Beauty From Ashes…

“It was during my first visit to Rwanda in 1999 that I heard for the first time survivors fight their way through the emotional furnace of telling of their ordeals and losses in the genocide. Meetings would be filled with sobbing and screaming. But still those brave survivors, mostly women, wrestled with the anguish of unimaginably painful memories. But they needed told. The act of being heard, listened to, believed, held in the embrace of someone who could cry with you, brought the first shafts of light onto the journey of healing. It also did something we began to hear more and more – it gave the survivors the hope and dignity that their story should and would be heard and that the denials and revisions of the genocide already being promulgated in Rwand and across the world could be combatted by their personal tesimony.

Several years later I spoke with John Gakwandi, the director of Solace Ministries, one of our partners in Rwanda. His vision was to write a book of genocide accounts. The idea was that I would collaborate and adapt the writing for a non-Rwandan audience. The problem was that he was far too busy ministering to survivors to get round to it. ‘Write the first chapter,’ he said to me, ‘and then I’ll take it from there.’ And so with the second, and every subsequent chapter. I would listen to survivors, and also some perpetrators tell their stories for hours at a time. The telling of those stories involved so many escapes, names, deaths and journeys that needed very careful listening. Sometimes I would need to refind a survivor and ask for clarification and it was always difficult to keep a balance between ensuring information was correct and allowing survivors to be left in peace. The patience and endurance of the survivors to tell and retell their ordeals is beyond admiration. but every one of them wanted their story told and told to the world. The book has never got round the whole world but your reading of it adds value to their pain and builds their dignity as their experiences are given value by your reading and listening.

The original title was ‘Worth More Than That’ a reference to way in which lives and women’s bodies were bought and sold in the genocide. Beauty from Ashes, however, better captured the journey of recovery and the hope for the future evident in the book. The book does contain many descriptions of atrocious acts. One reviewer of the book wrote to me with hesitations about recommending the book on that account. However, the act of genocide cannot be described with anything other than horror and it was the survivors themselves who wanted the fullness of their stories told. In reality, the worst depravities were not described in detail and, as the years go by, I find further stories of the genocide indicate that no description could ever capture the full pain and agony of what happened.”