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Fiction

from “At the Borders of Thirst”

By Kettly Mars
Translated from French by David Ball & Nicole Ball
Haiti's Kettly Mars paints a grim picture of life in the camps.

Fito looked at his watch. Ten to seven, he’d be on time for his appointment. The jeep’s headlights shiftily lit up the tortured trunks of the neems bordering Route 1. Traffic was fluid and the car was going fast. A sudden, liberating transition from the traffic jams that had held him up for almost an hour, all the way to the Bon Repos exit. Fito was a bit cold but he didn’t turn down the A/C. He was letting his blood cool down. In a moment he would be sweating out every drop of water in his body under a makeshift shelter. There was less and less vegetation as he went on. Soon he’d reach the Route 9 intersection—the crossing of all dangers—at the Cité Soleil exit. He saw them standing under an oleander bush. He knew he’d find them there, like the other times, but when he saw them his heart knocked hard against his chest and his throat tightened. He left the asphalt, drove the all-terrain vehicle onto the dirt shoulder and unlocked the doors. When the two men got in, the night swept into the car with them. There was almost no sound outside except for the loud whirring of cicadas in the tufts of the surrounding brambles and the engine of a powerful generator humming in the distance.

The three men exchanged a brief greeting in the car. About half a mile further on, the uncle said: Ralanti… vire la a, patron. Fito took a rocky path on the right. First they had to drive along the edge of Corail, the camp for the victims of the earthquake, with its ordered rows of tents set up by the foreign soldiers. Canaan, higher up, sprawled out anarchically, covering a succession of naked hills that towered over the North Road and met the foothills of Morne-à-Cabris on the other side, toward Route 3. A soil of volcanic tuff, hot and unrewarding. A few sparse clumps of neems and cactus where the displaced had ripped out sites for their tents. Canaan, a mix of women, children, men, of laughs and tears, hungers and thirsts. A chaotic conglomeration of plywood shelters and tents, mostly blue, stamped with the acronyms of international organizations. It had sprouted like a gigantic mushroom, crawling rapidly from one hill to another, covering them with a net of displaced lives. Beyond the apparent chaos, a subtle organization ruled the place. There was already Canaan 1 and Canaan 2, and as more people poured in, other Canaans would keep spreading out in the thirsty hollows of the earth. A few permanent structures were rising here and there, giving the place its topography of an official shantytown in the making. And dust everywhere—in hair, eyes, hands, between the buttocks, on legs, encrusted in the most intimate parts of people’s lives. Water as rare as blood. A dry, lonely spot. Canaan, invaded right after the earthquake by a few hundred disaster victims who proclaimed it the promised land. A year later, according to the rather unreliable statistics, there were eighty thousand of them. An NGO looked for water and promised to install a water supply system; they’d been waiting for several months now. Meanwhile, the precious liquid had to be purchased. At first, a few water-trucks sponsored by charitable organizations came to pour out their tanks into the people’s buckets and oil-drums. A struggle would ensue and most of the time, the strongest won. That water was then divided like little pieces of bacon and resold at the highest possible price. In Canaan everything had a price: the little patch of stolen earth; the water, so very rare; hardware, beauty care, bread, the Internet, marijuana, balls of crack, safety (ever elusive), and sex in all its forms.

The path stopped in front of a clump of bayahondas; they had to walk the rest of the way. Fito threw away his cigarette, which fell in a cluster of sparks. He put his keys into the right-hand pocket of his pants. He could feel his rubber soles digging into the pebbles of the path. A strong, sweet breeze was blowing, opening the sky. The Canaanites deserted the camp while the sun was out. Impossible to stay under a tent for an hour without dying of heat or going into a kind of thirst coma. Where did they go? Some of them had a steady job in the rare factories of Vareux, others sold all sorts of little things in Bon Repos, Damien, around Toussaint Louverture airport or as far as Port-au-Prince, still others were small-time dealers in illicit substances. But all the others, the old, the children—in what parched silence did they get through the day? Fito wondered about it sometimes but he never had the courage to ask a camp resident. When night fell and a cool breeze came up from the sea the place was reborn. Canaan seemed to live quietly, a few dozen yards higher, in the solitude of the hills: already, shouts and music were reaching him intermittently. It was a stiff climb and Fito was panting. Kerosene lamps and candles lit some of the tents; from far off you’d think they were on fire. Small generators hummed in a few rare spots, to keep business going—small businesses, honest or dishonest. The light around these points attracted the Canaanites. Behind the transparent canvases, each shelter was surviving in extreme conditions. There was a tent run by a Protestant pastor for religious services. Further on, a blind fortune-teller read her cards at twenty-five gourdes a shot. Canaan was organizing itself so it could look forward to some kind of future. A committee of concerned men and women in Canaan had even set up a supervisory body and served as political interlocutor. This committee was trying to establish its authority and make up for the absence of the government, which knew nothing of their existence. It was trying to set up security brigades, as thieves and rapists were sneaking around in the camp; all it took was a razorblade to get into a tent… Without material resources, though, all that was still only a pious hope. But they had already received visits from spokespeople for the candidates in the second round of elections coming up in two weeks. Canaan was a sleeping force, a male pandye, a time bomb. A potential breeding ground for the agendas of politicians and humanitarian aid organizations.

The little guy with the dreadlocks stayed there to watch the jeep. The other one, the uncle, walked ahead and went into an alley on the left. Fito followed him, stepped into the alley and toppled into another dimension. Everything was changing now. Every face he met led him to a paradise in hell, to an inexpressible happiness he was entering like a sleepwalker. He could lose himself in the dense promiscuity, the dangerous and fascinating proximity of the most intimate lives of the people, and forget himself at last. He was no one, he was nowhere. His pulse was adjusting to the pulse of the camp, to the sounds and shadows, to the smells of piss that rose at times with the breeze. Adjusting to the dull shock of blows hitting the flesh of women, to the cries from the belly, to banal pain, anesthetized by fear. The laughter of girls chatting among themselves, dreaming of love and of leaving one day to stay with a relative in the United States, Canada, or France were familiar sounds to him; he knew the dull eyes of the men sitting in boredom or waiting for the winning numbers of the borlette, the children in diapers clutching their mothers’ legs or playing with broken toys “made in China.” He rubbed shoulders with men and women whose job was to survive, from day to day, with their bible under their armpit, thanking God for the simple fact of breathing. There were children being prostituted in a few tents. There were gangs, weapons, and latent intentions to take lives, always for money. He knew he was in danger in this place but that very danger impelled him to live, slipped into his blood like a drug, gave him a boost. Fito knew the respiration of the camp, its shape, its smells, its bursts of shouting and its whispers. The Canaanites hadn’t made the streets narrow, in case a city was ever built there, or in case of a fire. Or in case of…

He was coming for the sixth time tonight; he always came on a Friday. Each one of his visits was its own beginning and its own end. Afterward, he would emerge from Canaan exalted, but ill at ease. The white dust of the camp covering his shoes. Burning from the stigmata of his own disgust. Already lonely. Already wrestling with his demons. Already knowing that his return was inevitable. Every time, his guide took him to a different alley, to a different part of the camp. A guide who didn’t talk much, except to point out to him the tricky parts of the path. Except to whisper to him sometimes, to moderate his impatience, Patron nou jwenn yon bon ti bagay pou wou wi. Bon zenzenn![1] Sometimes the uncle ran into men he recognized in the darkness of the night. A brief complicity. They greeted each other rapidly, striking their fists together:

Sak pase, baz? Gason ap mache?

Anfòm,bròdè pa m… nèg poze…[2]

Fito never knew beforehand to whom he was taking him. But the surprise was always worth the wait. To assess possible sites for the construction of housing projects, he had visited several camps, the ones in Port-au-Prince, the megacamp on the old Bowenfield Airport runway, another in Santo in the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, and finally Canaan, the unspeakable one. He had made technical evaluations, topographical studies, he had interviewed displaced people about the way they were living, about how they got water, their transportation problems, about what they were looking for in a new place of residence. He understood the necessity of giving a local, rational response to people’s needs. You had to go about it in a different way, a way that would respect people’s suffering. There was no point coming in with readymade plans that didn’t work. You had to educate them, teach them to live under different conditions and in other types of housing. You needed the energy and faith that move mountains to fight the corruption that rotted away institutions and killed hope in the bud. Fito became enthusiastic, worked, proposed, tilted at the windmills of the system, persisted, and grew depressed. The weight of the status quo suffocated him. Canaan swallowed him up.

No stranger to the place could ever claim to find his way alone in this huge camp, this labyrinth housing close to a hundred thousand souls. There were too many ways of getting lost. You got into it through several paths that all looked alike. You needed a guide, one of those men who lived off the flesh and blood of the camp. Fito was following his scout, tense, attentive to every detail opening up before his eyes. He almost knocked into the man, who stopped short in front of one of those  boxlike shelters with plywood walls. A few steps away, a woman sitting on a tiny bench was boiling spaghetti in a pot. The smoke from the burning embers enveloped her and thickened the night. The man whispered a few words to her and she nodded, without looking at the visitor. The guide turned to Fito and pointed to the curtain over the door. Fito also avoided looking at the woman and, his forehead covered in sweat, ducked in under the cloth.

There was a candle burning on a saucer to the right of the entrance, a mat on the dirt floor of the narrow space, a chair stuck between the mat and the plywood wall, and Mirline lying on the mat, her head raised by a pillow, waiting for him. As Kétia, Fabiola, Rosemé, Esther, and Medjine had waited for him… He always asked them their first names, that’s all he kept from his daydreams in Canaan. The guide had told him that Mirline was around eleven, an orphan since the earthquake, and he was her uncle; he was doing this to feed the other children he was taking care of. He said the same thing every time. That man was surely the uncle of all the little girls for sale in the camp. A story among so many others. True or false, did it really matter? As long as there was a market for young flesh, that uncle would pull little nieces out of his hat like a magician of deviance. Fito paid in American dollars and in advance. He was sure he was fifty-five, but that was his age in another world, in another life. She was wearing denim shorts with a frayed hem and a pink sleeveless T-shirt. You could make out two buds in lieu of breasts, hard, tense with fear. Her slender limbs were moving imperceptibly. She did not yet have hair under her armpits. Fito noticed the peeling red nail polish on her toenails and it annoyed him.

The big eyes of the child absorbed the light of the candle. Her black skin was shining. A multitude of little braids crowned her head, her forehead, her nose with broad, trembling nostrils, and her wide mouth. She smelled of the basil leaves her mother must have rubbed her with as a protection against visible and invisible misfortunes. A green, musky smell that stirred him and provoked the hardening of his maddened member. Without touching him, Mirline was already instilling an unbearable sweetness into his palpitating veins. An elation that bordered on vertigo. He could have wept. She was beautiful, almost unreal. Fito knelt down next to her. He couldn’t find anything to say to her, but his body was whispering so many words. His desire for her was intense but he absolutely didn’t want to hurt her. How could he make her understand that? She raised her legs and he absorbed the supple movement of her thigh muscles, her brand new flesh, like the source of a spring. Fito was sweating in big drops, his shirt already soaked. He could have watched her all night, touching her gently. But he had only one hour to touch eternity under the skin of Mirline. In Canaan too, time is money.

Aux Frontières de la soif © Kettly Mars. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by David Ball and Nicole Ball. All rights reserved.

 


[1] Creole: Boss, we’ve found a little jewel.

[2] Hi, brother. Out walking?

Everything’s fine, brother… take it easy…

 

English French (Original)

Fito looked at his watch. Ten to seven, he’d be on time for his appointment. The jeep’s headlights shiftily lit up the tortured trunks of the neems bordering Route 1. Traffic was fluid and the car was going fast. A sudden, liberating transition from the traffic jams that had held him up for almost an hour, all the way to the Bon Repos exit. Fito was a bit cold but he didn’t turn down the A/C. He was letting his blood cool down. In a moment he would be sweating out every drop of water in his body under a makeshift shelter. There was less and less vegetation as he went on. Soon he’d reach the Route 9 intersection—the crossing of all dangers—at the Cité Soleil exit. He saw them standing under an oleander bush. He knew he’d find them there, like the other times, but when he saw them his heart knocked hard against his chest and his throat tightened. He left the asphalt, drove the all-terrain vehicle onto the dirt shoulder and unlocked the doors. When the two men got in, the night swept into the car with them. There was almost no sound outside except for the loud whirring of cicadas in the tufts of the surrounding brambles and the engine of a powerful generator humming in the distance.

The three men exchanged a brief greeting in the car. About half a mile further on, the uncle said: Ralanti… vire la a, patron. Fito took a rocky path on the right. First they had to drive along the edge of Corail, the camp for the victims of the earthquake, with its ordered rows of tents set up by the foreign soldiers. Canaan, higher up, sprawled out anarchically, covering a succession of naked hills that towered over the North Road and met the foothills of Morne-à-Cabris on the other side, toward Route 3. A soil of volcanic tuff, hot and unrewarding. A few sparse clumps of neems and cactus where the displaced had ripped out sites for their tents. Canaan, a mix of women, children, men, of laughs and tears, hungers and thirsts. A chaotic conglomeration of plywood shelters and tents, mostly blue, stamped with the acronyms of international organizations. It had sprouted like a gigantic mushroom, crawling rapidly from one hill to another, covering them with a net of displaced lives. Beyond the apparent chaos, a subtle organization ruled the place. There was already Canaan 1 and Canaan 2, and as more people poured in, other Canaans would keep spreading out in the thirsty hollows of the earth. A few permanent structures were rising here and there, giving the place its topography of an official shantytown in the making. And dust everywhere—in hair, eyes, hands, between the buttocks, on legs, encrusted in the most intimate parts of people’s lives. Water as rare as blood. A dry, lonely spot. Canaan, invaded right after the earthquake by a few hundred disaster victims who proclaimed it the promised land. A year later, according to the rather unreliable statistics, there were eighty thousand of them. An NGO looked for water and promised to install a water supply system; they’d been waiting for several months now. Meanwhile, the precious liquid had to be purchased. At first, a few water-trucks sponsored by charitable organizations came to pour out their tanks into the people’s buckets and oil-drums. A struggle would ensue and most of the time, the strongest won. That water was then divided like little pieces of bacon and resold at the highest possible price. In Canaan everything had a price: the little patch of stolen earth; the water, so very rare; hardware, beauty care, bread, the Internet, marijuana, balls of crack, safety (ever elusive), and sex in all its forms.

The path stopped in front of a clump of bayahondas; they had to walk the rest of the way. Fito threw away his cigarette, which fell in a cluster of sparks. He put his keys into the right-hand pocket of his pants. He could feel his rubber soles digging into the pebbles of the path. A strong, sweet breeze was blowing, opening the sky. The Canaanites deserted the camp while the sun was out. Impossible to stay under a tent for an hour without dying of heat or going into a kind of thirst coma. Where did they go? Some of them had a steady job in the rare factories of Vareux, others sold all sorts of little things in Bon Repos, Damien, around Toussaint Louverture airport or as far as Port-au-Prince, still others were small-time dealers in illicit substances. But all the others, the old, the children—in what parched silence did they get through the day? Fito wondered about it sometimes but he never had the courage to ask a camp resident. When night fell and a cool breeze came up from the sea the place was reborn. Canaan seemed to live quietly, a few dozen yards higher, in the solitude of the hills: already, shouts and music were reaching him intermittently. It was a stiff climb and Fito was panting. Kerosene lamps and candles lit some of the tents; from far off you’d think they were on fire. Small generators hummed in a few rare spots, to keep business going—small businesses, honest or dishonest. The light around these points attracted the Canaanites. Behind the transparent canvases, each shelter was surviving in extreme conditions. There was a tent run by a Protestant pastor for religious services. Further on, a blind fortune-teller read her cards at twenty-five gourdes a shot. Canaan was organizing itself so it could look forward to some kind of future. A committee of concerned men and women in Canaan had even set up a supervisory body and served as political interlocutor. This committee was trying to establish its authority and make up for the absence of the government, which knew nothing of their existence. It was trying to set up security brigades, as thieves and rapists were sneaking around in the camp; all it took was a razorblade to get into a tent… Without material resources, though, all that was still only a pious hope. But they had already received visits from spokespeople for the candidates in the second round of elections coming up in two weeks. Canaan was a sleeping force, a male pandye, a time bomb. A potential breeding ground for the agendas of politicians and humanitarian aid organizations.

The little guy with the dreadlocks stayed there to watch the jeep. The other one, the uncle, walked ahead and went into an alley on the left. Fito followed him, stepped into the alley and toppled into another dimension. Everything was changing now. Every face he met led him to a paradise in hell, to an inexpressible happiness he was entering like a sleepwalker. He could lose himself in the dense promiscuity, the dangerous and fascinating proximity of the most intimate lives of the people, and forget himself at last. He was no one, he was nowhere. His pulse was adjusting to the pulse of the camp, to the sounds and shadows, to the smells of piss that rose at times with the breeze. Adjusting to the dull shock of blows hitting the flesh of women, to the cries from the belly, to banal pain, anesthetized by fear. The laughter of girls chatting among themselves, dreaming of love and of leaving one day to stay with a relative in the United States, Canada, or France were familiar sounds to him; he knew the dull eyes of the men sitting in boredom or waiting for the winning numbers of the borlette, the children in diapers clutching their mothers’ legs or playing with broken toys “made in China.” He rubbed shoulders with men and women whose job was to survive, from day to day, with their bible under their armpit, thanking God for the simple fact of breathing. There were children being prostituted in a few tents. There were gangs, weapons, and latent intentions to take lives, always for money. He knew he was in danger in this place but that very danger impelled him to live, slipped into his blood like a drug, gave him a boost. Fito knew the respiration of the camp, its shape, its smells, its bursts of shouting and its whispers. The Canaanites hadn’t made the streets narrow, in case a city was ever built there, or in case of a fire. Or in case of…

He was coming for the sixth time tonight; he always came on a Friday. Each one of his visits was its own beginning and its own end. Afterward, he would emerge from Canaan exalted, but ill at ease. The white dust of the camp covering his shoes. Burning from the stigmata of his own disgust. Already lonely. Already wrestling with his demons. Already knowing that his return was inevitable. Every time, his guide took him to a different alley, to a different part of the camp. A guide who didn’t talk much, except to point out to him the tricky parts of the path. Except to whisper to him sometimes, to moderate his impatience, Patron nou jwenn yon bon ti bagay pou wou wi. Bon zenzenn![1] Sometimes the uncle ran into men he recognized in the darkness of the night. A brief complicity. They greeted each other rapidly, striking their fists together:

Sak pase, baz? Gason ap mache?

Anfòm,bròdè pa m… nèg poze…[2]

Fito never knew beforehand to whom he was taking him. But the surprise was always worth the wait. To assess possible sites for the construction of housing projects, he had visited several camps, the ones in Port-au-Prince, the megacamp on the old Bowenfield Airport runway, another in Santo in the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac, and finally Canaan, the unspeakable one. He had made technical evaluations, topographical studies, he had interviewed displaced people about the way they were living, about how they got water, their transportation problems, about what they were looking for in a new place of residence. He understood the necessity of giving a local, rational response to people’s needs. You had to go about it in a different way, a way that would respect people’s suffering. There was no point coming in with readymade plans that didn’t work. You had to educate them, teach them to live under different conditions and in other types of housing. You needed the energy and faith that move mountains to fight the corruption that rotted away institutions and killed hope in the bud. Fito became enthusiastic, worked, proposed, tilted at the windmills of the system, persisted, and grew depressed. The weight of the status quo suffocated him. Canaan swallowed him up.

No stranger to the place could ever claim to find his way alone in this huge camp, this labyrinth housing close to a hundred thousand souls. There were too many ways of getting lost. You got into it through several paths that all looked alike. You needed a guide, one of those men who lived off the flesh and blood of the camp. Fito was following his scout, tense, attentive to every detail opening up before his eyes. He almost knocked into the man, who stopped short in front of one of those  boxlike shelters with plywood walls. A few steps away, a woman sitting on a tiny bench was boiling spaghetti in a pot. The smoke from the burning embers enveloped her and thickened the night. The man whispered a few words to her and she nodded, without looking at the visitor. The guide turned to Fito and pointed to the curtain over the door. Fito also avoided looking at the woman and, his forehead covered in sweat, ducked in under the cloth.

There was a candle burning on a saucer to the right of the entrance, a mat on the dirt floor of the narrow space, a chair stuck between the mat and the plywood wall, and Mirline lying on the mat, her head raised by a pillow, waiting for him. As Kétia, Fabiola, Rosemé, Esther, and Medjine had waited for him… He always asked them their first names, that’s all he kept from his daydreams in Canaan. The guide had told him that Mirline was around eleven, an orphan since the earthquake, and he was her uncle; he was doing this to feed the other children he was taking care of. He said the same thing every time. That man was surely the uncle of all the little girls for sale in the camp. A story among so many others. True or false, did it really matter? As long as there was a market for young flesh, that uncle would pull little nieces out of his hat like a magician of deviance. Fito paid in American dollars and in advance. He was sure he was fifty-five, but that was his age in another world, in another life. She was wearing denim shorts with a frayed hem and a pink sleeveless T-shirt. You could make out two buds in lieu of breasts, hard, tense with fear. Her slender limbs were moving imperceptibly. She did not yet have hair under her armpits. Fito noticed the peeling red nail polish on her toenails and it annoyed him.

The big eyes of the child absorbed the light of the candle. Her black skin was shining. A multitude of little braids crowned her head, her forehead, her nose with broad, trembling nostrils, and her wide mouth. She smelled of the basil leaves her mother must have rubbed her with as a protection against visible and invisible misfortunes. A green, musky smell that stirred him and provoked the hardening of his maddened member. Without touching him, Mirline was already instilling an unbearable sweetness into his palpitating veins. An elation that bordered on vertigo. He could have wept. She was beautiful, almost unreal. Fito knelt down next to her. He couldn’t find anything to say to her, but his body was whispering so many words. His desire for her was intense but he absolutely didn’t want to hurt her. How could he make her understand that? She raised her legs and he absorbed the supple movement of her thigh muscles, her brand new flesh, like the source of a spring. Fito was sweating in big drops, his shirt already soaked. He could have watched her all night, touching her gently. But he had only one hour to touch eternity under the skin of Mirline. In Canaan too, time is money.

Aux Frontières de la soif © Kettly Mars. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by David Ball and Nicole Ball. All rights reserved.

 


[1] Creole: Boss, we’ve found a little jewel.

[2] Hi, brother. Out walking?

Everything’s fine, brother… take it easy…

 

from Aux frontières de la soif

Fito regarda sa montre. Six heures cinquante, il serait à l’heure à son rendez-vous. Les phares de la jeep éclairaient furtivement les troncs tourmentés des neems au bord de la Nationale numéro un. Le trafic était fluide, la voiture filait vite. Une transition brusque et libératrice par rapport aux encombrements qui l’avaient retenu près d’une heure, jusqu’à la sortie de  Bon Repos. Fito avait un peu froid mais il ne régla pas le climatiseur. Il laissait son sang se refroidir. Dans un moment il allait suer toute l’eau de son corps sous un abri  de bricoles. La végétation diminuait au fur et à mesure de sa progression. Il atteindrait bientôt le carrefour de Route Neuf, croisement de tous les risques, à la sortie de Cité Soleil. Il les vit debout sous un bouquet de lauriers rose. Il savait les trouver là, comme les autres fois, mais à leur vue son cœur cogna fort dans sa poitrine, et sa gorge se serra. Il laissa l’asphalte, engagea le tout-terrain sur l’accotement en terre battue et déverrouilla les portières. Quand les deux hommes montèrent à bord, la nuit s’engouffra dans la cabine du véhicule. Il n’y avait presque pas de bruit dehors, des cigales crissaient dans les touffes de ronces alentour et, au loin, le moteur d’une puissante génératrice ronflait.

Dans la voiture les trois hommes échangèrent un bref salut. Au bout d’environ un kilomètre, l’oncle dit :  ralanti… vire la a, patron.[1]  Fito prit un chemin pierreux sur la droite. Il fallait d’abord longer Corail, le camp de sinistrés aux rangées ordonnées de tentes plantées par les soldats étrangers. Canaan, plus haut, couvrait dans la plus parfaite anarchie une coulée de mornes nus dominant la route du Nord et rejoignant sur l’autre versant, en direction de la Nationale no. 3, les contreforts du Morne-à-Cabris. Une terre de tuf, ingrate et chaude. Quelques rares touffes de neems et des cactus auxquels les déplacés avaient arraché des carrés d’emplacement. Canaan, un mélange de femmes, d’enfants, d’hommes, de rires et de pleurs, de faims et de soifs. Une agglomération chaotique de carrés en contreplaqué et de maisons-bâches à dominante bleue, étampés de sigles internationaux, qui avait grandi comme un immense champignon, rampant vite d’un morne à l’autre, les recouvrant d’une maille de vies déplacées. Au-delà du chaos apparent, une organisation subtile régissait l’endroit. Il y avait déjà Canaan 1 et Canaan 2 et au rythme de l’avancée humaine d’autres Canaan continueraient de s’étendre dans les creux assoiffés de la terre. Quelques maisons en dur poussaient ça et là, établissant au lieu sa topographie de bidonville officiel en devenir. Et la poussière partout,  dans les cheveux, les yeux, les mains, la raie des fesses, les jambes, incrustée au plus intime des vies.  L’eau rare comme le sang. Un endroit sec et seul. Canaan, envahie et proclamée terre promise dès le lendemain du séisme par quelques centaines de sinistrés de la zone. Un an plus tard, et selon des statistiques peu fiables, ils étaient quatre vingt mille. Une ONG cherchait de l’eau et promettait l’installation d’un système d’adduction, on attendait depuis plusieurs mois. Entretemps, il fallait acheter le précieux liquide. Au début, quelques camions-citernes commandités par des organisations caritatives venaient déverser leur réservoir dans les seaux et les drums du peuple. Une lutte s’engageait alors ou les plus forts gagnaient la plupart du temps. Une eau qui ensuite était découpée comme des petites pièces de lard et revendue au prix fort. À Canaan tout avait un prix, l’emplacement de terre spoliée,  l’eau rarissime, la quincaillerie, les soins de beauté, le pain, l’internet, l’improbable sécurité, la marijuana et les boules de crack, le sexe sous toutes ses formes.

Le chemin s’arrêta devant un bouquet de bayahondes, il fallait continuer à pied. Fito lança sa cigarette qui tomba dans une grappe d’étincelles. Il mit ses clés dans la poche droite de son pantalon. Il sentit ses semelles en caoutchouc mordre les cailloux du sentier. Une brise forte et douce soufflait, ouvrant le ciel. Les Cananéens désertaient le camp aux heures du soleil. Impossible de rester une heure sous une tente sans mourir de chaleur ou entrer dans une sorte de coma de la soif. Où allaient-ils ? Certains avaient un boulot régulier dans les rares usines de Vareux, d’autres vendaient toutes sortes de petits trucs à Bon Repos, à Damien, vers l’aéroport Toussaint Louverture ou jusqu’à Port-au-Prince, d’autres encore traficotaient des substances défendues. Mais les autres, les vieux, les enfants, dans quel silence déshydraté traversaient-ils le jour? Fito se le demandait parfois mais il n’avait jamais eu le courage de poser la question à un habitant de camp. Quand tombait la nuit et qu’une brise fraîche montait de la mer l’espace renaissait. Canaan semblait vivre doucement, quelques dizaines de mètres plus haut, dans la solitude des mornes, déjà des éclats de voix et de musique lui parvenaient. La montée était raide, Fito haletait un peu. Des lampes à kérosène et des bougies éclairaient certaines des tentes, de loin on croirait les voir brûler. Des petites génératrices ronflaient en de rares endroits,  pour faire marcher les affaires, le petit commerce honnête ou malhonnête. La lumière autour de ces points attirait les Cananéens. Derrière la transparence des bâches, chaque abri survivait dans des conditions extrêmes. Il y avait une tente tenue par un pasteur protestant pour le culte. Plus loin, une voyante aveugle tirait des cartes à vingt-cinq gourdes la séance. Canaan s’organisait pour se projeter dans l’avenir. Un comité de cananéens et cananéennes concernés s’était même constitué en structure d’encadrement et faisait office d’interlocuteur politique. Ce comité essayait d’établir son autorité, de suppléer à l’absence de l’État qui ne savait rien de leur existence. Il essayait de monter des brigades de sécurité, les voleurs et les violeurs volaient bas dans le camp, il suffisait d’une lame de rasoir pour pénétrer sous une tente… Mais sans moyens matériels, tout cela n’était encore qu’un vœu pieux. Mais ils avaient déjà reçu des visites de porte-paroles de candidats au deuxième tour des élections qui arrivaient dans quelques semaines. Canaan était une force endormie, un malè pandye[2]. Un vivier en puissance pour les besoins du politique et de l’humanitaire.

Le petit jeune avec les dreadlocks resta sur les lieux, pour surveiller la jeep. L’autre, l’oncle, prit les devant, s’engagea dans un corridor sur sa gauche.  Fito le suivit, posa le pied dans la ruelle et bascula dans une autre dimension. Tout changeait alors. Chaque visage qu’il croisait le menait vers un paradis en enfer, un bonheur indicible dans lequel il pénétrait comme un somnambule. Il pouvait se perdre alors dans la promiscuité dense, dans la proximité dangereuse et fascinante vécue au plus intime du peuple et s’oublier enfin. Il n’était personne, il n’était nulle part. Son pouls s’ajustait à celui du camp, aux bruits et aux ombres, aux relents de pissat qui montaient par intermittence avec la brise. Au choc mat des coups frappant parfois les chairs des femmes, aux cris du ventre, à la douleur banale, anesthésiée par la peur. Il connaissait les éclats de rires des filles qui bavardent entre elles, rêvant d’amour et de partir un jour rejoindre un parent aux Etats-Unis, au Canada ou en France, l’œil morne des hommes assis dans l’ennui ou dans l’attente des numéros gagnants à la borlette,[3] les enfants en culottes accrochés aux jambes des mères ou jouant avec des jouets cassés, made in China. Il côtoyait des hommes et des femmes qui faisaient métier de survivre, au jour le jour, la bible sous l’aisselle et remerciant Dieu du simple fait de respirer. Il y avait des enfants qu’on prostituait dans quelques maisons-bâches. Il y avait des gangs, des armes et des intentions latentes d’ôter la vie, toujours pour de l’argent. Il se savait en danger en ce lieu mais ce danger même le portait à vivre, s’insinuait dans son sang comme une drogue, le boostait.  Fito connaissait la respiration du camp, sa forme, ses odeurs, ses éclats de voix et ses chuchotements. Les Cananéens n’avaient pas fait les rues étroites, si jamais on devait construire une ville, ou si jamais il y avait le feu. Si jamais…

Il venait pour la sixième fois ce soir, il venait toujours un vendredi. Chacune de ses visites était son commencement et sa fin. Après, il émergeait de Canaan exalté, mais inquiet. La poussière blanche du camp couvrant ses chaussures. Brûlant des stigmates de son propre dégoût. Déjà solitaire. Déjà luttant contre ses démons. Déjà sachant la fatalité du retour. À chaque fois son guide le menait dans une ruelle différente, dans un point différent du camp. Il n’était pas très bavard, son guide, sauf pour lui indiquer les accidents du chemin. Sauf pour lui chuchoter parfois, question de le faire patienter : Patron nou jwenn yon bon ti bagay pou wou wi. Bon zenzenn ![4]  L’oncle croisait parfois des hommes qu’il reconnaissait dans l’ombre de la nuit. Une rapide connivence. Ils se saluaient vite en se frappant les poings :

-Sak pase, baz ? Gason ap mache?[5]

-Anfòm, bròdè pa m… nèg poze…

Fito  ne savait jamais à l’avance vers qui il le menait. Mais la surprise valait toujours l’attente. Pour l’étude de l’implantation des logements sociaux qu’il devait exécuter, Il avait visité plusieurs camps, ceux de Port-au-Prince, le méga camp de l’ancienne piste d’aviation de Bowenfield, un autre à Santo dans la Plaine du Cul-de-Sac et finalement Canaan, l’indicible. Il avait fait des  évaluations techniques, des relevés topographiques, il avait interrogé des déplacés sur leur mode de vie, sur l’approvisionnement en eau, leur problème de transport, sur ce qu’ils attendaient d’un nouveau lieu de résidence. Il comprenait la nécessité de donner une réponse locale et rationnelle aux besoins. Il fallait faire un travail différent, respecter la douleur des gens. Ça ne servait à rien de venir avec des projets prêt-à-porter qui ne marchaient pas. Il fallait les éduquer, leur apprendre à vivre dans d’autres conditions et dans d’autres types de logements. Il fallait l’énergie et la foi qui soulèvent les montagnes pour combattre la corruption qui pourrissait les institutions, qui tuait l’espoir dans l’œuf. Fito s’enthousiasma, travailla, proposa, se battit contre les moulins à vent du système, s’acharna, déchanta, déprima. Le poids du statu quo le suffoqua. Canaan l’engloutit.

Nul étranger aux lieux ne pouvait prétendre retrouver seul son chemin dans cet immense camp, ce labyrinthe où vivaient près de cent mille âmes. Il y avait trop de façons de s’y perdre. On y pénétrait par plusieurs chemins qui se ressemblaient tous. Il fallait un guide, l’un de ces hommes qui vivaient de la chair et du sang du camp. Fito suivait son éclaireur, tendu, attentif à chaque détail s’ouvrant sous ses yeux. Il faillit bousculer l’homme qui s’arrêta soudain devant un carré aux cloisons en plywood. A quelques pas, une femme assise sur un minuscule banc faisait bouillir des spaghettis dans une casserole. La fumée des tisons les enveloppa et épaissit la nuit. L’homme lui glissa quelques mots et elle hocha la tête, sans regarder dans la direction du visiteur. Le guide se tourna vers Fito et lui montra d’un signe de la main le rideau barrant la porte. Fito  évita aussi de regarder la femme et, le front moite, se faufila sous le tissu. Il y avait une bougie allumée sur une soucoupe, à droite de l’entrée, une natte sur la terre battue de l’espace étroit, une chaise coincée entre la natte et la cloison en contreplaqué, et Mirline couchée sur la natte, la tête relevée par un oreiller, l’attendant. Comme l’avaient attendu Kétia, Fabiola, Rosemé, Esther, Medjine… Il leur demandait toujours leurs prénoms, c’est tout ce qu’il gardait de ses rêves éveillés à Canaan. Le guide lui avait dit que Mirline avait plus ou moins onze ans, qu’elle était orpheline depuis le séisme, qu’il était son oncle, qu’il faisait cela pour donner à manger aux autres enfants dont il s’occupait. Il disait la même chose à chaque fois. Cet homme était surement l’oncle de toutes les petites filles à vendre du camp. Une histoire parmi tant d’autres. Vraie ou fausse, cela importait-il vraiment ? Tant qu’il y aurait une demande de chair fraiche, cet oncle tirerait des petites nièces de son chapeau comme un magicien de la déviance. Fito payait en dollars américains et à l’avance. Lui, il était sûr d’avoir cinquante cinq ans, mais c’était son âge dans un autre monde, dans une autre vie. Elle portait un short en jeans, à l’ourlet effiloché et un tee-shirt rose sans manches. A la place des seins, deux bourgeons se devinaient, durs, tendus de peur. Ses membres graciles bougeaient imperceptiblement. Elle n’avait pas encore de poils sous l’aisselle. Fito remarqua le vernis rouge écaillé sur ses ongles de pieds et s’en irrita.

Les grands yeux de l’enfant absorbaient la lumière de la bougie. Sa peau noire luisait. Une multitude de petites tresses couronnait sa tête, son front, son nez aux narines épatées et tremblantes, sa bouche largement fendue. Elle sentait la feuille de basilic dont sa mère avait dû la frotter pour la protéger des malheurs visibles et invisibles. Une odeur verte et musquée qui le remua, provoqua le durcissement de son sexe affolé. Mirline, sans le toucher, instillait déjà une douceur insupportable dans ses veines palpitantes. Une jubilation au bord du vertige. Il en pleurerait. Elle était belle, presque irréelle. Fito s’agenouilla à côté d’elle. Il ne trouvait pas les mots à lui dire, mais son corps lui en chuchotait tant. Il la désirait tellement mais ne voulait surtout pas lui faire de mal. Comment le lui faire comprendre ? Elle remonta ses jambes et il absorba le mouvement souple des muscles de ses cuisses, de sa chair neuve, comme la tête d’une source. Fito transpirait à grosses gouttes, sa chemise était déjà trempée. Il serait resté à la regarder et la toucher doucement, toute la nuit. Mais il n’avait qu’une heure pour frôler l’éternité sous la peau de Mirline. À Canaan aussi, le temps c’est de l’argent.

 


[1] Ralentis… tourne ici, patron.

[2] Bombe à retardement.

[3] Loterie populaire.

[4] Patron on t’a trouvé un petit bijou.

[5] – Salut, mon frère. On fait une petite trotte ?

– Tout va bien, mon frère… tranquille…

 

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