Silence
Silence.
We sit in silence for those who have been lost, for the senseless acts that took so many lives. Words fail to describe times like these, and today I am mourning the loss of innocence, of dignity, of passion and ambition, of truth, of joy, of hope, and every other thing and person, every home, lost at the hands of those who perpetuated the genocide.
She had a name.
She had a name and they did not know it. She had a name, and it held stories I will never know, dreams I will never imagine, fears I hope not to feel, and ideas that can no longer be realized. She had a name. She was Annonciata. Inside the walls meant to protect, holy walls, she was eaten alive. What does it mean for the house of the Lord to be turned into a living hell? Annonciata was swallowed by the lusts of more than 15 men, slaughtered in the place meant to keep her safe. The blood-stained altar cloth that still adorns the altar at the front of the room sings of her death, and the death of every other name that did not escape that parish. And all I can feel is silence. Too much silence. I find myself wishing to switch places with the bodies and bones inside of the musky wooden coffins that line the catacomb walls. It pulls the breath out of my chest, so that even my own self is silent.
Silence.
And yet, while I sit in the silence of the loss and grief in these places, I still hear life. The earth weeps with us and I am comforted by the pattering of raindrops on the ground. God mourns with us. He is not silent.
I wrote in my journal after our time at the Kigali Genocide Memorial on Saturday that I did not want to jump quickly to condemn the killers. I wrote that I did not want to harbor malice against them because it is important to leave room for redemption and reconciliation. But today, I believe they deserve it. I hope they feel the weight of every atrocity they committed during the genocide and I hope it crushes them. I hope they cannot sleep at night, and the rest of their days are spent with restless self-loathing for every life they destroyed. May their dreams be haunted with the screams of the children they smashed into walls, the tears of the women they raped, and the realization of betrayal they saw on their neighbors face before hacking them with a machete. May they never feel silence again.