Summary

Part One, “Flights,” Chapter Nine: Burundi-Rwanda-Burundi, 1993-94. In this lengthy chapter, narration details Deo’s long, dangerous escape from the Hutu-Tutsi civil wars in Burundi and Rwanda. The narrative begins with a description of Deo’s internship at a clinic in Mutaho, a remote Burundi village; how ethnic tensions between Hutus and Tutsis at the clinic and in the area began to build; and how Deo managed to ignore them, narration observing how “in order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange” (111). Deo’s internship came to a sudden end as the result of an attack from Hutu militias, which Deo eventually learned was retaliation for the Hutu president having been assassinated by Tutsi rebels. During the attack, Deo hid under his bed, narrowly escaping detection. In the silence following the slaughter at...