Summary
Didier moves to Boston, Massachusetts to pursue a career in music. However, life in the U.S. is much more challenging than he imagined. His story picks up in December 2009, after he’s been in the U.S. for five years. Within a year of Didier arriving in Boston, his music gigs start to dry up and Didier starts driving a cab to make ends meet. He borrows the cars of official taxi drivers on their off hours. Feeling unmoored and alone, he turns to religion. Back in Haiti, Didier was not religious. Instead Didier found hope in his music. He spent a lot of time in the market, especially with Ma Lou, a close friend of his mothers. Didier remembers Ma Lou as a big, strong woman, always wrapped in colorful clothing, and weaving gracefully among her wares to pick out goods for her clients. Didier used to bring his guitar and sing to Ma Lou and the other market women; they were his first audience and inspired his music. Surrounded by the safety of the women’s run world of the market, Didier felt he needed to get out. He dreamed of leaving Haiti and having more freedom to pursue his music.
Didier struggles to adjust to life in Boston. He feels intently the racism, both explicit and implicit, in his interactions with people: their assumptions of his inferiority due to his accent and dark skin. Didier realizes passengers want him to be quiet, invisible as he drives them around. Chafing under these new codes, Didier finds subtle ways to push back. He poses the common question he receives of “where are you from?” on his white clients and watches their surprise and discomfort as they incredulously respond they are American. Didier starts studying the people he drives around; he notices that many of the passengers with dogs treat their pets better than people. Didier imagines having a dog but believes they are a luxury for people with free time and an expendable income. One day, while driving on the highway, Didier sees someone throw their dog out of their car. The dog panics and tries to avoid the traffic but ends up getting run over. Didier is shaken up, but his American friend Guy just laughs and says in America everyone looks out for themselves without caring for their neighbor.
A year earlier, Guy, a fellow taxi driver and friend, asked Dider to pick up some passengers in South Boston late at night. Dider worried it would be dangerous but Guy, as a fellow Black man, assured Didier it would be fine. When Didier showed up at the address no one was there. He circled the block a few times when a group of masked white men came up to the taxi and began to attack the car with baseball bats. The men dragged Didier out of the car and beat him brutally, calling him the N word. Didier felt searing pain in his head and heard the crack of his ribs breaking. After the men told Didier to pass along a warning to Guy, Didier realized that Guy knowingly sent him into a trap. Unable to breath and in excruciating pain, Didier called 911 before passing out. Didier woke up in the hospital and called Guy to confront him. Although Guy denied knowing anything would happen, Didier knew he was lying.
At this lowpoint, while Didier is convalescing at home, he turns to God. Craving someone to talk to, Didier invites members of Jehovah’s Witnesses into his home. However they insult Haiti, calling it a place of the devil, which only makes Didier feel worse. On his own, Didier begins reading a Bible someone left in the taxi and going to Sunday school. Bible passages from the Revelation of St. John the Divine are woven throughout Didier’s chapter. The passages describe how seven angels enact the wrath of God, sending seven plagues to destroy Babylon, a city of sinners who do not follow the word of God. All this is in preparation for a final battle between good and evil and the Second Coming of Christ. Didier is curious and somewhat baffled by this idea of Armageddon, or the end of the world.
Didier returns to driving the cab but now brings along Siwo, a dog Guy gave Didier as an apology. Didier is still furious with Guy but keeps the dog. Didier returns to music for company and escape. Paul misses his family and worries about his young brother Paul. With their father spending his days in the rum shops, and Didier gone, Paul has no male role models for guidance. The sweet boy Didier once knew is disappearing and now Paul only dreams of being a makout, a member of a peasant militia group akin to the Haitian version of a cowboy. Didier thinks of how Taffia is the only innocent one left in the family. He wants to preserve her innocence and protect her. Music has always been their way to connect, so Didier decides to gift her with the iPod someone left in his cab. He asks Guy’s wife, Julie, to use her computer while Guy is out working, saying they owe him for what Guy did to him. Didier spends a week composing and recording songs for Taffia. He sends the iPod along with some money but never shares any of the difficulties he is facing in Boston.
Didier’s narrative jumps to January 12, 2010. Didier drives to Cambridge where he sometimes picks up college girls for casual sex. A woman approaches the taxi and they agree to go to her place. Chancy never reveals her name, only that she is from Bangladesh. As Didier is driving, he hears on the news that there’s been an earthquake in Haiti. He tries calling home but cell service is completely down throughout the country. In shock, Didier agrees to continue on to the girls house where he can watch the news. As he sits helplessly in front of the TV, the girl cooks dinner. They eat, watching the news as if old friends, rather than having only met that night. Frustrated by the lack of information, they go to the girl’s room where Didier searches online. He finds images of the cathedral near his family’s house, the one by the market, in ruins.Thinking only of his family, Didier barely notices the girl. Haiti has not experienced an earthquake in over 100 years and Didier compares it to the end of the world, their own Armageddon. Sensing his distress, the girl initiates sex saying the distraction will make him feel better. Dilier consents and feels a mix of pleasure and guilt. When Didier wakes up, the girl is already gone.
In the weeks after the earthquake, Didier and other Haitians immigrants frantically call one another hoping for information about their family members. However, with all communication lines down, there is no information. Didier’s imagination fills in the void, conjuring gruesome images of family members trapped under rubble or dead. Didier continues seeing the girl, thinking that being from Bangladesh she will understand what he is going through. Yet after some time, Didier finds her cold and callous manner of seeing the world off putting and so he stops seeing her. In the months that follow Didier and other Haitians are in a state of limbo: waiting for information about loved ones. Dider feels ashamed to admit he was having sex the day of the earthquake. But the boom of babies born nine months after reveals he was not the only one who sought physical comfort in the face of so much fear and death. Unsure what to do, Didier lets more Jehovah’s Witnesses back into his house to talk about the Second Coming of Christ, thinking to himself that Armageddon has already arrived for him and the rest of Haiti.
Sara’s husband, Olivier, narrates his account of the earthquake from Camp Cocasse, a refugee camp in the middle of the desert. His account takes place nearly two months after the earthquake, in March 2010. Olivier starts off saying he came to this refugee camp because there was a promise of a future for what was left of his family: Sara, Jonas, and himself. Aid groups promised free medical care, schools, food and water, shelter, and the promise of work in a factory once it was built. However, after having been in this camp for weeks, Olivier is disappointed. He compares the shelters to dog houses, which are even smaller than the tent he left Sara and Jonas behind in. Water comes via a truck once a week and food rations are limited, and nearly inedible. There are no schools and, so far, no jobs.
Olivier has a very low opinion of the international community, the government, and the aid reportedly being organized to alleviate suffering among the Haitian people. As an accountant, he analyzes Haiti’s current situation via numbers. Port-au-Prince was a city originally built for 250,000 people but trying to maintain 2.5 million. In only 45 seconds, one in fifty Haitians died in Port-au-Prince. Billions of dollars are being raised in foreign aid. The contrast between the amount of money being raised, and the abject conditions in the camp makes Olivier furious. Historically, he feels the Haitians are owed a debt. When the Haitians defeated the French in the early 19th century, they provided an opportunity for the United States to become dominant in the Americas. The United States gained territory through the Louisiana Purchase, while Haiti was forced to pay an unprecedented price for its freedom. Yet for all of its talk of supporting democracy, the United States bypasses the Haitian people when they need it most.
Over the course of the chapter, Olivier’s thoughts return to Sara, his family and the day of the earthquake. Olivier had a formal education when he met Sara and thought of himself as the smarter one. However it was Sara, the girl from the country, who taught Olivier about love, intimacy, and responsibility. The day of the earthquake, Olivier was the first to reach Tatie's house where Jonas was trapped. Olivier worked with others for hours to help free Jonas. After seeing his son’s injuries, Olivier realized that Jonas, who could always run so fast, would never run again. He took his son to the temporary hospital run by U.S forces. There, without anesthetic, Olivier watched as doctors amputated his son’s leg. Jonas and Olivier were sent home days later with antibiotics, painkillers, and clean bandages. As Olivier handed Jonas over to Sara, he saw the light in her eyes fading but maintained he needed her to take over. In the weeks that followed, Jonas barely had the strength to eat. Listening to his son’s steady moans of pain and watching the infection work its way up his leg, Olivier realized that Jonas was going to die. Unable to watch, he left Sara and Jonas, rationalizing his decision by explaining he was going to Camp Cocasse to find a better opportunity for them Before he disappeared, Olivier asked Loko and Ma Lou to take care of Sara, until he returned. His parting goodbye to Sara was a scrap of paper with the word woko written on it, his nickname for her.
In the new camp, Olivier passes the time drinking clairin, a type of moonshine. He hopes to drown out memories of Jonas’s amputation and his own feelings of helplessness and guilt for leaving his family. He continuously imagines different ways he could kill himself, but thoughts of Sara stop him. The same sexual violence that Taffia faces plagues this camp too. The night is filled with screams of women, who are attacked in their shelters and raped by groups of young men. Olivier joins a group of men to start nightly patrols. They hope to stop the attacks and provide some sense of security. One night on patrol, Olivier is attacked by a band of young boys, one of whom looks like Paul. They beat Olivier and are pulling his pants down when a group of older men on night patrol come and save Olivier before he can be raped. The men look away as he pulls up his pants and then escort him back to his shelter, where Olivier is glad to escape the other men's gazes. In the morning, when the water truck passes, Olivier suddenly runs out of his shelter and throws himself in front of the truck. The driver stops and a crowd gathers around. Olivier’s chest is caved in and it is apparent he will not survive a trip to a hospital. Olivier waits, praying the truck driver will end his life and put him out of his misery. Lamenting the situation, the truck driver wraps his big hands around Olivier’s throat.
Analysis
Chancy depicts the U.S. through Didier’s eyes as highly individualistic and cold, a stark contrast to the sense of community Didier remembers in Haiti. Didier struggles with feelings of isolation and loneliness. Didier is hurt when he realizes passengers want him to be invisible as he drives them around. At first, Didier finds company in Guy and his family which provides Didier with a sense of community. Yet after Guy betrays him, Didier never trusts him again. As a Haitian immigrant, Didier is seen as expendable, even by those he considered his friends. Chancy does not shy away from describing the violence and hardship of life in Haiti but a sense of community provides a counterbalance for many struggling to survive. Trying to find connection and meaning, Didier turns to religion, casual hook ups, and his dog to fill the void.
In hindsight, Didier realizes that part of what pushed him to immigrate was the overwhelming weight of not being able to fix the ills facing his community. Didier regrets being too distracted with his own dreams to offer Paul more guidance. Without direction, Paul turns to idealized images of the makout and chimè. Both were civilian militia groups from marginalized communities who were armed by leaders at different moments in Haiti’s history to repress the opposition and remain in power. While Paul glamorizes these groups, the reality is many came from Haitian slums and either died or were left maimed by the violence they committed on behalf of the state. This history provides context for the bands of boys that Paul joins after the earthquake, when a lack of role models, structure, or direction gives rise to anger and violence.
Feeling he cannot reach Paul, and that Sonia has already chosen her path, Didier turns his attention to Taffia. Through his music, Didier aims to connect with Taffia. He hopes to remind her of when their family was more united and give her strength. However, Didier himself holds back from sharing the difficulties he is having in the U.S.. He lets his family imagine he is living a better life, perhaps ashamed of his lack of success or not wanting to add to their burdens. This struggle to bridge the divide contributes to him and his family talking less frequently at a time when he and Taffia are both craving connection.
In Didier’s chapter, Chancy explores the earthquake through a different vantage point. Thousands of miles away, Didier and other Haitian immigrants feel completely helpless; they watch in horror as footage of death and destruction plays out on the news. Didier experiences shock and then overwhelming panic over the dearth of information about his family. Haiti is completely overwhelmed by the number of dead. Bodies pile up and are dumped into mass graves without tracking who has been lost. Those far away are stuck in an excruciating limbo, watching the world move on as they wait for news of their loved ones.
The passages from Revelations interspersed throughout Didier’s chapter add to the mood of destruction and doom leading up to the day of the earthquake. Revelations serves as an allegory for the earthquake in Haiti. The level of death and destruction it wrought feels, for many, like the end of the world. Chancy explores a question that many ask in the face of suffering: why us? The Jehovah’s Witness calls Haiti a place of the devil: to her, Haiti is Babylon. This contrasts with Ma Lou’s understanding that there is no rhyme or reason to who survives, that the innocent die along with the guilty. Like his sister, Didier struggles with how to piece together his life after the earthquake, leading him to conclude that after Armageddon there is no reward, no Second Coming of Christ.
Olivier is a character who tries to run away from the pain of loss. Olivier is a loving father and husband. At first, he jumps into action in an effort to save his family. But listening to the doctors amputate Jonas’s leg without anesthesia breaks something in Olivier. When Olivier realizes he is helpless to save Jonas, he sneaks away trying to convince himself he will search out better prospects for his family and then come back. Yet no distance will allow Olivier to escape the trauma that he and his family have been through. Olivier is haunted by Jonas’s screams of agony during the amputation. Both he and Sara try to escape their pain in different ways: Sara retreats from the living and enters the world of ghosts while Oliver turns to drinking. He spends his days drinking moonshine in a camp no better than the one he left, wracked by guilt and shame.
Olivier grates at the institutional, political, and moral failures he sees around him. He has equal disdain for the “do-gooders'' as the “Big Men”: both wield power and millions of dollars in the name of Haitians while doing very little to actually help those who are suffering. If people actually cared, and trusted the Haitians to know what they needed, there would be enough money to do it. Instead, Olivier and others are living in ramshackle shelters he compares to dog houses, stuck in the middle of the desert roasting under corrugated metal roofs. To add insult to injury, Haitian refugees are supposed to feel grateful for the meager help they do receive. Through Olivier, Chancy calls attention to the mismanagement of aid money after the earthquake which, combined with a host of factors, wasted billions of much needed dollars. Furthermore, she provides historical context for the reader and traces how racism and colonialism have contributed to Haiti’s current situation.
Not everyone has a reservoir of strength and resilience in the face of tragedy. Olivier’s character demonstrates what can happen when a person reaches their limit. The dehumanizing conditions in the camp, combined with the immense shame he feels at abandoning Sara to face their son’s death alone, make Olivier feel like less of a man. In an echo of Didier’s earlier comments, he refers to himself as a dog, living in a doghouse. Olivier enters a downward spiral, isolated and unable to cope with the extreme loss all around him. Even for Olivier, an accountant, the sheer scale of the death is difficult to comprehend. When Olivier is attacked, and almost raped, he is met with the same silence and shame Paul and Taffia experience. Sexual assault and rape are taboo, an open secret that everyone knows is happening but refuses to speak about. This is the last straw for Olivier and he decides to take his own life. Olivier only thinks of escaping his memories, pain, and shame. His last thoughts before the truck hits him are of ending a suffering with which he cannot cope.
