important papers. He was asked to pay the officer forty Haitian dollars, the equivalent of five American dollars, for a photocopy of the original document, which the officer then laid on top of another large pile of such documents on his desk.
Could someone be sent to his house in Bel Air now to examine the situation? my uncle asked.
The officer said it was a bad time. They were too busy, but they would look into it later.
What about a justice of the peace, an examining judge, or an investigative judge, who was usually sent to the scene of a crime?
If he could find one to go at his own expense, the officer said, he was welcome to send one there, but good luck to him, since no one was going into Bel Air right now, including CIMO officers and the UN.
But if the gangs took over his compound and he needed to eventually get it back, wouldn’t he need a report from a justice of the peace?
“We’re in a war now,” the officer calmly explained. “We’ll see what happens after the war.”
But how much longer could this war go on? How many more would have to flee? How many would have to die? Wasn’t the UN, the MINUSTAH, there to help end the war?
How could he file a similar report with the UN about the MINUSTAH? he asked.
The officer told him to go up to Bourdon, a small neighborhood up the hill, on the road leading to Petion Ville, one of the city’s suburbs. The headquarters of CIVPOL, the United Nations’ Civilian Police Unit, were housed at the Villa Saint Louis, a twenty-five-room, sixty-U.S.-dollar-a-night hotel with spacious balconies overlooking parts of Port-au-Prince.
He left the anti-gang unit around noon, carrying his copy of the police report. It was scorching outside and he could feel the sun warm his face through the fuzz of a short beard that had grown there these last couple of days. He hadn’t had a chance to shave at Man Jou’s. He’d have to remember to buy a razor before he went to Tante Zi’s so he could be clean-shaven for his flight the next day.
He then took another taxi to the Villa Saint Louis. At the entrance, he asked some soldiers in camouflage where he might file a complaint. The soldiers shrugged, not speaking any Creole or French.
“Portugues,” they said, motioning for him to go farther inside.
In contrast to Bel Air and the anti-gang unit, the hotel seemed extremely luxurious with its swimming pool and sundeck, crowded with umbrella-topped tables. Before the raids began, he’d heard some of his parishioners joke that the MINUSTAH were actually TURISTA, tourists on an adventurous exploration. He wondered what these parishioners would say now if they could see this hotel.
Milling around the bar and lounge area were a large number of CIVPOL officers. As bewildering as life had suddenly become, there were now all these acronyms to remember. CIMO. SIAG. MINUSTAH. CIVPOL.
Unlike the MINUSTAH “peacekeepers” or soldiers, the CIVPOL officers all wore the uniforms of their own countries’ police force with blue UN helmets and matching bulletproof vests. My uncle quickly recognized the scarlet tunic and breeches of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police French-speaking officers, who seemed to outnumber the other groups chatting in several different languages around him.
Approaching one, he asked in French if he could file a complaint.
The officer had trouble understanding his machine, so he had to repeat himself several times. The officer, a man whose face seemed as red as his tunic, perhaps from sunburn, took him aside to a quiet corner near a staircase, and as his eyes wandered toward some other officers having lunch around the pool, my uncle tried to tell him what had happened.
Had he filed a report at the anti-gang unit? the officer asked.
He answered yes and handed the SIAG report to the officer.
The officer took the report to him and told him to wait. He was going to make a copy.
The hum of multilingual chatter momentarily distracted my uncle as he waited. Soon the officer was back. He’d made a copy of the report, he said.
“Merci,” my uncle said, not even certain himself why he was saying thank you.
Would some action be taken? my uncle asked. Would the UN soldiers who’d shot from his roof be disciplined? Would the people who’d been wounded be helped? Would the Red Cross go in and take them to the hospital? Would the families of the dead be compensated? Or at least assisted with funeral expenses?
It was likely that Haitian police officers had shot from his roof, the officer said. MINUSTAH and CIVPOL were simply there to assist the Haitian police. If his neighbors were wounded and killed by Haitian police, there was nothing the UN could do.
Had my uncle contacted any Haitian human rights organizations? he asked. The Haiti branch of the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights, la Comite des Avocats pour le Respect des Libertes Individuelles or the Lawyers Committee for the Respect of Individual Rights?
He didn’t know where these groups were located, my uncle said. Besides, he was leaving the country the next day. He realized how arrogant that must have sounded, how privileged, how lucky. There were so many others who were indefinitely trapped in the crossfire between the police and the UN and the gangs. He planned to come back, he said, which is why he wanted to have all these reports filed, so he could have his place back, live again where he had spent most of his life.
Good luck, the officer said.
Later, after leaving Leogane and before going to Tante Zi’s, Maxo would travel the same path as his father, neither one knowing that the other had gone to the anti-gang unit to file a report that he’d then carried to the UN. Maxo had gone to another building near the Villa Saint Louis Hotel, a place that also housed some UN offices. There he ran into more Brazilian officers and more corporals with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. These men (there were very few women among these forces), and everyone else who wore a uniform, wielded a baton and carried a gun, inspired both awe and fear in Maxo and my uncle, for they were part of a constant pull and release, or what my uncle might have in Creole called “mode soufle,” where those who are most able to obliterate you are also the only ones offering some illusion of shelter and protection, a shred of hope-even if false-for possible restoration. In Maxo’s SIAG report, as part of his “declaration de perte,” or declaration of losses, he too listed “nos papiers importants,” birth certificates, old report cards, family photos, school diplomas, the kind of things one might need to restore even the smallest fragments of a life.
I only learned of my uncle’s predicament that Thursday night. Tante Zi had called her daughter in New York, who had passed the news on to my father.
During our nightly phone conversation, my father calmly said, “You’re pregnant, so don’t upset yourself too much, but your uncle’s had some problems in Bel Air.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know all the details myself, but I hear there’s a gang in his house right now.”
“Where is
“He and Maxo are at Zi’s house. They’re coming to Miami tomorrow. You’ll see them before any of us will.”
After sharing the news with my husband, I called Tante Zi’s cell phone. In her usual exuberant way, in things both good and bad, Tante Zi detailed as much of the story as she knew, as much as my uncle had told her.
I asked her if I could speak to my uncle.
“He’s asleep,” she said.
“Maxo?”
