Forgive us for our "freedom toast" we know not what we cook

Tuesday October 12th.

I woke up early and threw open the shutters to sit in the dim morning quiet. The calm in the early morning before sunrise is only ever disturbed here by the hourly chime of the central church bell and the mistral winds' swirl through the palm and cork trees. Typically in Argeles, at around 7am the sounds of scurrying poodles and terriers begin. Trailing behind, with a less hurried pace, the sounds of people follow their unleashed dogs. Some of them stop, and smoke a first cigarette. Others walk toward the boulangerie for their fresh morning bread. By 7:30 the sky begins to light and an occasional car drives by making a sound like a long drawn out yawn.
As 8 am neared on this particular morning, the wind picked up and so I closed the shutters and went downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast. We had some stale baguette left, so I chopped it into pieces for French toast and then found myself cornered into explaining the asinine George Bush era "freedom toast" nonsense.
Later in the morning I walked a mile or so to the beach and then explored the main boulevard for another mile as it snakes north toward St. Cyprien. I stopped at an EcoMarche and picked up some ingredients for lunch and then walked back to the house.
Daniel came by for lunch and I cooked my variation of Zuppa Toscana (a spicy sausage and kale cream soup). Sylvie and Daniel seemed to like it enough that they both asked for seconds.
After lunch I walked the dogs with Sylvie and we stopped at the village library. They had a large collection of French graphic novels so I got 2 to read this week. I lounged for a while back at the house and then there was another interesting meal. We had a salad with a mustard vinegarette and then grilled, marinated Magret de Canard. I've had duck prepared this way once before but ths was better- incredibly tender, flavorful and completely delicious. As our American neighbor, Donna said the other day, "say what you want about the French, but you can't knock the food...it's a great country for food."
During dinner my father told some stories about living and working in Bermuda, and in Haiti. He gave us his account of the last Carnivale he attended in 1985. He was aboard a parade float with the popular haitian band "DP Express" when a policeman ordered the driver to move the float. The band leader shouted at the policeman that the people wanted an encore and that they would not move the float. The band members decided to brandish their guns. According to my father the police in Haiti are particularly insecure about insubordination so the first policeman and a few others simply stopped arguing and drew their weapons on the band. Now the real problem with this standoff was that DP Express and the police were both government backed institutions. DP Express was given carte blanche in Haiti by Douvalier. They very often lived in presidential housing. They were given red carpet greetings at the airport, they were allowed to travel with guns, they could basically do no wrong. The police in Haiti were extremely insecure about insubordination at the time. When The band drew their weapons and fired the first shots in warning, the police returned fire in force. The resulting gunfight killed an unknowable number of people. My father described jumping off the float and then scrambling under a truck chasis to avoid the automatic gunfire. He said there was blood and there were body parts falling everywhere. The drunken, frenzied crowd, still dressed in their festive feathers and masks were now covered with spatters of blood and pieces of their friends and family. The music was gone and the air was filled with the most terrible kinds of screaming. My father managed to crawl on his belly through the human chum away from the truck and eventually out of sight of the gunmen.
My father looked distressed and then ended the story saying that he didn't want to think about Haiti anymore. He said there would be a time later to recount all the worst of it, but that he was done for the night. Sylvie and I could both see a deep sense of loss and regret in his face. He stared into space for a moment, lost in his memory of a paradise gone horribly horribly wrong.