BUILDING BRIDGES: FROM KAYSERI TO KIGALI

[Yervant1]

BUILDING BRIDGES: FROM KAYSERI TO KIGALI

By Lalai Manjikian on July 2, 2014

Special for the Armenian Weekly

Nothing makes genocide more real than looking into the eyes of someone
who has survived the unthinkable. I am always at a loss for words when
I meet genocide survivors. What can I possibly say to them given what
they have gone through?

The author with Francois Bugingo, the founder and president of
Reporters Without Borders in Canada and an avid advocate for freedom
of press around the world, at the Rwandan Genocide commemoration
event at Montreal's City Hall.

April 7 marked the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. A
commemorative event took place in Montreal's City Hall in the presence
of the city's mayor, numerous municipal politicians, Rwandan community
organizers, and members of the Canadian-Rwandan community.

I delivered a short speech on behalf of the Armenian Genocide
Centennial Committee to emphasize our solidarity with the Rwandan
community and our will to work together to combat denial. Besides
highlighting some of the chilling parallels between these two
genocides, the speech's aim was also to officially launch the Alliance
for Genocide Awareness and Remembrance, an initiative that brings
together the Ukrainian, Jewish, Rwandan, Cambodian, and Armenian
communities.

The room was filled with men and women who had escaped Rwanda and
survived against all odds to start life again in Canada with wounds
still healing.

One young woman described her harrowing journey that led her to
flee Rwanda. Her entire family was murdered. She found herself to
be orphaned, but only to establish a new family with other orphaned
Rwandans and eventually start a family of her own. "Better to live
twice than to die twice" is how she described her plight.

As this young woman shared her agonizing story, I couldn't help
but think of Armenian survivors 20 years after the genocide. Where
were they in their life trajectories? I thought of the difficulty,
reluctance, pain, and perhaps even impossibility of sharing such
heavy trauma during their youth. I am accustomed to knowing Armenian
survivors at their advanced age, but there, for first time, the
thought of young survivors took me aback momentarily.

My thoughts returned to the present when, during the commemorative
ceremony, the children of the survivors launched purple balloons in
the air as a symbol of remembrance and hope.

My exposure to Rwandan Genocide survivors did not stop at City
Hall. A few weeks ago, I began volunteering at an immigrant center
that facilitates newly arrived immigrants' social, economic, and
cultural integration in Montreal.

I meet newly arrived immigrants and refugees, at times only a few
days into Canada, from Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Ivory
Coast, Haiti, even Armenia. They bring new breath to an already
multiethnic city.

As a volunteer, I am often assigned tasks by the receptionist, a
distinguished middle-aged woman whose golden cross on her chest is
eye-catching. She works diligently fielding phone calls and immigrant
requests, and always smiles warmly.

The other day, between pulling out immigrant files from a cabinet
behind her, I finally asked where she was from originally, a very
common question at the center. She answered "Rwanda" with precise
pronunciation. Perhaps most conversations would have ended there,
but I couldn't help wanting to know more. As she recounted fragments
of her tumultuous life, time may have slowed down a bit. The life
events that had marked her journey are unimaginable. Like at City
Hall during the Rwandan Genocide event, all was too real, and genocide
became living history once more, beyond anything written in books.

During our conversation, she was quick to acknowledge that Armenians
had suffered a similar fate in the past. The office setting started to
dissipate as we talked, and I was transported to my imagined Kayseri
and Kigali (having been to neither of them). Our mere presence together
in our respective Armenian and Rwandan diasporas brought these faraway
places into existence right then and there.

She told me how her husband is still reeling from the atrocities. She
purchased books on the genocide for her husband to read, so that he
can talk about those events, but he refuses. She said that she thinks
it is important to demystify the events, but for him it remains taboo.

I immediately recalled my grandfather and his reluctance to talk
about the genocide unless stubbornly probed by one of us.

My Kayseri to Kigali reverie was interrupted when the reception phone
rang. Our conversation had come to an open-ended halt.

My volunteer shift also came to an end. I wish I could have offered
some sort of comforting closure to our conversation as a descendent,
two generations removed from genocide, especially after she immediately
opened up to me about her experience of war, genocide, persecution,
and escape.

Instead, I was simply mesmerized by the peace she carries, and her
religious faith and unassuming inner strength.

I gathered my raincoat and purse, approached this woman I had just met,
and told her I wanted to give her a hug.

We were locked in each other's arms for a few seconds.

Besides the historical importance that genocide survivor accounts
possess, we have so much to learn from them about life, resilience,
and determination.

We recognized each other's pain, each other's stories of loss, spoke of
families being destroyed and how surviving members are dispersed around
the world. My colleague and I had just built a bridge--continents,
histories, and years apart--that we both knew, on an unspoken level,
no one could break.

http://www.armenianweekly.com/2014/07/02/kayseri-to-kigali/