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A review by crystalisreading
An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina, Tom Zoellner
5.0
Paul Rusesabagina's story is amazing. I am only sorry I waited so long to read it. I was given this for mandatory reading at my previous job. I don't react well to mandatory fun of any sort, so naturally it sat on my shelves for the past 10 years. Shame on me for being petty. At least I finally read it. What a powerful story. What a hero (no matter how many times Rusesabagina argues that he isn't).
This isn't just the story of the genocide. This is the story of how Rusesabagina grew up in rural Rwanda, honing his entrepreneurial skills, while heading towards the ministry. But life takes different turns, and he instead ended up running one of the two major international hotels in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, before and during the genocide that destroyed so much of his beloved country in 1994, leaving it in heart-breaking shambles afterwards.
Reading this book, you realize what an intelligent man Paul is, and yet how unassuming. How much faith he puts in human goodness, even in the midst of the worst imaginable circumstances. How he can see goodness (or "softness", as he calls it) in people who have committed some of the worst imaginable crimes. How much perspective he has on everything around him. I related well to his manner of recounting a story, how he ties in correlations with so many other events and ideas around the world and throughout history. He reiterates often how much Rwandans are people who treasure and remember their history and how they value and listen to news. Those attributes in his life certainly helped shape him into an effective intercessor for people without any other hope. People including himself, his wife, and his children.
The story is heartbreaking. Of course it is. 80,000 people killed in about 100 days? horrific deaths, mostly committed slowly and tortuously with simple, crude machetes, or with being burned inside buildings. of course, there's also rape and leave alive, as another form of terror. Guns. Grenades. Throwing down holes and leaving to die... The death toll is staggering. The pain and the horror and the trauma is staggering. You can hear the sadness in Rusesabagina's writing, how he says at the beginning of the book that he only managed to save a tiny fraction of who died--that all his work could only save a few hours worth of lives.
BUT he did save lives. A lot of them. Time and again he put his life on the line to barter for the safety of others, as well as his own and his families, and he did so using the skills of his trade, his ability to speak convincingly, his ability to see the good in others, even ones who might seem irredeemably evil to anyone else, and his ability to drive a bargain. He uses his father's wisdom and Rwandan tradition (such as speaking over shared drinks like beer). He uses everything he has, and while I know it will never feel like enough, and he and everyone else who survived this horror will never be able to erase the memories they carry, he made a difference in the lives of so many. Just by being himself and refusing to give in to evil. His argument, along with the fact that he does not consider himself special or a hero, that other people did similar deeds without as much attention, is that anyone could do what he did, if they needed to and they tried. Standing for what is right isn't special. It should be the norm.
Rusesabagina also makes some more general commentary, on history and prejudice and hatred. The seeds of violence, planted by colonialization and the efforts of the powers that be to conquer and keep subjugated a population by dividing them and sewing hatred. Resentment and hatred, us vs. them in a population that is being oppressed, keeps them from working together to effect change, and helps them focus their hatred on each other instead. Missing the forest for the trees.
He also speaks, with some apparent and deserved bitterness, about the unwillingness of the world, including the UN, who had troops present when the troubles began, to step up and make a difference, to help to save lives. He still believes that timely intervention could have, if not stopped the violence completely, at least hampered it greatly, and by doing so saved countless lives. But those in the Western world, in the world at large, didn't care enough to risk it, the financial investments, the troop commitments, or even political statements. they stood by and watched. That is something Paul will clearly never forget--nor should he. nor should we.
Perhaps Rusesabagin's most chilling comments are in context of the phrase "never again". How we as a world population may say that after every event like this, like the Holocaust in WWII, like the genocide in the Balkans...and yet it happens again and again, because we will not make the efforts to cross the lines and speak to those who are different from us, to reconcile past wrongs and to see the good in others who are not like us or do not agree with us. His words, written years ago about incidents far away from my country, nevertheless carry an ominous warning for countries like mine so politically fractured we can no longer speak together or work in cooperation. Division like that brings good to no one but our oppressors. Hopefully we can wake up to that, like Paul asks us to, before it is too late for us too.
This isn't just the story of the genocide. This is the story of how Rusesabagina grew up in rural Rwanda, honing his entrepreneurial skills, while heading towards the ministry. But life takes different turns, and he instead ended up running one of the two major international hotels in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, before and during the genocide that destroyed so much of his beloved country in 1994, leaving it in heart-breaking shambles afterwards.
Reading this book, you realize what an intelligent man Paul is, and yet how unassuming. How much faith he puts in human goodness, even in the midst of the worst imaginable circumstances. How he can see goodness (or "softness", as he calls it) in people who have committed some of the worst imaginable crimes. How much perspective he has on everything around him. I related well to his manner of recounting a story, how he ties in correlations with so many other events and ideas around the world and throughout history. He reiterates often how much Rwandans are people who treasure and remember their history and how they value and listen to news. Those attributes in his life certainly helped shape him into an effective intercessor for people without any other hope. People including himself, his wife, and his children.
The story is heartbreaking. Of course it is. 80,000 people killed in about 100 days? horrific deaths, mostly committed slowly and tortuously with simple, crude machetes, or with being burned inside buildings. of course, there's also rape and leave alive, as another form of terror. Guns. Grenades. Throwing down holes and leaving to die... The death toll is staggering. The pain and the horror and the trauma is staggering. You can hear the sadness in Rusesabagina's writing, how he says at the beginning of the book that he only managed to save a tiny fraction of who died--that all his work could only save a few hours worth of lives.
BUT he did save lives. A lot of them. Time and again he put his life on the line to barter for the safety of others, as well as his own and his families, and he did so using the skills of his trade, his ability to speak convincingly, his ability to see the good in others, even ones who might seem irredeemably evil to anyone else, and his ability to drive a bargain. He uses his father's wisdom and Rwandan tradition (such as speaking over shared drinks like beer). He uses everything he has, and while I know it will never feel like enough, and he and everyone else who survived this horror will never be able to erase the memories they carry, he made a difference in the lives of so many. Just by being himself and refusing to give in to evil. His argument, along with the fact that he does not consider himself special or a hero, that other people did similar deeds without as much attention, is that anyone could do what he did, if they needed to and they tried. Standing for what is right isn't special. It should be the norm.
Rusesabagina also makes some more general commentary, on history and prejudice and hatred. The seeds of violence, planted by colonialization and the efforts of the powers that be to conquer and keep subjugated a population by dividing them and sewing hatred. Resentment and hatred, us vs. them in a population that is being oppressed, keeps them from working together to effect change, and helps them focus their hatred on each other instead. Missing the forest for the trees.
He also speaks, with some apparent and deserved bitterness, about the unwillingness of the world, including the UN, who had troops present when the troubles began, to step up and make a difference, to help to save lives. He still believes that timely intervention could have, if not stopped the violence completely, at least hampered it greatly, and by doing so saved countless lives. But those in the Western world, in the world at large, didn't care enough to risk it, the financial investments, the troop commitments, or even political statements. they stood by and watched. That is something Paul will clearly never forget--nor should he. nor should we.
Perhaps Rusesabagin's most chilling comments are in context of the phrase "never again". How we as a world population may say that after every event like this, like the Holocaust in WWII, like the genocide in the Balkans...and yet it happens again and again, because we will not make the efforts to cross the lines and speak to those who are different from us, to reconcile past wrongs and to see the good in others who are not like us or do not agree with us. His words, written years ago about incidents far away from my country, nevertheless carry an ominous warning for countries like mine so politically fractured we can no longer speak together or work in cooperation. Division like that brings good to no one but our oppressors. Hopefully we can wake up to that, like Paul asks us to, before it is too late for us too.