Brother, I'm Dying

Edwidge recounts Granmè Melina’s story of a man who wakes in a foreign land, which turns out to be hell, with the moral that ‘Hell […] is whatever you fear most” (163). Joseph, alone in the house, prepares to leave, as a neighbor informs him, “They’re coming. Go away quick” (165). However, an angry mob of young men confronts him in the yard, asking for much more money or his life. Joseph asks for some time, and the gang leader orders others to loot the church and the house, while Joseph watches, “completely surrounded, but no one was touching him” (166). The men burn the church altar, and the niece of Joseph’s old friend Ferna leads him secretly away. They reach Ferna’s house, where he hides. During the night he leaves for the house of his wife’s cousin, Mon Jou, “on the fringes of the neighborhood” (170), disguised in a curly wig and wearing a muumuu. There he spends the next two days. 

In the meantime, Maxo and his family have arrived safely in Léogâne, but Maxo decides to accompany his father to Miami. Joseph’s sister, Tante Zi, comes to get him dressed in mourning whites, commemorating the death of her son, Marius, from AIDS, and she escorts him to a pharmacy and to the anti-gang unit and the UN to file a complaint. Joseph refuses to wear women’s clothes but accepts a towel to hide his face. The neighborhood is partially ruined.

At the anti-gang unit, Joseph faces disinterest and blandness as an officer tells him, “We’re in a war now […] We’ll see what happens after the war” (181). With his copy of the incident report, Joseph goes to the UN, situated at a luxurious hotel in another part of the city, where an officer tells him that if “his neighbors were wounded and killed by Haitian police, there was nothing the UN could do” (182). At the same time, Maxo is doing the same thing, unbeknownst to his father, also to no avail. The family in the US only learns about Joseph’s troubles after several days, as Edwidge waits for Joseph and Maxo to take the flight to Miami the next day. 

The next day, Mira’s condition worsens, exacerbated by his worries over his brother. Tante Zi phones Edwidge to enquire if Joseph and Maxo have arrived, but there is no news of them. Edwidge phones the airline company and learns the plane has landed, but “they couldn’t tell me whether my uncle and Maxo had been on it or not” (187).

At 1:30am, a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer leaves a message on Edwidge’s phone saying her uncle and cousin have been detained, as Joseph has apparently requested asylum instead of entering on his valid tourist visa. Edwidge goes to the airport to pick them up, only to learn the government is sending them to Krome detention center in southwest Miami. Edwidge has visited the place before as part of a delegation and witnessed the rough, prison-like conditions. The officer at the airport does not allow her to speak to her uncle.  

Edwidge’s uncle has become US alien number 27041999. Having arrived at the airport, Joseph presented his valid visa but asked for temporary asylum. Edwidge does not know or understand why he chose to do this, especially as he could have applied for asylum later; she assumes he would not have wanted to lie to the officials. An officer, Reyes, using a translator, interviews Joseph, and Edwidge quotes from the official record of that interview. He states that his reason for coming to the US is that “a group that is causing trouble in Haiti wants to kill me” (196). He claims he is requesting asylum because “they burned down my church in Haiti and I fear for my life” (197). The officer never asks Joseph to elaborate on his statements.

The same evening, Edwidge’s uncle Franck receives a phone call from a CBP officer, asking him if Joseph applied for US residence in 1984. Edwidge would later find out that Kings County Hospital, where Joseph was having his surgery, filed such a request. Consequently, the government opened an immigration file on Joseph on February 14, 1984. At 7:30am, Joseph and Maxo boarded a van to Krome, Maxo in handcuffs. Edwidge suspects “that my uncle was treated according to a biased immigration policy dating back from the early 1980s when Haitians began arriving in Florida in large numbers by boat” (201). She asks herself, “If he were white, Cuban, anything other than Haitian, would he have been going to Krome?” (201).