Here I am already at the airport customs. There is an enormous woman, right in front of me, in a heated discussion with the customs officer.
The customs officer: Have you declared these mangoes, madam?
The large woman: Where are the mangoes? These aren't mangoes! É
The customs officer: But madam, I see mangoes right hereÉ
The large woman: These aren't mangoesÉ I can tell you this because I'm the one who planted the mango tree. And it was this morning, just before running to the airport that I went to pick these mangoes myselfÉ
The customs officer: I understand all that, madam, but these mangoesÉ
The large woman: Why are you calling them mangoes? I just explained to you that they aren't mangoes in the sense you meanÉ
The customs officer makes a weary gesture with his hand to say he's throwing in the towel. And the large woman, with a magnificent smile, pushes her cart full of heavy suitcases toward the exit.
She won, but how far will Canada accept this strange way of seeing life? Mangoes that are not to be called mangoes. Of course there's the other debate about the individual's place in society. In the south (or the third world), the human being is even more important than the laws, although the Tontons-Macoute often mistake us for wild ducks. It's for this reason there's a difficulty there in obeying the Constitution. Each person expects to be treated on a personal level, and what he has to say in his defence always seems more precious to him than any rule. While in the north, institutions exist precisely to prevent the citizen from believing he could be a singular entity. We're all equal. Only collective harmony prevails. In Haiti, anarchy reigns. And despite the terrible dictatorship that crushes them, people firmly believe that their social organization is preferable to that found in western countries. In Haiti everything revolves around the individual. In a negative way (dictatorship) as well as in a positive way (one who maintains that a mango is not always a mango would easily be believed). Why? Well, because at the end of the day a human being is more important to us than a mango. This way of seeing the world can sometimes put you into a certain state of confusion. I knew early on that I would have to become a maroon, at least intellectually, if I didn't want to lose my mind. In my case it meant pretending to accept a culture while trying by every means to blow it up. But you can't hold this position for long.
Here I am in the city. In Montreal. People are celebrating. The Olympic games represent the most important event (both social and sporting) since the Universal Exposition in 1967. I'm very happy to come across a city in full effervescence. The obvious joy that I see on the faces of the Montrealers gives me a nice change from the Haitian drama. It's the middle of summer. The girls are wearing such short skirts it puts me on edge. Young people are kissing each other on the mouth in the streets. It's so new. To tell the truth, everything is new for me. And even today, twenty-five years later, I'm still stunned by this change. I had just left a country so closed sexually, so harsh politically, so terrible socially (hunger, health, education) to come so abruptly to the Montreal of 1976. The first thing that impressed me was the absence of Tontons-Macoute, those hoodlums armed by the state. I will always remember the first time I witnessed an altercation between a policeman and a young hippie. The young, aggressive hippie was almost insulting (in fact he was only defending his rights), while the policeman kept his cool. Finally, the policeman left without having been able to make the young man leave the park bench where he was lying. I didn't understand this country where a young hoodlum (in Haiti anyone dressed this way could be nothing but a hoodlum) could thwart the police. At the end, the young, smiling hippie made a sign that could have been Churchill's V for victory or the peace sign. Was it to let me know that he had defeated the dragon or to welcome me in a brotherly way to his territory?
Hardly two weeks later, I was walking calmly down a dark little street when a car stopped abruptly behind me. As someone started shouting at me quite harshly, I turned around to see two guns pointed at me. In an instant I was spread out on the hood of a police car, legs apart. Search in order. My situation seemed complicated enough because of the fact that I didn't understand what they were saying. They spoke with a thick joual accent. Well, I said to myself, the only way to act in front of a policeman, no matter where in the world, is to be silent and to keep your head down. Here's the first big lesson that I learned instinctively in North America. One of the policemen got into the car while the other continued to keep me in firing range. He came back out a moment later and told me I could leave. He said it in a tone that was still aggressive, as though he were truly devastated to let a criminal go free. I walked a little before turning around to face them. I know it was reckless on my part, but I couldn't let it end this way.
"Why did you call me over?" I asked in a clearly polite tone.
The two policemen gave me a surprised look. As I wasn't moving, one of them said: "We're looking for a Black man."
And the other added: "Don't play cute with us!"
I didn't exactly understand the expression, but I knew he wanted to make me understand I had, by asking my question, crossed a boundary. I went over the two events with a fine comb for a good day in order to understand, beyond racism, what the difference was between them. With the young hippie, it happened during the day and in a busy public park. Maybe the policemen who work by day, in the Latin district, are different from those who operate at night in the dark alleys. Or if they're the same, they have different mandates. So the same hippie, at night, in a dark alley with two policemen searching for a criminal, would have behaved differently than he did in the park (he wouldn't have been so sure of his rights). Another point caught my attention: the question of the accent. I hadn't quite understood what the policemen were saying. Of course, I had adopted the universally accepted behaviour in front of a policeman: silence. But it wouldn't be sufficient in the future. I have to plunge into Quebec culture right away, not only to understand what's said around me, but also to be able to quickly decipher the gestures, the signs, everything left unsaid in this new culture. Otherwise, I'm a man in danger.
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