by Maryse Conde
I was around eight and Zohran ten when my mother remarried a Lebanese baker whom she had seduced; I don’t know how, since the Lebanese, be they Muslim or Christian, hate us. They believe we are responsible for most of the ills that beset their country. The man my mother married was not an ordinary baker. He was king of his trade and rolling in dough. He sold all kinds of breads, biscuits, and cakes; he had invented a tart called “The Boat” because it had the shape of a small craft stuffed with dates and marzipan. Dodging the bombs and the murderous shots by snipers, off he would go at the wheel of his van to make his deliveries to all four corners of the town. My mother was sharply criticized for betraying the community with this marriage and she lost her few remaining friends. Due to this marriage we not only left the loving warmth of our community, but also the overcrowding and promiscuity of the Chatila camp, such as common washrooms and toilets and shared canteens, for the comfort of a vast, sunny apartment in a building facing the sea. For Zohran and me, it was the only happy consequence of my mother’s matrimonial change. We who had always slept under a tent now had a room of our own. The baker, my mother’s new husband, took an instant dislike to us, especially Zohran. He only had to lay eyes on us to turn as red as a tomato and shower us with insults.
“Lower your eyes. Lower your eyes, I said, when I speak to you,” he would yell. “You’re nothing but a lump of rolling shit!”
Sometimes he would hurl himself onto us for no apparent reason. He would beat us until we collapsed on the ground, unconscious. My mother watched these senseless acts without saying a word. What else could we do except disappear and join the hundreds of kids who lived on the sidewalks of Beirut?
You’ll never guess how maternal the street is, even in a town in labor like ours. Only the homeless and the youngsters rejected by their family know this. The town is like a woman who reveals her most intimate treasures to those she cherishes. For us there was no Muslim East or Christian West, communities that are perpetually set against each other. By day, the city offered up its parks, gardens, play areas, and wastelands. At night, the carriage entrances and their dark interiors made for a thousand hiding places. Sometimes we would sleep on the beach wrapped in the warm sand while the bombs continued to rain down on this martyred city, at war alternately against itself and others. It was often forbidden to travel from one neighborhood to another. Sentry boxes and police checkpoints loaded with arms appeared at crossroads. In places, the city was nothing but a field of ruins. We were oblivious to fear. We would run loose among the rubble, chase each other under the very noses of the guards, and invent all sorts of games. Entire sectors collapsed or went up in flames. A terrible smell of dust rose up from these piles of charred stones.
I must have been fourteen when Zohran broke away from the gang and began to lead a life of his own. I didn’t fully understand what he was doing until he endeavored one day to recruit me. He wanted me to join his association, the Armed Branch of the Revolution, which aimed to win back the occupied Palestinian territories.
“We can’t go on living like this!” he told me passionately.
All that didn’t appeal to me. I learned that the Armed Branch of the Revolution was classified as a “terrorist” organization. But I had a great deal of trouble giving an exact meaning to this word, which everybody was using. What exactly is a terrorist? One evening Zohran turned up, beside himself.
“You must help me hide myself for a few days,” he told me in a frenzy.
“Hide you? How can I hide you when you know full well I live on the streets?” I replied.
“Yes, I know, but you and your gang know of places where the police never go.”
“What have you done?” I asked, looking him straight in the eye.
He refused to answer and I refused to put my companions in danger for I was in charge of their safety. He left. A few hours later we learned that the prime minister had been assassinated. Riots broke out. For several days the country was plunged into chaos. Was this assassination the work of the Armed Branch of the Revolution? They arrested several members who apparently belonged to “terrorist” organizations. I still have just as much trouble understanding this word. Isn’t a “terrorist” simply a victim excluded from his land, excluded from wealth and happiness, who tries desperately and perhaps savagely to make his voice heard? Shouldn’t I have been counted as one?
I was never to see Zohran again. Right up to the present day. Not a day passes when I don’t think of him. Is he alive? Is he dead? Was it my fault?
I am overcome with remorse.
As I have always been fascinated by writing and the mysterious power of signs on a page, I found time to attend a school run by the Red Cross. Besides Arabic, they taught French and English. Most of those who elbowed their way in were mainly interested in getting a midday meal and some refuge from their daily trials and tribulations. I myself was only interested in the books there. The library housed hundreds of books which, if not for me, would have remained untouched. I reveled in the poems by Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. But I also loved the works of Arthur Rimbaud and W. H. Auden. At the age of eleven, I composed my first poem and showed it to Leïla, my favorite school mistress, because she was Palestinian like me. She read it, made a few corrections, and then solemnly said, “You have a great gift. Make good use of it.”
She then told me at length about Mahmoud Darwich, whom I had never heard of. I listened to her passionately. I had no idea political commitment could be fused with poetry; they seemed to be two radically different worlds. Can poetry, then, denounce the ills of civil wars with their trails of bombings, suicide attacks, and deprivations? I swore that one day I, too, would be a great poet.
Shortly afterwards I was arrested by the police who, instead of dealing with the countless drug and arms traffickers, constantly harassed us youngsters. Like Jean Valjean I had stolen a loaf of bread in a supermarket. I did three years for this peccadillo for they wanted to set an example; too many children were roaming the streets of Beirut. When I got out of jail, I discovered I had a pair of half-brothers, twins, two bawling babies who occupied my mother full time. My stepfather, the baker, sat me down in front of him and said, “You’re even worse than I thought. We’ve never had a thief in this family. I won’t let you break your mother’s heart and bring shame on the family name. I’ve a brother who lives in Haiti. The Lebanese are the world’s greatest travelers and trade just about everywhere. He has agreed for you to come and work with him. I’ve bought your plane ticket: one way. You understand what that means? You’re leaving tomorrow.”
I left, dry-eyed, impassive but with a broken heart. I traveled to Damascus to take the plane, squeezed in a taxi with other passengers, other traders. I bade farewell to this country which in spite of everything I considered as mine. Despite some people’s reasoning, one needs to have a country. Once I had arrived in Damascus, I waited for the flight for three days at Shelda’s, one of my mother’s cousins. What a chatterbox! She plied me with questions about Zohran, who she thought was alive and hidden in East Beirut, then a lot of other nonsense.
“Is your mother’s new husband, the Lebanese, kind to her?”
“There are no Arabs where you’re going.”
“No Muslims either.”
“All Christians?”
“The people over there are all black, aren’t they? They’re niggers then, the poor things. Oh, Allah!”
At the airport she showered me with kisses and insisted, “Over there, always be proud of who you are.”
Who was I? I didn’t understand what she meant, but I liked her kisses, since I had received so few in my life.
I landed in Haiti in 2000, I was twenty-three and I didn’t like the place.
I was used to a soft Mediterranean climate. I discovered the brutality of the tropics: the blazing heat that burned you to the bone, the stifling siestas where you sought in vain for a little resp
ite and cool, the dazzling flashes of lightning and the never-ending storms and rain that soaked the earth. I thought Port-au-Prince different from Beirut and yet so similar. Yes, one day I’ll write a poem about all these cities in agony throughout the world.
To my surprise, I was troubled by my attraction to the dark skin of the men and women. In the street I would follow boys and girls who, despite my desire, I never dared approach. What a lovely color black is—the dark side of our dreams.
That same year, the President, beloved by all, had been reinstated thanks to the Americans. Apparently he was totally unrecognizable and, once having gone by the name of “the Voice of the Voiceless,” he had taken leave of his senses to the point of dealing in drugs. His sole concern was to increase his personal fortune by every means possible so that it was greater than that of the dictator who preceded him. There ensued a frantic reign of anarchy and corruption.
Luckily, Azzouz, the eldest brother of my stepfather—the baker, the king of dough—had a heart of gold. He treated me like the son he never had, despite his three marriages. Three times, fiancées had been sent him from Beirut and three times they had died while giving birth, something which had deeply affected him. He belonged to that generation of Lebanese who had left their country with only their belongings on their back and had eventually accumulated a considerable fortune. He knew the Caribbean inside out, having lived in Trinidad, Jamaica, and St. Barts. A few years earlier, he thought he had clinched a good deal by bartering his clothing store for a hotel-restaurant in Port-au-Prince. He had no idea at the time that the name of Haiti would soon be erased as a holiday resort and not a single tourist would set foot there again. Aside from a few foreign journalists, there were no guests. Azzouz had reduced expenses to a minimum and after decreasing the numbers of cleaning staff and waiters he fired the chef. Since then he did the cooking himself. I helped him, at first grudgingly, since cooking was a woman’s job. When my mother was not fussing around the children, she was slicing garlic, blanching onions, chopping chicken, or roasting lamb. Then, to my great surprise, I took a liking to the work. Soon, cooking up a savory dish gave me as much pleasure as writing a poem.
So, in order to compensate for his loss of revenue, Azzouz began dealing in drugs, a common practice in Haiti as well as in Lebanon, much like the world over. He kept company with a group of disreputable, sinister-looking individuals who came to eat for free. That’s how he met his death. One lunchtime a group of armed men burst into the kitchen where he was rolling a pizza pastry and, under my very eyes, shot him on the spot. I was terrified.
What was I to do? There was no question of me going back to Beirut, from where I had been dispatched like a bundle of dirty linen. Nobody was waiting for me there. My mother had had another child, a fourth, a baby girl this time. She never wrote. The country’s problems seemed increasingly insoluble. The Americans, French, Israelis, Syrians, and Palestinians were all getting involved. So I decided to stay where I was. In actual fact, my dream was to set off for the US as soon as possible, study at university, and devote myself to literature. To poetry. I was not yet ready to go. I followed courses at the French Institute where you didn’t learn very much. They were only interested in teaching Business French.
After Azzouz was murdered, I barricaded myself at home. Perhaps the assassins hadn’t finished their dirty work, so I made up my mind to protect myself. From a very early age I had hated and feared firearms. I bought a sawn-off shotgun and a revolver. I went for shooting lessons given by a German who worked out of a place on the road to Gonaives. He talked to me nostalgically about Germany’s past and Hitler. He was the son of a former Nazi officer and he hero-worshiped his late father. Since I was an Arab, he was convinced I shared his hatred for Jews. I myself have no problems with Jews. There were of course the terrible massacres of Sabra and Shatila that I heard my mother ramble on about. But the fact of constantly hearing about these terrible events with their piles of mutilated bodies caused them to lose all reality. I can imagine that if I had stayed in Beirut, I would have learned to fear the Jews, the Israelis. You have to be part of a community to share its identity. Living in Port-au-Prince, I’m nothing but a non-Haitian.
Since the days went by without incident, I ended up resuming a normal existence.
It was then that my stepfather, the baker, my mother’s husband, forwarded me a letter from Zohran. A few words, rapidly scribbled, which made me sob my heart out. He told me he was leaving Beirut for good, without saying where he was going. He was now a member of a Liberation Army. I guessed he was going to engage in terrible and dangerous missions. I dashed off a reply and begged him to renounce living dangerously and come and join me in Haiti. The two of us would manage The Cedars of Lebanon together. Week after week went by. I never received an answer.
I had only one form of entertainment. Every Monday I used to accompany my uncle to the bordello, since he was not interested in having mixed-blood children and preferred the services of a prostitute. After he died, I continued the custom, for various reasons, but mainly as a way of fighting against the feeling of solitude and abandonment. The bordello was called The Garden of Eden, an odd sort of name I thought. It was nestled in the hills of Pétion-Ville, a cool, leafy neighborhood, once much sought after by the bourgeoisie. The bordello was housed in a “gingerbread” building and was owned by Bringitte Buch, a Haitian-German. A former mistress of a murdered president, she had sung her way into celebrity thanks to the melodies from Manon. She had also written several novels, one of which had been translated into Spanish under the title Barlovento. I don’t know how I got round to talking to her about my own literary ambitions but, as a result, it turned out we had the subject of literature in common. She was the one who introduced me to poets from the Caribbean. I had no idea that the region was so rich in languages and colors and I discovered it in poems by Saint-John Perse, Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, Nicolás Guillén and Aimé Césaire. Oh yes, poetry was a miraculous weapon that would unite the whole world. I was convinced that the time would come when I would be equal to these great minds.
The Garden of Eden was an extraordinary place, filled with furnishings of precious woods imported from the palaces of Cuba. Clients were handpicked, composed of former or current government ministers, foreign ambassadors, and privy councillors. It was rumored that the acting president was a regular client incognito. As for the pedigree of the residents, Madame Buch made it a point of honor; they were either young girls from reputable families who had been ruined or else descendants of political opponents assassinated by the henchmen of such and such a dictator.
One evening I was about to pay a visit to one of my favorite girls, Ketty or Célia, when Madame Buch called me into her private salon, whose walls were covered with paintings by Préfète Duffaut. But it wasn’t the usual visit to discuss poetry.
“I’d like to introduce you to a young beauty,” she said in a mysterious tone of voice. “Cuca comes from Santo Domingo,” she went on frenziedly. “As a rule, I don’t like people from Santo Domingo because they are racist and think themselves superior to everyone else. But this one, I insist, is a small marvel. Her family had founded a so-called charity which was in fact a front for drug dealing.”
Seeing my horrified expression, she shrugged her shoulders. “There are so many like that! A rival group murdered every member of her family at a meeting in Léogâne. She escaped the massacre because she and a friend were at the movies. At a complete loss for family or friends in Haiti as well as in Santo Domingo, one of my clients who knew her had the bright idea to bring her here.”
I ended up agreeing to meet her out of politeness and curiosity. Up till then I had never been particularly interested in women, even though I quite liked making love; something I had practiced since the age of thirteen. When you think about it, giving women all your attention means you have solved your existential problems. I haven’t solved mine since I’ve been devoid of family, country,
and virtually any education.
Cuca was my first love and a sexual awakening. Her body must have had a good dose of black or Indian blood, for her skin was as dark as a Haitian’s, much to my delight. Consequently, I could release on her all my frustration that had built up all these months. Little did I know that love is a servitude, a dependence, a constant need for another human being. Little did I know, above all, that there is no love without jealousy. Our situation was almost laughable when you think about it. Cuca was a resident girl in a bordello, available to anyone willing to pay. And yet I dreamed of having her all to myself. The very thought of all those males in heat lining up to take advantage of her charms made me crazy. I took an instant dislike to Ruddy Télémaque, the head of the President’s personal militia. He was a smooth little operator, with an affected way of speaking, too polite to be honest and whom Madame Buch treated as a VIP. I was furious, since, when he arrived, Cuca was off-limits to everyone. Madame Buch told me that he had known her parents and, after they had both been murdered, it was Télémaque who had entrusted Cuca to her. I for one hated any form of violence, since I had witnessed it up close, but I dreamed of torturing, emasculating, and then killing him.
One day I picked up courage and endeavored to convince Cuca to leave the bordello.
“Where do you expect me to go?” she asked in annoyance. “I no longer have any parents or relatives. I don’t know anyone here or in my home country. I haven’t got a centime to my name. You always say such stupid things,” she concluded drily.
You can guess by the way Cuca answered me that she did not feel as passionately for me as I felt for her. In her eyes I was merely a client like all the rest. However, I didn’t give up trying.
“You could come and stay with me!” I suggested one day.
