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Just be Socratic.

René explains, “I am a Congolese patriot. I love my country. I love my forefathers’ land. I am ready to say ‘No!’ to any kind of aggression against my country. Our army showed it was weak; some noticed bribery among political authorities. Soldiers were running away instead of waiting for the opponents. People gathered to discuss the weakness of our army. It was unable to face the war. I joined the other people who were ready to have some kind of manifestation of resistance.”

“When was that?”

“The 1996 war.”

“So you’ve been involved for eleven years? From the very beginning?”

He smiles boldly, hands cupped around his knee; he rocks back and forth, delighted but feigning modesty, like a housewife who has just been complimented on her cookies. “Ah, yes.”

“It’s no wonder to me that with your skill set, if you’ve been involved that long, you play a leadership role in the upper levels.”

“I was appointed president of all of South Kivu province of the Mai Mai movement. I was appointed by my fellow Mai Mai to be a candidate for national elections. But they needed only five and there were three hundred of us running. It wasn’t successful. I lost the election. ”

“That’s elections,” I say, laughing anxiously, trying to get him to relax and speak freely.

“My work was, of course, focused on the political movement,” he continues. “As the Mai Mai is a movement of action, it needed to be structured politically, ideologically. As they knew they would kill whoever opposed them, they needed an ideology about who to kill, because they must kill whoever along the way.”

“So you developed an ideology of when it is appropriate to kill.”

“I read different documents on how to behave in a time of war, books regarding human rights, such books as The Battle of Solferino. In the book they figured the soldier’s attitude towards civilians and other opponents during the war.”

“What guidelines did you develop?”

“In the books there are different attitudes to take, according to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. You can be, for example, with a civilian who has betrayed. These civilians . . . You see, it is during the war, there is not even any legal judgment, but you have proof he has shown where your positions are . . . These civilians can be killed, in order to demand that other civilians do not betray. So you understand? There are cases like that. What we have for an ideology is: We only kill the enemy. You do not need to arrest him because you don’t have prisons or jails. So you must kill the enemy and protect the local population as much as possible. That’s it.”

“What about behavior typical to all militias—raping, looting—”

“The Mai Mai don’t have to steal because they are local defenders. The local population gives soldiers what they need as support. Rape is a foreign practice. A foreign behavior the Congolese did not know before.”

My carsick friend leans back from the front seat, clearly annoyed and determined to call him out. “What about child soldiers?”

I lean forward, subtly squeeze Carsick’s arm and whisper, “Don’t go there. It’s a safety issue.”

René leans towards the front passenger seat. “There is no need to abduct children. They volunteer. They want to be part of our fight.”

We are all quiet for a moment. I think of the BVES boys I interviewed, who spoke openly about being abducted, and stealing, and raping any female they came across.

“I cannot say the Mai Mai are perfect, that they are like saints,” René says. “Sometimes they switch to environments which are not their own. They feel hungry and go to farms to loot crops. But Mai Mai is a traditional movement; it has hints to follow. They are not to get drunk, smoke, rape, or do something bad because according to the elders, if they misbehave they will be killed on the front.”

“Oh right!” I say. “There are some elements of superstition . . .” The second the word escapes my mouth, I want to grab it midair and stuff it back in. I quickly correct myself—“Beliefs, rather”—hoping to catch it before translation. It