First Among Equals

How the presence of a US citizen saved 3,000 CAR citizens from a massacre. An extract

Anjan Sundaram

Bouca’s restaurants were shut. And we were about to cut up a few tomatoes, bananas, and mangoes for dinner, when Angeline invited us to dine with her and the doctors, in a room reserved for the nun’s guests.

The Doctors without Borders team leader was a Quebecois surgeon named Berthier. “Hassan is high on ketamine,” he told me.

I asked what that was.

“A white crystal stimulant that makes him manic.”

Berthier had tried to save Hassan’s former commander, James, who the rebels had shot in the liver some weeks before. At one point, James had looked up at Berthier, and said, “Doctor, I think I’m going to die.” Berthier said, “When people have that premonition, death is very close.” He had then only diminished James’s pain. It was like a missionary’s work.

The church staff had laid out a buffet of salad, boiled vegetables, pasta, and a fish. We ate behind a closed door, away from the gaze of the hungry people in the yard. Angeline said benediction. “The soldiers killed 180 the last time, and even the Pope could not stop them. Give us courage for tomorrow.”

The church’s gates creaked. Men crept out carrying their bags. But the majority of people here behaved as if Hassan had not come by that morning. They cooked their meals and rinsed their plates, which they stacked up neatly for use the next day.

On my post-dinner walk through the grounds, I met a mother who asked me for medicine. “My nine-month-old girl Mirabelle has a fever,” she said. I gave her half a paracetamol tablet, and asked why she stayed.

“Soldiers have burned our homes and the bush,” she said. “I have nowhere left to hide. They also burned my peanut crops.” A gust blew into the camp. And she shook her head. “That noise of the leaves reminds me of hiding in the forest. The soldiers hunted us down like animals.”

Vendors sold beignets—balls of fried dough—at food stall. A man waiting in line in front of me said that a few weeks before, Hassan had beaten up Angeline. “He bruised her so badly that the church transported her to a hospital in Bangui.”

Angeline had served as a human shield, putting herself between the soldiers and the people. In a conflict with few escapes, in which people retreated into the jungle, Angeline offered them refuge in this church. And this place had a natural power. People in distress looked to God.

To calm the children, the doctors perched a laptop on a low wall and played a science fiction movie. The children watched rap