Broken Memory: A Novel of Rwanda

By Elisabeth Combres

IRA Notable Books for a Global Society selection

Hiding behind an armchair, five-year-old Emma does not witness the murder of her mother, but she hears everything. And when the assassins finally leave, the young Tutsi girl somehow manages to stumble away from the scene, motivated only by the memory of her mother's last words: "You must not die, Emma!"

Eventually Emma is taken in by an old Hutu woman who risks her own life to hide the child. Emma stays with the old woman and a quiet bond forms between the two, but long after the war ends, the young girl is still haunted by nightmares.

When the country establishes courts to allow victims to face their tormenters in their villages, Emma is uneasy and afraid. But through her growing friendship with a young torture victim and the gentle encouragement of an old man charged with helping child survivors, Emma finds the courage to return to the house where her mother was killed and begin the journey to healing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781554981618

Elisabeth Combres

Elisabeth Combres is the author of several children's nonfiction titles. She lives in Grenoble, France.

Book preview

BrokenMemory.gif

BROKEN MEMORY

A Novel of Rwanda

Élisabeth Combres

Translated by Shelley Tanaka

GROUNDWOOD BOOKS

HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS

TORONTO BERKELEY

First published as La mémoire trouée by Élisabeth Combres

Copyright © Gallimard Jeunesse 2007

First published in Canada and the USA in 2009 by Groundwood Books

English translation copyright © 2009 by Shelley Tanaka

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the author’s rights.

This edition published in 2011 by

Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press Inc.

110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801

Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4

Tel. [phone]

Fax [phone]

www.groundwoodbooks.com

Ouvrage publié avec le concours du Ministère français chargé de la culture – Centre national du livre.

This work has been published with the assistance of the French Ministry of Culture – National Book Center.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Combres, Élisabeth

Broken memory : a novel of Rwanda / Élisabeth Combres ; translated by Shelley Tanaka.

Translation of: La mémoire trouée.

eISBN 978-1-55498-161-8

1. Genocide–Rwanda–Juvenile fiction. 2. Hutu (African people)–Juvenile fiction. 3. Tutsi (African people)–Juvenile fiction. 4. Rwanda–History–Civil War, 1994–Juvenile fiction. I. Tanaka, Shelley II. Title.

PQ2703.O53M4514 2009 j843’.92 C2009-901409-2

Cover photograph copyright © by Robert Palumbo

Design by Michael Solomon

pub2.jpg

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Ontario Arts Council.

The author would like to thank

Le centre régional des lettres de Midi-Pyrénées for its support.

À Manu

À mes parents

À Fabienne et Christine

"He did not only kill my mother.

He killed humanity."

— A survivor of the Rwandan genocide

BAD DREAMS

1.

They are there.

Behind the door.

They are yelling, singing, banging, laughing.

Mama’s eyes are wide with fear.

Soon she will be nothing more than suffering on the ground.

Cut up and bleeding.

Then, finally, set free by death.

2.

Emma woke up with a start, exhausted by the same nightmare that she had almost every night. Ever since that day in April 1994, when the men burst into the house and murdered her mother.

She didn’t see it happen, but she heard everything, huddled against the wall behind the old sofa, trembling with fear. To keep from screaming, she kept repeating to herself what her mother had ordered when the first blow of a club battered against the door — Slide behind there, close your eyes, put your hands over your ears. Do not make the slightest move, not the slightest noise. Tell yourself that you are not in this room, that you see nothing, hear nothing, and that everything will soon be over. You must not die, Emma!

Everything was over quickly after that, just as her mother had promised.

But for Emma the nightmare was just beginning.

She lay curled up in the empty house for a long time, until the ache in her limbs brought her back to reality. She peeled her hands from her ears and very, very slowly opened her eyes.

When she heard nothing but silence, she stood up stiffly and staggered out of her hiding place. She stumbled blindly around the lifeless body of her mother and stepped over the shattered door and through the curtain of rain that blocked the open doorway of the house.

In a daze, she joined the crowds of fleeing families. She slept in the bush, went for long days without eating, drank muddy water from the ditches beside the roads. She managed to dodge the many checkpoints that the murderers had set up to catch anyone who was too tired or careless to avoid them.

Soon she no longer saw many others trying to flee like her. She walked down her road, more and more alone, walking between the dead bodies that blackened the fields and the roads.

Until the day she knocked on the old woman’s door.

She had watched her for two days from her hiding place in an empty old chicken coop. Finally, something about the woman’s gentle movements made her cast caution aside and approach her.

Sitting on her bed, Emma listened now to the old woman

Reviews for Broken Memory

[alyssjo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Emma is a Tutsi, and is one of the child survivors of the Rwandan genocide. Emma was only four years old in 1994 when she hid behind a wall and listened to her mother being beaten to death, but she remembers the sounds vividly. The passages about the violence of the genocide are accurate, but not descriptive, making it appropriate for adolescents. This lack of detail in describing violence of the genocide leaves the reader’s imagination to fill in the blanks. Through Emma readers get a glimpse of what life was like for children who survived the genocide, and how they tried to piece their lives back together with little to no family left living. Emma is young, but she experiences so many contrasting emotions all at once, making her character deeply developed and curious. As this adolescent girl tries to cope she must face chilling nightmares and blood-stopping flashbacks while dealing with ridicule from other Tutsis for living with a Hutu woman. This historical fiction illustrates how many child survivors of the Rwandans genocide came to terms with the horrors of their past and found themselves in the process.

[sueo23 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

April 1994. Rwanda is at war with itself. The Hutus and the Tutsi's. On April 6th, after the assassination of the Rwandan president, the Rawandan army begins massacring the Tutsi population. Almost one million Tutsi citizens are killed. Emma's mother is one of them.Emma is five years old when her mother is brutally murdered by Hutu rebels. When they arrive at her house, Emma's mother hides her behind the sofa telling her "you must not die, Emma!" These last words stay in Emma's mind and make her determined to survive, no matter what the odds. After her mother's death she finds herself swept along in a sea of refugees - ending up at the door of an old woman who takes her in.Mukecuru becomes Emma's substitute grandmother and gives her a sense of family. Slowly Emma begins to reach out to others, especially a boy named Ndoli, who has also lost everything and was horribly injured during the massacre. Ndoli befriends and old man and eventually so does Emma. The Old Man is someone who has been sent to Rwanda to help refugee children return home and begin healing the injuries of the past.After a long time, he takes Emma home, where she sifts through what is left of her burned down house. As she sifts through the rubble, she picks up some of her mother's possessions and turns them over in her hands. This triggers memories from her past that had been buried for a long time. She begins to remember her mother's face, which had faded in her mind, and she breaks down amongst the rubble. This is a turning point for Emma. Her life will never be the same.Read this in a matter of hours - could not put it down. The writing and characters are compelling. Highly recommended.

[bookalover89 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful young adult novel about the genocide in Rwanda.

[timestar1337 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Elisabeth Combres's Broken Memory is a "Heartstopping" book of unforchanet events that happens to Emma. They main background in this story is in between a War. Emma is a small little girl who is 5 years old who has so take so much pain and sadness to keep her mother alive. This book reminds me of "War Brothers" it is smaillar to this book but its about child soilders. I will like to recommend this book to everyone that like stories with adventure along with some very sad parts.