Read Online God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) by Dimitry Elias Leger - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Dimitry Elias Leger
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him. The outpouring of aid is unprecedented. You are not alone. Thatâs how the officers concluded each briefing. For some reason, each time he heard the pat phrases he cringed. This is between us and God, he wanted to say. We appreciate your help. Could you please leave our island now? Instead, he nodded.
Natasha spent the day sleeping, or lying in her cot in their tent with her back turned away from him and the world. Her mind was far away and seemingly unreachable to him. He was afraid of what she was thinking. Did she also think me unworthy? Could she validate me?
That night, when the emergency camp at the airport was asleep, and even the millions of newly homeless Haitians around the city slept to keep from weeping, he suffered great anxiety. The cure wasnât going to be found on the island. He scurried behind a pile of rubble, sat down, fished out his cell phone, and dialed a number he hadnât dialed in years but remembered by heart. The phone rang an unfamiliar tone. What time was it in South Africa? Only an hour later than Paris. He should be awake.
Bernard Métélus speaking.
Hello?
Hello?
The President cleared his throat. Forgive me, Father, I have sinned, he said. Itâs been six years since my last confession.
Seated in a car in the parking lot of the University of Johannesburgâs Soweto campus, Father Métélus, a defrocked priest and former president of Haiti, turned off the engine and covered his mouth to suppress a gasp. His oldest friend in the world was on the phone. In the twenty four hours since the earthquake had struck down Haiti, he had been famished for news from home. After a sleepless night watching CNN, Bernard Métélus had decided he had a good-enough feel for the scale of the tragedy to stop listening to foreignersâ takes on it, either on TV or in the faculty lounge at the university. He did have a good laugh when a Rwandan criminology professor told him he felt sorry for Haiti and added, It was a shame to see so many people naked and barefoot and desperate on TV like that. Why canât they get it together? Easy, buddy, Métélus wanted to say, Haiti has its failings, but we never up and killed a million of our own in one month, like your people did in the nineties. But Métélus had long ago become accustomed to the absurdly extreme reactions Haiti provoked in people around the world. So he bit his tongue and spent his time swimming in nostalgia of his favorite places in Port-au-Prince: La Saline, Cité Soleil, Champ de Mars, Paco, Carrefour Feuilles. He liked that his heart had seemed to accept the probable premature deaths suffered by many of his loved ones with a certain amount of Zen. Maybe his old priestly wisdom hadnât completely disappeared after all. He now realized that his calm in the face of his wifeâs and other Haitiansâhysterical reactions to the horrific event back home was a front. The sound of the voice of an old friend, even one who had become a colleague he despised and a successor he dismissed, pierced a thick wound he long thought healed. His emotions outran him, spilling tears through his eyes and spectacles, sandpapering his throat. If the President had survived the gruesome destruction of the National Palace, maybe Tante Evelyne in Léogâne survived too? Maybe my domino-player buddies in Carrefour survived too? Maybe the daughter in Port-au-Prince whose existence I had to deny survived also? Maybe the Lord does finally have mercy on me? Maybe He forgives my hubris? Maybe, just maybe, He loves me still. Maybe, just maybe . . . and then Bernard Métélus, failed Roman Catholic priest and politician in exile, for the first time in a long, long time, felt hope fill his soul, like fresh air through the lungs of a drowned man left for dead.
Go on, my son, Métélus said, with a quivering voice.
PART II
Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live; but which of us has
Natasha spent the day sleeping, or lying in her cot in their tent with her back turned away from him and the world. Her mind was far away and seemingly unreachable to him. He was afraid of what she was thinking. Did she also think me unworthy? Could she validate me?
That night, when the emergency camp at the airport was asleep, and even the millions of newly homeless Haitians around the city slept to keep from weeping, he suffered great anxiety. The cure wasnât going to be found on the island. He scurried behind a pile of rubble, sat down, fished out his cell phone, and dialed a number he hadnât dialed in years but remembered by heart. The phone rang an unfamiliar tone. What time was it in South Africa? Only an hour later than Paris. He should be awake.
Bernard Métélus speaking.
Hello?
Hello?
The President cleared his throat. Forgive me, Father, I have sinned, he said. Itâs been six years since my last confession.
Seated in a car in the parking lot of the University of Johannesburgâs Soweto campus, Father Métélus, a defrocked priest and former president of Haiti, turned off the engine and covered his mouth to suppress a gasp. His oldest friend in the world was on the phone. In the twenty four hours since the earthquake had struck down Haiti, he had been famished for news from home. After a sleepless night watching CNN, Bernard Métélus had decided he had a good-enough feel for the scale of the tragedy to stop listening to foreignersâ takes on it, either on TV or in the faculty lounge at the university. He did have a good laugh when a Rwandan criminology professor told him he felt sorry for Haiti and added, It was a shame to see so many people naked and barefoot and desperate on TV like that. Why canât they get it together? Easy, buddy, Métélus wanted to say, Haiti has its failings, but we never up and killed a million of our own in one month, like your people did in the nineties. But Métélus had long ago become accustomed to the absurdly extreme reactions Haiti provoked in people around the world. So he bit his tongue and spent his time swimming in nostalgia of his favorite places in Port-au-Prince: La Saline, Cité Soleil, Champ de Mars, Paco, Carrefour Feuilles. He liked that his heart had seemed to accept the probable premature deaths suffered by many of his loved ones with a certain amount of Zen. Maybe his old priestly wisdom hadnât completely disappeared after all. He now realized that his calm in the face of his wifeâs and other Haitiansâhysterical reactions to the horrific event back home was a front. The sound of the voice of an old friend, even one who had become a colleague he despised and a successor he dismissed, pierced a thick wound he long thought healed. His emotions outran him, spilling tears through his eyes and spectacles, sandpapering his throat. If the President had survived the gruesome destruction of the National Palace, maybe Tante Evelyne in Léogâne survived too? Maybe my domino-player buddies in Carrefour survived too? Maybe the daughter in Port-au-Prince whose existence I had to deny survived also? Maybe the Lord does finally have mercy on me? Maybe He forgives my hubris? Maybe, just maybe, He loves me still. Maybe, just maybe . . . and then Bernard Métélus, failed Roman Catholic priest and politician in exile, for the first time in a long, long time, felt hope fill his soul, like fresh air through the lungs of a drowned man left for dead.
Go on, my son, Métélus said, with a quivering voice.
PART II
Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live; but which of us has
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