WHEN I WAS FIVE YEARS OLD, there was an afternoon when people came to our house carrying spare clothes in their bags. My father seemed to know some of them, but not all. There must have been a dozen strangers in our courtyard. They were frightened and apologetic.“Don’t worry, you’re safe here, ” I heard my father say. “Relax and have a drink.” There was one strange boy about my age. His shorts were filthy. There were cuts on his feet, as if he had been walking a long way. We looked at each other from across the courtyard.

I asked my mother what was happening, and she told me that there was trouble in the capital city. The white men who had been in control were having problems. Some bad things had happened, and these people who had come to visit us were trying to get away from bad men. They would be staying awhile.

We all slept outside that first night, and it was a bit of an adventure to be under the open sky. The adults smoked tobacco and talked in low voices.

On the second night I asked my father why we were sleeping outside and he told me the truth: “Because if somebody comes to burn the house down we will not cook to death inside it.” The people who had come to stay with us were known as “Tutsis, ” he said, and there were people roaming about who hated them. It was hard for me to understand because they looked just like us.

I understood years later that our guests that November week had been fleeing widespread massacres in the wake of what was called the “Hutu Revolution of 1959.” It was also when the tactic of burning down the enemy’s houses was pioneered. Those who tried to protect the Tutsi were considered targets as well. To shelter the enemy was to become the enemy.

History is serious business in my country. You might say that it is a matter of life and death.