\nby Scholastique Mukasonga<\/span>
\nfrom the June 22, 2020 issue of\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
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On TV, on the radio, they never called it genocide. As if that word were reserved. Too serious. Too serious for Africa. Yes, there were massacres, but there were always massacres in Africa. And these massacres were happening in a country that no one had ever heard of. A country that no one could find on a map. Tribal hatred, primitive, atavistic hatred: nothing to understand there. \u201cWeird stuff goes on where you come from,\u201d people would tell her.<\/span><\/p>\n She herself didn\u2019t know the word, but in Kinyarwanda there was a very old term for what was happening in her homeland: gutsembatsemba<\/em>, a verb, used when talking about parasites or mad dogs, things that had to be eradicated, and about Tutsis, also known as inyenzi<\/em>\u2014cockroaches\u2014something else to be wiped out. She remembered the story her Hutu schoolmates at high school in Kigali had told her, laughing: \u201cSomeday a child will ask his mother, \u2018Mama, who were those Tutsis I keep hearing about? What did they look like?,\u2019 and the mother will answer, \u2018They were nothing at all, my son. Those are just stories.\u2019 \u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, she hadn\u2019t lost hope. She wanted to know. Her father, her mother, her brothers, her sisters, her whole family back in Rwanda\u2014some of them might still be alive. Maybe the slaughter had spared them for now? Maybe they\u2019d managed to escape into exile, as she had? Her parents, on the hill, had no telephone, of course, but she called one of her brothers, who taught in Ruhengeri. The phone rang and rang. No one answered. She called her sister, who\u2019d married a shopkeeper in Butare. A voice she\u2019d never heard before told her, \u201cThere\u2019s nobody here.\u201d She called her brother in Canada. He was the eldest. If their parents were dead, then he\u2019d be the head of the family. Perhaps he had news, perhaps he had advice, perhaps he could help her begin to face her terror. They spoke, and then they fell silent. What was there to say? From now on, they were alone.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is heart-breaking. I’m glad that she has been willing and able to write. This looks to be part of\u00a0Igifu<\/em>, a collection that is coming out from Archipelago in September. That’s definitely a book to have on your radar.<\/p>\n Please share your thoughts below.<\/p>\n [\/fusion_text][fusion_builder_row_inner][fusion_builder_column_inner type=”1_2″ layout=”1_2″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” center_content=”no” last=”no” min_height=”” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all”][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=””]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/June-22-2020.jpg?resize=388%2C530&ssl=1\")
[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″ text_color=””]I[\/fusion_dropcap]t’s great to see another story from Scholastique Mukasonga in\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>. I first got to know some of her work a few years ago when Archipelago published\u00a0Our Lady of the Nile<\/em> and\u00a0Cockroaches<\/em>. Her work is powerful and important as she looks, usually from a very personal perspective, at her family’s history in Rwanda. She was a young girl when her family was driven out of her home village and moved to a refugee camp. Truly, there is no way for me to put into words, let alone for a brief introductory post like this, what she and her family went through over the next several decades. It looks like this particular piece concerns what happened to her family in Rwanda in the 1990s, after she herself had managed to get to France. Here are the first few paragraphs:<\/p>\n\n