An Ordinary Man

Thomas Rupfure, Paul’s father, was a great influence on Paul growing up. Paul describes him as a man who always spoke “without apology or flourish and with a calm self-possession” (4). A respected community elders who helped resolve conflicts, Thomas dispensed wisdom through proverbs and short stories, and taught Paul to be an upstander through his own example of sheltering several refugees in his home during the Hutu Revolution of 1959.

The most important lessons Paul learned from his father was to offer shelter to those in need, regardless of other considerations, and that resolving conflict among community members must lead to renewed friendship, and not adversarial actions.

Paul describes his sense of justice as something that was instilled in him by his father and grandfather, whose belief in fairness was independent of ethnicity. 

Gerald is Paul’s best friend in school. Both Paul and Gerald come from mixed Hutu-Tutsi families and have a shared worldview.

In 1972, the President of Burundi, a neighboring nation with an ethnic composition similar to Rwanda, orders his armed forces to stifle a Hutu uprising. The Rwandan Hutu government is sympathetic toward the Burundian Hutus and begins reprisals against Rwandan Tutsis as a kind of revenge. 

As a result, in 1973, Gerald is expelled from school because his father is Tutsi. Paul remembers Gerald’s expulsion as one of the saddest days of his life as, “it was for the first time I became aware of myself not as ‘Paul’ but as ‘Hutu’” (21). He adds, “I suppose this dark epiphany is an essential rite of passage for anyone who grew up in my country, one of the most physically lovely places on the globe, but one with poison sown in its heart” (21).

Gerald ultimately ends up working dead-end jobs, as his Tutsi lineage does not allow him to attain a good education and gainful employment. 

Juvenal Habyarimana was President of Rwanda from 1973 to April 6th, 1994 when he was assassinated by Tutsi RPF forces. A “criminal and a blowhard” (55), Habyarimana was a dictator who came to power through fraudulent elections in which he never received less than 98.99% of the vote. His assassination led to the Rwandan genocide.

Habyarimana ruled through fear, propaganda, and repression. His picture was on billboards throughout the country, and every person in Rwanda was supposed to wear a medallion that displayed his likeness. Paul gets into trouble with government officials when he refuses to wear this medallion on the 25th anniversary of Rwanda’s independence.

Tatiana Rusesabagina is Paul’s second wife. As a Tutsi nurse, Tatiana faces much prejudice at work; when Paul meets her in 1987, she wants to leave her job. Paul helps her transfer to the central hospital at Kigali and marries her after two years of courtship. Paul’s children from his first marriage accept Tatiana as their stepmother. After losing their first child, Tatiana and Paul become parents to a son, Tresor.

Tatiana is a source of strength for her husband and weathers the genocide in squalid living conditions at the hotel. She doesn’t ask Paul for special privileges or comfort and shares the little space and the amenities she gets with other refugees.

At one point, Paul tries to smuggle Tatiana and the kids to the airport by hiding them in a truck. The militia catches the truck, targeting Tatiana for a brutal beating because she is Paul’s Tutsi wife. Tatiana survives and finds her way to the hotel, where her wounds slowly heal.

After the war ends, the Rusesabaginas discover that former neighbors have murdered Tatiana's parents and other family members, their bodies thrown into a pit. Only two of her siblings manage to stay alive. 

Paul Kagame is the current President of Rwanda, elected in 2000. In An Ordinary Man, Kagame commands the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel force that ends the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Born to a Tutsi family and only a few years old when his family flees the Rwandan Revolution, Kagame enlists in the RPF before it invades Rwanda in 1990. By 1993, the RPF negotiates a ceasefire, which is broken when the assassination of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana incites genocide, and Hutu extremists subsequently kill more than a million people.