'His neck snapped with a satisfying pop' - Gilbert Tuhabonye interview

Published on Friday 18 April 2008 13:19

Trapped by a baying Hutu mob intent on murder, his friends burning to death beside him, Gilbert Tuhabonye was on the point of becoming another statistic in the Burundi genocide. Fifteen years on, the track star, still hoping for a chance at the Olympics, puts his survival down to his speed and strength – and divine intervention

OUTSIDE the building, the drums of Gilbert Tuhabonye's Hutu captors beat out a sinister, pulsating rhythm that competed with the fast thump of his heart. Above him, a percussion chorus of rain on corrugated iron tapped out a tattoo on the roof. The floor was glutinous with the blood of hundreds of his fellow Tutsis, mown down with machetes and spears, who lay dying beside him.

And then the petrol was poured in, and the burning eucalyptus branches came flying through the windows like fire bombs, and the air was thick with it, the smell of blood and fear and urine and burning flesh and hair. Curled up in a small alcove off the main room, Tuhabonye watched skin shrivel on bodies, burning, blistering, then simply disappearing to expose sinew and bone. The drums beat on, accompanied by singing and exultant chants of "We did it".

It was October 21, 1993. The empty building in Burundi was due to be a petrol station but was not yet in use and the captives inside it had been herded there from Kibimba school. The previous day, many of the Hutus who gathered outside the building had been 18-year-old Tuhabonye's friends. He trained with them on the running team and the drumming team. He shared track shoes with his Hutu friend Severin. Now Severin stood outside, chanting.

In all the atrocities of the 20th century, perhaps the most frightening, the most depressingly indicative of human nature, were those perpetrated by former neighbours. In the Balkans. In Rwanda. In Burundi. In 1993, it was a political coup by Tutsis, who killed the country's first Hutu president, that re-ignited tensions in Burundi. The Tutsi pupils of Kibimba had fled to their Hutu headmaster for help. Tuhabonye watched the foaming spittle of hatred form on the headmaster's bottom lip. "You are now going to see," he told Tuhabonye, "what Jesus saw on the cross."

The history of Burundi has been marred by acrimony and civil war. The country is wedged between Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, and while once populated by the Twa pygmy people, its two main tribes now are Tutsis and Hutus. Tensions have simmered between the two for many years, though in parts of the country, like Bururi where Tuhabonye lived, there was little problem in day-to-day life. The two peoples lived side by side.

Traditionally, the Hutus were numerically dominant, the Tutsis politically dominant. The Tutsis were the cattle-owning elite, while the Hutus were mainly farmers. Physically, Tutsis are taller, thinner, with slimmer noses, while the Hutus tend to be smaller and more squarely built, but in truth inter-marriage often makes it difficult to differentiate between the two. Inside the burning building, the two tribes had never felt further apart.

Tuhabonye was a golden child of Kibimba Lyce. He was a top student, a national running champion, a boy on whom many school privileges had been conferred. He was targeted by the Hutus because he had to be prevented from running to the army or police to bring help to his people. The fastest, strongest boy in the school, even his name distinguished him. He was called Tuhabonyemana, later shortened to Tuhabonye, which means 'child of God'. And it seemed to him now that only God could help him, caught as he was between the machete-wielding crowd outside and the thick, toxic smoke that choked him inside.

Chemicals had now been added to the flames. Anybody who had so far cheated death and tried to escape through the windows was being pounced on by the crowd and hacked to death.

Tuhabonye climbed up on to a concrete partition and threw himself to the ground, meaning to kill himself by landing on his head. But at the last minute he instinctively tucked his head round and landed on his shoulder. He cried with fear and frustration. But he did not want to die in the fire. He picked up a burning femur, the bone so hot it scorched his hand. Swinging it like a hammer, he smashed the glass of the window and climbed up, prepared to sacrifice himself to the mob. The drums, the chanting, rose up to meet him from the darkness below and he jumped straight into the middle of the crowd.

This is when he believes a miracle happened. The crowd did not see him immediately. By the time they did, he knew he had to live up to his nickname, Tumagu, which means 'constantly in motion'. He was dehydrated and badly burned but he was still the fastest boy in his neighbourhood. Now, he had to prove it and run for his life.

FIFTEEN years later, and Tuhabonye and I meet on the 15th floor of a London hotel, the grey sprawl of the city spreading out below us. He is in London to run the marathon, his final attempt, at the age of nearly 34, to qualify for the Olympics. Despite everything, he still wants to run for Burundi, to inspire his people and bring attention to the desperate need his impoverished homeland has of outside help. "It's so beautiful," he says of Burundi. "The gorgeous mountain, the lake, the beaches I used to go to every Sunday… the coffee plantations, the banana plantations. It's very green and the weather is so beautiful."

Life now is different. In 1996, he sought political asylum in the US when he was invited to an Olympic training camp there. He has made a life in Austin, Texas, with his wife, also from Burundi, and their two daughters aged six and two. The physical beauty of his country is in stark contrast to its political situation. He cannot return. "Some of the people responsible for the killing are now in the highest power in the government. There is no protection. I do not feel safe."

When he jumped from that window all those years ago, he thought he was jumping to his death. "I was giving myself to them to get killed because I did not want to die in the fire. I wanted to die with a machete so that my parents would come and find a head or a leg… at least a little piece of me."

When the crowd caught sight of him running, his back on fire, he heard shouts that they would get him in the morning. One man insisted on pursuing immediately but Tuhabonye sped away. Exhausted, he jumped into a hole, realising later that the Hutus must have dug it as a grave to bury their victims. The rain stung his burned back but he stayed silent, then climbed quietly out of the hole and pounced on his pursuer. With one hand clasped over the man's mouth, he took a firm hold of his jaw and snapped it back the way he had seen in Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris movies. The Hutu collapsed, dead. Tuhabonye outran his assailants to reach the hospital, where he was picked up by the Tutsi army. He spent three months recuperating in hospital, spurred on by his desire to get back on the running track.

Tuhabonye is a slender figure, dressed in running trousers and a black jumper. The braces on his teeth suggest he has embraced his adopted culture and the desire for the perfect, all-American smile. His remarkable story is published in Britain as The Running Man, although in America it is called This Voice in My Heart – perhaps because the audience there is considered more sympathetic to the religious aspect of Tuhabonye's story. The voice in his heart, he is convinced, was the voice of God. "When they put us in the fire, I heard the voice. This voice that kept talking to me, saying, 'Nothing will happen to you.' All this time I am counting who is dead and waiting for my turn and when I jumped to try to land on my head and see if I would die, the voice was very strong. 'Nothing will happen to you.' But at that point I didn't know who was talking to me."

Brought up a Catholic, he says he was not much of a Christian before the fire, skipping church to go and run or play at the beach. But there is something puzzling about his faith. If he believes God helped him escape – and he does, strongly – then surely he believes God put him in there in the first place? "No, he didn't put me in the fire, he got me out." He never felt deserted? "No. I just felt that I was at the punishment stage. The question that was going through my mind was, 'Why have I done something wrong?' So instead of saying to God, 'Please get me out of here,' I said, 'Please forgive me.' That's when I came up with the idea of breaking the window. After I asked for forgiveness, God kicked in."

But there must have been other people in that building who believed in God. Yes, he agrees. So why would God save him? "You know," he says thoughtfully, "my six-year-old daughter Emma asked me the same question. 'Dad, how come you escaped? What about the people who died?' I really don't have an answer for that. I just think God saved me for a purpose, to be a witness, to tell the story."

For three months in recovery, he had nothing to do but read. He read the Bible, cover to cover. And then he read it again. "I wanted to understand how in the world these people were friends yesterday and today they wanted to kill me. How people become evil. I couldn't imagine. Only the Bible helped me." But when asked what explanation the Bible gave him, he talks about forgiveness, suggesting his reading gave him less an explanation than a way to cope with what happened.

His eyes are watchful, his expression inscrutable, when I ask him to imagine that I have all those responsible for the atrocity lined up before him. He is judge; it is up to him what happens to them. Does he want to shoot them? "No," he says, his eyes flicking down. Then, unexpectedly, he says he met one of those responsible again. "The guy who was in charge, who donated the gas station as a place to burn us. The guy is walking in the central market. He saw me, collapsed, begging for forgiveness." How did he feel when he saw him? "First, I was shocked. Second, I wanted revenge. But something went through my head quick… 'Don't do it. Don't do it! I helped you. I saved you. There is no reason to kill… let him go.' At the same time, the guy was begging for forgiveness, saying, 'I didn't know what I was doing… they told me to…' I said, 'SHUT UP! I won't kill you.'"

All the while, Tuhabonye was looking round to see who was watching. "I was coming from training and if I didn't let him go, my classmates, my team-mates, would kill him." Wherever human brutality exists, it sometimes seems as if there is always something to offset it, make you believe again in the human spirit – inspiring courage perhaps, or generosity or compassion. Tuhabonye has that capacity to be bigger than what happened to him. "My anger is gone. Hutus attacked Tutsis and Tutsis attacked Hutus. I look in your eye and I see who you are – as long as you don't harm me, you are my friend. We used to live in harmony. We used to share everything, especially where I came from. Hutus missed me; they came to see me when I was in hospital. I don't have hatred for Hutus. I just wish there was peace."

The headmaster of Kibimba was put to death for his part in the attack. But letting the man in the market go was a decision Tuhabonye never regretted. "Really, letting him go was the beginning of everything. If I can let someone who tried to take away my life go free, I can do anything. That was the beginning of the joy, the hope. Everything started kicking in then. I probably met him in January and by April I moved to America. I let him go because it's in my nature. I cannot even kill a mouse, an ant. Why should I kill a person? I have always respected human beings. They are going to get punished anyway."

To be in extreme circumstances is to test the limits of your own possibilities. Ordinarily, Tuhabonye couldn't kill an ant. But of course, he did kill a man in self-defence. His written account is brutally factual. "His neck snapped with a satisfying pop, and he crumpled dead." Did he feel guilty afterwards? "I did. Later. But at the same time, God gave me the power. I had to get rid of that man… but the strength, the power… the guy was too big, too strong for me to kill him. I should not use God to help me kill this person, but the strength… I cannot explain."

Participation in sport can give a person so many things. Determination. Stamina. Endurance. Discipline. The lessons of running, the ability to continue when his body was screaming to stop, helped Tuhabonye survive. He has no doubt about that. But when you ask if perhaps he was the only person in that building to escape because he was mentally tougher than anyone else, he simply shrugs and says he puts that down to God.

His experiences have changed him in so many ways. "I used be sceptical, doubting; now faith is my strength. I focus on the positive. I know there are people out there trying to do bad things but I just focus on what I do best. And I have hope. I started chasing the Olympic dream when I was 18. My perseverance has been incredible. I don't give up easy. No, I don't give up easy." But he lost something in that fire too. Trust. "DTA," he says. "Don't trust anybody."

ANATOLE. Desiree. Martin. Delphine. Robert. Monique. Leonard. Solanga Beatrice. Hubert. Brigitte. Patience. Inside his head in that burning building, Tuhabonye took a terrible roll call, imprinting on his mind the names of the people who perished there so that he could bear witness to what happened. He would tell the outside world of these events on a hillside in Burundi, where a monument now stands that says 'Never Happen Again'.

There is a strange link between bearing witness and running. Culturally, being the fastest person in his community gave Tuhabonye status because physical strength was so important in a place where his heart and lungs grew stronger daily from running up and down the mountainside to carry essential water for his family. Now running feels like it connects him back to those people he left behind, to the country he is no longer able to visit.

As he recovered in hospital, he discovered his father had also been killed in a separate Hutu attack. His mother is 66 now and has a son and daughter who live near her, but she cries when Tuhabonye phones. She visited America once but found it so fast, so strange, and it is so expensive to bring her over. Tuhabonye was shocked when he saw her. She weighed less than six stone. He made sure she had put on a stone by the time she left. Does he miss her? "I do. I miss her so much," he says, with poignant longing. She hasn't even seen his youngest daughter yet, and the children can't communicate with her. "I keep praying that one day she will join me."

Tuhabonye loves his life in America. He feels that people care, really care, for him. But there are some cultural differences in attitudes. I tell him I read a piece in an American paper in which a coach said if Tuhabonye believed in himself he would be unbeatable. "That's true," he says. "They try to push me like that. To say I'm the best. They want you to be cocky. I am not that way. If you come to race me, I respect who you are. Any day you can win. Any day I can win. I don't have it in me to be showy, to say I'm the best. That's what they want to hear but that's not me."

Running is more elemental than that for him. "You know, I think running for me is a way of finding my freedom, a way of finding my joy. It becomes stressful when I am running for the Olympics, when everyone has their eye on me and I am giving interviews. Those are the pressures. Otherwise, running is a way of life for me, the best way I can say thank you to God that one day I was in the fire and now I can run."

He carried the Olympic torch in 1996 but, strangely, injury has always prevented him fulfilling his Olympic dream. We meet a few days before the all-important London marathon and again he has a hamstring injury. It makes him wonder. Perhaps God does not want him to run in the Olympics, he says. But if it is not meant to be, it is not meant to be. He won't be devastated? "Not at all," he says. "My life goes on without the Olympics." A few days later, injury forces his withdrawal from the marathon after 13 miles. Now he has only an outside chance of fulfilling the Olympic dream. But running can never be a disappointment to Gilbert Tuhabonye. How could it be? It's the very reason he's alive.

• The Running Man (Metro Publishing, 8.99)