Hotel Rwanda

I finally watched "Hotel Rwanda" today, and it had a real effect on me. If you haven't seen it, move heaven and earth to rent it and I think you'll see what I mean.

In an elegantly understated performance, Don Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabagina, a Rwandan hotel manager who sheltered more than 1,000 of his countrymen during the horrible Rwandan genocide of 1994. The movie's been called an "African 'Schindler's List'." Rusesabagina doesn't himself fight, he uses bribes, lies, and as many creative options as he can come up with to buy himself and his hidden people a few more days, a few more hours.

He was the perfect example of a fable Rob and I use to inspire us to always try everything we can think of when in a certain situation. It's the story of a man who is in a king's prison about to be executed. He promises the king that if the king will not kill him, in one year, he will make the king's pet monkey talk. The king agrees, and when the man is back in his cell, his cellmate pounces on him: How can you promise that? You do not know how to do that! And the first man replies, no, I do not. But much can happen in a year. The monkey may die. The king may die. Or, the monkey may talk. Rusesabagina knew that he had to do anything he could to get his people another hour, praying all the while that conditions would change in his favor.

At one point, he tells them: "There will be no rescue, no intervention for us. We can only save ourselves. Many of you know influential people abroad, you must call these people. You must tell them what will happen to us... say goodbye. But when you say goodbye, say it as if you are reaching through the phone and holding their hand. Let them know that if they let go of that hand, you will die. We must shame them into sending help. " And I am ashamed, now, that we did not help.

I remember when I first became cognizant of the Holocaust, and I asked my parents why they didn't do anything to stop it. Not why America didn't do anything, but why my parents, personally, didn't do anything: After all, they were alive at the time -- I firmly believed, I had to believe, when reading about the war's horrors, that surely, had I been alive, I would have worked against it. But I have read enough about Cambodia and Rwanda and other genocides to know that they have happened in my lifetime and I, too, have done nothing.