ayiti
Land of High Mountains
“Dominican Republic and Haiti”
2200
“Dominican Republic, not Haiti,” Skelele informs me.
Should I tell him that it was, and is, one island, Ayiti? Why bother if he knows so much.
We land hard on a concrete shore, just outside of a dome marked Parque Nacional Jaragua. Smog hangs above it like a mega-storm. Our suits shrink into plated brown skin, articulating our muscle segments, and we both have long, black hair. We’re almost identical and genderless.
[Amana, mis mayores me enviaron a conocer tu mundo, AGUA.] Skelele thought-texts me in Spanish! Amana, my elders sent me to learn of your world, WATER. But this is OUR world! [¡Pero este es NUESTRO mundo!]
From the congested street nearby, suddenly a large, dirty flamingo bursts out of the traffic and flings itself happily onto Skelele, knocking him down. Rolling around and tumble-tangle playing, Skelele laughs, delighted. I am laughing at them too, and there near my feet, my dehydrated green turtle sidles up.
[¿Cómo sobreviviste, mi bebé?] I pick him up and gently float him back into the harbour but then, hustling toward me is the weirdest-looking naniki, a Hispaniolan solenodon.
Who’s laughing now? Skelele, of course. Howling, still grappling with his loving flamingo, as I bend to inspect my naniki.
Even though scruffy, my solenodon is calm and manages to soothe the two clowns. It sniffs the air, and we look in that direction. We look through the land and across the island; masses of people work machinery, razing the few remaining trees on hillsides, demolishing old-style buildings.
[¿De verdad?] We both thought-text at the same time. Really?
As we scale a wall, something happens. Our look, our cladding changes and we are now two African-looking Ke Ara with long locks. Our naniki thump down with us. They have not changed.
[Ki sak sot rive nou?] What just happened to us? I have to ask because Skelele seems to know.
[Nou sot travèse yon fwontyè. Li sèvi pou separe moun ki pa sanble youn lòt. Nou sot chanje ras.] We crossed a border. A boundary they use to separate people who look different. We just changed race.
[Ki sa RAS vlé di?] What is RACE?
[RAS pas existe, se Ke Ara ki invante mo sa.] Race doesn’t exist. Ke Ara make it up.
[Poukisa?] Why?
[Divize pou renyé.] Divide and rule.
We stare at a few Haitian Ke Ara outside a dome busy bottling waste water and air that’s expelled from the bubble community.
[Kounya fo nou kouri tounen nan lanmè a!]
And right now, we should be RACING back to the sea!
Rows of little living pods line the street, and, in the distance, a large clear dome covers green mountains. Massif de la Hotte.
We catch ourselves laughing at our frazzled odd-couple naniki strolling ahead of us. [Yo devan!] They are leading! And we follow them, we must, to a noisy outdoor market where the bottled air is bargained off as a precious supplement. Our naniki turn in to a quiet side street lined with paintings that almost forms a tunnel of wondrous art. We all pause.
[If my elders see me disobeying your elders, they will summon me back. BUT “At every step I encountered the marvelous in the real,”13] Skelele breathes.
[Listen to you! “Magic realism lives and thrives in past and present Haiti.”14 I know some Ke Ara things too.]
We enter the artwalk and are drawn to a large powerful painting of a figure looking like us, netted in red, suspended between lush dark hills and a bright blue, symbol-filled sky. We face our numinous.
I whisper-text to Skelele, [But I want to fly too, I want to see your world.]
The scene ripples as if inviting us into its brilliance and we step forward, into it.
In this colourful collage of a place, rich, fertile lands abound, with abstract people cooking, fishing, selling food, celebrating exquisitely detailed deities. The glitter of sequins, beads, and hammered metals frames … a lake.
On the lake’s azure surface, a gorgeous mermaid goddess, Èzili La Sirenn, approaches in a boat. “I only have one daughter oh!” she sings, as if to me alone. She is. Is as beautiful as her other name, La Sirenn Diaman, sparkling at me.
[Wife of Agwe, ruler of the … oh, of course you know.] Skelele hushes.
She slides right up to us and offers her ornate mirror. “Pou ou wè sa ki dèyè ak sa ki devan ou.” For you to see what is behind and what is ahead.
I take the gift. And in the mirror, we see, flying toward us, Èzili Dantò.
Ke-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke-ke! The fierce and scarred goddess protector of women and children hovers over us, beckoning. Where to? I am Ti Koukoun, her daughter and her translator, because her tongue was cut out.
“Say it!” Skelele shouts as we lift off into the air.
“I can fly!”
We are flying with Èzili Dantò over this painted land, back, back in time and higher into acrylic clouds. Ahead of us, a distant victorious army is surging, led by Toussaint L’Ouverture on a horse.
A history beyond words.
Èzili Dantò leads us over Henri Christophe’s citadel, the Laferrière Fortress, and we can smell the ox blood that colours it red.
She swoops down closer to a shrieking crowd
and in its centre, one-armed Makandal is burning.
But the putrid smoke becomes a cloud of mosquitoes
swarming into worlds beyond this one.
Our loa Dantò lands near a lake and so we do too, even as she shifts into the exceptionally beautiful Taino Golden Flower, Kasike Anacaona. She smiles at us, and I melt as much as Skelele does. She turns and walks into the centre of her village and into her gathering of eighty chiefs.15
From behind us, we hear the watery voice of La Sirenn. “Ou dwe gade avèk lanmou. Lè sa a, ou ka wè toutbon sa k te pase. Fò w met tout ke w. Pandan w nan bra lanmou.” You must look with love. THEN you can see the true past. If you care enough. While you are IN LOVE.
“Lanmou??” Love?? We both look at each other. Fou!
It is not La Sirenn though, but Èzili Freda, loa of love, sliding forward with her pink anthuriums and white dove naniki. “You are each other’s NANICHI, ‘My Heart,’ ‘My Love.’” She chuckles. “And you are loved by your spiritual Egbe family. You are IN love. And this is why your tattoos glow when you touch each other. Oui, Nanichi lanmou!”
She gives us each a flower and our tattoos blush deep dark red, throbbing, almost painful. Ha ha ha ha! She laughs and when we look up from our anthuriums Èzili Freda is gone, leaving us on a tiny sandbank island, alone with each other.
Our flowers turn from pink to red.
Skelele flips up into the air, playfully shifting into his angel-like sky self. “O ni ife mi!” I knew you are in love with me!
I dive into my aquamarine and shoot away, but underwater I am smiling as wide as my pumping heart.
This might be like when dark clouds in a bright morning sky are tethered to a silver sea surface by sheets of rain, far away. They barely move, no rain sound, and then it looks like these clouds are sucking water up instead of releasing.
In, out, water breathing.
Air and water is us. In, out, drifting.
And when the raindrops finally arrive, ticking on the billowing sea sheet, plickering until it echoes the reef crackle, it flickers the light that is still cutting through.
Harder, until rain-cloud colour
smothers sunlight and now
the sea crackle sounds are quiet
compared to the crashing up here.
Like when rain bounces off sea
so hard
surface is a crazy haze of
clashing air and water
both ways laughing
dashing together
we are one.
In this bright sunlight, we stream along, air and water, and through the rippling surface, Skelele’s mirage is a dream alive. So elegant and joyful with his white dove and red anthurium. A vision in an ocean of air.
He is looking at me too, I can feel his heart growing, spreading like his delicate wings, fanning mine. He may be trying to signal me to turn back, head home. But yes, he can see where I’m heading; he must see it too!
My parrotfish winks at me and we are swimming in a rainbow that arches up over him, flowing with a show of immortal jellyfish toward a gleaming jewel of an island. Prisms of light stream through the water from the bottom of this floating island. Up there, Skelele is close to its spectacular foliage.
skin to sand
creation
elation
freedom sky and sea
washing eternity
in me
rainbow sand grains
strain
rolling bubbles of brain
sweeping waves
cleaving stones
that stand and wait
and wait
to paint
patterns etched inside
cracks that slip and slide
growing
closing
moving millimetres of pride
can’t hide
but shine
blazing burnt lips
design
words that don’t mean a thing
fling
away today
tomorrow
only now