“They will kill him. That’s it … ,” says Gasana, who is now a refugee living in North Carolina. “When they get him. They will kill him. That’s for sure. He needs help.” Right now, Munyakazi sits in his house and waits for an asylum hearing before an immigration court judge.
“What can I do? I’m stuck here,” he says. “I can’t work. I can’t go to campus. I am a teacher. How can I get a position in education now in the middle of the year?” He stays in the house. He reads. He talks on his cell phone to friends. He hopes he’ll be granted asylum.
The thought of returning to his home country is unacceptable. He pulls up a blue, IZOD button down shirt he is wearing to show his stomach. “I have scars on my belly. Look,” he says, pointing to scars he received while in prison in Rwanda. “This is from hot nails. Hot nails.”
“I can’t go back there,” he says. “I can’t. No.” So what will he do now? He shrugs and says, “I wait.”
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