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Naomi Benaron

The Geology of Ghosts

There will be no more Inkotanyi; there will be none in this country anymore. When you see how many of
them die, you would think they came back to life. They themselves believe they come back to life, but
they deceive themselves. They are disappearing.--Radio RTLM

For the first time since the President’s plane was shot down and the killing began, the sun shows her
face. She is defiant, fighting her way through the dawn’s bleakness as if daring the Interahamwe and
their bands of murderers to emerge into light. The announcers on RTLM have declared curfew in
Butare over. People may go about the business of living. If they can.

Nkuba steps from his front door onto the wet earth and takes his first breath of fresh air in more than
sixty hours. “Kare kare mu museke,” he sings softly, a line cast out to his former life, this simple
greeting of the dawn. He feels like Rutegaminsi from the ancient stories, tunneling through the earth to
emerge into a terrible beauty on the far side of the world.

Blue haze hides the hills. Burundi’s mountains float in a blue sea of clouds. Here and there along the
goat paths, the first brave farmers climb toward the fields. Unlike Rutegaminsi, Nkuba has not reached
the other side of the world, and he knows that in this April without end, there is no path leading there
from Rwanda.

After wiping the dirt from his feet and checking one last time that his identity card is in his jacket pocket,
Nkuba pulls on his running shoes and sets off at a slow jog toward town. He settles into the motion his
legs have ached for. Into his Nikes he wills the power of the thunder god for whom he was named. He
imagines tucking his family beneath his arms and lifting off with them across the Akanyaru swamps, the
bogs that separate Rwanda from Burundi, separate a war they would probably survive from this war in
which they will almost certainly die.

While the rest of the country still drowns in blood, Butare, with its Tutsi prefect, remains an island of
safety. Women emerge to tend their plots; men pull carts laden with firewood and sacks of potatoes.
Streams of Tutsi, seeking refuge in Butare, stagger toward churches and hospitals. They are filthy and
bleeding, they come from every direction, and they seem to Nkuba like gupfa uhagaze, the walking
dead. Behind them, children with sticks run to the roadblocks, waiting for the action to begin.

Nkuba spots the convoy from a long distance off, racing toward him. He sees the UN vehicles, flags
flying, and his heart hammers. He nearly jumps into the air. Help has come. They are saved. He
quickens his pace and prays fiercely, joyfully. He wonders why crowds are not lined up along the
streets to cheer.
The convoy barrels down the hill, and Nkuba sees it is led by government soldiers, horns honking. He
can make out their faces now, their scowling expressions. The presence of these troops confuses him.
He stops to watch, keeping to the trees’ shadows. Behind the army Jeeps, a parade of cars and trucks,
UN flatbed vehicles, canvas-topped. Inside are the whites, looking out on the countryside with dull,
shocked stares. The rescue is only for them. They are fleeing, abandoning the fast-sinking ship. Nkuba’
s excitement flees with the trucks.
A ragged group of refugees jumps from the bushes and sprints after the vehicles, shouting and pleading
to be taken in. A few manage to cling to the tailgates when the procession stops for a checkpoint. UN
soldiers push them away with their rifle butts. One soldier shoots into the air.
In the last flatbed truck is a young girl, two tails of brown hair sticking out from her head. She is
crying. Clutched to her chest is a carrying case with wire mesh, and a little dog peeks out from inside.
She catches Nkuba’s gaze and holds it. The convoy starts up again. “Imbazazi,” the girl mouths,
forgive me. Over and over until she fades into the haze of distance. Nkuba wonders if this is the only
word of Kinyarwanda she knows.

The sun shreds the mist in the hills, and Nkuba turns onto the trail that leads to the University’s
arboretum fields. When he reaches the first field, he lifts onto the balls of his feet and sprints the steep
rise. Trots down, then fast up, as hard as he can push. Again. And again. He recites the names of the
minerals he has studied for his geology class, the names he would be writing today for his exams if
Rwanda had not spun away from the earth’s common axis.
Malachite. Azurite. Lepidolite. Greens. Blues. Purples. He continues until he has no breath left in his
lungs, no choice but to collapse into the drenched grass. He bathes his face in it, takes into his nostrils
the fresh, stinging scent. Flopping onto his back, he watches the sky, the bright, shattered clouds. The
sun warms his face. He dreams of peace.

A truck rattles along the road, axles squeaking. Nkuba is startled awake. He turns over onto his
stomach, presses into the grass. The engine whinnies closer. He hears the casual chatter of men that
drifts from the open window. The truck comes to a stop directly above him. The cab is filled with
soldiers. In the bed, the Tutsi cargo, bound. Nkuba wiggles deeper into the earth and holds his breath.
Doors slam. The tailgate clanks down.
“Move inyenzi , move! Tugende!”
From his hiding place, Nkuba hears the thud of feet hitting the ground. A moan as someone falls. There
are nine shots: one resonant in the echo of the last. A bird starts from the bush. It’s a green-headed
sunbird, rare in this part of Rwanda. Captivated, Nkuba shifts to follow its flight. When he turns back
toward the truck, he nearly touches the boots beside him. Above the boots, the soldier’s crumpled, khaki
pants. He inhales the rifle’s sharp breath and feels the muzzle’s round mouth pressed against his
forehead. The bird wheels into sunlight: a metallic glint of wings and tail feathers. Pyrite. Chalcopyrite.
Fool’s gold.

Naomi Benaron's short story collection, Love Letters from a Fat
Man, was the winner of the 2006 G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for
Fiction. Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous in print
and online journals. She lives, writes, and teaches in Tucson, Arizona.