FOREWORD: My Father’s Son, by E. Vin Mudah

“Why don’t they go back to their home country?” is a question frequently posed by Malawians of the 52,000 refugees who live in the Dzaleka Refugee Camp, just outside the capital Lilongwe. At the time of writing in 2022, most came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda, with small numbers from Ethiopia and Somalia. Malawians (and others) are especially puzzled by the thousands who fled Burundi and Rwanda in the early 1990s, now almost thirty years ago. These countries claim to be safe and encourage their citizens to return to reestablish a peaceful life. Recent human rights reports similarly claim there is no “credible evidence” that refugees who fled these countries so long ago will suffer any danger should they return. Those living in Dzaleka exist in precarity; they endure, always being neither here nor there with uncertain futures. They live in fear of being forcibly repatriated, while simultaneously often being refused resettlement elsewhere because of this lack of credible evidence.

Missing from this persistent reference to credible evidence of danger is the perspective of the human beings who have been violently thrashed and haplessly tossed about throughout the past 28 years—the very people who have had little choice about their present or futures. They are at the mercy of the decisions of government officials, who likely care little about the actual people their policies affect, and of immigration officers whose system is strained by too much demand. These human beings are the ones who have to survive whether they live for multiple generations in refugee camps, are resettled to foreign countries (often whose languages and lifestyles are unfamiliar and economic opportunities are limited) or are tossed back into the sites of the original trauma that forced them to flee in the first place.

E. Vin Mudah’s My Father’s Son is the fictional story about a Rwandan doctor Mwiza, his wife, and children. One day, the family and their peaceful life is violently torn apart. The date is not given, though it was likely April 1994, the beginning of what is typically referred to as the “Rwandan Genocide.” Friends betrayed neighbors, and even became murderers as people slaughtered one another, children and all, flamed by the historic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis.

Mwiza’s family journeys from Rwanda across wild terrain and from refugee camp to camp where additional danger and violence welcome them rather than the sanctuary they seek. This is a family who survives, though barely and not all of its members. They eventually make it to the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi where they are able to settle somewhat peacefully. Mwiza, the hero of the story, uses his medical skills, smarts, and charm to obtain the best life possible for his family. They are the lucky ones. The novel ends with hope and the prospect of a journey that promises a peaceful future. Yet, it also highlights how the war differently impacted men and women, the intensity of loss, the dramatic corruption of trust, the devastation of child abandonment, and the violence of intergenerational trauma.

My Father’s Son provides the answer for the question of why they don’t go back. We know that trauma is about place, it is about memory, it is about relationships, it is about loss, it is about resolution. What would happen to Mwiza’s family were it thrown back into the community they once fled? What would happen were they to return to the location of the school, home, river, and churches where innocent family members were butchered, their friends betrayed them, they were tortured, and they almost died? Who could they trust, remembering the intimacy of the violence between neighbors? What would happen when they encountered members of these families, even the children of those who ripped their children from them? And, how would people receive them, not knowing the circumstances of why they left, what their role was or wasn’t in the war, and what they had been doing since?

Yes, the Rwandan government has a process for reconciliation between those from opposing sides. But how possible is it for someone to forgive and reintegrate? Should they want to, or be forced to? The story of Mwiza’s family brings this question to the human level. The family lost so much and had so little control or choice in where they lived or what they did. Should they not have the choice of whether they want to go through the trauma of return in order to go through the reconciliation process? Reconciliation, after all, is a simple word to say, but the process is retraumatizing, arduous, and inconclusive.

As with the characters in his novel, Mudah’s family fled from Rwanda and ended up in Dzaleka. The story captured in these pages resonates with what I have heard from people living in the Dzaleka Refugee Camp and from refugees and other displaced people I have met in other countries.  Anywhere in the world today has a “refugee crisis.” Even Rwanda and Burundi have camps for internally displaced people and those fleeing violence in neighboring countries.

There are too many wars, too much conflict, and too much persecution. That is why people leave. That is why they fear going back. Governments, immigration officials, and everyday people need to understand who “refugees” are, recognize their humanity, grasp why they have left, and what they need.

Yes, resources are slim. Yet, if we want to counteract the horrors that humans are constantly inflicting on one another, we need to step up with what we consider to be “humanity,” recognizing ourselves in the other, welcoming people so that they too can have a reasonable life. Mudah shares in the short bio on the book cover that he is one of a tiny few from Dzaleka who have been selected to go to Canada to study and be resettled. He has successfully completed multiple degrees, yet ironically, he writes that now he “naturally” works as a mailman. To put it mildly, life for a resettled Rwandan in North America is not easy.  And what Mudah does not share is what happened to his family. Has his opportunity for resettlement worsened his isolation and further torn apart his family?

Novels such as this one that capture the emotional, physical, economic, and social truths of refugee experiences can contribute to empathic understanding. What would an immigration policy built on compassion look like? What would an immigration policy look like had its creators or implementors read this book?