An Ordinary Man

“What had caused this to happen? Very simple: words.”

The book emphasizes the power of words. Hateful rhetoric made Hutus feel inferior to Tutsis and created a divide that eventually led to the Rwandan genocide. Radio propaganda further widened the rift between Hutus and Tutsis, with the announcers telling Hutus to take up arms against Tutsis.

“I am not a politician or a poet. I built my career on words that are plain and ordinary and concerned with everyday details.”

The author admits that he is not a man who is adept in the art of the rhetoric. He is neither a politician who can sway the public with powerful words nor a poet who can weave magic with his verses. He is an ordinary man who learns how to make people from diverse fields comfortable in his job as a hotel manager. This skill allows him to convince would-be murderers to spare the lives of Rwandans who seek refuge inside the hotel. 

If you are willing to do it, you will be successful.”

Paul’s father, Thomas Rupfure, takes him down the road leading to his school for the first time when Paul is eight years old. When Paul is upset because he has to leave his parents, his father tells him that success only comes through learning. Paul’s father never had the privilege of going to school, and by sending Paul to school, Thomas is enjoying a vicarious education.

“The lasting message for all that gathered there was that solutions could always be found inside—inside communities and inside people.”

Rusesabagina is critical of the adversarial system of justice that is practiced in the West, as it offers no opportunity to the warring parties to be humane to each other. The social justice system in Paul’s community is based on the concept of renewed friendships. Witnesses drink banana beer with the opposing parties as a sign of the accused man’s reconciliation with the community. The message is that solutions to all problems are found within the community itself, so that all parties can move forward from the incident. 

“History is serious business in my country. You might say that it is a matter of life and death.”

In these lines, Paul explains the relevance of history in the Rwandan culture. He says that everyone in Rwanda is familiar with Rwandan history, if not obsessed with it. This obsession with history plays a part in the 1994 genocide, with Rwandans not only trying to take control of their present lives, but also to control their past.

“These ideas about race were to become more than fanciful stories told over port at the Royal Geographic Society but an actual template for governing us.” 

Paul attributes the racial divide between Hutus and Tutsis to an illegitimate theory concocted by British explorer John Hanning Speke to help European colonists to carve up colonies in the late 19th century. Instead, the social position enjoyed by the Tutsis is merely the result of being close to the Rwandan king.

“I suppose this dark epiphany is an essential rite of passage for anyone who grew up in my country, one of the most physically lovely places on the globe but one with poison sown in its heart.”

The Tutsi-Hutu racial divide has led to a number of unfortunate events in Rwanda. Paul’s friend, Gerald, is one victim of this hatred when he is expelled from school because of his Tutsi racial identity. He ends up as a failure as he never gets a chance to get good education and only works dead-end jobs. 

“Someone who deals can never be an absolute hard-liner. The very act of negotiation makes it difficult, if not impossible, to dehumanize the person across the table from you.”

Paul learned the art of conversation during his time as a hotel manager, developing the ability to be polite to everyone he meets, no matter who they are. His politeness helps him to be friendly even to those people with whom he has obvious disagreements—a useful trait, since negotiating politely makes it difficult to dehumanize the person sitting opposite. Negotiation often results in a compromise, which makes us understand and, often, sympathize with the other person. 

“Make no mistake: There was a method to the madness. And it was about power.”

The genocide in Rwanda was not a result of tribal hatred and general chaos. It was a result of a dictator not wanting to give up power. Murders were planned with calculated efficiency, and sentiment manipulated by those in charge. 

“If a man can keep a fierce lion under his roof, why can he not shelter a fellow human being?” 

Paul remembers his father’s favorite proverb—that one has to provide shelter to the distressed, even if they are one’s enemies—when his neighbors flock to his house after the genocide begins. Paul lets them in just like his father, who opened his tiny hillside house to refugees during the Hutu Revolution of 1959.

“Now it was going into the pockets of killers, but I think it was the best use of that cash anybody could have imagined.”

Paul pays an army captain a bribe of a million Rwandan francs to spare the lives of all the people in the hotel instead of converting the money into foreign currency to wire to the corporate office in Belgium. Paul says that even though this money is now going into the pockets of the killers, it is the best use of the money possible, since it is saving lives. 

“In my opinion the UN was not only useless during the genocide. It was worse than useless.”

At the time of genocide, Rwanda is left with 500 poorly-trained soldiers, most of whom do not know how to use firearms. Paul criticizes the UN during the genocide in Rwanda. He feels that it would have been better if the UN were not present in Rwanda at all, since its presence made the global community feel that things were under control, when they very much were not. 

“I cannot say that life was normal inside that crowded building, but what I saw in there convinced me that ordinary human beings are born with an extraordinary ability to fight evil with decency.”

Both Tutsis and Hutus use the hotel Paul manages during the genocide as shelter. Inside the hotel, however, Hutus and Tutsis sleep and eat together, even while the two groups fight and kill each other beyond the hotel walls. This prevailing sense of decency, even between otherwise-warring factions, is indicative for Paul of the inherent sense of good in people. 

“The cousin of brutality is a terrifying normalcy.”

In these lines, Paul offers that those who carry out unthinkable acts of violence can turn on a dime and do something entirely commonplace. For example, Nazi concentration camp guards used to come home after manning the gas chambers and play games with their children and make love to their wives. This is similar to the attitude of the colonel, who comes to the hotel to commit murders, but instead takes a glass of beer after Paul talks him out of killing anyone. Paul never sees men as good or bad, but rather as degrees of soft and hard.

“If you stay friendly with monsters you can find cracks in their armor to exploit. Shut them out and they can kill you without a second thought.”

Paul’s only goal is to save the lives of the refugees living inside the hotel. For this, he is ready to entertain anybody and do anything—even make pacts with evil men in order to ensure the safety of the hotel residents. Only by being friendly with the murderers can he manipulate them and save the lives of hundreds of people. If he had decided to shut the murderers out and not negotiate with them, they would have easily entered the hotel and killed whomever they pleased. 

“Even the best of us can be slaves to our self regard.” 

During his talk with the colonel, Paul gives him a drink, puffs up his ego, and makes him feel like an important person. Paul makes him believe that killing anyone is beneath the colonel’s dignity, while at the same time reinforcing the truth that he has the power to kill Paul and other people in the hotel at any moment. While the colonel is not stupid, he is egotistical, and it’s this egoism that Paul exploits. 

“People are never completely good or completely evil. And in order to fight evil you sometimes have to keep evil people in your orbit.” 

Paul paraphrases the saying “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” While Paul may innately want nothing to do with those creating chaos and killing people, he understands that to lose touch with them is to unintentionally make one’s self a future victim. To be an extremist when dealing with extremists, can only end badly; instead, the trick is to locate the humanity in the enemy. 

“Everything I had in my life was pulling away in those trucks, and it was my decision to stay and face probable execution.”

When Paul sees his wife and kids get into the truck to leave for the airport, he feels that everything that he holds precious in his life is gone. Still, Paul decides to stay in the hotel, as he feels responsible for the lives of the hundreds of guests who have nowhere to go.

“I have told you that Rwandans have a special ear for their own history; we take it seriously in a way that few other nations do.” 

History has a special significance for Rwandans: They are killing each other because of perceived historical racial and class divides. Paul convinces the mayor of Kigali to ensure that there are no killings in the hotel by reminding the mayor that if he doesn’t protect these lives, he will have to answer to history. 

“War is hell, and ugly things happen in its midst—I know this. But they always create permanent resentments that have a way of erupting later in history.” 

Paul sees rebel RPF soldiers steal food from shops, dig out potatoes from fields, and capture goats for slaughter. This is similar to what Paul witnessed in the 1959 Hutu Revolution. Now, victims of the 1959 revolution are helping themselves to the spoils of war, thereby perpetuating the cycle of abuse and conflict in Rwanda. 

“‘I always fight with words,’ I told them. ‘Not with guns.’” 

When Paul and his family are at the refugee camp, rebel soldiers offer some Hutu men a few days of military training to fight against the Rwandan Army. Paul refuses to take up arms, since he prefers words to be his weapons. Many of the people in the camp who take the offer and go to fight never come back from the combat.  

“Their uniqueness was gone forever, their stories, their experiences, their loves—erased with a few swings of a cheap machete.”

Paul sees heaps of dead bodies scattered on the side of roads once the genocide has begun in earnest. Even though he tries to distract himself from the sight of the corpses, he can’t help but think that these people’s lives and histories have been lost to a conflict Paul views as manufactured. 

“This last factor is the most powerful commonality of all, and without it no genocide could take place.” 

If one looks at the genocides that have occurred around the world, while each is in some ways different, all of these attempted purges have commonalities. Genocides tend to be the brainchildren of insecure leaders who are eager for more and more power, and who harness homogenous thinking in the dominant group. Ordinary people turn into ruthless killers only when forced and bullied into doing things that they otherwise would never do.