read about some of those things in the Lonely Planet guide,” his companion interjected, leaning across the table in my direction. Head shaved bald, she was similarly attired, except for a nylon photographer’s vest with a plethora of stuffed pockets, and appeared to be studying the operating directions for a plastic water filter, the pieces spread out on the table. “Too bad the violence is impacting the animals,” she said, looking up at me with very intense blue eyes. “It’s bad enough that we kill each other, but we’re replaceable. Not so the animals.”
I spent the next seven hours on a badly upholstered bench in the main hall of the terminal building, trying without success to sleep, worried about my safety and inadequate preparation for this journey. Scenes from Irvin Kershner’s film Raid on Entebbe, with Peter Finch as Yitzhak Rabin and Horst Buchholz as one of the hija ckers, alternated in my brain with images of Idi Amin from ²The Last King of Scotland. I’d been in tight spots before—on a Taliban visa in Kabul two weeks before 9/11 or facing water cannons and a hostile military in the streets of Santiago—but had always been lucky and had learned to trust my own instincts and serendipity. If your plans don’t work out, something unexpected and more interesting is likely to transpire; that was the essence of the pep talk I gave myself as fragments of conversation, boarding calls, discomfort and a full bladder kept me half awake.
When the first call for passengers travelling to Kigali on RwandAir came over the loudspeaker, I made my way to security. I removed my shoes and took the computer from my pack for closer inspection, Soyinka’s words still turning in my mind. He’d found his protective spirit, Ogun, also known as the orphan’s shield, and had come to terms with both death and the fact that some works of art are more time-sensitive than others. So be it. The backpackers from Chicago were ahead of me in line, their heads not visible behind their enormous backpacks. They resembled two giant ants. The lady with the Bible, also heading to Kigali, waved to me.
“God bless you,” she said. “I’m a genocide survivor going home for the first time since ’94. And I’m a bag of nerves.” Thus the scar, the uneaten meal. I was so embarrassed by my unfair assumptions about her that I did not have the presence of mind to ask if we could meet to talk in the coming days.
As I stood in line in my stocking feet, I felt vulnerable, insignificant and ashamed of my paltry record as a champion of human rights: too much time at the desk, too little in the arena facing the lions. If it were me rather than my luggage passing in front of the X-ray, I thought, the screen would be blank. When my turn came to surrender bags, shoes, belt and computer to security personnel, I was waved through, as if to confirm my sense of being invisible. Only later did it occur to me that I might have benefited from the last remnant of a whites-first colonial hangover.
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