Scholastique Mukasonga - The Barefoot Woman

Copyright Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2008

English Translation Jordan Stump, 2018

First Archipelago Books Edition, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mukasonga, Scholastique, author. | Stump, Jordan, 1959- translator.

Title: The barefoot woman / Scholastique Mukasonga ; translated by Jordan Stump.

Other titles: La femme aux pieds nus. English

Description: First archipelago books edition. | New York : Archipelago Books, [2018]

Identifiers: LCCN 2018025794 (print) | LCCN 2018027065 (ebook)

ISBN 9781939810052 (ebook) | ISBN 9781939810045 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Mukasonga, Stefania. | Mukasonga, Scholastique

GenocideRwandaHistory20th century. | RwandaEthnic relationsHistory20th century.

Tutsi (African people)Crimes againstRwandaHistory20thcentury.

Hutu (African people)RwandaPolitics and government20th century.

RwandaHistoryCivil War, 1994Atrocities | RwandaBiography. | WomenRwandaBiography.

Classification: LCC DT 450.437.M85 (ebook) | LCC DT 4450.437.M85 M8613 2018 (print)

DDC 305.800967571dc23 | LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018025794

Ebook ISBN9781939810052

Distributed by Penguin Random House | www.penguinrandomhouse.com

Archipelago Books, 232 Third St. # A 111, Brooklyn, NY 11215 | www.archipelagobooks.org

Cover art: The Master of Essankro, Mask with different hairstyles,

Baule region, Ivory Coast, c. 1880. Wood, 25 15 13 cm, private collection.

Cet ouvrage a bnfici du soutien du Ministre des Affaires trangres et du Service Culturel de lAmbassade de France aux Etats-Unis.

This work received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.

This book was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Archipelago Books also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Nimick Forbesway Foundation, the Carl Lesnor Family Foundation, Lannan Foundation, the Centre National du Livre, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

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Often, in the middle of one of those neverending chores that fill a womans day (sweeping the yard, shelling and sorting beans, weeding the sorghum patch, tilling the soil, digging sweet potatoes, peeling and cooking bananas), my mother would pause and call out to us, her three youngest daughters, not by our baptismal names, Jeanne, Julienne, Scholastique, but by our real names, the ones given us at birth by our father, names whose meaning, always open to interpretation, seemed to sketch out our future lives: Umubyeyi, Uwamubyirura, Mukasonga! Mama would give us a lingering stare, as if she were going away for a long time, as if she who rarely left the enclosure, who never strayed too far from her field, except on Sundays, for Mass she were making ready for a great voyage, as if she would never again see the three of us gathered around her. And in a voice that didnt sound like hers, that seemed like something from another world, a voice that filled us with terror, she would say: When I die, when you see me lying dead before you, youll have to cover my body. No one must see me. A mothers dead body is not to be seen. Youll have to cover me, my daughters, thats your job and no one elses. No one must see a mothers corpse. Otherwise it will follow you, it will chase youit will haunt you until its your turn to die, when you too will need someone to cover your body.

Those words frightened us. We didnt understand them even today Im not sure I understand them but they sent a chill down our spines. We were convinced we had to keep one eye on Mama at every moment, that we had to be ready, should death suddenly take her, to cover her with her pagne so no one could glimpse her lifeless body. And its true that death hovered insistently every deportee in Nyamata, but to three little girls it seemed to threaten our mother most of all, like a silent leopard stalking its prey. All day long, our anxious thoughts stayed close by her side. Mama was always the first one up in the morning, long before the rest of us were awake, to go off for her daily walk around the village. We trembled as we waited for her to come back, relieved when we finally glimpsed her through the coffee plants, washing her feet in the dewy grass. When two of us went to fetch water or wood, we always told the third: Whatever you do, keep an eye on Mama. And our hearts knew no peace until we came home and saw her shelling beans under the big manioc. But schooldays were the worst, when my mind filled with horrific pictures that blotted out the teachers lesson, pictures of Mamas corpse lying in front of the termite mound she so loved to sit on.

I never did cover my mothers body with her pagne. No one was there to cover her. Maybe the murderers lingered over the corpse their machetes had dismembered. Maybe blood-drunk hyenas and dogs fed on her flesh. Her poor remains dissolved into the stench of the genocides monstrous mass grave, and maybe now, but this too I dont know, maybe now shes deep in the jumble of some ossuary, bones among bones, one skull among others.

Mama, I wasnt there to cover your body, and all I have left is words words in a language you didnt understand to do as you asked. And Im all alone with my feeble words, and on the pages of my notebook, over and over, my sentences weave a shroud for your missing body.