Left to Tell: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

Immaculée stares at the Tutsi soldier pointing his gun at her and tells God that it is up to Him whether she lives or dies. She begins explaining that French soldiers brought them to the camp, but the soldier tells her to stop speaking and lie on the ground. He cannot believe that so many Tutsis are alive, and insists they must be Hutu spies. Just as Immaculée begins praying for Aloise on the others who she left by the road, she hears someone say her name. It is Bazil, a Hutu neighbor who’d joined the Tutsi rebels. Bazil had been Rose’s favorite student; now, he and Immaculée embrace. Bazil explains to the other soldiers that Immaculée is telling the truth and isn’t a spy. Immediately, the soldiers agree to go and help the friends Immaculée left behind.

Immaculée and Bazil immediately begin catching up, and when Bazil asks after Rose, he still calls her “Teacher.” With a heavy heart, Immaculée tells Bazil that her family, along with almost every Tutsi and moderate Hutu in Mataba, are all dead. Bazil’s own parents, four brothers, and three sisters are dead, and in this moment he breaks down in tears. When Aloise is safely brought to the camp, she tells Immaculée to keep saying the prayers she has been saying, because they worked to miraculously save the group from the Interahamwe. Aloise embraces her two children and announces that they have survived the genocide. She thanks God, as does Immaculée.

Aloise’s cheerfulness is infectious, and raises the mood at the RPF camp. Immaculée speaks with the leader of the camp, Major Ntwali, who asks if she blames him and other RPF soldiers for the genocide. Immaculée assures him that she doesn’t, and that the evil of the genocide is the work of the devil. She talks about forgiving the killers, but Major Ntwali is not inclined to forgive. He directs her to a Baptist church where other about 100 other survivors are being sheltered. There are no beds or blankets, but Immaculée is happy to be in a house of God.

Immaculée tries to cook food for the group but has to stop because she is sickened by a hideous smell. Bazil leads her behind the church and shows her a pile of hundreds of dead bodies piled on top of each other. Next to it is a pit filled with thousands more corpses. Immaculée vomits, reeling from what she has seen. She doesn’t understand how Rwanda will ever heal from this horror. Immaculée decides that in order to help others as God intends for her to do, she will have to leave Rwanda for a while. This can’t happen immediately, however, because she has no job, home, or money—not even any belongings except the clothes she is wearing and Leonard’s rosary.

Immaculée and the others want to leave the camp for Aloise’s house in Kigali, but at first there seems no way to make this happen. However, Major Ntwali then offers to drive the whole group “right to Aloise’s front door” and give them enough food to last for months. In Kigali, Major Ntwali warns the group to be careful walking, because there are land mines everywhere. Aloise asks for them to be dropped off at the UN, which is a 15 minute walk from her house. She reasons that if Fari has survived, he will have come to the UN because it is the safest place in Kigali. She prays that he is alive because she doesn’t know what she would do without him.

Happily, the group arrive at the UN to find that Fari is there and alive. He embraces Aloise and his children, but when he asks after their baby Aloise tells him that she died from a fever. The two parents sob together; Immaculée is shocked, as she didn’t even know that Aloise had lost a child. Like his wife, Fari tells Immaculée that she resembles her parents, and reiterates Aloise’s offer for her to live with them.

Aloise and Fari’s home has been heavily damaged, but the group works together to repair it and soon it is in a good state again. Immaculée is thrilled to sleep in a real bed for the first time since she fled her parents’ house. Because they don’t have any possessions or money, the group searches abandoned homes, gathering clothes to wear. Immaculée takes a pair of gold earrings as a treat, but balks on seeing her reflection. She thinks of the woman who owns the earrings and feels “like a trespasser in another person’s life.” She returns the earrings to where she found them. At this point she realizes it is time to get a job.