The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

“And then what do you think happened? Can you guess what happened next?”

As a little girl in Kigali, Wamariya has a nanny named Mukamana who tells her fantastical stories. Wamariya especially loves that Mukamana’s “stories never [have] a set ending” (15), that she lets Wamariya determine the plot herself. She recalls how in one story, the girl who smiled beads escapes into the distance and eludes capture, leaving beautiful beads in her wake. Because Mukamana allowed her to dictate the story, the girl who smiled beads became “a means to bend and mold reality that I could grasp and accept” (210). Wamariya identifies with the girl because the girl is “truly special, undeniably strong and brave—a dream, a superstar, a goddess of sorts” (210); the story allows her “to believe those things were possible and that they might be true about me too” (210). Because the story is about “one who had power over her life” (210), it represents to Wamariya unlimited possibilities. The girl is a metaphor for Wamariya herself as she recreates her identity and reclaims her agency.

“You are unwanted, by everyone. You are a refugee.” 

It is not long after fleeing from her grandmother’s house that Wamariya begins to feel that she has changed “from being a person who is away from home to a person with no home at all” (29). As she and Claire move from place to place, Wamariya feels “like a feather, molted and mangled, drifting through space” (113). Transient and constantly focused on survival, she feels her life is without value or purpose. She also describes how time seems to stand still in refugee camps, where people live in “a horrible groove” (73). This feeling of being adrift impacts her ability to forge her identity: years later, she still feels “so old and so young,” as if she is “so many people and nobody at all” (181).

“You could walk toward town and ask the farmers to share whatever they had, though they also had nothing. If they were not there you took a few sweet potatoes or some corn, and in return you left a sweet potato vine or a shirt, to let the farmer know that you recognized taking his food was wrong. You’d just run out of choices.”

Despite the dehumanization they endure in the refugee camps, the refugees demonstrate humanity by attempting to repay farmers for food they take without asking. They steal “with a code,” always leaving “something to grow back—clip a vine and tuck it into the soil or plant a seed” (70). These passages show the refugees’ humanity and their desperation. In the camps they must cling to their identities as well as their humanity.

“Some part of me believes that if I can just find the right arrangement of pieces—if I can string all the beads in the right order, situate them in the right light—I can create a narrative of my life that looks beautiful to me and makes sense.”

Wamariya frequently describes her complex relationship with time, which “refuse[s] to move in an orderly fashion” (33). She writes that her “life does not feel logical, sequential, or inevitable” (33) and that in an effort to “make sense” of her life, she “collect[s] primary sources” (33) like toys or ticket stubs. Rebuilding oneself after trauma is a primary theme in The Girl Who Smiled Beads; Wamariya must reconcile her past with her present, even as people make assumptions about her. Part of the journey she describes is her gathering the tools to do so.

“How could one place have such excess while in another, just a plane ride away, people starved?” 

At the pastor’s house in Chicago, Wamariya is stunned by the size of the refrigerator and ponders the contrast between the plenty in America and the starvation she recently left in Zambia. Though she and Claire were excited to go to America, a place where one could “grow rich” and where “somebody would take your hand and give you everything” (204), Wamariya notices that the comfort enjoyed by Americans frequently renders them incapable of taking the experiences of those who have suffered seriously.

“I lost track of who I was. I’d become a negative, a receptacle of need.”

Because “staying alive was so much work” (43), Wamariya focuses purely on survival, and in the process she loses a sense of her human identity. She must worry about what she will eat and drink and where she will sleep; she is “so consumed with survival” that she forgets “how to enjoy pleasure” (76). In new situations, she asks herself, “How do I survive here?” (79). As she fights to keep herself from being overrun by bugs, she feels “worthless except as food” (50), and “[e]very surface, every body part, [is] a battleground in the struggle to remain a person” (45). Rebuilding her identity after dehumanization becomes part of her journey when she goes to America.

“So many times, in our former life, I’d had to become someone else in order to stay out of a refugee camp or out of jail, to stay alive […] Now I had become this strange creature: an American teenager.”

While adjusting to life in America, Wamariya plays the part that is expected of her. In the Thomases’ house, she eats all her food even when she does not like it, and she participates in activities at school. She depends on her “refugee skills,” which enable her to “be who I needed to be and get what there was to get” (56). She knows that if she “performed well in [her] role as a student, people responded with happiness and pride and wanted to pour more resources” into her (56). Her ability to perform the expected role, while ensuring her survival, impacts her ability to rebuild her own identity. Even as an adult, when speaking in front of audiences, she “play[s] the part” of herself (239). She must “package [her] story in a way that mattered” (239) and “be relevant and not too frightening” (240). However, “no role” feels “right” (239). The toll this constant readjusting takes is illustrated when, in a high school improv class, she is asked to “express” herself, and she acts like “[a] kid who came home from school and did her homework” but feels as if she is “revealing nothing” of herself (126). Molding to an identity eases assimilation, but it is another manifestation of dehumanization.

“I work every day now to erase that language of ruin, to destroy it and replace it with language of my own.”

Wamariya describes how in Rwanda, girls are “supposed to be reserved, contained, nearly opaque” (13) and how her mother discourages her curiosity. In this passage Wamariya explains that girls’ and women’s value is dependent on their bodies, for their families will financially benefit from their dowries. However, a girl’s value can be easily eliminated if she is raped. Girls who are raped are “polluted” and “worthless” (60), unable to financially benefit their families. Wamariya and Claire both demonstrate that this “language of ruin” has impacted them. Wamariya tries to “reclaim [her] power” so that she does not “fear men” (246), and she hesitates to discuss marriage with her boyfriend because marriage feels like possession. Claire obeys Rob when he tells her to return to Rwanda, for she was raised to believe “she had to do what her husband wanted her to do” (155). Claire’s excitement at buying herself chicken gizzards, which are usually reserved for men, and her belief that they “tasted like victory” (151) suggests rejection of the subordination of women to men.

“This is just how it starts: all cute and adorable and they’re buying you soda and candy and the next thing you know, they want to kill you.”

Wamariya is invited to the mall and to sleepovers with American teenagers, but she stops going to the sleepovers because, while “[i]t was easy to perform the rituals of casual friendship,” she does not “want to bond” (64). As refugees, Wamariya and Claire learned not to trust people, for even those who help may want something in return. Because they have lived such different lives, Wamariya believes these girls “were not my peers at all” (64).

“I now felt I’d made a mistake in Uvira. I’d let my guard down. I’d allowed myself to feel I belonged. But there was no real belonging—not anymore. There was only coming and going and coming and going and dying. There was no point in letting anybody get close.”

To escape impending violence, Claire and Wamariya leave Uvira, Zaire, where Wamariya enjoyed vibrant, happy times with kind Mama Nepele and the rest of Rob’s extended family, and move to Kazimia. Wamariya is devastated to leave the home where she finally felt a sense of safety. Though the people in Kazimia are good to her, she does not want to call any “new people Auntie” (89). The pain of saying goodbye to another family is too great, and she decides she will not get close to another family again. It is one more way in which she is forced to harden to survive.

“I did not understand the point of the word genocide then. I resent and revile it now. The word is tidy and efficient. It holds no true emotion.”

When she is in eighth grade, Wamariya is introduced to the word “genocide.” The word is too cold and “clinical” to encompass her experiences of actual genocide. It cannot describe how she “wished to be invisible” (93) or the pain of losing loved ones or the “never-ending pain” of survivors (94). In addition, while “genocide” can refer to the Rwandan massacres, the Holocaust, or other events, they are not the same, and one “cannot line up the atrocities like a matching set” (95). The word cannot embody the scale of the slaughter or the tragedy of human beings dehumanizing each other. The word itself is “dehumanizing” (94) because it does not reflect the individuals genocide actually affects.

“It was categorically, dimensionally, fundamentally wrong. It was like trying to store a tornado in a chest of drawers. That was not how the universe worked.”

Wamariya must rebuild both her identity and her vision of the world. As she learns about the history behind the genocide, she tries “to piece that world back together, but the idea of one group of people killing another group of people—people they lived with, people they knew—that chunk of knowledge could never fit itself in [her] mind” (96-97). Wamariya similarly struggles to reconcile what the world should be with what it actually is when she visits Antietam National Battlefield and hears how 23,000 people were killed or wounded in one day. When she visits the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, she is forced to let go of “the fantasy that [she] now inhabited a better world” (105). The knowledge that she does not, in fact, live in a country that “did not have wars at home” (105) causes her to break down in tears. People’s struggle to acknowledge the world’s violence is evident in the wailing of people at the Remembrance Day program in Rwanda: Wamariya explains that they “needed to acknowledge facts that are incompatible with a stable faith in humanity” (233).

“We Africans could kill each other if we wanted. We were not anybody else’s problem.”

Wamariya explains that the Belgians, who brought eugenics to Rwanda, claimed the Tutsis were superior because they “were more like Europeans,” which led “the races to antagonize each other” (98). Though many countries promised genocide would happen “never again” after the Holocaust, the international community declined to intervene in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Later, Wamariya discusses how “paternalistic foreigners” who believe themselves “better and brighter” attempted “to save, enlighten, and modernize Africa” (140). These passages illustrate the role racism played in the scale of the genocide.

“You were a victim because you were less worthy, less good, and less strong than all the non-victims of the world.”

People’s “worldview” is “upended” (117) when they learn that a refugee is intelligent and accomplished because people assume refugees are victims “due to some inherent, irrevocable weakness” (118). Claire rejects these assumptions by making as much money as she can to create for herself a better life. Wamariya also describes how people “panic” upon learning that she is “not defeated” (241) because they see themselves as “more powerful” (241). In these passages Wamariya illustrates another manifestation of the dehumanization of refugees. She also suggests that those who dismiss refugees as inferior miss out on a valuable learning experience, for they do not understand that “I could help them too” (241).

“None of us were the same people who’d lived together in that house in Kigali. Those people had died. We had all died.”

When Claire and Wamariya finally get in touch with their parents, the conversation is stilted and uncomfortable, for they are not the same people they were before the genocide. The fact that Wamariya no longer wants to tell her mother about her experiences despite having longed to do so illustrates how their bonds have been taxed and damaged. When her parents and siblings move to America, Wamariya finds that “[t]ime had opened such a gap” and that “[n]othing was fixed” (181). Looking at her mother across the table one evening, Wamariya realizes how much they have all changed; though their reunion on Oprah’s show was meant to be heartwarming, “[t]he fantasy of reunion was a lie” (145). Wamariya attempts to reconnect with her mother when she takes her on a European vacation; however, mother and daughter exist “parallel to each other,” on opposite sides of “a giant chasm” (260). These passages illustrate the devastating effects of time and trauma.

“I had to be impermeable, self-sufficient […] I didn’t trust or accept help, especially from men, because when people extend their help to you, they feel you owe them.”

Claire instructs Wamariya early on “never to accept gifts” because “[t]here are no gifts” (65). She and Wamariya both learn that when people give you something, “[t]hey believe they have the right to take advantage of you later,” often when “you are at your lowest” (130). They remain wary of “[t]he whole dynamic of giving and receiving” (140) even in America. Wamariya is overwhelmed by the kindness of those who receive them in Chicago; she is “so bruised and mistrustful” (36) that she cannot understand their generosity. Having for so long tried to avoid becoming targets, they cannot “relax” or “enjoy this plush new world” (36).

“She asked for no pity, no permission. She was a fact of life, an equal. Nobody needed to know more.”

Wamariya frequently describes Claire’s persistence and indomitability. Claire refuses to accept life as a refugee, believing it is not “the life she deserved” (74). Understanding that “[t]he world owes you nothing” and that “nobody deserves more or less than the next person” (148), she is determined to work hard and earn the life she wants. As a refugee, Claire keeps “one dignified outfit” (148) so that, wherever she is, she can present herself as an equal and obtain a job. Throughout their journey she creates opportunities for herself, running a black market butcher stand, washing clothes, or selling pasta. Claire believes that “to have a life she wanted, to hold on to her identity,” she had “to retain that light from within” (66).

“I want to make people understand that boxing ourselves into tiny cubbies based on class, race, ethnicity, religion—anything, really—comes from a poverty of mind, a poverty of imagination.”

Wamariya recalls how her mother used to cut an orange into pieces and see if they would “take more than [their] share” (176). Though they had enough oranges to each have their own, her mother was trying to teach them how to share. Wamariya thinks about “how there are people who have so much and people who have so little” (176). She believes that “true survival of the body and soul requires creativity, freedom of thought, collaboration” (177). Rather than discriminate against each other, people should combine their talents and resources for a common cause. Even giving “establish[es] hierarchy” (178). She concludes that sharing is the sole path toward equality, for sharing is the only time when people do not insist “on being [a] savior” (178).

“I had not picked bugs out of my feet and watched my beaten sister nurse her baby while fleeing from one refugee camp to another to be lectured about human ethics by a man in corduroys.”

At Hotchkiss Wamariya is frustrated when peers in her philosophy class ponder a “thought experiment” about whether a boat captain should sacrifice a young or old passenger to save a sinking ship. While this is “an abstract question” (182) to her classmates, Wamariya has actually lived this experience, and her pain is minimized when students from affluent families who “were headed to careers at Goldman Sachs” (184) muse on it at a table in the library. Wamariya judges that her professor’s request that she be “less emotional” is “meant to augment his own comfort while ignoring [hers]” (183). Wamariya frequently finds that her American peers have little concept of the suffering she has endured. This is also demonstrated by the mundane questions she receives about how often she showered and by her classmates’ taking photographs at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

“I wanted everybody to turn, stare, and say, ‘Oh my goodness, look at that beautiful dress. Who do we have here?’”

While living in Chibolya, Wamariya washes Claire’s kids, puts on a fancy dress, and walks around the block so she is “seen in the world” (202). She needs the world to “see that [she] is here” (202) and that she exists. While she spends most of her time feeling like “nobody’s child,” during this time she is “proud” (203). This small act is a way for her to regain her identity and self-worth, to fight the dehumanization she has suffered. Wamariya often describes how clothing can change a person’s perception of herself. As a refugee Claire keeps one nice outfit in which to search for a job. When she later returns to Rwanda, Claire wears an expensive dress to show that she is “worthy and valuable,” and that the war “did not destroy” her (262). Wamariya wears five-inch heels at speaking engagements because she wants to be “admired and loved” (241). She buys her mother clothing in Europe so she will “feel special” and “know her worth” (254). When she first arrives in America, she does not fully understand why Mrs. Kline wants to buy her new clothes; however, she later realizes that Mrs. Kline saw that she “needed help loving” herself (60). Clothing is humanizing, a signal of individuality, and it is a powerful tool against subordination.

“I was so scared the person I’d created would be lost, that she was already lost.”

When Wamariya goes to Kenya with a group from Yale, she believes she is returning as “a special native daughter” who is no longer “a socially worthless refugee” but rather an American, a Yale student, with “a certifiably valuable identity” (212). However, when she arrives she finds that assumptions are made about her just as they are in America. She is thought to be a “worker or a whore—not an American, not a Yalie, not the Oprah Girl, not special, not strong, not brave” (215). People believe her to be her white classmates’ translator. At night she defies the dress code and wears spaghetti straps and short skirts even though it is “dangerous and stupid” (216). She does this in an effort to hold on to the identity she has built in America. As she feels herself slipping into the identity she left behind, she tries “to prove that [she] could be like Claire: inviolable” (216). If she can be “rejected” and “disparaged” (216), it would mean her identity is strong.

“So much of Rwanda—so much of the world—struggles with this. When you’re traumatized, your sense of self, your individuality, is beaten up. Your skin color, your background, your pain, your hope, your gender, your faith, it’s all defiled. Those essential pieces of yourself are stolen.”

Just as Wamariya must “re-create […] an identity untouched by everything that’s been used against” her (220), Rwanda must rebuild after trauma, creating a new nation that incorporates but does not succumb to the past. On a trip to Rwanda, Wamariya notices that the country appears to be “holding its chin high, determined not to swivel around to see who might be creeping up from behind” (230). However, “[t]he burden of history, the presence of history, was overwhelming” (230). Though the city of Kigali is clean and there is a beautiful new library with “glass walls” that represent “intelligence, hope, and space” (230), there are armed soldiers everywhere. The nation, like many of its survivors, is bruised but hopeful it can move forward.

“It’s truly impossible to hold all the single experiences of suffering in the world in your mind at the same time. The human brain can’t handle that much pain. You cannot differentiate and empathize with each of those distinct people. You cannot hear each of their stories and recognize every individual as strong and special, and continue on with your day.”

Wamariya observes that after the siege of Aleppo that killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of people, “[t]he world cared briefly about refugees, for that thirty seconds” (242). Awareness is enhanced by a viral photograph of a little boy who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. She describes this brief attention as “filtered, curated horror” (242) that is encouraged by social media personalities who capitalize on the war to flaunt their compassion. This passage is reminiscent of Wamariya’s observation that audience members who hear her speeches sometimes fail to understand that she is only one of millions and that those millions are individuals, not just “dark migrant bodies crammed into a flimsy boat” (241). Though this passage suggests frustration with the superficial interest in refugees, Wamariya understands that people focus on “this one precious baby or this one outstanding adult” (242) because the human mind simply cannot absorb the pain of so many people.