New Landmarks
The government can name streets if it wants to, but people have their own way of establishing landmarks. A church, an empty house, a park, a public building, a stadium, a cemetery — anything can be a landmark. People invent their own personal map of the city. They come from the countryside with precise information that will help them locate a family member or friend. Luckily, no one building looks like another, and no urban plan was ever considered. Everyone had his say when it came to building his house so it wouldn’t look like a rabbit hutch. Every house can be found thanks to its originality and especially its loud colors. But when everything has been destroyed, and since people have always refused to orient themselves according to street names, it’s a little hard to get your bearings, especially at first. That situation created a new reality and people had to adapt fast. “You know where the Caribbean Market used to be? Well, you go past it, and then two buildings that collapsed …” To the landscape of this crumbled city, people have added elements of the old one still present in their memory. For the population whose minds are always in ferment, things accumulate instead of disappearing. We’ll have to wait for a generation who never knew the old city, and who’ll be willing to accept a new map.
Golf
For the last few months, the golf course has been occupied by a crowd of people who knew nothing about the game before the earthquake. The game is hard to comprehend in a city so overpopulated. It takes up too much space for too few people: no more than a dozen bored spouses and young mistresses who pretend to be amused as they wait for the game to end. A tiny white ball for such a vast surface — it seems like another provocation. And the players take their time in a country where the abbreviated life expectancy pushes people into constant agitation. Anyway, soccer is our passion. The land is good, but there’s not a single fruit tree in sight. Most agronomists believe that our survival can be credited to the mango and avocado trees that serve as a rampart against famine. The owners of the golf course are getting worried; they sense that the crowd is not about to leave the grounds. It took an earthquake to get them here, and it will take an event of equal magnitude to chase them away.
The Chair
Between Aunt Renée’s and my mother’s bed, in the narrow room, stands a chair. It’s an old chair that my grandmother brought from Petit-Goâve. It reminds me that my grandmother, before she died, shared this room with my Aunt Renée. My mother slept in the room where my sister is now. After my grandmother’s death, my mother came and replaced her, next to Aunt Renée. She couldn’t be left alone at night since her heart attack. The room is Spartan, with two single beds separated by an old chest of drawers. And the chair where I would sit when I wanted to spend time with them. Actually, I used the chair to converse with my mother. When I talked to Aunt Renée, I preferred to sit on the bed. I was the only one to whom she granted that privilege. After her illness began, she had trouble expressing herself, and you had to be close to her to understand. My mother knew her so well she could anticipate her every desire even before she spoke it. The other family members did their best to decipher the noises she made. But since I was rarely there, I had to concentrate on her face (her mouth and eyes) to understand her. She repeated every word several times, with a touching kind of patience, until I understood what she was trying to say. Often it was the same thing: news of my daughters, how my health was, the subject of the book I was writing. We clung to these conversations and refused all intermediaries (starting with my mother) who would have served as translators. After a conversation with Aunt Renée, I would sit on the chair, taking my place between the two women who occupied such an important place in my life, and in my writing as well. The chair, like the room itself, has aged, but my mother doesn’t see it that way. She wants my sister to have it repaired. And when my mother really wants something, she’ll talk about it day and night. My sister is in a tough spot. She can’t really ask a tradesman to take care of an old chair when they are all busy with more urgent jobs. Meanwhile, my mother won’t leave her alone. Without the chair, she’s afraid she won’t have any more visitors.
The Role of God
The few belongings people had are buried in rubble. The city is on its knees. Help isn’t reaching certain parts of the population. For these people, what they hear on the radio — in other words, politics — doesn’t concern them. They can count only on themselves. And God. They use God to convince themselves that they’re not alone on this earth and that their lives are not just a beadwork of misery and pain. What matters most is their access to God at all times. They’ve understood that they can’t ask too much of him. His spiritual resources may be infinite, but his material ones are limited. They lost their house, but they praise him for sparing their lives. I’m always surprised by what intellectuals say about the role of God among the poor. It has nothing to do with spirituality. It’s like my mother’s chair. It’s better to have it in case a visitor shows up.
A City of Art
If it’s true that we have so many painters that we don’t know what to do with them, we should give them a special place in the rebuilt city. A house is not just a shelter. And a city has to have a soul to be livable. What defines Port-au-Prince on the international scene? The brightly colored tap-taps that carry people from one place to another? Why not consider painting certain neighborhoods? Or turning Port-au-Prince into a city of art where music could play a role too? Haiti should use this truce to change its image. We won’t have a chance like this a second time, if I can put it that way. Let’s show a more relaxed face. Although everyone knows the reasons behind the tension (poverty, dictatorship, insecurity, hurricanes), it puts off visitors. Despite our troubles, our culture is joyful; we need to show it off. First, by separating art from craft. Haitian painting is a major art form. Why don’t cities like Paris (Paris has done it more often than the others), New York, Rome, Montreal, Berlin, Tokyo, Madrid, Dakar, Abidjan, Sao Paulo, and Buenos Aires organize major exhibitions of Haitian art in their national museums? That would create interesting partnerships, and all sides would benefit. Haiti would recover its place among the nations. Its contribution would be artistic — and that’s saying a lot.