The antelope's strategy

The antelope's strategy - Living in Rwanda after the Genocide
By Jean Hatzfeld.

The atmosphere:
I just finished reading this book. On a Sunday morning, quite cold by California standard, while sitting at Peet's coffee shop at 7:30 am i started reading it from 100 page or so and finished it at 11:30 am while sipping my coffee. Peet's coffee on Castro is a spacious coffee shop where you can see allkinds of people doing interesting things - some with their laptops open, some solving crosswords from today's paper, some forming business plans, some merely grouping with friends, old people just relaxing there and some like me are reading books - all while drinking good coffee.

The text:
The antelope's strategy is the third book by Jean Hatzfeld on Rwandan genocide. The first was an account of survivors in the book -Life laid bare, the second was an account of killers in Machete season. After 7 years Rwandan govt released the killers from prison and asked both the survivors and killers to live amongst each other, to reconcile differences and try to lead humane lives. In Antelope's strategy, Jean talks to people from both sides the killers (Hutus) and survivors (Tutsi) on what they feel about this govt's decision, how are they coping up, what happens when they see a person from other group. This book is account of actual people living there and through them Jean talks about justice, reconciliation, faith, God, past-present-future, motivations, guilt, shame and many deep ideas. In between these social discussions, Jean also gives a context on how people live there now, how they used to live before genocide and what happened during genocide. On one side there are survivors who expect atleast some apology from killers now they are set free, and there are some survivors who know that even if they apologize it wont make any difference. On the other side there are killers who think same, some dont apologize because they know that it wont make any difference and some who do. Jean also describes although not in complete detail about steps taken by Govt to promote reconciliation, how the prisoners were trained, how survivors were trained etc etc.


I have not read the first two books but after reading this one, i am definitely going to read them atleast the Machete season. Why Machete season? The idea that a normal farmer can become a mass murdered within a time span of 3-6 months, the idea that a normal man can murder his neighbors without blinking an eye, murder children etc is very strange to me. I hope to fund these answers in Machete season through their accounts.


Non-fiction writing comes in many forms, the one that i read i summer - Hamas vs fatah gave historical account of the two factions in 300 pages. This book, however, instead of talking about historical facts takes a social commentary type of position and explains the lives and times of suring genocide and its aftermath, something that i think is very difficult to record, something that is very difficult to put into words but it is of immense value both from historical stand point and to a reader who has no idea of what or how it was. Shaking hands with the devil - the journey of Romeo Dallaire was my first introduction to Rwandan genocide and that moved me deeply. This book gives a thousand time better picture and shows how different human see the same thing so differently. I highly recommend this book.

The contrast:
Such was the contrast that i was seeing between what i was reading, what i was seeing in the coffee shop and what i was imagining aka India. It could be very well the difference between underdeveloped nation, developed nation and a developing one. It shows how easily India could have been Rwanda (to some extent it already happened i think about Godhra) or how easily it can become a Rwanda (if i look at what is happening - MNS in Maharashtra, Manipur, Naxalites etc), so there are many lessons to learn here. Sitting at the coffee shop and looking at people around me, it just tells you how life should be, this is what meant by peace by civilization perhaps. And in the text it was antithesis, of humanity is capable of...etc etc.

I lost, gained and fought for hope several times in a matter of 4 hrs.