Beginning ~ with a killer

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust ~ by Immaculee Ilibagiza, 2006, memoir

I heard the killers call my name.

They were on the other side of the wall, and less than an inch of plaster and wood separated us.  Their voices were cold, hard, and determined.

"She's here . . . we know she's here somewhere. . . . Find her — find Immaculee."
There were many voices, many killers.  I could see them in my mind: my former friends and neighbors, who had always greeted me with love and kindness, moving through the house carrying spears and machetes and calling my name.

From the dust jacket:

Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished.  But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide.  Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.  Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter.  For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them.  She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers.

A dozen years ago, more or less, I read another book about the genocide in Rwanda.  A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche is a novel, published in 2000.  I also saw the movie.  Although it was fiction, it was all too real to me.  I knew about Immaculee's true story, but having met a man whose family died in the Rwandan slaughter, living right here in my town, I didn't feel that I could read any more about what is now almost two decades in the past.  I ran across this pristine copy of Immaculee's memoir in a used book store, so clean and "new" that it surely has never been read.  I'm ready to read it now.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.