Reflections on sunday: We know our heroes and heroines off-and-on-screen

Last Sunday night all the stars were out – the film stars! It was a night of glamour, when the best actors and actresses received their awards of cinematic merit in Hollywood. But we also know our heroes and heroines off-and-on-screen. The best actor was an Englishman, Daniel Day-Lewis; the best actress was a French woman, Marion Colliard; the best supporting actress was an Englishwoman, Tilda Swinton; and the best supporting actor was a Spaniard, Javier Barden. Indeed, the Academy Award of Merit has gone international! I remember when it was the preserve of a few select Americans. In fact, I am probably the only Rwandan so privileged as to have seen one of such Americans. He was one of only two recipients of the award, when it was first introduced in 1929. We in the sprawling ridges of Bukamba, northern Rwanda, used to call him Charlot. ‘Charlot’ is French for ‘Charley’, and so you might also have heard about him as Charley Chaplin. Much as we in Bukamba used to laugh our silly heads off at the antics of Charley Chaplin, the man was our avowed tormentor. You see, there used to be a mobile cinema that made the rounds of Rwanda once a year. I remember particularly in our area in 1957 when I saw it for the first time; the film was shown in our sitting room because my father’s was the only stone house around. One of the white walls acted as the screen, and the large sitting room as the theatre. On that particular day, we young ones had settled early near the ‘screen’; sitting silently and not moving even a muscle. By five in the evening, the older people had also arranged themselves and were sitting compactly behind us, making sure that no one was in the way of the ‘film’ that would ‘come through the door’ from the van parked outside. We sat thus patiently and waited, hardly breathing, until it was dark. Then, without warning, the machines in the van outside started rolling, whereupon uproar broke out! Screaming and yelling for help, we were tearing at one another, struggling to get out, as the older people pushed, shoved and punched one another out of the way, trying in vain to get out of the house, and only succeeding in blocking the way. The stampede was made worse by the shouts and curses of the ‘cinema officials’ who were standing in the doorway, trying to calm us. By the time calm returned, a number of people had been wounded and lay on the cement floor, moaning. So, what happened? You see, as we sat silently watching the dark wall that functioned as our ‘screen’, it suddenly burst into white light, with heavy rains falling and four fierce horses running towards us, pulling carriages behind them. Unused to such films, we were all convinced that the floods had torn down the house and that the animals were going to trample and the machines to run over us! The ‘cinema officials’ had a hard time convincing us that what had just happened was not real. With our hearts pounding, we reluctantly agreed to sit down and watch the film through. Knowing that the films of the time were silent, you can imagine what would have happened with today’s colour, motion and sound pictures! Anyway, I’ve been watching movies since then, without a modicum of fear. Today I can tell the fact from fiction but hordes of people can’t tell the difference. The inconsequential ‘ordinary man’, Paul Rusesabagina, for one. This is the man who hijacked the management of Hôtel des Mille Collines, here in Kigali, during the 1994 Genocide, and expropriated the meagre savings of the refugees seeking sanctuary there. The kind-hearted movie makers of Hollywood, seeking to expose the monstrosity of the Rwanda Genocide, erroneously landed on the sly fly of Gitarama (Rusesabagina), who sold them a con tale of how he saved thousands of victims of the most horrendous carnage this side of the century. The world swallowed that movie hoax hook, line and sinker and everybody praised him as a hero that they would have loved to have seen in those circumstances. Overwhelmed by the misplaced praises, Rusesabagina is swollen to ‘nyamaturi’ proportions and strutting the world as a true hero of the Rwanda Genocide. The ‘ordinary man’ did not save any life, and he did not act the part in any film, and yet he has imbibed the fiction of being a hero. In fact, his fictional bravery has so gone to his head that he thought he could easily sell another con tale: “A section of Rwandans were being killed, and he was the hero to articulate their plight!” Like in our case, however, no one confuses fact with fiction for a long time. We are watching movies without being scared senseless and, I’m reliably made to understand, President George W. Bush is considering rescinding the honour that he mistakenly bestowed upon Rusesabagina. Contact: ingina2@yahoo.co.uk