Dimitry Leger - God Loves Haiti

The prime minister said the country cleared some hundred thousand bodies in the first five days alone. Can you imagine a hundred thousand dead bodies in one city like that? And we barely scratched the surface. Léogâne’s dead have barely been touched. There are more bodies all over the streets.

So many more, someone else said.

Who knows how many.

The government really did try to figure out how to best handle all the dead bodies after goudou-goudou. We all wanted to find an alternative to putting bodies on loaders and having loaders put bodies in trucks, and having trucks take bodies to improvised dump sites, like so much trash. Those people deserved better. But the bodies were beginning to decompose, to smell. We were facing a choice: leave them in the streets to rot where you would never be able to identify them and run the risk of making people living around them sick, or leave with them and bury them wherever we could, as well as we could. We all decided to put the safety of those people who are still alive ahead of better treatment of the dead.

Who gave you the right, huh? the Angry Man said, angrily. Who?

The Fort National cemetery was quickly filled beyond capacity, Souvenir said after a sympathetic glance at Angry Man. There were bodies on top of bodies on top of tombs.

All the men shook their heads at the memory. One looked like he wanted to literally shake the memory out of his head. Natasha listened with her mouth open.

The earthquake demolished a lot of tombs, so what we did was, we broke into tombs to create mass graves. It was the simplest solution for us to quickly remove the bodies from the streets.

Angry Man sucked his teeth loudly.

Some people are upset, Souvenir said. The government buried five thousand bodies in a landfill in Titanyen, then the people living in the neighborhood near it started protesting. The government had to quickly find another location while trucks loaded with bodies stood still. The government designated a new site. People started dumping bodies there, on the road near there, on the road to go there, everywhere, without even burying them. We’ve been burying those bodies to protect the locals from diseases. We all wish things worked out differently. Jesus Christ, why couldn’t we have more body bags at least?

Angry Man walked away again and disappeared into the darkness on the other side of the cathedral. His sobs wafted through the pews seconds later. The sobs were heavy and watery.

See that man? Souvenir said to Natasha, pointing into the blackness where sobs flowed like beat-boxing. That man buried fourteen family members with his own hands over two days after goudou-goudou. Wife, children, nieces, uncles, and his parents.

Natasha, an orphan, stared at the darkness and tried to imagine what having fourteen relatives to love and live near could be like, and how horrible having to bury them all at once could feel. She almost fainted.

The next morning, the brilliant heat of the sun stunned Natasha awake despite the fact that she slept under a pew with her forearm shielding her face. You think you miss not having a roof over your head when it rains? When you’re trying to sleep in after a long night of dreaming of hurriedly discarded dead bodies, not having a roof sucks almost as bad. Around Natasha, the guys were awake too. But they looked like they’d had the good night’s sleep Natasha wished she’d had. Their energy was high, in midday form. Clean-shaven, showered, and pumped from performing push-ups and crunches, not smiling but faintly upbeat, they were gentlemen who tried not to look at the train wreck Natasha no doubt looked like. In the bathroom — yes, the bathroom had no roof, yet, oddly, the toilet still flushed — Natasha took stock in the mirror. She did indeed look like shit. Her hair went everywhere and nowhere and begged for the mercy of a drop of shampoo. The rest of her could use a proper, long, and languid wash too instead of the splashes of cold water and the touch of a microcube of soap. This is not how you want to look when you’re going to see the man who could have been your father-in-law on the day of the memorial of his son’s death, Natasha thought. At least her clothes were relatively clean, her breasts firm and high, and her face unblemished, chocolate skin looking brand-new. She checked in on Monsignor Dorélien. He was enjoying having the gravediggers around.

In many ways we are in the same business, he said.

A few of them listened to him intently as he talked about the importance of honoring the dead and how they shouldn’t make much of the absence of the rituals of service he specialized in for the dead. My work was elaborate and a welcome succor in normal times. In these times, these men will have to count on the purity of the love in their hearts and the talent they pour into their work to stand as the symbol of the rite of passage for those thousands of folks who have gone on to meet their maker without the comfort of a coffin and a tombstone. Before they left, they all closed their eyes, and Monsignor Dorélien blessed them and their families for their courage and faith. Natasha watched the men stream out of Monsignor Dorélien’s small office with chins high. Today was the national day of mourning for the victims of goudou-goudou. The government had declared a weekend period of memorial. Millions were expected to converge on the National Palace and the Champ de Mars to sing and pray and cry for their collective and individual losses. A nation of stoics was about to have a very public mass catharsis. The gravediggers were eager for it. Most people were. Natasha was too. They, the living, wanted to touch and to be touched. Mourning was such a lonely business. Today, sorrow would be shared. Natasha planned to pay her respects to the dead by visiting an elderly couple she knew to be too old to make the trip from their hilltop home to the Champ de Mars.

Are you sure about this? Jean-Richard asked for the fifth time.

They were standing on the steps of the National Cathedral. His confreres stood a few meters away. They were all clean and eager to join the ceremonies, which, Haiti being Haiti, would have a carnivalesque flair. Natasha would be going in the opposite direction, in a car provided by her new friends. You’re not even going to wait for your security guards to come take you? Jean-Richard asked. Is that wise?

This is not an affair of state, Natasha said. Everyone has the right to mourn their dead this day their own way. Besides, with everyone downtown today, going the opposite direction will be the safest direction to go in the entire city.

All right, Madame Robert, he said.

Natasha, she said.

Madame Natasha, he said with a smile.

They hugged farewell. The man was all muscle, Natasha thought, her chin on his shoulder. Thanks for everything, she said. Squinting into the morning sun, she waved good-bye to the rest of the fellas. Au revoir , they said, et merci ! She watched them join the crowd one by one, brown heads and arms bobbing, red, yellow, black, green shirts and dresses, hats and caps and fans a-waving. The gravediggers could be anyone now, lost among the living. They couldn’t be happier. She was happy for them.

The car was old and looked unsafe. It may have been yellow once. Today the car was a sickly beige-and-white with echoes of a mustard past. There were no windows but there were a windshield and leather seats. Very hot leather seats. Took a while for the car to start, a dozen tries of the ignition, enough to make Natasha’s wrist sore. The engine wheezed and seemed to ask why Natasha wanted it to make the effort of waking up. Like a metallic wounded horse, the car seemed to want to sit there, ready to be put to sleep or somehow be nursed to health.

Come on, car, Natasha said. I don’t have all day.