SEVEN

WE LOST OUR PHONE SERVICE near the end of April. This was potentially disastrous. Without a phone my black binder would be nearly useless. I could no longer call in favors with the Army brass or the government.

But then came a surprise. In 1987, when I was the assistant general manager, the Mille Collines received its first fax machine. We had to request an auxiliary phone line to support it, one that was not routed through the main switchboard. We had asked the technician to feed the fax line directly into the telephone grid of Kigali. This was a glitch I recalled when I was in the darkness of the secretary’s office on the day the phones were cut. I was moved to pick up the handset attached to the side of the fax. There was a dial tone humming back at me, as beautiful a sound as I could have imagined.

I guarded this secret carefully. If the hard-liners in the military found out that I had a phone, they would send in their thugs to find it and rip it out. So I let only the refugee committee use it and instructed them to keep quiet. The news could reach the ears of some of my renegade employees, which would be just like telling the Interahamwe themselves. I took to locking the door of the secretary’s office whenever I was away so that unauthorized people could not wander in and discover my secret weapon. That phone was a lifeline.

I started staying up late at night, often until 4:00 A. M., sending faxes to the Belgian Foreign Ministry, the White House, the United Nations, the Quai d’Orsay, the Peace Corps-whoever I thought might be able to help stop an attack against the hotel. I tried to make the faxes brief and direct and forceful. I described the lack of food, the militia roaming outside, the desperate struggle of refugees to get into the hotel, the constant rumors that we were about to be invaded. I pleaded with these governments and agencies for some kind of assistance and protection. These letters were usually followed by a direct appeal via the little phone handset on the side. But I often felt as though I was a man shouting into an empty room.

One follow-up call to a White House staffer was typical. It was very late at night in Rwanda and the conversation went approximately like this:

“Yes, hello, my name is Paul Rusesabagina. I am the manager of the Hotel Mille Collines in the capital of Rwanda. I sent a fax today to the number your secretary gave me. I was calling to see if you received it.”

“Ah, yes, Mr. Roos… Roossuhbaggian. How did you get this number?”

“I asked for you at the switchboard.”

“I see. You’re calling from Rwanda?”

“Yes, Rwanda.”

“Yes, I remember the fax. I passed it along to a colleague of mine who handles foreign policy details. He will review it and get back to you.”

“So you didn’t have a chance to read it? I was told you were the one to handle this matter.”

“No, that wouldn’t be me. This has to be routed through proper channels. Have you also contacted the State Department or the embassy of the United States in Rwanda?”

“Your embassy left the country on April 9.”

“Yes, that’s right. I see.”

“I was really hoping you could bring this up with President Clinton directly. The situation here is very bad.”

“Well, as I have said, this has to be handled by the foreign policy staff. All I can say is that they will review the document and get back to you.”

“Who on that staff has been given my letter?”

“I can’t really say for sure. I’ve got another call coming in and I have to let you go.”

To all the faxes and phone calls I made to the United States in those weeks, I never once received a reply. It shouldn’t have surprised me. I should have known a Rwandan no when I heard one.

On April 26 Thomas Kamilindi, who was one of the city’s best journalists, gave a telephone interview to Radio France International in which he described the living conditions at the hotel, the lack of water, and the state of the ongoing genocide and civil war. He also described the rebel advance on the capital. The interview was intended for listeners in Paris and all over the French-speaking world, but it was also broadcast in Kigali.

Apparently some of the génocidaires had torn themselves away from RTLM long enough to listen, because there was a death order out for Thomas within the half hour.

Friends in the military urged him to sneak out of the hotel and find another place to hide, but I urged him not to leave. I had been in touch with General Bizimungu and General Dallaire about his situation. We had him switch rooms to fool any spies who might have known where he was staying. Some of the refugees were terribly unhappy with Thomas for focusing attention on the Mille Collines-they thought he only reminded the militia thugs that we were here, dancing just out of their reach. Some of the guests wanted to hand Thomas over as a kind of peace offering to the militia. I couldn’t decide if I found this idea abhorrent or laughable.

A friend of Thomas’s was sent to the hotel that day to assassinate him. His name was Jean-Baptiste Iradukunda and he was with an Army intelligence unit. They had known each other since they were children. Thomas was smart enough to boldly step out into the corridor and meet his would-be killer face-to-face. They started to talk. I am convinced that had Thomas tried to cower-or worse, to run-that he would have been shot. It is so much easier to die anonymously; it is so much harder to kill someone after you have talked as one human being to another.

“Listen, Thomas, ” said the solider after a while. “I have been sent to kill you. But I cannot. I am going to leave now. But somebody else will be coming later and they will not be as hesitant.”

Immediately after Thomas gave the interview, an Army colonel called from the hotel entrance. He was a man I had known for a long time. I went out to say hello, and he wasted no time telling me what he was there to do.

“Paul, I am here to pick up that dog!”

“You are fighting against a dog, colonel?” I asked him with a small laugh. “Let’s go talk about this.”

We went back to my office and I asked a chambermaid to bring us drinks. Sitting in the quiet, and without an audience to encourage him, I could already see that some of the rage had leaked away from his countenance. But he remained adamant: He was going to have the head of Thomas Kamilindi. The interview he had given was an act of treason against the government of Rwanda and the Army.

I began to think that the government leaders were most concerned that they had been embarrassed in front of their French patrons. That they should have cared about an interview describing people drinking from the swimming pool at a time when murder-by-machete was the law of the land tells you something about their mentality. But regardless, the execution order against Thomas was real and I resolved to save his life by any means I could.

I tried flattery first.

“Colonel, ” I began, “you are too high ranking an officer to be concerned with such a small matter. Thomas is a small man.”

“I have orders, Paul.”

“You have orders to kill a dog? That is an insulting job. Don’t you have boys in the militia who are supposed to do that kind of work?”

“It is not a small matter. He is a traitor and must pay.”

I could see that I was getting somewhere, but I switched my argument.

“Listen, colonel. Let’s say you take that dog out with your own hands and kill him. You will have to live with that for the rest of your life. You did not hear this radio interview. You do not know what was said. You are proposing to take a man’s life without a trial.”

“Paul, I have my orders. Where is he?”

“Even if you were to order it done instead of doing it yourself, it would be the same blood on your hands.”

It went on like this for quite some time. I don’t know why he kept talking to me. But the longer he sat there and sipped his Carlsberg the greater the odds were that Thomas was going to survive to see the sun go down.