Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

A Hymen Tale

Winner of the 2026 American Literary Review Award in Fiction, Judged by Olufunke Grace Bankole

There is something about returning to a place where you once could have died. Especially one that was twenty-five years in your past. Your trauma was born here, a frantic cry-baby that had now grown into a bullish adult in your subconscious. For many years now, it no longer made your heart race or skip, but your life’s reel still flashed before your eyes every single time you remembered Rwanda… 

[A merry Christmas in Nyamata. Noheri nziza n’umwaka mushya muhire in multiple voices → Classroom with oversized uniform → Football games at lunch break → End of year results → Church choir → First girlfriend → ID checks → Hutu Power → igisope → Studio sessions → RTLM → Two dead presidents → Blood spurts → Mangled bodies → Metal box → America.]

You’d choke on the ever-so familiar smell of death, wriggle and shiver as you imagined yourself in the confines of being one with mother earth, soil, roots, worms, and utter darkness, or worse, decaying in a field of corpses at the mercy of red-eyed vultures.

But not today, even as the bogey-location transcended the walls of your mind to the vision before your eyes in the airplane window. You still could not answer the simple question you’d asked yourself since booking the New York to Kigali flight four days before. Yes, your mother pushed for you to return, and yes, you saw the campaign video, showcasing the growth of Rwanda since the 1994 genocide—a twenty-five-year remembrance which made you wonder how the realities embedded in your subconscious and this new one could be of the same place. But your mother was not there to push you now, and it wasn’t the first video you’d seen in all those years, so you knew those really weren’t the answers.

What am I doing? Why am I here? Why now?

Your mind was at it again, holding you to account as you wriggled your way out of the aircraft, luggage-free, your life-reel scrolling in a frenzy before your eyes… 

[Blue and brown secondary school uniform → First girlfriend → Love letters → igisope → Studio sessions → Two dead presidents → Interahamwe roadblock. Multiple killings → Hunger → UNAMIR → Nigerian passport → Wobbling in the darkness → America.]

You trudged along with the rest of the passengers, shoes, walking sticks, and luggage tyres traversing the floor from the aircraft to the arrivals checkpoint. Yes, you had travelled through this airport before but stuffed in a metal box, so, of the airport, all you remembered was the pitch-darkness in that box. Seeing it now, everything looked new and orderly, just as it was advertised in the campaign video. Yet, you felt a sense of gloom as dark and tense as being carried aboard a plane in that box twenty-five years ago. 

Soon it was your turn, your American passport transferring from your hand to that of the officer behind the desk. She peered into the data-page and looked up at your face. A few moments later, she handed the passport over and waved you away with a smile.

Before you stepped out of the airport, you made sure to connect to the airport Wi-Fi so you could hail a Uber. Now stepping outside to locate the car park, the questions were much louder in your head. You had no answers for what you were doing, why you were here, or why now. You did not even have a hotel booked. You had no living relatives, and even if you did, they’d likely be in Nyamata. You were loaded with depressing memories of the place. Your memories of Kigali weren’t any better. When, in 1969, your father returned to Rwanda from France with his then Nigerian girlfriend—your mother—they had settled in Kigali, but following the Tutsi killings of 1973, he relocated the family to his hometown, Nyamata, to protect your mother and you from Kigali’s potent Tutsi discrimination. You returned to Kigali for university, and it was then that you truly understood it. In Nyamata, you hardly had to show your ID for anything, but in Kigali, they would ask for it before you could breathe in air if they could. You quickly learned that the Tutsi label you carried meant you were a marked man. You couldn’t wait to run back to Nyamata when you got the chance, especially because, after graduation, you tried for two years to get a good job in Kigali with no luck. You worked in the post office since your uni days, but delivering mails to sometimes unfriendly recipients had lost its appeal to you… 

[Father’s burial → Mother’s heartbreak → Post office trips → ID checks → Trekking through the city → Hundreds of stamped envelopes → Writing by the dim lamp → Job applications → ID checks → Checking through hundreds of envelopes → No reply → Back to Nyamata.] 

It was the old post office that you put as your destination for your Uber ride. The sun was high in the sky and the heat was boiling your skin, yet your subconscious still wore the gloom of the escape box and made everything look dark. You took a panoramic sweep of the scenery in one direction, and before your eyes could make their way back the other way, the Toyota Corolla car was already there, the plate number matching the one in the app. A tall, young man with broad shoulders and chiselled arms alighted, smiling at you. 

You peered into the app for the driver’s name. Your bubble of gloom shed a layer of darkness as you read it.

“Mutara?” You called to the young man, a little embarrassed that you didn’t see the name beforehand. 

“Yes, sir,” his smile had grown wider, his rows of white teeth sharply contrasting his ebony shade. “Murakaza neza. Mr. Survivor?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” you smiled back, stepping into the back of the car as he held the door for you. When he had settled into the driver seat, you said, “But Survivor is not my real name, of course. I just use it for the app. I’m actually Mutara too.”

“Oh,” he smiled through the rear-view mirror, sticking the key in the ignition and spurting the car into life. “That’s great to know, sir.”

Somehow, a sense of familiarity was there in the car, and it shed another layer of darkness of your gloom. Yet, the reels from your past here kept speeding across your mind’s eye as the airport and its environs began to speed past in the window… 

[Interahamwe roadblock. Machete swish → Blood spurts → Mutara! → Umuriro. Plenty of fire → The metallic smell of blood → Mangled bodies. Corpses → Mutara! → Climbing over back-fence → Metal box → Cramped limbs → America → Mr. Survivor!] 

Yes, this was Kigali, the same one you used to roam with a sackful of mails and legs layered with dust, but the roads were paved and with almost no single dirt in sight. It was only a few minutes into the journey, but the sense of orderliness outside of the car’s window was striking. There was no armed militia, Interahamwe or Impuzamugambi. You couldn’t tell the Hutu from the Tutsi or the Twa. It was only by the driver’s name that you knew he was most likely Tutsi. You wondered if you would have felt safe in this car if he had told you a name that was most likely Hutu. You shuddered and shook your head.

How was it that the first person you met outside of the airport introduced himself with your exact name, one that you only used when filling out official documents; one that most of your new friends over the past twenty-five years in America didn’t know you bore. You always felt that it was better that way. All those gruelling hours you spent cramped in that box—trudging over bodies for over an hour in a van from Nyamata to Kigali, before you were moved onto an aircraft and away from Rwanda—were like a nine-month term that had rebirthed you into this new person. Rwanda was supposed to be like the place babies went into the belly from, wiped from their memory afterward. For you, the memories refused your divorce. The name was a trigger you’d rather not engage. 

But today, it didn’t matter. In fact, you felt a sliver of excitement at such a coincidence. This boy here made an impression with how polite he was. A softness flowed from his rich smile despite the hardness of his features. It reminded you a lot about yourself, back when you were also a fervent smiler. But the hollows in his cheeks were a telltale malnutrition sign. An obvious fade ran across the collar of his shirt. You had grown so accustomed to reports of young people getting involved in one get-rich-quick scheme or the other, you told yourself he must be from a good home to be here making an honest living. But Uber drivers were well off in the US, weren’t they? This car is probably not his, you thought.

“What would you like to listen to, sir?” Mutara asked, his eyes seeking yours in the rearview mirror, questioning as though he had been listening to your thoughts…

[Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines. RTLM. Hutu Power Radio. Radio Genocide → Two dead presidents → Kill the cockroaches. Cut down the tall trees → Machete swishes. Gun shots. Explosions → Mangled bodies. Bloodied Corpses → Mfasha!]

“Certainly no radio,” you winced. “If you have any original Rwandan music, igisope, that would be nice.” 

“Oh yes, I have some,” his voice beamed with excitement. “I could play you my own demo if you don’t mind.”

You had hoped for some nostalgic flavour, something to connect your senses back to your days singing backup with a band at Wake-Up House. There was nothing else for you to do in Nyamata after you arrived from Kigali. Your mother wanted better. Your father was long buried then. You missed him, and now you missed your mother two, buried only months ago after she died in a Utah hospital. You had to admit to yourself, you missed igisope too. But now Mutara was going to play you some new school flavour. You weren’t sure you wanted that, but instead of saying no, you nodded and said, “Of course.”

A CD slide, a few button crunches, some whirring, and the car was suddenly filled with melodious sounds pouring from the speakers. You told yourself it wasn’t that bad after all, until vocals came over the beat and sent you into a spiral. In a split-second, you were an audience of a frantic pictorial rush. A quick death that had you, but spat you back to life… 

[Rehearsals. Vocals in alto, soprano, harmonizing → Studio sessions → Live performance → Alice’s smile → Anger. Jealousy → Sex → Blood. No blood → Rage → Alice’s tears → Two dead presidents → Interahamwe roadblock → Machete swishes. Multiple killings. A massacre → A field of burnt offering → Mangled bodies. Carcasses → Destitute cries for help. Mfasha! → UNAIR → Metal box → Silence. Darkness. Cramps → America.]

The shaking of your hand, the sudden sweat dots on your face, the bulge of your eyes, the erectness of the hairs on your body, all things that came with the death you just survived. Your stomach rumbled and you had to summon some innermost will to keep yourself from farting, or pooping in your seat. This was your trauma when it was still young, when you had absolutely no control over what the memories did to you. To your horror, Mutara’s eyes were there in the mirror, watching as your demons pummelled you.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said, his eyes fleeting between the road and the mirror. “Is everything alright?”

“How did you get those lyrics,” you blurted, rather aggressively. “Did you write them yourself?”

“No, I did not,” he said calmly, his gaze firmly rooted on the road now. 

Somehow, his answer calmed your nerves. This was intellectual theft, and if he had said yes, then he definitely was in on it. But he was in on it quite alright, you were listening to the song here in his car, and he had introduced it as his own demo. 

Again, as though he read your mind, he added, “It is an inheritance from my father, given to me by my mother.”

You had recovered from the initial shock, but your heart still raced as though trying to tear through your chest. Your eyes narrowed again as you took in the boy’s features in the mirror, the song still heavy in the car’s closed space, the familiarity of the lyrics unmistakable. 

In April of 1994, your first song was finally going to make a radio debut. Your life was finally going to change. Perhaps Alice’s too. She had lost her parents in a car crash while you both were still in secondary school. When you left Nyamata for Kigali, she instead went to learn a trade—hair weaving. By this time, your mother was well aware of your relationship with her, and she did not support.

“She’s a Hutu girl,” your mother said with such alarm. 

You wondered how she could discriminate, when she, a Yoruba woman from Nigeria, had married a Tutsi Rwandan against her people’s wish. But she was right. Even though Alice’s parents liked you when they were alive, they never quite liked the idea of you dating their daughter. Her uncle whom she now lived with was even more hawkish. Traitors! That’s what Hutus who married Tutsis were called. You came home for holiday one time, and your mother had a copy of Kangura—a Hutu propaganda magazine—waiting for you. It was too hateful to read, but you saw the word in there yourself: “Traitors”. 

This had deterred neither you nor Alice. She worked for a Tutsi boss and most of her hair braiding colleagues were Tutsi. Yet, your difference soon became an excuse for many of your silly quarrels. When you first got to Kigali, you had made sure to write to her every month, frequenting the post office so much that you eventually found your first job there. You wanted to know how she was doing, if her asthma was under control, if she didn’t miss you too much. By your third year, she was hardly writing back, dwindling the frequency of your words traveling to her. A few friends told you they had seen different men visiting her uncle’s house. You had exams in two weeks, but you travelled back home with a convulsing heart, and she swore to you that there was no one else. She was just being overworked at her job. Your love for each had been strained, but it was too strong to simply die. When you eventually moved back to Nyamata, it was mostly because of her. Your mother knew, but what could she do? When you took that singing job at Wake-Up House, your mother could swear she put you up to it, because asides when you used to sing in the choir, the only other times she’d ever heard you sing, you were singing to the Hutu girl. 

“If they ask you to pick between me and her, you’ll probably choose her,” your mother shook her head, her lips a crescent pointing downward. 

Again, she was right, because when, on the day the killings started, you rushed back from an aborted trip to Kigali, it was to Alice’s place you first ran—her workplace where she also lived by then. To the best of your recollection, it was the first casualty site in Nyamata. Alice and the other inhabitants were not just macheted, the entire wooden structure was razed to the ground. Of course, you could only watch the ashen destruction in hiding and wail like a child. There were no survivors, a fleeing Tutsi had told you…  

[Alice’s tears → Two dead presidents → Interahamwe machete → A massacre → Kangura. Traitors → Umuriro. Plenty of fire → A field of burnt offering → Destitute cries. Mfasha!]

But now, this young man was telling you about an inheritance he got through his mum. Could this all be a huge mix-up? Your eyes fixed on him in the mirror, you wondered how you didn’t notice the resemblance earlier when he arrived. You always knew it wasn’t the campaign video that brought you back home. The questions were there again, dancing across your mind, this time not as confusing, or as daunting. 

What am I doing? Why am I here? Why now?

Mutara had just pulled up at the post office, an entirely different, more modern building, but this could not be your destination anymore. Perhaps you were on the road to your answer here. So, you cleared your throat and prodded, “And your mum, she’s alive?”

“Of course.”

“I’d love to meet her,” you said. “If you don’t mind, please.”

“Okay,” his calmness was almost irritating. “I’ll give you my number, so you can call me when you’re ready. I’ll take you to her.”

“I mean now,” your eyes pleaded. 

He looked at you in the mirror, no element of surprise in his eyes. “But she doesn’t live in Kigali,” he said. “She lives in Nyamata and that’s over an hour from here.”

“Nyamata?” your eyes widened. “Yes, I don’t mind. If you could take me to her please.”

[Secondary school → First girlfriend. Alice → First kiss → Studio sessions → Kangura. Hutu Ten Commandments → Birthday greetings. Isabukuru nziza → Alice’s smile → No blood → Alice’s tears → Two dead presidents → A field of burnt offering → Mfasha! → A long walk to church → Trapped in a box. Road wobble → Silence → America.]

The boy gave no response, but engaged the car’s gear and reversed into the road. You did not think this person, his mother, was your Alice. Alice was dead. She’d been dead for twenty-five years. But this person lived in Nyamata of all places. Perhaps there was a blip in the system, a malfunction in the universe, and by some weird chance, she was somehow Alice? A rumble ran through your bowels at the thought. Since your escape, you had many reasons for staying away from Rwanda, even as others returned to build. But Alice’s death was one mental lockdown that weighed more in your subconscious than the general trauma of the genocide. You had not parted on good terms. A fact that you’d never truly confronted, and one whose haunting compelled you more to stay away from Rwanda than all your other reasons combined.

“Kigali to Paris, we go go, we go o…”

The lyrics came at you, wafting you into that evening on your 24th birthday. April 3, 1994, an Easter Sunday. Wake-Up House was filled with merrymakers. You were not the only one celebrating. Instead of singing backup for the usual medley, Samson, your bandleader, had allowed you to perform your newly recorded song. It was this same song—different instrumental, but same lyrics, same melody, same song. It was an ecstatic audience, demanding an encore three or four times. But even in your excitement, your eyes were glued on Alice, a guest at Wake-Up for the first time ever. You couldn’t believe how beautiful and shapely she looked in the shimmering purple dress she’d always had but never worn. Her makeup was just as bright, with matching purple glitters on her lashes and around her cheeks. Her jaw-lifting smile was the most charming adornment. All your bandmates wanted to greet and give her a hug. Your heart endured an irregularity in its beating as man after man made advances at her while you performed, sitting with her, talking to her, smiling…It was the smiles that got to you, and how she smiled back, flirted back. Even though a suit-wearing man with an air of importance had called you to his table to have a chat, you couldn’t shake off the consuming rage in your heart.

“I’m only here for the holidays,” the man had said. “I’m back to Kigali tomorrow. Come meet me on Radio Rwanda next Friday. I’ll give you an interview and play your song.”

Back in your room, Alice’s words, touches, efforts, all bounced off a cold shoulder. You never knew she was so cheap, you said. Despite you agreeing to be celibate until marriage just to make her happy, she shamelessly threw herself at every man the very first time you took her out to a bar. Was this how loose she was all the while you were back in Kigali? How were you to know if she was indeed still a virgin?

Perhaps these words were why she decided to give it up that evening, begging you to finally have it, as proof that she was indeed yours and not interested in anyone else. Her smile was just her natural self, she said. You knew this, but jealousy was a wicked drug. It beclouded you even as you gave in to her pleas, even as you pulled her close and dissolved in the heat emanating between you both, even as you pushed amidst grunts and tears, planting yourself in her—in any woman—for the first time. And when it was over and you saw no blood, the intoxication returned. 

“So, you’ve been lying to me?”

“Lie, Mutara? Lie about what?”

“It was supposed to be your first time. Where is the blood?”

How embarrassed did you feel playing back that question now, just as you’d felt every single time you played it back over the years. What did the ignorant young you know about the hymen? Nada! Zilch! How you wished you could go back and detox yourself of your senseless rage; if time could reverse, how you’d stop at the point where you asked her to leave and take the words back. But those were beyond you, just as the plane crashing the Wednesday after was too. Who could have predicted the gory events that two presidents falling out of the sky would trigger? You heard the announcements on RTLM, the Hutu Power radio, on Thursday morning, and like your mother, you feared for the aftermath. But you also had a live-changing radio interview to attend the next day. So, on Friday morning, you were out under the cover of dusk before your mother was up from bed, seated in a bus heading to Kigali, until the vitriol on the radio made the driver pull to a stop only about fifteen minutes into the journey. He had spotted machete-wielding Interahamwe ahead.

“How many Tutsi or Twa in the bus?” The driver asked.

All hands went up, but his. The next few seconds were a rude jolt, machetes flying into the air and crashing into bloody spurts at the Interahamwe roadblock ahead. Two men sliced open like cattle on a butcher’s slab. The speed of the driver’s reverse caught the Interahamwe’s attention. They gave chase, but they were never matching the adrenaline of a motored engine fuelled by fear. All you could think of was Alice, but despite risking your life to waddle through the confusion building up in town, her place was a smothering field of burnt offering by the time you arrived there. Not with her chronic asthma could she have survived such a ravenous combustion even if she had somehow survived the macheting. You were never to see her again… 

Or maybe not. Because Mutara had now turned in at a junction that your recognized as a part of you, each inch covered an unearthing of a past you thought was buried for good. This was the area you grew up in, the street where your father’s house stood. Even with the paved roads and gentrified buildings, you knew this place like the back of your hand, etched into your subconscious and now coming to life despite your jubilee-long exile. 

Your mother’s voice floated into your mind, begging you after all those years, to return even if it was just for a day, because Rwanda was peaceful and prosperous now, and your father still had a house in Nyamata. It could help you heal; she pleaded. But you had only looked at her and shook your head. She couldn’t possibly be serious. Or did she forget how shaken you found her in that same house? A neighbour had come to knock before you arrived. 

“Your husband was a good man,” he had told her. “I’ve known your family for long. I don’t want to kill you, but others will be here, and they will. They will also take your things. Leave now so I can take them before anyone else gets here. Think about it.” 

Her voice shook as she recalled his words. A few moments later, you both were climbing over the back fence, finding your way through bushes and shrubs, alongside other fleeing Tutsis, to a church you stopped attending since leaving Nyamata for uni, walking over quarter of a mile with your hearts wedged in your throats. Did she forget how when UNAIR arrived, they refused to take anyone who was not a foreigner. How her Nigerian passport gave her a spot in their van, a spot she was not going to take unless her son was coming too. Had she not exchanged her trinkets, would the officer have agreed to fit you in a box? How many days was it before it reached you, news of the gruesome end faced by the thousands of people you left behind at the church? And before that, wasn’t it a miracle to everyone, including yourself, how you had not passed out or died by the time you were freed from the box? How long did you have to live in a hospital bed as a result…? 

[A smoke-filled sky → Umuriro. Plenty of fire → The metallic smell of blood. The sulphuric smell of rotten blood → Bloodied bodies. Mangled bodies. Corpses. Carcasses → Destitute cries for help. Mfasha! Calamity → A nightmare under a rising and setting sun.] 

From the main streets of Kigali, Mutara had glided through thickets along the road, in and out of small towns for the next hour. Before arriving now on the street where you were raised as a child, you had taken in the unfamiliarity on the familiar roads of Nyamata from the back of the car. You hardly recognised any building, even though you recognised the town. When a familiar, lonely site came into view in the window, you could swear it was the old church. A sign by the roadside read, UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

What am I doing? Why am I here? Why now?

“How old are you, my boy,” you asked in a subdued tone.

“Twenty-four, sir.”

[Secondary school → First girlfriend. Alice. Love notes → First kiss → Birthday greetings. Isabukuru nziza → Studio sessions → Alice’s smile → First sex twenty-five years ago. No blood → Alice’s tears → Two dead presidents → A field of burnt offering → Mfasha! → Long walk to the church → Hunger → Tears → Grief → America → Trauma.]

A little boy tore off a building wall and ran up the road. On seeing him, Mutara swerved dangerously to a stop, opening the door and bolting out of the car. There was surely some danger, but your heart was too heavy to trigger a flight reaction. You simply pushed the door open and walked in the direction of Mutara’s haste, arriving at the only unchanged building on this entire street, older, faded, a web of cracks visible along its walls, but your father’s house alright. It bore plenty scars, but nothing about it betrayed signs that it witnessed a genocide

A crowd stood over a figure sprawled across the floor. The latter moments of a seizure, or an asthma attack? Mutara had torn through the crowd and was cradling the figure, an inhaler clutched in the figure’s grip. Heart thumping like a bass drum, you took a few steps closer, pressed against bodies as you peered over the crowd… 

[A merry christmas in the village. Noheri nziza n’umwaka mushya muhire in multiple voices → Classroom with oversized uniform → Football games at lunch break → End of year results → High school → First girlfriend → Alice, having an asthma attack.]

Your fleeting reels spun to a screeching halt, pausing time, a lone image frozen in the frames. A cloud hovered above your head as you beheld it. In your bubble, an orchestra played in the background. The face was tired and worn, cheekbones jutting against a stretched and sunken cheek. But the beauty remained evident in her eyes, and even though she wasn’t smiling just then, you could tell that the charm and magic of her smile never left. You need not ask yourself those tormenting questions anymore. The living ghost of your first love, Alice, was what had dragged you back here.

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim grew up on his grandmother’s telling of African folklore, from where he developed a passion for literature. Since 2019, when he left an erstwhile career to focus on writing, his work has been published in Transition Magazine, Shenandoah, Zone 3, Ake Review, Typehouse Magazine, Adi Magazine, JMWW, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. Among other honours, Ibrahim has won the Creative Future Writers’ Awards and the Quramo Writers’ Prize. His work has been selected for Best Small Fictions anthology, and has been a finalist for Faber Children’s FAB Prize, Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, and twice for the Moon City Short Fiction Award.