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"My Parents' Bedroom" Reimagined



Then he wanders toward the U.N. soldiers at the corner, their rifles shiny in the twilight. They’re walking away from him, as if they were a mirage. The soldiers won’t wait for him but Jean doesn’t let up. He does everything to get their attention, screaming and crying, tugging at their shirt sleeves. They don’t understand what he says and begin to look around anxiously. Eventually they break free from Jean and disappear into the night. 
We limp on into the chilly night, ascending the stony road into the hills. There’s a smaller mob coming toward us. These are our people on Maman’s side, and they’re all in military clothes.
The next day Jean and I awake to gunshots. I return to the road and look back, our house is burnt to a crisp. Maman is no longer outside on the ground. When I return to Jean I notice a white vehicle coming down the road toward the bush. I quickly run back into the shade of the leaves, but it comes to a halt a few meters before us. 
UN soldiers come out from the front seats. They wear the same uniforms as the ones who left us last night but they aren’t carrying rifles. Looking in our direction, they slowly approached. Jean was still sleeping heavily clutching the crucifix and I held my breath so as to not make a sound. Coming closer and closer… until they stopped, turned around, got back in, and drove off.
Suddenly I run out of the bush and onto the road. They don’t stop driving and soon become just a white blip on the horizon.
______________________________________________________________________________
Since the narrator and Jean are very vulnerable, both as children and because they are both Tutsi and Hutu, they have to hide. Though a group of Tutsi rebels called the Rwandan Patriot Front (RPF) eventually takes over the government, they cannot run away with the Tutsi mob because they might be killed by them too. 
However, they could possibly be saved by outside forces, like the UN soldiers. Unfortunately, the UN soldiers can’t do much to intervene and go so far as to simply ignore small children like Jean just so they don’t feel further guilt. In my alternative ending, I wanted to emphasize the failure and incapibility of the UN to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. 
A bit later into the genocide, the UN started sending out white vehicles to rescue Tutsi minorities and take them to RPF controlled areas. Although the narrator and Jean are determined to survive, the UN soldiers share no spoken language with them and thus appear unhelpful and possibly as threats to their safety.

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