The World is Moving Around Me Read Free Page B

your feet. We glance at each other to gauge our neighbor’s fear and measure our own. By the fence around the tennis courts, next to a dozing security guard, a small radio is spitting out sound. Sometimes we even understand what it’s saying. Often a voice is shouting out advertisements for mattresses. Which is ironic when most of the city is sleeping on the ground.

    The Concrete Trap
    A lady who lives nearby spent all night talking to her family still trapped beneath a ton of concrete. First her husband stopped responding. Then one of their three children. Later, another. She kept begging them to hold out a little longer. More than a dozen hours later, people were finally able to rescue the baby, who had been crying the whole time. When he got out, he broke into a wide smile.

    The Revolution
    The radio announced that the Presidential Palace has been destroyed. The taxation and pension office, destroyed. The courthouse, destroyed. Stores, crumbled. The communication network, destroyed. Prisoners on the streets. For one night, the revolution had come.

    The First Messages
    Day breaks. We awake slowly. Some are still sleeping, especially those who stayed up all night. The night is frightening; the day, reassuring. A mistake to believe that, since everything happened in broad daylight. We’re still in the hotel garden, under the spreading trees, elated to be among the living, even if we lack the essentials. We try to reach our friends. The means of communication (cell phones, land lines, Internet) are still not working up to capacity. Someone shouts that there is Internet access in front of the hotel. We rush over there. I’m amazed by this group ability to find a solution when everything seems blocked. We fan out, then someone shouts, “It’s here!” I go running and discover a row of people sitting on the ground at the entrance to the hotel, feverishly sending messages to their loved ones. We need to act fast because the connection, we’re told, can go down at any minute. A guy next to me, his face running with sweat, is staring at his screen. I see he’s looking at the news. I grab the machine from him. He turns to me, incredulous, but doesn’t try to take it back. I send my first message to my wife: “I’m all right but the city is broken.” I add that Saint-Éloi is all right too and that we’re together every second, day and night. Our little group has washed up on a desert island the day after a ferocious storm.

    The Outside World
    We were sitting around a table talking in the hotel garden when Lyonel Trouillot the writer showed up. He told us what happened the day before, once night fell. Everything was pitch dark, but he left his house and headed for the hotel. Trouillot walked the entire way last night, to the hotel and back, two hours in total darkness. Knowing his health problems, the effort must have been superhuman. Today, he seemed relaxed. He had his car now. I decided to use the opportunity to go see my mother, since I haven’t been able to reach her by phone. Saint-Éloi will join us. The hotel is set back from the main road by a hundred meters or so, just enough to separate us from the city. We leave the hotel life and fall into the cauldron of Port-au-Prince and its suffocating reality.

    The Mango Lady
    She’s the first thing I see on the road to Pétionville. A mango vendor sitting with her back against a wall, a dozen mangos spread out before her. This is her livelihood. For her, there’s nothing new. It doesn’t occur to me to buy from her, though I love mangos. I hear Saint-Éloi’s voice behind me: “What a country!” These people are so used to finding life in difficult conditions that they could bring hope down to hell.

    The First Bodies
    Just outside Pétionville, I see bodies on the ground. Carefully stacked one next to the other, eight in all. I don’t know how they died or who put them here. The