered the words to him and unlocked his voice:

          “When I was young my mother gave me a grave responsibility — ‘You must become a second father and mother to your little sister.’ And she taught me — even though I was just a boy — how to hold my sister, how to wash her, dress her, sing lullabies to her. At this moment I remember holding her in my skinny arms and spooning food in her mouth. The sun came through the window where my mother was standing, holding another child. I can see her smile of pride. She said that my tenderness was the true strength of man.” And this was a genuine memory of Patrice Nkunde’s — I took it from his soul and gave it words.

          Patrice Nkunde continued: “Because of my mother I am here today, and in her honor and in honor of your courage, I want you to sing at sunrise. Make up your own songs — about a mother standing in the sunlight, proud of her son. Or about how some of you have borne children of the men who tortured you, of how your love for those children is the rain that will extinguish the fire of hatred you must feel, the conflagration of war and despair.”

          An old woman’s voice rose and others joined her, more and more women singing as they guessed where her words were going.

          He left them healing in the sun.

          I walked Patrice Nkunde to the operating theater where several young doctors waited to assist him in reconstructive surgery. He explained as he operated and had each doctor do a part of the surgery under his guidance. I moved his hands with skill and delicacy. He performed nine operations that day.

          As he operated and talked, more women arrived with the dawn. For many it would take a year and three operations to recover.

          I walked Patrice Nkunde through the wards of women in various stages of postoperative care. The women wanted to kiss his hands. They blessed him by the Christian God and by the African gods. They smiled and joked with him. He had given them hope.

          That night I took the soul of Patrice Nkunde from the body of the sleeping surgeon, and we crossed Lake Kivu, where fishermen were lighting their torches and casting their nets.

          I placed his soul in the body of the sleeping soldier. He would wait in the camp for the commander’s orders.

          The lava of Mount Nyiragongo is unusual, rare in fact. The lava of most volcanoes is ropey, viscous and crawls down the slopes and across the fields and villages. People have time to flee, even to gather some of their belongings and save them. But Nyiragongo’s lava runs as free and quick as water, flooding villages with fire with the speed and volume of a tidal wave. When the lava cools, those who survived return to where they think their village once stood. Every landmark has disappeared in the devastation.

          But the villagers broadcast seed over the rich black soil and build houses with timber cut in a forest far away. The children born there take the bleak landscape as natural and grow to love the fertility of the soil.

©Robert L. Fisher, 2008