The Small Screen
Inside Haiti, we didn’t have enough perspective to see the big picture. We could only take care of those next to us and had no idea what was happening in other parts of the city. The radio wasn’t working full-time yet. We had to find water, help an injured person get to the hospital, look after a child whose parents had disappeared. Everyone was trying to find out if their family members were still all alive. We didn’t dare ask if people had survived. It’s always a shock to learn of a friend’s death. In Haiti, we experienced all that first-hand, but in only one place at a time (the place we happened to be). From outside the country, we had a panoramic view of the city. The small screen never blinks. A protean eye made of hundreds of cameras that show everything. Everything is naked. Flattened out. Death without discretion, since the camera, at first, made no distinction between class and gender. Since I returned a few hours ago, I’ve been lying prostrate on the bed, watching an endless parade of horrifying images, unable to absorb the fact that I’ve just emerged from that landscape of devastation. The worst thing is not this succession of misfortunes, but the absence of all nuance in the camera’s cold eye. Sleep came and caressed the back of my neck, warning me it was time to let go.
A Glass of Water
I woke up bathed in sweat. I felt the room moving. The books on the bedside table had fallen to the floor, carrying the telephone with them. I must have been having a nightmare and knocked over the glass of water with my hand. I always keep a glass of water next to me because I often get up in the middle of the night to read. Mostly poetry. The little mess I’d made affected me because I know people don’t have enough water in Haiti. And what they have, they have to boil. It’s not easy to start a fire when you can’t find matches. I think of all those smokers trapped in a city without cigarettes. What’s worse, the Barbancourt company that makes the local rum sustained major damage. I stare at the wet floor and can’t stop picturing the faces of thirsty people. Normally I’m against transposing torment from one place to another. It’s better to keep your energy to help people solve their problems. Just because there’s a water shortage in Port-au-Prince doesn’t mean there should be one in Montreal. I lift myself and slide the pillow behind my head. I turn on the TV without the sound. The images flicker by in silence. A continuous stream. Women with arms raised skyward. Long lines of people walking with no destination. A girl telling a story I don’t need to hear to understand. I drift off again and leave the TV on. Turning it off would be like slamming the door on all those people who demand our attention. In any case, the telephone next to my head never sleeps.
Year Zero
I turned on the TV this morning and found myself listening to a political analyst who claims that Haiti could get back on its feet again if the country agreed to forget everything that occurred before the earthquake. He spoke of life before the event, which was hardly paradise. The scene was shocking, since the analyst and the journalist interviewing him were comfortably seated while behind them, in full screen, pictures of desolation streamed past. Just look at those scenes of horror (screaming faces that make no sound) and you’re bound to agree with everything being said. This technique of intimidation is so widespread we don’t see anything abnormal about it. What’s happening is this: we’re presented with a problem while being prevented from truly thinking about it. The answer is behind the question. To wrap up everything in a single expression supposedly rich with hope, the expert calls it “Year Zero.” Zorro to the rescue. It’s the first time I’ve heard the concept of Year Zero applied to Haiti. I can’t swallow the idea despite the intolerable images that assault my eye. After all this time, people should know you can’t erase the memory of a nation so easily. In Haiti’s case, history begins with the prodigious leap from Africa to America. People driven by a desperate desire to live together, despite the many reasons that would dissuade them from doing just that, are what creates cities, not the other way around. The earthquake didn’t destroy Port-au-Prince; no one can build a new city without thinking of the old. The human landscape counts. Its memory will link the old and the new. Nothing is ever begun from scratch. It’s impossible, in any case. All we do is continue. There are things you can never eliminate from a trajectory, like human sweat. What should be done with the two centuries, and all they contain, that preceded Year Zero? Throw it all in the garbage? A culture that pays attention only to the living risks its own death.
My Mother on the Phone
I finally reached my mother on the phone. Her voice was clear, but always with that trace of concern. She was happy to hear from me. The evening before I left, thinking I was going to come back, she made me something to eat, and that missed meal saddened me. Like every time, the conversation got around to her health, which worries me. To reassure me, she told me her appetite has returned. I picture her picking at a few grains of rice, like a bird. My doubts reached her over the phone. She can read my states of mind, even from a distance. She handed the phone to my sister, who confirmed she was eating more lately. What is she eating? Mostly the sweets you send her, she says with a side order of blame. My sister and I have opposing opinions on the subject. She’d like my mother to eat filling food: rice, beans in sauce, chicken. Which my mother refuses, because she only wants to eat sweet things. Otherwise, all she’ll tolerate, when it comes to filling, is spaghetti and peanut butter. She’s practically allergic to rice and red beans; she’s eaten them every day for the last eighty years. It does me good to talk about the small details of daily life with my sister: those little things mean life has returned. After a silence (her silences always fill me with dread), she gave the phone to my nephew who provided me with a complete description of everything that’s happened since the earthquake. He travels throughout the city; he’s my source of information. He told me about Filo’s misadventure, which he considers comical. Apparently, there was a passageway behind the wide black curtain I saw in the studio. Filo wormed his way into it and was able to crawl free of the building before it collapsed. His gods didn’t let him down (he always wears a picture of the goddess Erzulie). My mother came back on the phone but we got cut off just as she started telling me about Aunt Renée. My mother seemed in excellent shape. She didn’t make me repeat anything. Some people get their energy back when everything else is falling apart.