Gaël Faye: "I live with my daughters in the country where more children have been killed than anywhere else in the world."

BarcelonaGaël Faye (Bujumbura, 1992) arrives late from a talk at the French Lycée in Barcelona because the students couldn't stop asking him questions about his two novels, A small country (2016; Empúries/Salamandra, 2018; trans. Mercè Ubach) and The jacaranda (2024; Salamandra, 2025; trans. Lydia Vázquez) More than two million copies of its debut were sold in the forty languages in which it can be read. of the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda. The jacaranda, who received the Renaudot Prize, starts again in 1994 to approach another young man, Milan: despite having grown up in Versailles, he becomes increasingly interested in Rwanda, the country his mother had to flee.

One of the most delicate relationships this novel addresses is that of the boy protagonist and his mother. Every time he asks her about Rwanda, she remains silent. Did the same thing happen to you at home?

— Yes. Mom has never said anything about Rwanda. I remember once an acquaintance asked her if she'd be willing to go back, and she replied, "No way. There's blood everywhere." Parents believe they're protecting their children by remaining silent, but in reality, the opposite often happens. Some children suffer a certain lack of security precisely because of this silence.

You decided to return to Rwanda, like your character, ten years ago, and from there you've consolidated a dual artistic career as a musician and writer. How did your mother react?

— It seemed absurd to her, a completely out-of-place idea. How could I possibly want to go to Rwanda with my daughters? Had I lost my mind? For the mother, Rwanda is too painful a place. This is my interpretation because she has never spoken about it to anyone.

Milan hears about Rwanda for the first time on the news. That magma of "images, violence, and exodus" leaves him stunned. What worries him even more is that the parents aren't saying anything.

— In that regard, my personal experience was different. I grew up in Burundi and lived through the climate before the war and the genocide. When we arrived in France, I knew about what was happening where I came from. Milan grew up in Versailles and hears about Rwanda through the news. On the day of the accident that killed Ayrton Senna, the country's newscasts devoted more attention to the Formula 1 driver's death than to the Rwandan genocide. I think it should have been the other way around, because what happened in Rwanda was a key episode of the 20th century.

In The jacaranda Remember how the country's people have turned the page on genocide. Should we keep this in mind more?

— It was only thirty years ago, all of this. There were more than a million deaths, tens of thousands of rapes, countless families left traumatized for life... And yet, Rwanda is now referred to as the Singapore of Africa. It is a very well-managed and prosperous country.

The book shows this contrast between economic prosperity and the wounds of the recent past.

— Since the arrival of the first Europeans at the end of the 19th century, Rwanda has never ceased to fascinate the world. The explorers' search for the source of the Nile awakened ghosts, ideas, and stories that ended up confusing reality and mythology. In 1994, a section of the village left their homes to hack their neighbors to death. The result was shocking. It's impossible to understand why it happened. All I can do is try to reconstruct the genealogy of how it was reached.

A Rwandan author who preceded her in this attempt to explain how genocide came about is Scholastique Mukasonga. Our Lady of the Nile (2012; in Catalan in Minúscula, 2024) explored the roots of social division based on the experience of a Tutsi girl in a Christian school full of Hutus. Has this writer been important to you?

— It's a blessing to have been able to read Mukasonga's novels. She's from my mother's generation, and they tell me part of her life story. Like Mukasonga, my mother grew up in Tutsi regroupment camps in the 1960s and 1970s, until she managed to flee to Burundi when persecution began.

In The jacaranda, Milan discovers that he had a brother, Claude, in Rwanda, and years after the genocide he will witness the popular trial in which this brother's version of the events is confronted with that of the man who killed seventeen members of his family and almost killed him too.

— Between 2005 and 2012, two million popular trials took place in Rwanda. gacaca, which means "trial on the grass," and were open-air popular tribunals where everyone could attend. This created tremendous violence for the survivors, who had to tell their stories, and for the executioners, who accepted or denied their role in the events. It was painful, but it also allowed people who hadn't spoken to each other since the genocide to resume conversation. In Rwanda, when you walk down the street and meet someone, they may be a murderer, but you know they've had to face justice.

One of the book's characters, Eusébie, says that "justice is always imperfect." But is it also the way to overcome revenge?

— In Burundi, there were also many massacres, but not a single one was prosecuted. This created frustration, rage, and anger. A genocide jeopardizes moral, philosophical, and legal norms. Trials establish a standard.

Without the trials, wouldn't you have returned to Rwanda?

— In 2014, I was invited to sing at the stadium in Kigali, the country's capital, on the twentieth anniversary of the genocide. There, I witnessed several people recalling their experiences in front of the crowd, just as Eusébie does in the novel. It was a way of provoking a collective crisis, one that affected both the survivors of the genocide and the new generations. Today, 70% of Rwandans were born after those terrible events.

Don't you feel unsafe, living in a country where there have been so many murders?

— I live with my daughters in the country where more children have been killed than anywhere else in the world. And this happened in just a few months, just thirty years ago. But today's Rwanda is a lovely place. The people are very friendly. For a tourist, it's even a place of peace. kids friendly.

AfterThe jacaranda Will you continue writing about Rwanda?

— Writing offers the opportunity to be reborn and escape from one's personal history, but when you come from a world like mine, where so few voices emerge, you have a responsibility to speak. There are many people in the world who can write about a divorce in Paris or a love story in New York, but not many who can narrate from within a society like Rwanda's. Furthermore, there is a reading public located around the Great Lakes of Africa that needs to recognize themselves in the stories. We've had too many visitors from outside who have told us stories. Now it's our turn to tell ourselves.