Fear

I have been raised with fear. How those horrible arguments between my parents scared me to death! Knowing well how any petty discussion could escalate between them, I started to tremble on the inside as soon as it began. My mother always told me that I should not get involved in it because it was between my father and her. Nevertheless I could not help it. I could not calm the immense fear that my world was crumbling down whenever these fights occurred.

I was not the only one. My brother shared the same feelings. We would huddle together silently in a corner, visibly reading our fright on each other’s face and waiting for the terrible storm to be over. And these arguments were many. They always ended with my short-tempered father hitting my mother. They altogether ceased the day my mother passed away. But fear was not over with me yet.

Even though my mother was not sick, I feared that she would die until one day she actually did. Fear really filled every aspect of my life. So much that for a time I was seriously depressed.

During my childhood and early teenage years, Haiti was to me the dearest place in the world. Most of the happiest times of my life have been spent there. But things had gotten worse through the years, mostly in the mid-1980s, when the country knew severe political and economic turmoil. It was during that time that I felt fear’s grips really tightening up around me.

The constant embargo imposed by the Western countries on Haiti at that time felt like a heavy load on our shoulders. We were left without gas, which meant difficulty to travel inside or outside the city, scarcity of foods, water and electricity. Political tension between the different local parties flooded the country with hatred, killings, and a cohort of other ailments.

It was sickening to daily see dead bodies in the street on my way to work. Almost every morning, I would pass three or four bodies of so-called “Macoutes”, left in the streets as a token of the type of justice reserved for these people. I particularly remember the body of someone left for days under a little bridge called “Portail Leogane.” The person had been burned under a pile of burning tires by the public. Days after, his body looked as a big chunk of black charcoal.

At night people were pulled out of their beds and killed. Women and children were raped in their own house. The word “dechouke” (lynching) was used as an excuse for all kind of sordid acts. It was a terrible thing. I wanted to run far, far away. I prayed days and nights during those days.

One morning I went to work and learned that the nuns of the school where I did office work had been attacked over night. Some of them were left with deep wounds on their facesOne morning I went to work and learned that the nuns of the school where I did office work had been attacked over night. Some of them were left with deep wounds on their faces. I was shocked!

What was happening to the people in Haiti? Why were they becoming so cruel and mean? I felt miserable, wretched, unhappy, and mostly “scared.” There was that constant, dreadful feeling that our life was hanging at the end of a very thin thread. I lived in fear, and as a result it affected my health.

Several months later the social hatred for “Macoutes” turned into hatred for the military. My father was a lieutenant in the Navy. My fear went up ninety degrees higher on the scale. People in the neighborhood began to look at us differently, with visible hatred. They became visibly hostile, even expressing threats towards us. Why wasn’t our house attacked? To this day this is a mystery to me. God was certainly watching over us.

A few days before being forced into early retirement, something happened to my father and one of his military friends. They had been wearing their military clothes on their way back home from work. The crowd who was out to “dechouke” (lynch) the military, spotted them and almost killed them. They escaped only because a man in the crowd, who knew my father, asked the people to let them go. That day my dad came home running, breathless, and tired. He had escaped that lynching only by the grace of God.

I constantly prayed during that time. But it is sometimes strange how, no matter how much we want to believe that God is close and watching over us, we lack the boldness of those Christians of old who, even in the face of death, stood firm on God’s promises. I did not feel such bravado at that time. I have to confess it to my shame.

I only dreamed of leaving and going far away. Which I actually did, trying to escape my fears. I left everything. Yet running did not free me from fear. In America where I was hoping to find peace, fear followed my path.