Strength in What Remains

“God is just. God is never unjust. And we will finish them soon. Keep working, keep working. We will finish them soon, we will finish them soon.” 

This is something of a chant Deo hears before and during the Burundi genocide. Kidder later encounters in a museum and compares it to a “satanic inversion of a hymn” (241). 

“I think I sensed something missing: the protective opaqueness that many Americans, maybe especially black Americans, learn to put on for strangers, certainly by the time they are thirty. Deo’s face jumped out at me.” 

The book’s author, Tracy Kidder, describes Deo upon their first meeting in Boston in 2003. He comments on the vulnerability he witnessed when he first saw Deo; this is, perhaps, what drew them together. 

“I thought I could picture him as he was then, a skinny, worried-looking youth, moving from panic to exhaustion and finally giving up all hope of escaping the subway.” 

Kidder envisions the Deo when he first arrived in New York City. On the outside, Deo has changed, but notably, his character remains true and unshakable throughout the narrative. 

“But for all the horror visited on Deo, the list of strangers who had saved him seemed remarkable: the Hutu woman in the banana grove, Muhammad the baggage handler, Chukwu and James O’Malley and above all Nancy and Charlie and Sharon.”

This quotation reveals the importance of the theme having to do with kindness from strangers. Deo could not have achieved as much as he did if he did not encounter such good, helpful people along his journey. 

“I do believe in God. I think God has given so much power to people, and intelligence, and said, ‘Well, you are on your own. Maybe I’m tired, I need a nap. You are mature. Why don’t you look after yourselves?’ And I think he’s been sleeping too much.” 

Here, Kidder offers the reader a bit of insight into Deo’s feelings about God. This is an interesting description of faith—while he claims he believes in God, he still has some criticism, due to the challenges that life presents. 

“Can you imagine that kind of life? It’s terrible. How are you going to think right? With pain everywhere. So it’s been really hard to blame the people who have been slaughtering each other, though I do blame people all the time. They were not themselves. They were something else.” 

Again, the reader is given some direct knowledge about Deo’s beliefs. He is still a kind and loving person who has difficulty blaming the people involved in the genocide; he explains this by claiming these people were “something else,” which makes it easier, in his mind, to place blame elsewhere. 

“Blearily watching this slender young man in his rakish hat and sunglasses, who was carrying himself with what seemed like just the right amount of swagger—not too much to give offense but enough to get things done—I had the feeling that somewhere between the United States and East Central Africa he had become a size larger.” 

Kidder’s description of Deo in this section reveals how much Deo has changed in the face of his circumstances. It is evident, however, that although Deo’s outer appearance may have shifted, his character remains largely unchanged. 

“I didn’t know how to respond to all these bones. I had come expecting to feel the horror of what Murambi memorialized, but I wasn’t sure if I felt enough, or if I felt much of anything.” 

Kidder anticipated feeling more emotional in this moment at the Murambi memorial and instead feels “stupid[ly] self-conscious” (243). It is not the response he anticipated having, which catches him off guard.