An Ordinary Man (Paul Rusesabagina)

This is an amazing book. It's the second book I've read on the Rwandan genocide. This book gave a lot more information about the politics behind it all. The story a true one about Paul Rusesabagina who is a hotel manager in Rwanda when the war breaks out. He uses the hotel and his connects and power of persuasion to preserve the lives of the people hiding out in his hotel.

The war there was so horrific it is almost hard to read the book. He says:

The Interahamwe were known to be extremely cruel with the people they chopped apart; first cutting tendons so the victims could not run away, then removing limbs so that a person could see their body coming apart slowly. Family members were often forced to watch, knowing they were next. Their wives and their children were often raped in front of them while this was happening. Priests helped kill their congregations. In some cases the congregations helped kill their priests. Tutsi wives went to sleep next to their Hutu husbands and awoke to find the blade of a machete sawing into their neck, and above them, the grimacing face of the man who had sworn to love and cherish them for life. And Tutsi wives also killed their husbands. Children threw their grandparents down pit toilets and heaved rocks on top of them until the cries stopped. Unborn babies were slices from their mothers' wombs and tossed about like soccer balls. Severed heads and genitals were on display. The dark lust unleashed in Rwanda went beyond friendships and beyond politics and even beyond hate itself - it had become killing for killing's sake, killing for sport, killing for nothing .It raged on, all around the hotel, on the capital's street and in the communes and in the hills in every little spidery valley. (page 134)

Paul's hotel was one of the best in Rwanda and so many government people and other people with power often stayed there. He made it a practise to introduce himself to them and collected their business cards. The contact information became very useful while the war was going on. A number of times he was told his hotel would be raided. He'd call person after person trying to get someone to change the orders - and each time it worked out. He also made a lot of calls to other countries to get help. None came though. He even had contacts at the Whitehouse in the USA. He'd call and get told that they'd take a message....but nothing ever came of it. He says:

...the world's foremost superpower, America, has almost never acted to stop a race of people from being exterminated, even when confronted with overwhelming evidence. (page 137)

I can't imagine life after going through a war like that. How do you live life after you've gone through such horror? The author says:

Nights were hardest for us. Weeping filled the air. I found it hard to find even the mindless release of sleep. Wives came to understand that they would never see their missing husbands again. parents had to force themselves to stop imagining hos their irreplaceable children had died at the hands of strangers. And that emptiness in their lives would go on and on. It took a tremendous force of will to keep your own heart together in this unending grief. (page 167)

I can really understand why one would wonder about where God was in all this.

I still believe in a kind of Higher Power that is the original of all we see around us, but I am not one who prays much anymore. I felt that God left my on my own during the genocide. I have many troubling questions that I fear will go unanswered until the day I die. I share this yearning in the heart with many other Rwandans. Was God hiding from us during the killing? It sued to be that God and I shared many drinks together as friends. We don't talk much anymore, but I would like to think that we can one day reconcile over an urwagwa and he will explain everything to me. But that time is not yet here. (page 184)

My heart aches for these people. He says that now it is illegal to think of yourself as either a Hutu or a Tutsi. We say that we learn from these things and that we'll never let it happen again....but I have to wonder if it will ever really end. I wonder though how many stories will come out of what is going on in Darfur right now.