My notes were arranged as follows:
'On April 6th, 1994, the President of Rwanda was killed when his plane was shot down at Kigali Airport. Within 24 hours, every moderate leader in Rwanda was either dead or in hiding. On April 7th, the Rwandan Patriotic Front launched a military campaign that would eventually lead them to victory over the country in July of the same year. However, behind the resumption of hostilities there was another, more sinister operation in progress. This was the deliberate extermination of every Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Rwanda.'
This was the backdrop for my essay. It wasn't due for another week, but I was determined to have the draft done before the weekend. I shuffled back and forth through the various articles that comprised my research, all of them marked with glaring streaks of pink highlighter. I had enough information, I knew what I wanted to write, and all that was left to do was to organize it into an outline.
The constant hum of activity in the Rideau Centre food court leant a comfortable, monotonous feeling to my task. People moved back and forth through the tables, brushed past the coat hanging off of my chair, and I pulled quotes from my research and plugged them into my outline. I was scrawling notes onto a pad of loose-leaf when a group of women sat down at the table next to mine.
There were three of them, all dark-skinned. I recalled them having been in front of me in the line-up for Tim Horton's. They seemed content enough to ignore me. They were laughing and carrying on with each other-about what I don't know. They were speaking something other than English.
I sorted through my research again, laying out the articles on the table so their titles would be clearly visible to anyone who might glance over. I then went back to copying out a quote from a journal article, mouthing the words as I wrote them, hoping to garner some attention from the women next to me. 'UNAMIR's Rules of Engagement were restricted to the point where they could do little more than stand on the sidelines as genocide was carried out before their eyes,' I wrote. My efforts were satisfied when one of the women leaned over ten minutes later and asked, 'What are you reading about?'
I didn't understand her. 'Sorry?' I said, and listened carefully as she repeated the accent-mangled words. For a moment I was afraid I wouldn't be able to comprehend her at all.
'Oh!' I smiled, once I'd realised what she had asked. 'I'm writing an essay about Rwanda for my Human Rights class.'
Her face lit up in delight. 'That's what we were laughing about, just now!' she said, and the 'laughing' struck me as odd. 'We're from Rwanda.'
I wasn't surprised, but I knew they expected me to be. 'Really?' I asked with feigned astonishment.
She nodded. 'But I wasn't there during the war. They were,' she motioned to the two sitting across from her. They were much younger than she was-they looked to be in their late twenties. The two of them watched me, almost in what I thought to be anticipation. I felt like I should ask them something, but no words came. Thankfully one of them filled the silence.
'What is your essay about?' she asked.
'It's about what happened, with the genocide, and how the military should have done something,' I explained lamely. They all looked at each other, and I felt like I'd said something wrong.
'The military?' the older woman asked.
'Yeah, how the peacekeepers didn't have enough power to stop what happened and they should've sent the military instead.'
'Oh, I see. Because it was the military that was killing people,' she explained, and I realised she had thought I was talking about the Rwandan military. Still, all of the articles spread across my table had at some point talked about the 'far too many civilians who had taken part in the slaughter.' I wondered if she really thought that only the military had been involved in the killing, and then felt ridiculous for thinking I knew more about the Rwandan Genocide than the Rwandan sitting next to me.
The pause was enough for them to go back to their own conversation. I still don't know what language they were speaking, but from then on I heard every 'Tutsi' and 'Hutu' between the frequent laughs and chuckles. It didn't take me long to finish my outline. I packed up slowly, hoping they'd look up and give me a chance to say goodbye. But they didn't, and I left without a word.
I told my friend about the experience later, hoping she'd find as much amusement in the irony of the situation as I did. She spoiled the fun when she asked, 'Did you interview them?'
Her question caught me off-guard. 'No, why?'
'Why not? Wouldn't it have been good for your essay? At the very least it would've been interesting.'
'I don't know,' I teetered. 'It would've been weird.'
'It was such a good opportunity! I can't believe you passed it up!'
I glanced at the computer screen where my draft sat, cursor blinking, waiting to be edited. 'But,' I told her, 'there wasn't anything to ask.'
And there wasn't.
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