I always dreamed of living on a campus back when I was in Port-au-Prince. My main activity would have consisted of assiduous library attendance because of that girl who was doing research on the slave trade and its impact on the European economy of the period. I would have participated half-heartedly in the interminable discussions about the Wajda and Pasolini movies screened by the film club at the back of the yard. And in the accusation of censorship leveled against the rector who would have prevented the first-year students from watching Deep Throat. And in stormy protests against the government that would have confiscated the copy of State of Siege. The first kiss with the girl from the library the evening before a major exam. The feeling of having to choose between her and my future. And of screwing up my life no matter what choice I made.
The Ancient Caribbean Wind
My mother takes me aside
to give me a little photo
of my father with my sister on his lap.
And me standing beside him.
My sister is crying.
My father and I have the same serious face.
My mother tells me the photo was taken by a friend of my father’s, a “comrade in arms.” They tried to take another picture to have a happier memory of that sad time, since my father and his friend had made a quick visit before heading for the hills, but my sister wouldn’t stop crying all afternoon.
Her voice becomes even softer as she remembers that afternoon. My father’s friend was called Jacques. He was so full of life. He played guitar and loved to dance. After the photograph, he played a Spanish song in fashion at the time and my mother danced in the kitchen. Since my father and Jacques were being hunted by the President-for-Life’s men, they disappeared once night fell. Later my mother found out that Jacques had been caught and had died in prison.
People who have lived under several regimes change mood depending on whether they are remembering happy or unhappy periods. The happy periods, like tropical rains, are intense and short-lived. They are often followed by long tunnels in which no one sees any light for decades. When my mother looks at today’s young people dancing in the streets after a government falls, she gets sad, knowing they will soon change their tune. But as she always says, “at least they got that much.”
My mother is looking for something in the armoire.
At the very back I see
a large black-and-white photo
of a young man who looks like me.
It’s the only photo I’ve seen of them together
at the time they met.
When I look at this photo, my mother says,
I feel like I’m with my son and not my husband.
The last time she saw him
he was still in his twenties.
My mother asks me how I managed to survive back there. Her question comes as a surprise since it’s the first time she has come so close to the edge of the precipice. I seem to be leading a good life, but my mother isn’t interested in whether I’ve succeeded or not. Her question is about how it happened. How what happened? Then I understand she isn’t expecting me to describe the obstacles I faced in order to make a way for myself in my new country, the usual business you tell journalists. She wants to know how I felt about it. She’s waiting for my answer. It’s a question I’ve long avoided, and coming here is a way of finally facing it. Only a mother would insist on descending into an abyss like that with you.
I might have been ten years old.
I had just left my grandmother
to come live with my mother in Port-au-Prince.
For the first days I slept with her
until they bought me a mattress.
My mother had a toothache.
I heard her whimpering very quietly
for fear of waking me up.
These days when I tell her to take some medicine,
she replies that a small pain
keeps her from thinking about the larger one.
My sister comes back from work.
Everyone wants something from her.
She escapes by disappearing into the bathroom
with a magazine.
We hear her turning the pages.
The family waits for her to come out
so they can devour her whole.
This insatiable appetite for attention.
I go out on the gallery to be with my mother. Her universe, so dreary at first sight, is actually very rich. She knows the two birds that meet here every afternoon, at the same time. She has named the lizards after her dead brothers and sisters: Jean, Yves, Gilberte, Raymonde, Borno, André. Dead or in exile. That way I can remember their names. Otherwise I forget a name, then the face that goes with it. That’s how you lose a part of your life. She even has a name for the wind, this gentle breeze that comes to rock her to sleep when it’s time for her nap. If you’re quiet, a new world appears. Little things take on life. Sometimes she is eager to join them. Other times her anger with life is so strong she refuses that illusion. She will stay in her room for a week. Finally, she comes out, and all those things are there, waiting for her return, patient as always. She tells me they don’t show themselves unless they feel our despair.
The Death of Benazir Bhutto
The death of Benazir Bhutto comes to me while I am in the bathroom. The final spasms of on-and-off diarrhea. From another room, I hear the high-pitched voice of BBC’s female correspondent in Pakistan repeating the name Benazir Bhutto. In general, when someone speaks the name of a public personality more than three times in a sentence, that person has just died and the death was violent. Before the journalist’s commentary comes to an end, I hear a series of explosions. Screaming. Sirens. A terrible uproar. I can’t move because my diarrhea has returned with a vengeance. The noise of the crowd covers the journalist’s voice. I imagine at that very moment, all around the world, people are feeling the same sense of surprise, though no death was more predictable than hers.
It’s strange that the Middle East
in a certain way gives the impression
that the dice aren’t always loaded in politics.
People still risk their lives there.
All that anyone risks losing here
is their reputation.
What moves me
in this story of bloodshed
is the return of Benazir Bhutto
for her funeral,
to her native village of Larkana.
We always return in the end.
Dead or alive.
The wooden chamber.
Benazir, who wanted
to run a vast and populous country,
must feel cramped in there.
And very alone in that room
though it was made to measure.
We’re born somewhere.
If we can
we take to the road.
See the world, as they say.
Spend years out there sometimes.
But, in the end, we return to our point of departure.
The Wild West
Coming back to the hotel, I pass five kids straddling a low wall under a mango tree. They are playing cowboys and Indians. Four decades ago I was one of the Indians. We would rush down the hill, brandishing our tomahawks. The cowboys were waiting for us, hiding behind their stagecoaches. At the last moment they would shoot us down in full stride, like birds. One afternoon, I refused to show myself in plain sight like a fool, since the Indians knew the terrain better than the cowboys, and there was no reason why they wouldn’t use their experience. I was immediately made a cowboy. An Indian who protests becomes a cowboy. I understood there and then that being a cowboy or an Indian simply depends on how the guy organizing the game feels. Or who is telling the story. There’s no use complaining about the role we’re given; we just have to take the one we want. These little frustrations, accumulated over the years, end up erupting one day in bloody revolt.