God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) Read online

  DEDICATION

  To my wife, Katarina, and our children, Sidney and Nina.

  And the nine million survivors of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, including my cousins Josette, Fabienne, Reginald, Philippe, Alain, and Gilbert Léger, and their spouses and children.

  EPIGRAPH

  After that hot gospeller had leveled all but the

  Churched sky,

  I wrote the tale by tallow of a city’s death by fire;

  Under a candle’s eye, that smoked in tears, I

  Wanted to tell, in more than wax, of faiths that were snapped like wire,

  All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,

  Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;

  Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales

  Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire.

  By the smoking sea, where Christ walked, I asked, why

  Should a man wax tears, when his wooden world fails?

  In town, leaves were paper, but the hills were a flock of faiths;

  To a boy who walked all day, each leaf was a green breath

  Rebuilding a love I thought was dead as nails

  Blessing the death and the baptism by fire.

  —Derek Walcott, “A City’s Death by Fire”

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART I

  Sex in Hiroshima

  Welcome to Place Pigeon

  God Is on Line One

  PART II

  The Prayer

  A Closet in the National Palace

  The Coward

  PART III

  Looking for a Needle in the Rubble

  Damaged Goods

  Gangsters in New York

  PART IV

  Caged Bird Song

  Homecoming

  Women

  The Voodoo Wedding

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART I

  When it brushes past, Death leaves us in a frenetic state that pushes us to defy the gods.

  —Dany Laferrière, from his Haitian earthquake memoir, Tout bouge autour de moi

  SEX IN HIROSHIMA

  On a five-meter-high pile of gravel where a blink of an eye ago stood a grand airport and a dozen blue-helmeted soldiers having a smoke and a laugh under a cooling shade away from the blistering Caribbean sun, a young woman in a torn dress and one broken high-heeled shoe sat on her elbows and cried. The world had gone white on her in a very unexpected and violent way. Not the tanned white of the skin tones of the Tuscan neighbors she expected to be sipping coffee with after a transatlantic flight. Her entire world had gone white white, and she was still in Port-au-Prince, her eternally godforsaken hometown, confused as hell. A dense cumulus of dust shrouded her eyes. She felt something had gone irrevocably wrong in the universe. Her carefully laid plan to reach a dream so dear to her that she’d sold her soul for it seemed stillborn. She felt like the smallest person in the world. Microscopic. Unmoored and irretrievably lost. She tried to scan the horizon and noticed what was left of the American jet from whose steps she had been rudely ejected a half-minute ago. The jet sat on its back. Wheels-up in the literal sense of the term. She knew that even the finest jet in the world would have trouble taking off from an upside-down position on a runway composed of rubble and fog. She knew this meant she would be stuck in Haiti for a while longer. On a level that shock prevented her from articulating yet, she would try to find honor in this state of affairs, or at least come to see it as an opportunity to restore honor lost. First her head would have to stop throbbing and her ears would have to stop ringing. The goudou-goudou sound must have done this. The rumble would not go away. She felt submerged in it, swallowed up by it. She felt like she was in the belly of a whale, and she was struggling to peer out into the world or find solid footing in its swaying and sloshing. The whale’s intestines and pounding heart and lungs pounded hers. Was, was that an earthquake? Only a giant earthquake could shake the ground hard enough to pluck her from an airplane’s steps and toss her a hundred meters backward, like a feather, while also taking the airplane and flipping it on its back, like a toy. Did an earthquake destroy the airport and, and, anything else? My God. But she had studied her country’s history in school. As best she could tell there was no record of the earth’s randomly knocking things about. Granted, she had mainly studied Haiti’s art history, particularly works of a spiritual bent, works meant to inspire, heal, and bring folks closer to God. If an artist never painted or sculpted or wrote poetry about an event of the magnitude of a massive earthquake, and the succor of God, Jesus, angels, and saints, in vain, always in vain, after such a ravaging disaster in Haiti, could an earthquake ever have happened here? There had been deadly floods, famines, diseases, hurricanes, civil wars, and invasions in Haiti. That, she knew. All of these events, and every single death, especially the preventable ones, were gut-wrenching, and most were documented one way or another with the creative tools of the day by each era’s painters, singers, and poets, and this despite the country’s considerable illiteracy rate. The artists almost always tried to celebrate the presence of heaven above by making light and preaching courage in the face of the limits of the human spirit and our fortunes here. It was easy for foreigners and the wealthy who felt safe on their perches to laugh at the believers, Natasha often thought. In the end of times we’d be proven right. Those who laughed now would cry later. After all, it’s easier for a rich man . . . blah, blah, blah. My God, am I dead? she thought. Is this hell? Heaven? Could time really have run out on me before I’d painted my Sistine Chapel? Before I’d made things right with Alain, the man I loved but left for a wealthier man?

  Natasha was about to blaspheme. She resisted the impulse. Barely. She sensed, on a primitive level, the scale of the rupture in history that had taken place. It frightened her. Her arms and legs and feet were caked with dust, so were her lips, face, and false eyelashes. With no warning, something had transformed her into a Caribbean version of a lava-caked citizen of Pompeii. And she was not alone. The moans of wounded men and women both inside and outside the airport, which had been faint and distant, grew closer and louder. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! they said. Mon Dieu! they wailed. A pearly bead of cold sweat trickled down Natasha’s temple.

  She decided to get off the pile of rubble. She’d read somewhere that earthquakes were known to generate aftershocks. Who knew how long she had been knocked out? Who knew how long she had before the earth betrayed her trust again? She had to get moving before an aftershock transformed her debris pile from a throne to a coffin. Gingerly, Natasha moved her ass down the pile of cement, cheek by cheek, hand by hand, gripping rock and, once, the face of a dead man whose head, judging from how easily it rolled around, had been separated from his body. Finally, she stood on terra firma, whatever that meant at this point. She took stock. Her right knee bled and her left ankle hurt terribly. She still couldn’t see beyond two meters in front of her. Her ears still rang with the pounding roar. Like a misting rain, moans, oh-my-gods, and cries for help floated in the air. The voices’ glancing touch felt like being pricked by ice. And breathing the heavy air stung Natasha’s lungs. When would the itch in her throat go away? The first step she took went off OK. The second step butted on something soft and expiring. A man in a pilot’s uniform with half of his head missing stared up at her. As a child, she’d worshiped airplane pilots, as though they were angels, angels who ferried people off her island and into the endless blue sky in hulking metal contraptions that only God had to know how th
ey managed to stay aloft. If these men could foil Haiti’s gravity, why couldn’t I, Lord?

  Now an angel lay dead at her feet. Quietly, Natasha Robert began to weep. She walked on. In tears, she whimpered and limped on. Wearing one shoe. Her destination, unknown. She carefully apologized to each prone person on the ground, whether he or she was dead or alive. The ground was hard to see. The fog was still thick. In truth, she didn’t want to look too closely at other people yet. Too often, they were broken up. Their bodies were contorted in ways the body wasn’t meant to be. After a while, she couldn’t tell for how long she had been walking or where she was. Time seemed to have stood still or shifted in a way she found hard to grasp. She may have walked through the airport and out to the street and around the block and back to the tarmac. Besides moaning and crying for help, she could not hear much else. No sounds of cars, radios, or birds chirping.

  A roar overhead caused her to stumble then look to the sky. In the dust-filled air in which birds and even the sun seemed extinct, she saw three planes. Fighter jets. Trailed by plumes of thick black smoke, flags of red, white, and blue stars and stripes plastered on their sides. Flying low, fast, and purposefully, they cleared away the clouds each time they passed. Their sleek bulks emerged. They were magnificent. A second pass. Then a third. Natasha couldn’t tell if each trio of planes was the same set or a new one. Suddenly, men clinging to giant white balloons emerged from the jets’ trails. Parachutists. Slow like snowflakes, they fell to the ground. No hurry. It was as if they wanted to take in the view from up there. As if they wanted Natasha and the wounded Haitians all around her to bow in awe of them.

  Natasha stared at the parachutists with tears streaming down her cheeks. She tried to imagine what Port-au-Prince after an earthquake looked like from their perspective high up in the heavens. Her heart sank with a mixture of terror and embarrassment. Was the city up in flames? Had it sunk into the ocean? Was everyone dead? Was she? If she was dead, what kind of hell was this? How would she know if she was dead or alive? Were those men or angels? Or demons? What was she? How would she know? How would they know? Suppose they didn’t know? Suppose they didn’t know, then what, man, what? Suppose these men didn’t know they were drifting down into hell? Her hell. Foolish, foolish foreigners.

  Go away! she found herself screaming while waving at them. Go away! Go away! she kept screaming. The sky was raining men in balloons. Men in little white balloons that got bigger and bigger as they drifted closer and closer to the ground.

  Go away! Go!

  Strong arms soon wrapped themselves around Natasha’s waist from behind. A husky voice gently, ever so gently, whispered her name. Natasha, the voice said. Natasha, ça va.

  Natasha would have none of it. Not even bothering to turn around, she continued to howl at the parachutists.

  Go away!

  Ça va, the voice said. It’s OK.

  Go away!

  Natasha, it’s OK.

  Go away!

  Shhhhh, chérie, Calme-toi.

  Go!

  Ça va. Ça va. I’m here.

  With wild eyes, Natasha turned around to see the face of the man who was rescuing her. It was the president of Haiti, her husband. His clothes were wrinkled and ashy with dust. Yet he looked good . . . not good, but almost. He looked younger than his sixty years, young and fresh. His arms were unusually strong. He held her. He held her. He held her like he never did before. In the past, when he’d try to hold her, she used to wince. In the palace, in his bedroom, anywhere. The few times they’d touched, he was rough or scared. A bundle of nerves. He might have been a virgin before they made love. If she didn’t want to protect his pride, she would have asked him. Protecting his pride. That’s what she felt her role in his life was to do. She thought that’s why God had brought her into his life. So she could care for a man in need, an old man triple her age who had outgrown the pretense of invincibility men Natasha’s age cling to. Natasha could care for someone instead of waiting for a prince charming to take care of her. Lord knew she benefited from the distraction.

  Back then, sculpting crucifixes made of trash and assorted debris along Avenue Lamartinière was all that kept her busy. She sculpted morning, noon, and night. It was an obsession. They were pretty and funky, the crucifixes. She liked them and occasionally carved smiles and frowns and, controversially, glee in the dying Jesuses’ faces. She sculpted Christ on his cross in different sizes, colors, and materials, and she put them up against walls with the help of strangers and kids. At some locations, folks were inspired to light candles on the ground near her crucifixes. She’d hang back and enjoy the serenity of the scene. Fireflies would come around to dance with the flames. Sometimes people took the crucifixes down overnight. Often they stayed up for days, even weeks. Whenever they disappeared, Natasha hoped they ended up in places of pride, in a family’s shack or a villa in the hills. That’s how she came to meet the President.

  How much do you want for that one? a voice said to her one night. She was standing on the street admiring a particularly cheerful rusty expiring Jesus. This Christ was particularly heavy. The two boys who had been assisting her, Toto and Rodrigue, were exhausted. It was late; the black night’s chill drew close. The voice belonged to a dapper little old man leaning against a black Mercedes flanked by four armed men dressed in black and two smaller Asian soldiers wearing blue helmets that were a size too big.

  It’s not for sale, she said.

  Is that a political decision? the old man said. Because there were five of them being sold in front of my house this week.

  Really? she said. That’s not supposed to happen. They’re not for sale. They are gifts to the community. Where do you live?

  The National Palace, he said.

  Natasha took a step back.

  She proved to be a lousy girlfriend and wife, but she tried hard to protect his feelings as best she could. His work was difficult and he was terrible at it. He let her sit in on meetings in his office at the National Palace. And what she saw and heard was not pretty. Just a couple of weeks ago, on January 1, Haitian Independence Day, he had to postpone attending his nation’s birthday celebration at the National Cathedral because of a last-minute summons from someone called the special envoy. The special envoy worked on a military base. It was near the national airport, on the road to Tabarre. She never saw such a base before. The entrance was six meters from the street. African and Asian and Latino soldiers wearing blue helmets stood guard in front of the entrance. The base’s walls were painted off-white and sky blue. The walls were tall and topped with brand-new and thick barbwire that sparkled in the sun. The creamy blue wall with its crown of metal thorns stretched as far up the street as Natasha could see. Across the street, young men and women stood by booths, selling trinkets and artifacts of the folksy kind aimed at tourists. White Range Rovers, military buses, and trucks with the letters “U” and “N” painted black on their doors streamed in and out of the base. The base looked like a world unto its own, Natasha thought. How could such a military base with its posh and mysterious ecology hide in plain sight in the middle of Port-au-Prince?

  The President had to show ID to get in. Twice. After the car glided through the hive of military activity, they reached a leafy street. The man they had come to see greeted the President and the first lady near a garden outside his office. He had silver hair, a pointy nose, and white hairy eyebrows reminiscent of Santa Claus, and he wore a tie, a tan suit, and brown shoes. He spoke Spanish to a well-dressed and fresh-faced assistant on his right. He spoke perfect Haitian Creole to the well-dressed and fresh-faced assistant on his left. To the President, he spoke the most chaleureuse and mellifluent French. The man was short, shorter than the President; his enthusiastic handshake almost made the President lose his balance. After the President introduced Natasha to him, the silver-haired man known as the special envoy bowed courteously. Then he told Natasha to wait outside. The President said nothing. He hadn’t said anything since the small humiliations began pil
ing up that morning. He seemed to have nothing to say now. He couldn’t even look Natasha in the eyes, so Natasha spoke up.

  It’s OK, honey, she said. I need some coffee anyway. I think I saw a cafeteria around the corner.

  In rapid-fire Spanish, the special envoy ordered one of his assistants to accompany Natasha.

  Afterward, during the tardy ride to a ceremony in Fort Dimanche, the gulag-like prison that had emerged as a powerful symbol of the perverted form of justice occasionally practiced on the island, a heavy silence wedged the first couple apart in the presidential car. The President and his wife stared out of their respective windows, as if they were each seeing Port-au-Prince for the first time. Stray dogs, colorful shops, barefoot children, muscular men in finely pressed shirts, big-breasted women in tank tops fanning themselves, ever-present potholes, an ocean-blue sky flecked with rice-white clouds. Natasha had to cling to the handle in the car to survive the car’s dips in and out of the giant potholes. With no warning, she began to sing, softly.

  Hark! the herald angels sing

  Glory to the newborn king

  Peace on earth and mercy mild

  God and sinners reconciled.

  The President laughed.

  Very funny, the President said.

  So what gifts did the special herald come bearing for our forlorn nation-state?

  The President shrugged.

  Who was this special envoy anyway?

  Our international banker.

  What?

  Look around you, Natasha. The armored car you’re in is a gift from the Canadian government that no local mechanic can maintain, so the special envoy provides the mechanics. You’ve seen my bodyguards, right?

  The President raised his voice, a rare event.

  They may be Haitian, but the government doesn’t pay their salaries. We can’t afford to. The special envoy does. He leads something called the United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti.