God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) Read Online Free PDF Page A

burst of strength he needed, and he had used it well, pushing himself out of harm’s way, a full three meters from where the car crash-landed. Alain had moved so fast that his ass burned, a trail of dust hovered in the air. Out of breath and coughing, Alain stared at the car with fright. No, he said one more time. Then he passed out.
    Some time later, the sour scent of his own piss, like smelling salts, startled Alain awake. How long had he been out? Clearly not long enough for the events of the past dozen or so hours to disappear in a nightmare’s blur and return him to his normal and, all things considered, not terrible life. In that life, he’d lost the woman he loved to a rich old man, but at least his legs were functional, which gave him a decent shot at running after her and winning her back. In that life, his city had a ground you could run on and not feel like running from. Now the world around him was filled with horror. Herds of peoplehad settled on every patch of available dirt in the park. Women, men, and children, all looking hysterical and in pain, like they, too, had had recent and unusual encounters with death. Their own shadows made them nervous. They were jumpy and kept looking up at the sky or over their shoulders, as if they feared an attack, as if the sky might decide to fall on their heads or the ground might turn into quicksand. Most of those heads already nursed garish injuries. Most shoulders sported bleeding gashes mixed with gravel or dirt. Or was that cement? As if the arms had been used to protect their owners from falling objects. Their eyes now darted to and fro, as if, having barely survived nearly getting buried alive, every sense yearned for connections to community and humanity. The people clutched and touched everyone near. Alain guessed they touched each other because they needed help shaking off the shock of whatever had happened that seemed to have stripped them of everything save their lives. I did it, their faces said. My God, we did it. Survival needed constant affirmation. Alain had seen this look before. It was after a runaway truck at a carnival sent a crowd running for cover. He was a small boy. The mob reached him when they ran out of steam. His father had him fetch them water, out of his customary generosity. People took the water from Alain without looking and drank while looking over their shoulders in the direction of the danger they had just fled. Some of those survivors were so distracted they missed their mouths while tryingto drink the water. They missed his tray when they tried to put the cups down.
    These disaster survivors were different. They looked like survivors of an avalanche, and Alain was in no position to help them. He was one of them and felt exactly how they felt. Fucked-up and scared out of his wits. Terrified of what unexpected shit the next second of life could bring. From his seat on the ground, Alain strained to see the world beyond the mob of survivors. A couple hundred of them already filled the park. Unable to stand, he saw only jumbles of limping legs and feet and groins and white dust-covered clothes and swollen, sad faces. On his right, beyond the fence and across the street, Alain took a look at the National Palace. The two-story domed manse had been reduced to one story. The dome was gone, caved into the building. The memory of witnessing the revered building’s destruction while his car flew through the sky came back to him. He broke out in sweat and felt the return of the now familiar—hopefully not permanent—terror run through his body. What force could do that, casually destroy one of the biggest buildings in the country and throw cars into the air like leaves? A nuclear bomb? On Port-au-Prince? No, Alain had read John Hersey’s Hiroshima at university. Even if he and these people had managed to survive being at ground zero of a nuclear explosion, their bodies and the city would either be on fire or coping with