Listen to collaborate in writing the paper. this is a piece that will be published in next issue
The entry of family members - No. 18 Healing: reception -
healing the soul, warmth Heart
"I was raped. This was his chance. "
By calm, simple, Peter said this sentence, for us women contains fear and anxiety. It is the tone, however, who has been objectified history dramatic, metabolized and broke a lot to say to another as if he were telling the plot of a novel.
The 'other', in this case, I'm sitting next to this white American than forty years, in a plane that takes us from Frankfurt to Portland, Oregon. Peter is an agricultural engineer. Back home after two weeks, his wife Beatrice, and their daughter, Alicia.
As often happens in a long journey, we began to talk to banality. He, perhaps encouraged by my white hair, was told, first superficially, then on personal things, and eventually was abandoned in the confidence that intervenes between strangers because thinking never to see more reassuring and can give vent in a loud voice, to his own thoughts.
"He may have followed the events in Rwanda," he tells Peter after a long silence.
"Yes," I tell him sure, "I saw a nice play."
"He will know of the genocide of 1994, the ferocity with which ethnic communities are addressed. My wife is Rwandan. He lived in hell and you have saved by a miracle. "
We had already said everything about Portland, the pleasure of living there, the serenity of his family, the joy of having a child when no longer mattered.
Faced with the realization that my confidence gross ignorance and I feel guilty watching this man pleasant, open-faced, almost family is so typically American.
Forget the drowsiness that gives me the xamamina, I let go surface considerations that are made in situations like that, and I understand that I find myself facing a man of quality. I have to give very careful if you do not want to offend him.
"I'm sorry. A painful experience. "I say with great participation. "How did you meet?"
"I worked in Rwanda for a year and she worked for a Dutch company with whom I had business contacts. Just a friendly meeting. When I left I wrote until I knew who worked in the Netherlands. I was surprised that he had abandoned the country and family, but I thought an opportunity work.
I did not know, however, who had been forced to flee and the company he worked for had helped her to safety. I did not know she had been beaten, tortured, hunted. I did not know they had taken away the family to kill her. I knew nothing, despite knowing well the tensions in the country. Beatrice, then, was twenty years old and very beautiful.
Wishing to see her strongly, I reached in the Netherlands: a woman transformed by fear, anxiety, rootlessness.
I realized, looking at her, suffering what could be taken to the extreme limit. The atrocities experienced, with such modesty and neglect together, I have revealed his mind, his sensitivity. I already knew that I was in love with her, from Rwanda, but at that moment I loved her with a transport I would not have imagined. I asked her to marry me and come to America with me. Four years ago, Alicia was born. "
I was so moved by this story to want to know about Beatrice. Maybe it was not part of the ritual of casual acquaintances and perhaps, to meet this requirement, Peter was uncomfortable. But he reading my heart, I said: 'Beatrice and Alice waiting for me at the airport. She likes to know? "
I said yes with his head, murmuring:" Thank you.
After landing and sbrigate control practices, we have initiated with the output.
When I saw a black woman, tall, delicate features, elegant in ethnic dress, in her arms a tiny, curly-haired blacks, I recognized Beatrice and Alicia.
were safe, they were healthy, were serene.
Mi, 11.10.2006
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