An Excerpt from Lamentation of a Warrior

"As they drove down the streets, Blaise saw a house that looked vaguely familiar. He stared again at the house and recognized that he’d been there before.  He remembered to whom it belonged.  The home and the activity in it grabbed his complete attention, and he ordered the driver to stop.  The driver stopped immediately.  Blaise saw that the killing group had gone into the home, and he could hear that the group was in the process of killing the family, so he acted fast.  He stepped out of the truck and walked quickly up to the house and looked into it.  He shouted at the men in the group.  The men paused, their machetes dripping with blood.  An older man and woman were on the floor near the front door, obviously bleeding to death from the multiple wounds caused by being hacked many times with machetes.  There was one young woman, who was on the floor crying loudly.  He looked at her tearstained and distraught face and recognized her.  Blaise remembered carrying her in his arms when he was a boy."
Lamentation of a Warrior

Lamentation of a Warrior, A Novel - The story continues in the sequel to Sojourner's Dream.

An apocalyptic genocide has commenced in the heart of Africa.  Joseph Kalisa, a corporate lawyer living in Washington, D.C., has returned to his homeland in Rwanda to help save his family, and thousands of other people, from total annihilation.  Can it be done?  Or, is the genocidal killing machine unstoppable? Joseph, and his fellow rebel soldiers, must somehow beat the odds against them to stop the killing of an entire ethnic group of people.  With Commander Blaise Hakizimana as opposition, their chances could be slim.   What will be the key to stopping the genocide and saving lives?

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Lamentation of A Warrior, A Novel


The sequel to Sojourner's Dream will be published in March 2012...

LAMENTATION OF A WARRIOR

Excerpt from Lamentations of A Warrior

Excerpt from Lamentation of A Warrior
by Angeline Bandon-Bibum

PROLOGUE

Nyanza, Rwanda

July 1955

As a boy, Joseph was playing hide and go seek with his younger cousin, Theodetta. He hid in one of the many corridors of the palace inhabited by his uncle and aunt, the King and Queen of Rwanda. Joseph heard the footsteps of his little cousin, Theodetta, as she searched for him. He heard the girl’s voice echoing through the hallways, as she called out for him. The boy said nothing, but he ran through the seemingly endless corridor of the palace. He then suddenly bumped into the legs of an extremely tall man, the King of Rwanda. The king was called the Mwami. He wore an elaborate headdress, and draped over his elegant French suit, was a toga-like, white cloth. In his hand was a golden scepter that reached to the floor. Joseph was terrified. Would he be beaten, or thrown out of the palace? He looked up at the Mwami, and the Mwami's face was serious. Joseph kneeled and bowed down in front of the Mwami. He looked at the shiny, black European shoes that the king wore. Then Joseph dared to look up again. To his surprise, he saw that the Mwami was smiling at him.


CHAPTER ONE

Kigali, Rwanda

July 1994

Joseph was dreaming. He was lying on a his back on a cot, looking up to the sky. The sun seemed red. Its rays radiated in concentric circles. Joseph thought to himself. What world was he in? A red sun was blazing down at him; it seemed to be bleeding, like the bodies that he had seen for the last several months.

When Joseph woke up, he could smell the rotting human corpses that were piled all around the city of Kigali, Rwanda. He sat up on his cot in the military barracks. He could not get use to the sickening smell of decaying bodies. Joseph had employed a teenager, Charles, to fetch water for him and to wash his clothing and carry his clothes and military equipment. The boy went to fetch two buckets of water from a nearby river. Joseph reminded him that the water had to be boiled before he could use it to drink or wash.

Charles had lost his entire family during the killings in Rwanda, in the summer of 1994. To Joseph, it seemed that Charles was always in a daze, and silent. Joseph had managed to convince the silent boy to tell his story nonetheless. It was a story of bloody barbarism and horror; Charles had watched his family butchered alive right before his eyes. Everyone in his own family was probably dead, too, Joseph thought. However, he hoped that his niece, Valentina, had somehow survived.

Copyright © 2007 by Angeline Bandon-Bibum