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• Ms. Ilibagiza's official site
• Excerpt from Left to Tell

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Tavis: Immacul&eactue;e Ilibagiza was twenty-two years old in 1994, the year of unspeakable genocide in her homeland of Rwanda. She survived a massacre by hiding in the bathroom of an Episcopal pastor for over ninety days while members of her own family were brutally murdered. Her courageous and heartbreaking story is the basis for the new book, "Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.' ImmaculEe, nice to have you on the program.

Immacul&eactue;e Ilibagiza: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Tavis: I say that so routinely, I suspect, to most of my guests. It's nice to have them here and I always mean that, but I really mean that about you, given the horrific story that you've endured and survived. It really is nice to have you here in more ways than one.

Let me start this conversation, John, if I might, by asking you to put the picture up of the bathroom. This is the bathroom. And that picture, I suspect, doesn't do justice to it, but it gives you - leave it up, John, thank you - it gives you some sense of the smallness of this bathroom that ImmaculEe and seven other women hid in for ninety-one days to survive this Rwandan holocaust. I really don't know where to start the conversation. I want to put that picture up again to give people a sense of that. But ninety-one days in that bathroom?

Ilibagiza: Yeah, I would spend three months in that bathroom. I don't even think, knowing my situation, anyone would choose to be there.

Tavis: How did you end up in that bathroom in this house of this Hutu pastor?

Ilibagiza: I came home. I was in the university. I went home for Easter holiday and, when I got home, we heard that the president was killed in a plane crash and, like ten minutes later, they started to kill people, my tribe, Tutsis. So we heard it on the radio. Everything shut down in the country, the schools, markets, banks, everything shut down and the government was calling the people, Hutus, to go to kill Tutsis. So they started to kill.

Then my parents asked me if I can go to hide because I was one girl among three boys and they were worried actually that I might get raped. So that's how they sent me to hide before they could do anything for themselves. Then I went to this pastor as my father asked me. When I go there, he told me that he feels they will kill us like they have done in the past. Then he asked me to go in the bathroom.

He had five women. There were six in the first two weeks and then, after two or the third joined us. So he told us not to make any noise, not to flush the water until somebody flushed the water in the next bathroom because he didn't even tell his own children that we were there. He was worried that one might tell another person and they may talk to killers. So he had people who worked in his home and no one knew we were there, so we had to be absolutely quiet.

Tavis: There's a fascinating dichotomy in this book that grabbed my attention. On the one hand, you are Tutsi. The president is Hutu. His plane, as you mentioned earlier, is shot down or crashes mysteriously, let's put it that way. His plane disappears mysteriously. He perishes in the plane crash and so Hutus are on the radio across the country saying to go get the Tutsis.

All right. So here you, though, end up in the bathroom of Hutu pastor. So while the Hutus are killing your tribe, the Tutsis, a Hutu minister takes you in and hides you in his bathroom. That's one part of this dichotomy. The other part is that you're in the bathroom and you're constantly praying. You write in this book about how, when you got to a particular passage of "The Lord's Prayer,' that part we all know so well, "to forgive those who trespass against us,' you had trouble reciting that line.

You had trouble saying that line because you had difficulty trying to figure out how it was you could forgive these people who were not just trespassing against you and your tribe, but killing, murdering, chopping off arms and legs. How did you balance those two things? A Hutu minister takes you in, but his people are killing your people.

Ilibagiza: You know, it wasn't really like all the Hutus were killing all the Tutsis because Hutu is ninety percent, eighty-five percent, and we were fifteen percent. So even if like ten percent of them run after Tutsis, of course it was easy to kill us. Many of them were very nice people. They couldn't understand what was going on, but because the government was at the head of this, of course no one, even those who were nice, could even mention that we are hiding Tutsis.

So I think it was really dependent on who and the heart that someone has. We trusted him. We knew him. Many is the time you know somebody, what they're capable of doing, so we knew our parents knew him and that he was not a person who would kill us. For me to forgive, really, like I explained in the book, I struggled with that. I knew I had a good reason not to forgive them, to hate them.

But somehow, when I was praying - because when I went in the bathroom, they came to search for us. We had like three hundred people who are in the house searching for us and the only thing we can count on was God. Even the pastor himself had to tell those killers that he can never, never hide Tutsis. We knew that, if they catch us, there was no mercy. It was about killing us.

So I am praying to God to help me out, to save me, but yet I have got anger. It was like a conflict in my heart. How do I continue to beg God to help me, but yet I am here angry? I can feel that God maybe understood that I had a good reason, but I knew that there was an obstacle in my heart.

When I was praying this prayer which Jesus himself taught us, I knew He knew what I was talking about. He is God. He can't make a mistake. So I was like, "I can't say this word. How can I forgive them?" But at a certain time, I told myself that I know I need God so much, but yet I'm holding to that. What can I do if I can't do it myself? Maybe I'll ask him to help me.

It was a moment of surrendering. I swear, I never knew what surrender meant in my life until that moment when I felt that I need so much to forgive them, but I don't know how to do it. Then I gave everything to God. Later when I saw Jesus on the cross when He said, "Forgive them, Father, for they don't know what they do,' I understood what exactly he meant and what I needed to do.

Tavis: So you went all the way to Jesus on the cross and that prayer that He prayed to forgive them. You write in the book, of course, that if Jesus hanging on the cross could forgive all these people for what they had done to Him, you could find your path or at least start on the path.

Ilibagiza: Exactly. I knew somehow. It was like a knowing. You just got like this knowledge that you knew. Yes, I knew those words, but when I got there, I said, yes, of course. There's no way they can measure, they can understand, what they are doing. I think it is the same thing with everyone who hurts all the people. Most of the time, we don't think about the consequences that can come to us.

There is somewhere a spiritual blindness and that is what I thought in these peoples' hearts. From that moment, I was able to pray for them, for this evil to come out of them. I knew for sure that these people can have one time a chance to regret what they are doing. So then that gives me a way out of my unforgiveness, of my hatred, and I felt so good.

Tavis: So you're praying this prayer for these ninety-one days, these three months, while you're in this bathroom with these seven other women. While you're praying this prayer, you're starting your path to forgiveness. Something tragic is happening to your family which you, of course, do not learn until the end of the three-month period when you get a chance to come out of the bathroom primarily because the French have arrived and you all hear and know that the French are there and they're putting the word out that, if the Tutsis can get to these safe centers, then they will protect them.

Many of us saw the movie, "Hotel Rwanda,' so we kind of know the story a little bit now, just a little bit, thanks to the movie starring the great Don Cheadle. That said, you get out, you and these other women start to make your way to one of the French safe places and then you learn the story of what had happened to your family. What did you learn?

Ilibagiza: I learned the first night. I was in the bathroom and I knew I suspected that my family might be dead. But when I came out, I told myself that I don't want to lie to myself anymore. I want to be sure that, if they are dead, at least there I was able to cry. In the bathroom, if I knew, I didn't have any rights to cry, to make noise. I found out that my mom was killed, my dad was killed, my two brothers. I found about my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncles.

It was something you can only imagine or you see in the movies. You know, something real. But I was surprised how much strength I had in my heart, to have prayed, all the ways through meditation I have done, to think about heaven. Make it real, that people die and go there. So then I was strong to take it. I knew God was on my side and I didn't have anything, only the clothes I had on my back, dirty clothes.

Tavis: You wore the same clothes.

Ilibagiza: Yeah, the same clothes.

Tavis: So your mother's gone, your father's gone, your brothers are gone. It's basically you. You make your way to one of the safe places and what happens then?

Ilibagiza: We spent there a month.

Tavis: A month there.

Ilibagiza: Yeah, with the French soldiers. Then at the end, there was a group of Tutsis and moderate Hutus who were fighting to come. They have just captured the country and the killers run away from the country, but they had a barrier, like a place where they have run to, and the French had to go by the place where they were.

In the meantime, when they drove us to that point, somehow something happened that they dropped us in the middle of the killers and we couldn't reach the barrier of the safe place. But there it was a miracle to me that really God saved us. I felt that maybe God wanted to squeeze me (laughter).

Tavis: As I'm reading the text of this and you talk about it now, after surviving in that bathroom for three months, this is a worse predicament than being in the bathroom. At least in the bathroom, nobody knew where you were, but the French, trying to get you as close to the border as they could, end up inadvertently dropping you in the middle of the fighting. How did you survive that? How did you escape that?

Ilibagiza: You know, I remember when I reached there, somebody recognized me and he called me and said that was the only person when we think, oh, my God, so I knew how much it is. I remember that they were all around us. We were a group of fifty people. We are trembling. I held onto the rosary my father had given me when we were separating and I was again praying, "God, help me out. It is not over. I didn't come all the way from the ninety-one days in the bathroom to come to die here. You can still do a miracle because I feel that I was saved by a miracle anyway."

I remember there was a guy who looked at me in my eyes and he was really pushing me. You know, you feel the strength of the energy. He wanted me to be scared and to be ashamed, looking down. I can feel like he's looking at me and pushing me down inside and I'm praying hard inside. I'm like, "I know you are a human being. Thank God, I have forgiven them. Thank God, I knew. This is a person who is being used by the evil, but there is a good spirit inside." I was praying, "God, help me out. Let this evil come out of him."

The guy was getting softer. His eyes were dropping a little bit and he looked at me again and I can feel he was getting ashamed. Almost like, "What am I doing here? Why am I killing these people?" Then he turned his back and left and he was scratching his back and he was rubbing the machete on the side. I knew it was the Holy Spirit right there really working.

I remember I told two men who were with us because we had a handicapped lady and we couldn't push her cart, so we went to the side of the people who were at the safe place. It was a ten or fifteen minute walk. We run and the killers came behind us making circles all around us and I'm praying, "If you cut me, maybe the machete will not even touch my body. I will get through it." I was thinking about Daniel in the den of lions. Nothing will touch me. Only in the strength of God.

I don't know what happened, but a few minutes later, they run back, but they had machetes all around us like this. When we reached the other place, also they didn't trust us. I went back screaming, "Happy, oh, so happy we find you. We reached you safe. You can't believe what we went through." When I got up, I had a gun at my head. That was the moment I said, "You know, God, it's okay. Now I can die."

Tavis: I can handle that (laughter). Fortunately, this is no laughing matter. Fortunately, she did not die, as you can see. She lives and she is really living now. I'll fast forward to the end of the story since my time is up to let you know that she lives here in the United States of America.

She's happily married to a man who she met who worked with the United Nations and there you see that lovely picture. They have two babies. So the story does have a happy ending to it on this level at least. We are so delighted, ImmaculEe, that you and your new family, your extended family, are well. An honor to meet you.

Ilibagiza: Thank you so much.

Tavis: Thanks so much for coming on.