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“Why?” she asked me.

“You have ruined my mother’s parents,” I answered harshly, “so go back to your own country.”

One evening, I saw my father come home all worked up, announcing that British warships had weighed anchor in Port-au-Prince harbor to protect their Syrian subjects. Dora Soubiran, Eugénie Duclan, Jane Bavière, Agnès Grandupré and I trapped Térésa at the gate and beat her up.

The next day, my father received Dr. Audier and my friends’ fathers. They seemed really worked up, and the cocktails prepared by my mother, who tiptoed in and out like a shadow, stoked their vigor and agitation.

“The foreigner has invaded our country,” my father barked. “Our businesses are now in the hands of the French, the Germans, the British and the Americans. The Syrians are mere surrogates. All of this is simply competition between the great powers. Who is it that’s arming the people and teaching them to say: ‘Down with the Syrians’?”

“The French,” Dr. Audier replied.

“And who is openly protesting the expulsion of the Syrians?”

“The Americans and the British,” Dr. Audier answered again, looking to the others as witnesses.

“The United States is afraid to be supplanted by the Europeans in imports,” my father added. “It’s a cold war between Europe and the United States. What are we in all of this? Lost lambs devoured by wolves. Only one man has been able to meet the challenge and drive out these Syrian undesirables, and this man is none other than our beloved leader. Long live President Leconte!”

“Long live Leconte,” they roared, raising their glasses.

“The people will suffer from unemployment,” my father continued. “They will be prey to poverty in a country without industry. These great powers call us incompetent: they insinuate themselves into our affairs, demand control of our customhouses and, like jackals, fight over our very hides. I am a patriot, a nationalist, and I will defend what I believe to be the national interest until my dying breath …”

“Long live Deputy Clamont!” a short, chubby man named Laurent cried out.

“Long live our deputy!” the others echoed.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” my father answered quietly, as if he were not privately enjoying these outbursts of enthusiasm. “My hour has not yet struck but I am sure it will. For now, I will continue to give my full support to our leader and to watch the opposition closely. I am returning to Port-au-Prince on the next ferry. In my absence, anyone who betrays him must be denounced to the police and punished without mercy …”

My mother found me hiding under the table, my eyes fixed on my father.

The next day, at dawn, the clarion call of the district commandant got us out of bed. We rushed to the balcony. He was resplendent in his uniform with its huge epaulettes and his bicorne hat. He was reading out a statement, surrounded by a police force of “little soldiers,”18 whose shoulder sashes emblazoned with the word Police were the only thing that distinguished them from beggars.

“Liberté, égalité, fraternité,” he began …

And we learned that the Syrian businesses had just been notified of the order of liquidation.

I wasn’t there to witness the departure of Térésa Aboud because I was in bed with measles. My friends had been forbidden to come near my house for fear of contagion. When a week later I was able to leave my room, from the veranda I noticed the sealed doors of the Syrian shops, and Dora told me that a fanatic had struck Térésa’s mother with a stone as she stepped aboard the American ship.

A little later, our simmering little city learned that the Palais National had been bombed and that more than three hundred soldiers had perished with President Leconte. Reports accumulated and spread far and wide. Day and night, men were scuttling in the streets at all hours or gathering at the Cercle to discuss politics more freely. Who gave my father such an absurd idea? I never found out. But soon he launched his electoral campaign and began preparing his speeches.

Tonton Mathurin, who lived alone in a large beautiful