The Peacock 645

 This is why I had to leave the monastery.  We were hearing confessions.  I was approached by a gentleman, somewhere in his fifties, dressed in a suit, African, but I could tell right away which class of African.  He was a Hutu.  Of course, he couldn't see me because of the screen in the confession booth, but I could see him.   I had never known this man before, but instinctively, I froze.  I knew I was not going to like what I was about to hear.  He said that he had sinned so grievously and so horrendously that he didn't know if he could ever be forgiven.  I tried to reassure him that to God there is no sin so dreadful, nor any sinner so abject, that with true and genuine repentance and penance cannot be forgiven.  

"As he began to speak, I found myself drifting into kind of a personal dead zone, and I knew even then that I was in the process of being traumatized.  Still I heard, and still remember, every single word that he said.  He said how he had been involved in the genocidal slaughters of my people in June 1994, that he had participated in many stabbings, hackings and shootings.  Then he told me about a church that was harbouring over one hundred Tutsis who had run there for refuge.  He told me how he had brought with him a jerry can of gasoline, and poured and sprinkled it around the church, while some of his thugs waited at the doors and windows with knives and machetes at the ready.  He told me the name of the church, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, that it was white and made of wood, and I suddenly recited to him the exact location of this church, the street corner, the park across the street, because Mom had told me this story over and over and many many times over again.  

"The gentleman asked me how I knew the place.  I simply told him to please continue with his confession.  This is where it gets really interesting.  As the church was already being covered by flames, some people were trying to escape through the doors.  That gentlemen said he was there, with his machete, along with his buddies, hacking to death every poor soul that tried to break free.  One of the people he killed was my father...