The World is Moving Around Me

by Dany Laferriere

  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.

  Brazil and Haiti

  Brazil has three things in common with Haiti: coffee, the love of soccer, and voodoo. They practice a variety of voodoo called candomblé. As for soccer, we hopped onto the Brazilian train a long time ago. Add to that the passion for music (the body fever of Carnival) and the rituals that come from Africa. We worship the Brazilian national soccer team to the point that we cheer for Brazil even when it plays against Haiti. I remember when Pelé came through Port-au-Prince. The city was literally transfixed. I didn’t go to the game, even if I did live close to the stadium. I was surprised to hear three loud cheers that shook the city. I went outside to find out what was going on. A guy was coming up the street, dancing with joy. I asked him how much Haiti was leading Brazil by. He looked at me like I was out of my mind and told me that Brazil had scored only three goals so far out of politeness for the host. In my memory, I can still hear him laughing all the way to the end of the street. At the beginning of the World Cup, every tent flew its Brazilian flag. The warm green and yellow colors made the city look happier somehow. The earthquake was no longer the first subject of conversation in this wounded place.

  Writer at Work

  When I came in, my nephew was writing on an old computer that he had put together himself. I sat down to watch him. I spotted a notebook close by in which he scribbled down something from time to time. Exactly the way I do. Yet I’d never told him anything about the way I work. Maybe he read it somewhere. Or maybe we have the same method. Writers at work all look the same. Suddenly, he turned to me.

  “Are you writing?”

  “I don’t know …”

  “I saw you.”

  “I wasn’t writing.”

  We looked at each other a moment.

  “Why do you refuse to accept that you were writing? That’s what writers do.”

  “I’m not a writer,” he stated in no uncertain terms.

  “Why not?”

  “I haven’t written a book.”

  “A writer is just someone who writes.”

  He looked at me like a punch-drunk boxer. Now the issue of craft enters. A long road awaits him. He’ll have to walk it by himself.

  A Sunday in Petit-Goâve

  I wanted to escape the uproar of Port-au-Prince, and the best time to cross the city of constant turmoil is early on a Sunday morning. I wanted to take that route again, but in an atmosphere different from Aunt Renée’s funeral. See everything with a different point of view. From our house at Delmas 31 to the fragile shacks along the sea in Martissant, with fresh eyes I discovered a Port-au-Prince deep in slumber. I can’t remember the last time I gazed upon the monster at rest. Even the gaudy tap-taps, those swift trucks that carry thousands of workers from the poor neighborhoods to the industrial zones, were hard to come by. A few party-goers were making their way home, crossing paths with elderly ladies going to early morning mass. Young girls with buckets of water on their heads. The district is overpopulated and very poor. All week, in the slums that have grown up around Port-au-Prince, there was only one subject in
the air, and that was the unacceptable elimination of Brazil from the World Cup. People must have been emotionally exhausted (there were four deaths after Brazil’s defeat). Once I got on the highway, I recovered that sense of exhilaration I always felt when I left Port-au-Prince for Petit-Goâve after year-end exams. On the road, I saw countless bicycles and little red-and-yellow motorbikes that serve as taxis, carrying girls who stared at me impassively, their expressions an obsession from my younger years. To the left, little houses with shutters painted yellow and blue like in the paintings they sell in front of the hotels. To the right, I glimpsed the sea, turquoise this time of day, behind the cane fields. Long stretches where you don’t see anyone alternated with little markets, crowded even this early in the day. The sharp sunlight caught up with us at the foot of the terrible Tapion Mountain. Since childhood I’ve had this premonition that a truck will slide off the edge of the cliff with me in it. I got out to pick a mango and ate it beneath its tree—an old dream of mine. Then came Petit-Goâve, just on the other side of the mountain. I didn’t recognize the entrance to the town. The new road doesn’t go through the heart of town, which has grown in size. I’ve lost my bearings. I sorted through my memory—so rich in details when it comes to Petit-Goâve—but I couldn’t locate any of these houses. The car turned right, toward the sea. And Petit-Goâve leaped up before my eyes. The same long, white, dusty street still crosses the town. We went past the hospital still standing with its back to the sea and continued to the little square by the marketplace. The new square is more handsome than the one from my childhood, but it doesn’t have the same effect on me. I wish it were more natural, less prettied up. I wanted to see the port. That’s where the adults would gather for an evening stroll when the July heat became unbearable. For teenagers, it was the perfect place for an innocent touch and an exchange of burning looks. When I think that’s all it took to send me to seventh heaven. We went by the church, still clean and white; the religious songs and the noonday bells still live within me. From the church (that exists only in memory) to the elementary school where priests from Brittany looked after my education. The sisters’ school, with its swarm of girls, reminded me of my years of thralldom to Vava. And Killick the teacher’s house—he was the best back on the Petit-Goâve soccer team. We then turned left toward the house that stands at 88 Lamarre. For two decades, I’ve been working to make that address universal: the address of a happy childhood. The big Jubilee Cross around the back helped me recognize it. I first noticed the house across the street where a black dog lived. Today, the house of my childhood belongs to a friend who used to live across the street, but it crouches intact in the thicket of my memory. When I visited it, I clearly heard the voices of my aunts and felt the soothing presence of my grandmother. In the shadows, my dog Marquis brushes against me. I walked through the little Sunday market to the old cemetery on the other side of the bridge. Surrounded by tall grass, at the very back, I found my grandmother’s grave, next to which Aunt Renée is resting. I took a bouquet from another tomb and put it on hers.

  Electricity

  I was sleeping when I heard a happy shout. What’s happening? Electricity, my sister said. The current’s come back. Suddenly, it’s all hands on deck. She turned on all the lights. She put on coffee. Music played. The energy level rose. The neighbors’ voices were happy too. My sister told me the neighbors were leeching off them. How’s that? She went and rummaged through the drawers, then came back with a bundle of bills and shook them in my face. The figures were unbelievable. For months she’s camped out in the electric company offices, the EDH, trying to get her bills lowered. She managed to speak to someone who understood the problem and who eliminated part of her debt, but on the next bill, the same amount showed up. It’s enough to drive you crazy, she swore. My mother listened to the story from the doorway. These administrative irritations poison their lives. Everything here is designed to spoil your life, my sister declared. My mother said she has nothing left in her veins but poison. But they both agree they can’t live without the little bit of electricity the EDH is willing to supply (four hours a day). Not only because it’s useful, but because my sister refuses “to return to the Middle Ages.” My mother agrees wearily; they’ve been engaged in this struggle forever. My sister, who almost never talks politics, said that the government treats poor people like animals. My mother agreed, but only to support her daughter.

  The Presidential Palace

  We have started to miss our old lives. Life before January 12, 2010. To be exact, we enjoyed two-thirds of the day of January 12, since the earthquake occurred at 4:53 p.m. Up until 4:52, we lived carefree lives. We had one minute left. What is a minute worth? A lot, since the earthquake didn’t even last a minute. The most shocking news was hearing that the Presidential Palace had collapsed. I remember the silence that followed the news. As if we had lost the war. Months later, we still can’t get used to its absence. The place is the center point around which all dreams of grandeur and all the nation’s hopes collide. Some people on the left are happy that the palace collapsed—for its symbolic value, I suppose. The poorest are the most saddened by its fall. They considered it the only house they could ever own; that idea is more deeply anchored in the ordinary citizen’s mind than you might think. Every mother dreams that one day her first son will sit in the “presidential armchair.” The fact that dictators have squatted there, more often than not over the past two hundred years, doesn’t make that piece of furniture any less desirable. People have never mistaken the building for its occupier. One day they hope to restore its splendor. If a building’s importance resides in the emotion its absence creates, then the palace has a value that’s more than symbolic. A wave of feeling submerged the city, the whole country even, when we learned the palace had fallen with the first tremor. Now the Presidential Palace looks like an enormous white cake set on a low table of grass; it stirs envy and desire like a child’s on his birthday.

  January 11

  To help her with an article, on the day before the earthquake I went walking through the city with journalist Chantal Guy and photographer Ivanoh Demers. They came by the Hôtel Karibe early to get me. The sky was clear. Finally, the sun was shining. The week before the weather had been lousy, cloudy and cold. This was a piece about Port-au-Prince; they wanted to see the city through my eyes. The journalist was using me to get the editor-in-chief to accept an idea he’d already dismissed out of hand. They protested: “No, we want your view of the city. Your private Port-au-Prince is what we want to share with our readers.” In that case, we’d have to go down to the Champ-de-Mars, the big square in front of the Presidential Palace. We went around the palace. I told them that under Papa Doc, we avoided going past the place. The surveillance was too heavy, and we didn’t want to attract the attention of a tonton-macoute who happened to be in a bad mood. If we had to go by, we did it as quickly as possible and held our breath. Back then, the Champ-de-Mars was our destination. We went there to study and catch a breath of fresh air when it got too hot in our tin-roofed houses, play soccer with our pals, and chase the girls from the nearby neighborhoods who came to study for their exams too. Demers took pictures without bothering to frame the shots. He wanted to catch things on the fly. We headed for the little café (half a dozen tables) next to the Rex Theatre (the best hamburgers in town), and met the cashier I knew when I got a burger on Saturday nights after the western at the Rex. Across the way is the museum of the Collège Saint-Pierre where I first saw the works of Saint-Brice, Hector Hyppolite, Antonio Joseph, Cedor, Lazare, Philippe-Auguste, Wilson Bigaud, Rigaud Benoît, Jasmin Joseph—all the painters I discovered at the beginning of the 1970s. We walked along rue Capois, in front of the Lycée des Jeunes Filles, to rue Lafleur-Duchêne where I lived before I left Haiti for Montreal. I saw the house that I shared with my mother, my sister, and my aunts before they moved, once I’d left, for Carrefour-Feuilles, a humbler neighborhood, and more lively too. A lady invited me into her yard where she’d set up a hair sal
on underneath an awning. She was hoping to add a new room to her house before the year was out, since the clientele was getting larger by the day. Next to her, a woman getting her hair done made an off-color joke that I didn’t quite catch, though it set off a wave of hilarity. When I left, she was still laughing. We continued down rue Capois to the Hôtel Oloffson where Graham Greene lived at the very beginning of the 1960s when he was writing The Comedians, the novel that, sadly enough, made Papa Doc famous. We sat down at a table and ordered a rum punch and waited for our plates of grilled conch. We all ordered the same thing, hoping that would speed up the service. The food is very good at the Oloffson, but you have to wait forever. We used the time to do a long interview and take a few extra photos. Then we returned to our respective hotels, with a date to meet the following day.

  A Word to the Gods

  I wonder how long it will be before the event (an earthquake of magnitude seven) is taken up and transformed by voodoo. What do the gods have to say about it? Legba, where are you? Ogou, what do you have to say for yourself? Erzulie, what are your thoughts? Not a word. The gods are silent. If you’re behind this thing, do you have some kind of a plan? What do you have in mind? What do you want? First, show yourselves.

  What Does Goudougoudou Want?

  Can the popular imagination, which thrives on outsized events, inflate the unthinkable into something even greater? You can count on that. It just needs a little time. I wonder how the religions are going to use the earthquake’s impact on people’s minds. Every religion and denomination encumbering the Haitian landscape is furiously searching for the moment when it first predicted the earthquake. As January 12 turned into January 13, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were already out in the streets of the ruined city, claiming that this was the end of the world as announced by Jehovah himself. Their day of glory had arrived. They’d been right to turn their backs on the world. Jehovah hadn’t lied to them when he warned that God’s wrath could shake the world at any time. He said he would come like a thief in the night and be as swift as lightning. And that’s exactly what happened. The voodoo priests were more careful; they were abstaining from comment, at least for now. They didn’t want to be held responsible for the disaster. The Protestants and Catholics had already pointed the finger at them. In their opinion, the devil was at work here. But if you ask me, the event will soon have its spot in the voodoo pantheon, and then we’ll find out which god manifested his anger. Maybe the uproar is announcing the appearance of a new god. And that god already has a name in popular culture: “Goudougoudou,” the sound the earth made as it trembled. Those who had no more faith in heaven watched the earth buckle beneath their feet. People were afraid of the hurricane’s winds and the flood’s waters, but the earth itself turned out to be a pitiless foe. What does Goudougoudou want?