Nomad's Pub

Their Blood Cries Out from the Earth

“Words aren’t enough—Dear God, help us all.”

If you look through the registry at Murambi Genocide Memorial in Rwanda under the date of the 27th February 2007, you’ll find those words written. I know. I was there today.

We went, knowing it would be hard, hoping we had somehow managed to “prepare ourselves” as instructed. “There will be bodies in lime…and an over-representation of children…” they told us.

We arrived, met our guide, and walked past nicely built mass graves for the dead; the murdered. (Can you describe such a thing as nice?) Walked around these to a building—a long corridor with several doors opening onto it from the left side. It reminded me of an elementary school building, but was nothing like… Our guide unlocked them all, pushing open the metal doors and standing to the side. “You—go in!” He told us in broken English. (“My French is much better…” he had said.)

We stepped through the first door—dark and cool. Then we smelled it; something rotten; foul. Dead.

Bodies everywhere. Shrivelled. White. Lying on bed-boards with mattresses removed.

Room after room after room; bed after bed after bed.

Moved slowly in the dark confines of the room, looking. Covering my nose—but it didn’t work. You could still smell it.

I remember the story of Cain and Abel. Cain had just killed Abel, his brother, and God spoke to him. Where is your brother? He wanted to know. Am I my brother’s keeper? Cain returned, defensive. And God asked him, What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.

And I look at the bodies and wonder, what have we done? Here brother has risen up against brother. Hutu and Tutsi and Tutsi and Hutu—they, who even sprang from the very same clan. How can this be?

I force myself to look. To look at each figure lying there before me; to memorise each face, gesture—every slightest detail.

A woman, clutching a baby to her chest. Vain efforts to shield and protect.

Here an arm extended out before the face; the figure raised up and resting on his shoulder. His arm extended as if to ward off a blow; his body permanently resting, raised up in that position—dreadful, fruitless waiting.

I count the rooms we enter—14. Try to count the bodies in a room but stop. The count makes me sick. For now it is enough to see the faces of these, the dead; the victims betrayed. Enough, even, to see but one. I need to know what to do with the faces—these expressions searing themselves on my mind.

Shock. Recognition. Horror. Resignation.

Pleading.

Hopelessness.

Dear God, why?

These are the faces of those staring out at me.

Help me understand this!

Tiny feet; toes curled and withered.

Shriveled ribs. Skulls dashed in.

I see the bullet holes shattering the bone; bone splinters sticking out like shards.

Beads around a woman’s neck. A man whose arms and legs nearly touch against his back—frozen in the wrenching distortions of pain, of agonizing death.

Tufts of hair. Teeth locked forever gnashing.

I look and wonder at it all. Think perhaps it is something I might find or should belong in the Tate Modern—an artist’s depiction of human sufferings. But these are not images created by an artist or creations formed from plaster, but the remains of once living, breathing people now covered in lime. This is no artist’s depiction of pain—it is the actual agony ruthlessly inflicted on my brothers and sisters; on their children and their parents and their siblings and friends. This is no art; it is a tragedy—a tragedy of life.

I leave the last room—room 14. Yes; 14 rooms of the contorted dead.

Stand on the pathway; funny how now everything is so different. Suddenly the flies whose buzzing sound barely annoyed before now makes me want to run. Run far away! I do not want to picture what their buzzing conjours up. Do not want to picture those same flies flitting just as happily around the bodies of those I have just seen. Do not want to envision their larvae growing in the eyes of those just gazing at me; crying out to me their stories of mortal anguish.

His blood cries out to me from the ground…

Our guide moves us along, towards another set of buildings. Dear God, please no! I can’t bear to see anymore.

But now we see not bodies. No No bodies—but clothes. A room, big like a warehouse, with clothesline strung back and forth, wall to wall. Clothesline laden down under the weight of hundreds of blood-stained, muddied clothes.

I move slowly down the rows.

A child’s sock.

A bright yellow skirt.

Faded worker’s linen.

Clothes much like the styles I myself have worn.

Clothes ripped with bullets and shredded by machetes.

Oh God, why? Why this?

I look outside; turn, look around inside again. My companions—we are each turned away to the windows. Seeking solitude in our tumultuous thoughts? Struggling to reconcile the beauty of the surroundings with the tragedy we have now borne witness to? Asking the same questions that beg answer in me?

Our guide leads us back out, and the rust coloured path offends me.

He walks through puddles of water; I sidestep them—they do not look like water to me.

At the same time, I desperately want to wash the soles of my shoes—the bottoms of my feet. Want to wash off the dust of the dead. But I can’t. I won’t.

A deep ditch beside us—a mass grave, now exhumed. I look down into its epths. Picture the bodies I have just seen tossed into it; jumbled together. Some perhaps will alive.

Think of Daniel in the lions’ den. Why—why!—were these lions’ mouths not also shut? Where was the world in this? Before this? Where love which sees past differences, which embraces across ethnicity and titles? Why did we allow such hate to sprout and grow in our midst? What are we doing differently now?

What?

As we pull slowly out of the parking lot, the Rwandan flag waving a solemn farewell, I see the lone figure of a woman. She sits on a ridge overlooking the valley. Overlooking the dead. Her head is covered in lace, bowed low; her posture that of someone who bears too much of the weight of the world. Who that she loved met death in this place? Who, unlike me, never walked away from those barracks? And how many more will die the world around before her cries are heard? Hers and those like hers? Those who also have lost so senselessly?

I voice this question; but it is not mine alone.

Each of those bodies I saw today—they asked it of me. Their blood cries out from the earth.

Students I met with from the National University of Rwanda in Butare—students who have formed a peace organization and work so hard for the reconciliation and healing of their country. Who strive to find a history of peace within their culture; to bring a future of peace to their people and to those neighboring them. They each ask this question.

And that lady, shoulders slumped and head bowed; waiting. She asks this question.

And what shall be our answer?

What shall be our answer?

posted by Lada @ 4:15 PM