God Loves Haiti (9780062348142) Read Online Free PDF

burn wounds. The very air around them would still be burning. The air would be thick with radiationand rendered invisible and unbreathable by lingering clouds. In short, we’d be dead. And the sun wouldn’t have come out so quickly. So brightly. So damn perkily. Fucking Caribbean sun. Besides, today’s nuclear bombs were stronger than Hiroshima’s. If one landed here, or anywhere on Hispaniola, even by accident, it likely would have sunk the island. Today, Haiti, like man since his first encounter with death, persevered. Worn, but still here. Heads above water. Barely. What else could . . . an earthquake?
    Oh my God, an earthquake. It was an earthquake! Had to be. But there’s no history of earthquakes in Haiti. None whatsoever. His parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents never mentioned it. And picking apart the nation’s colorful, sorrowful, and thrilling history is all Haitians do. It’s a sport, the fucking national pastime. History is all we have to take pride in, since our greatest achievement occurred in 1804, and we hadn’t contributed fuck-all to humanity in the intervening two centuries save a few good books and paintings. Dining out on the heroes of independence of 1804 allowed Haitians to overlook the mess we made of the present. No one would have overlooked a major earthquake in this society’s, and indeed the world’s, constant search for proof that Haitians are or aren’t God’s children, put on one of earth’s most beautiful corners to suffer absurd streams of misfortune. But how else could Alain explain the buildings he saw falling over like dominos on rue St. Honoré? And allthese people sporting injuries that could come only from falling objects? Gashes and wounds on their heads, shoulders, and arms, arms that were probably used in futile attempts to protect themselves from falling debris, houses, trees, and . . . cars.
    Fuck. An earthquake hit Port-au-Prince! Must have been huge. My God, the city is too crowded. Its houses too poorly built. Too much liberal use of cement everywhere. Too-lax building safety regulations. Our government is too ill equipped! Too few hospitals, doctors, nurses, beds, and even ambulances. Fuck. My Lord, how, how could You allow this to happen? Here and now? Three million people are said to live here, but we all know the number is closer to five million. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuuuck. God, how could You? What father does that to . . .
    Hey!
    Someone had walked quietly up to Alain and poked him in the head with a stick. It was a boy. A naked boy of about six years old was staring at him with the biggest, brownest, and softest honey-chocolate-colored eyes Alain had ever seen. The reflection of himself he saw in the boy’s eyes gave Alain pause. He looked like shit. Dirty, swollen face. Hair askew. Wounded and mangy, like roadkill. He looked scared and crazy. In desperate need for medical attention. The child, meanwhile, wore preternatural calm. As if he didn’t realize he was nude and covered with dried mud, the child looked at Alain with familiarity and tenderness.
    I was taking a bath, the boy said. Maman was telling me a story about why I should stop playing with the big boys across the street. Then goudou-goudou came. It was loud. I couldn’t hear her voice anymore. I couldn’t hear anything but goudou-goudou, goudou-goudou, goudou-goudou. The room rocked back and forth, back and forth. Mummy wanted to hug me. Then the ceiling came crashing down on her.
    The boy mimicked a roof caving in. Mother disappeared, he said. The roof fell on her. In midsentence, she disappeared. All of her except her hands. It was strange: her fingers continued to stroke my shoulder. I pulled her hand away and climbed out of the bathtub and walked around the pile of debris that filled the room. I apologized to Maman for walking over her. After one last look to see if she would climb out of the pile of