“In a few weeks, the international media will leave the country, and Americans will be free to forget about Haiti once again. It is my hope that this story will give American readers a glimpse into the lives of people I have come to love in Haiti. We must not forget them.”

On January 17, 2007, a gang of armed kidnappers broke down Francky and Tania Désir’s front door near the village of Callebasse, Haiti, in the mountains just south of Port-au-Prince. They abducted the Désirs’ 2-year-old daughter Fabby and held her for $200,000 ransom. For 5 days, the Désirs did not know if they would ever again see their daughter alive. Francky Désir negotiated the ransom down to $5,000, borrowed the money from relatives in upstate New York, and delivered the ransom to the kidnappers in Delmas. The next day, his daughter was released on the street nearby. Her clothes had been stolen, and she was severely dehydrated because  she had been given little to eat or drink except moonshine. She was afraid for her life, but she was otherwise unharmed.

For the last two years, I have been traveling to Callebasse to work on a book about Fabi Désir’s kidnapping. While there, I often stay as a guest at the orphanage where Tania Désir used to live, and which she and Francky now operate. When news came last Tuesday, January 12, that a 7.0 magnitude earthquake had hit Haiti, my first thought was of the orphanage. What about the children who live there, and what about Tania and Francky Désir? Were they alive? Were they safe? Was there still a roof over their heads?

Francky and Tania Désir

Information came in dribs and drabs, some of it good, some horrible. The orphanage was still standing, but many of the other homes in Callebasse had fallen, and many in the village were dead. All the children at the orphanage were safe and accounted for. Tania was safe, and Tania’s children were safe. Francky was missing. He had driven a truckload of men to a church meeting in Port-au-Prince the morning of the earthquake, and no one had heard from any of them.

In first days after the earthquake, the television showed horrible scenes, most of them from Pétionville, the richest and best-constructed city in the country. The streets were full of rubble. Bodies lay dead beside fallen buildings. Men with sticks and shovels tried to rescue the people trapped inside.

Then worse news. The Hotel Montana had fallen on its occupants. The Caribbean Supermarket was down. The National Palace was down. These were bourgeois places, the places where foreign dignitaries slept and the richest families shopped for imported ice cream and President René Préval governed. If the earthquake was sufficient to topple these well-built places, what of the cheap concrete and tin-roofed squatter houses in the bidonvilles on the unstable rises overlooking Pétionville? What of the shantytowns alongside the open sewers of Cité Soleil by the water? What about the impoverished cities of Carrefour and Léogâne, near the epicenter of the earthquake? What of the remote mountain villages like Callebasse just hours from Port-au-Prince?

It was not difficult to foresee the worst: International aid would reach the city first, get bogged down in the transportation, security, distribution, and other logistical snags that would greet the first responders, and never quite reach the countryside.

Yet if I had to choose a place to ride out the aftermath of a devastating earthquake—in the city or in Callebasse—I would choose Callebasse. The people I knew there were survivors. They grew their own crops, raised their own rabbits and chickens, and believed in replenishing the local forest. They lived through the fall of the Jean-Claude Duvalier regime, the dechoukaj uprooting, the so-called political times surrounding the rises and falls of the priest-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the terror of the kidnapping gangs out of Cité Soleil, and the hurricanes of 1998 and 2008. What man and nature destroyed, they rebuilt.

And if I had to bet on a single survivor, I would bet on Francky Désir. In the last three years, he had lived through many nightmares—his life threatened, his dogs poisoned, his trucks and guns stolen, his daughter kidnapped—and yet he went to work daily, driving his truck up and down the same mountain roads along which his tormentors had taken his daughter, so he could shuttle supplies between the village on the mountain and the city below. He was the neighborhood taxicab driver, offering free rides to town to anyone who asked. He was the neighborhood ambulance service, on call 24 hours a day, to bring the gravely ill and injured to the nearest hospital in Fermathe. And he was the neighborhood’s chief mechanic, able to build one new truck component from three old, broken, and mismatched parts. In his downtime, he was turning his house into a walled, armored, and iron-gated fortress so no one would harm his family again.

A day passed with no news. Then, Wednesday evening, a new report: No one had heard from Francky, but now the roof was caving in on the house he was fortifying. Tania and the children were sleeping outside, in the open area of the yard, for fear that aftershocks might topple the house or the wall around the property and crush them.

At 8 AM on Thursday, January 14, the phone rang, with good news: Francky was alive. Then the bad news: The truckload of men he delivered to the church meeting had died along with everyone else in the building, 40  dead altogether. Francky would have died too, except that his truck developed mechanical problems on the way down the mountain, and he skipped the meeting to buy some parts downtown.

One danger of writing a dispatch from the moment is you don’t know what is going to happen next. I continue to fear for the safety of my friends in Haiti—I am afraid to hope too much—and I plan to return to the country as soon as flights resume to see them with my own eyes and to offer whatever help I might. For now, I offer an excerpt—the story of Fabby’s kidnapping— from a book now less close to being finished. The village of Callebasse must be rebuilt. The ill and injured must be tended. The dead must be buried.

In a few weeks, the international media will leave the country, and Americans will be free to forget about Haiti once again. It is my hope that this story will give American readers a glimpse into the lives of people I have come to love in Haiti. We must not forget them.

Fabby Kidnapped

In December 2006, Francky received two anonymous phone calls a week apart. Both followed the same script. Francky answered. The man on the other end said, “The chief of kidnapping wants to talk to you.” “Okay,” Francky said. “Let me speak to him.” Francky waited to speak with the chief of kidnapping, but no one came to the phone. Francky ended the call. Twice this happened.

Francky told his friends about the calls. They said, “Be cautious. Don’t come home late.” He began to change his daily patterns. If he shopped on Monday one week, he shopped on Wednesday the next. He tried to take different routes each time he visited the city. He started coming home early every day, well before dark.

On January 19, 2007, he went to bed, but he remembered that he had not closed one of the house doors. The interior door was closed but not the exterior door. He got up, closed the door, and went to bed. He looked at the clock. It was 12:30 AM.

A few minutes later, Francky got up to use the bathroom. Tania’s sister Claudette and her friend Nadia were awake in the bedroom they shared. They said they heard somebody in the yard. They thought it might be Francky’s friend Serge, who had been sleeping in the storage room downstairs most nights; when they checked to see if it was him, they found him downstairs and not in the yard. Through the window, they saw flashlights.

Francky heard footsteps on the front porch. There were three knocks at the house door. By now everyone in the house was awake. Francky told Serge to check the window again. Serge said there were a bunch of men in the yard and more by the gate. He asked if the men who were working on the cistern had come early. Tania said, “It’s 12:30 AM. If there are men outside, they are thieves. Whatever you do, don’t let them in.”

Francky picked up the phone in one hand and his pistol in the other. He shot through the front door. Outside he heard one of the men yell to the others, “Go to the other doors, the other windows. They have guns in the house.”

The men began to beat on the doors. They shot through the front door. Francky shot through the front door. They yelled that they had bigger guns. Some of them began to work at the front door with crowbars.

Francky told the women to hide themselves and the children. Nadia hid herself under her bed and began to pray that if they got in, they wouldn’t hurt anyone. Tania gathered the children into her bedroom and put them in the back of the room for fear they would be hit by a ricocheting bullet. She put 5-year-old Talor on the mattress. Fabby, her 2-year-old daughter stood next to her. She held 11-month-old Jodams in her arms.

Francky dialed the number of a policeman he had consulted about the callers earlier in the day. Tania said, “What are you doing? Hang up. Maybe the policeman is in on it. Maybe those are his friends outside. Get off the phone.”

They heard the exterior door give. The men pried it off its hinges. They started working on the interior door. Tania said, “Get in the bedroom and shut the bedroom door.” The door was made of iron. There was some chance it would hold for awhile.

Francky hid his gun. He had heard that kidnappers liked to kill the man of the house with his own gun. He said, “I think we’re going to die.” Tania said, “Get away from the door.

Outside, they could hear the men rummaging through the house, yelling, “Where are you?” and firing their guns into the ceiling. A voice yelled, “If you don’t come out, we will burn this house down.”

They could track the progress of the men’s feet, through the living room, through the kitchen, toward the bedroom Nadia shared with Clonette. They broke down the door to that bedroom. Clonette was in the bed under the covers. Nadia was underneath it. They ripped the sheet from Clonette’s body. They yelled, “Where is Francky? Go get Francky.”

Clonette knocked at Francky and Tania’s bedroom door. She said, “Please open the door.” Francky had no choice. He was sure they would rape and kill Clonette and Nadia if he didn’t.

He opened the door. One of the men slapped Francky twice on each side of his face. He turned Francky around, tied his hands behind his back, made him lie on the floor, and disconnected the power inverter. The room went dark except for the flashlights the men carried.

A big man came into the room with a shotgun slung across his back and a gun in each hand. He said, “Don’t hit Francky anymore. Leave him alone.”

The big man leaned down and put his face close to Francky’s. “Where is your gun?” he said. Francky didn’t answer.

The big man took Jodams from Tania, held him in the air by one of his hands, and said, “If you don’t tell me where the gun is, I will fill him with bullets.”

Tania told Serge to get the gun. The big man hit Serge on the shoulder with the butt of his gun and said, “Go get the gun.” Tania said, “Quit hitting him. He’ll get it for you.” The big man told Tania to shut up. Jodams began to cry. The big man shot into the ceiling. Tania feared the ricochet hit Talor or Fabby. She checked. The bullet missed them.

Serge brought the gun. The big man threw Jodams to the ground. The big man said to Francky, “I thought you were a pastor.” Francky said he would like to study to be a pastor. The big man said, “I see you have three trucks in the road.”

“What do you want?” Francky said.

“You know exactly what I want,” the big man said.

“No,” Francky said. “I don’t know.”

“How much money do you have in the house?”

“You can believe me if you want,” Francky said. “I don’t have any money in the house. Outside in the truck I have my wallet. It has 50 dollars Haitian, $20 American.”

“You don’t have any money here?” the big man said. “All the cars outside are yours?”

“No,” Francky said. “The Terios belongs to one of my neighbors. The Daihatsu belongs to another guy. The Mitsubishi L-200, that’s mine.” He gave them the keys.

“Where is your ID?” the big man said.

“It’s all in my wallet,” Francky said.

The men took everything they wanted from the bedroom. They took one of Francky’s cell phones and showed him that they were taking it. Then they went into the living room and bickered. It was dark in the bedroom.

The big man came back into the bedroom. He shined his flashlight on the children. “These your kids?” he said.

“Yes,” Francky said.

He turned his flashlight on Fabby, the 2-year-old girl. “Take her,” he said.

Two of the men grabbed her and hauled her away screaming and crying.

Tania pled with them. “Please. She’s my precious. She’s in pajamas.”

The big man told Francky he would leave his wallet outside for him. “Listen,” the big man said. “You’re indebted for $200,000.”

Outside they could hear the truck starting. Tania told Serge to untie Francky.

“No,” Francky said. “Wait until they’re gone.”

One of the kidnappers came back into the house looking for Tania’s wedding ring and whatever jewelry he could find. Another came and demanded everyone’s tennis shoes. Finally, they left, straight up the hill from the house.

For awhile it was quiet in the house. Then they heard the voices of neighbors outside saying, “Where are you? Where are you?” The neighbors called to one another in the night, and in minutes, the house was full of people who immediately started to clean up where the windows and doors had been torn down. Francky’s mother came into the house crying. Soon everyone was crying.

Tania heard her neighbors and Francky’s family cleaning in the other room and felt that she should help, but she had no strength. She asked her friend Rosemarie, who had grown up with her in the orphanage, to call Lonnie Murphy, the American missionary who helped raise them. When Murphy arrived, Tania said, “What will we do? We don’t have much money saved up.”

Lonnie did not want to stay. If the kidnappers believed the family had American connections, they would be less likely to negotiate and more likely to kill Fabby. And if Tania and Francky were able to meet a large ransom demand, a second kidnapping would become more likely. So Lonnie left the house.

A woman from Francky’s family came into the bedroom and told Tania that the living room was full of people and she must make an appearance and greet everyone who had come to see her. She did not want to go. She was full of dread at the social obligation—these people would have to be entertained, these people would have to be fed—and she was tired, and she was frightened for the life of her daughter. But she summoned the courage. She sat for awhile in the living room. People kept asking, “What happened? What happened?” But she could not answer them. All she could think about what her daughter, Fabby: Where was she, where were they taking her, what were they doing to her there, and why her?

Francky’s mother began to fuss at Tania for being so upset, for crying so openly. “Relax,” she said.

When the sun rose, between 5 and 6 AM, more people arrived, and the house was so full it was hard to move around. Tania’s head throbbed. She wanted to go into the bedroom to lie down. “Eat,” Francky’s mother said. “I’m not going to eat,” Tania said, “until we find Fabby.”

Finally, she went into the bedroom, but the phone began rang. It was Francky’s father who was visiting Francky’s sister in upstate New York. “I don’t have time to talk,” Tania said. Francky’s sister got on the phone. “If you can’t speak to my dad, speak to me,”  she said. “I need something to encourage me.” So Tania tried.

Another of Francky’s sisters came into the bedroom. “Tell me, Tania,” she said. “Why Fabby? Why us? We’ve never done anything to anybody.”

“I don’t know,” Tania said. “It happened. Nobody got killed. Those guys had big guns. They could have killed anyone.”

Francky came into the bedroom and tried to call the cell phone that the kidnappers stole, but there was no connection.

Throughout the morning, people continued to come and go, but the house remained full. For awhile Tania sat with her sister Rosemina, and Tiza, another girl who had been raised in the orphanage. They sat and could not speak. There is a word for this in Haitian Creole, Sézi, a semi-conscious state almost like the immediate aftermath of a heart attack, which comes after bad news.

Francky’s skin grew black, and he began to look smaller. People in the house realized he was in shock. His mother and his sister Emma made remedies in the kitchen. They drained olive oil into a pot, poured salt in the olive oil, and beat the mixture to a froth. They picked leaves from the yard and used them to make a bitter tea. They made a drink of amido mixed with honey. They served these to everyone who was in the house during the kidnapping and promised to keep serving them every day until Fabby  returned safely.

That afternoon the people in the living room began singing hymns from the Creole hymnal and reading Psalms about persecution and holding a prayer service in the front room. Friday evening passed with no contact from the kidnappers. 24 hours and no word about Fabby.

***

The next day, Saturday, some family members tried to call the kidnappers on the cell phone they had stolen. Tania told them to hang up the phone. Lonnie called Francky. She had contacted a policeman who had some experience with ransom negotiations. “They’re going to start really high,” she said. “They’re going to ask a lot of questions. They’re going to put pressure on you. You have to be patient.”

She drove to the house and picked up Francky and took him to the United Nations compound to meet a Haitian-American negotiator who had worked for the New York Police Department. Francky gave him a statement. When he returned home, a visiting Haitian policeman wearing civilian clothing pulled Tania and Francky into the bedroom and said, “Be careful what you say in the living room. It would be easy for the kidnappers to keep an ear in there.” He said it was possible that the same person who had tipped off the kidnappers about Francky and his trucks was in the house right this minute. Tania told the others who had been in the house during the break-in—Clonette, Nadia, and Serge—to keep quiet about the details of what had happened.

Later that afternoon, the UN negotiator came to the house with two French UN kidnapping investigators who asked follow-up questions and searched the house for physical evidence. Someone came into the bedroom with a cup full of bullets they found all over the house. The UN investigators took them for analysis and said they must have come from pretty big guns. They saw the hole where the big man shot into the bedroom ceiling, and they told Francky the bullet should be somewhere in the room. They asked him to strip the bedding. The bullet had entered the mattress where Talor, the 5-year-old, had been laying. The bullet missed his leg by inches.

***

Francky visited the investigators at the UN again on Sunday, and when he returned home, Tania said, “I can’t go another day without hearing her voice. You have to call the big man. Even if the money is not ready, I need to talk to Fabby. I need to know if she is dead or alive.” A few weeks prior, in Cap Haïtien, a 6-year-old girl was kidnapped, and her father did not know as he handed over the ransom money that his daughter was already dead.

Francky called. The man who answered called himself the commander. Francky said, “Hello, commander.”

The commander said, “How are you doing?”

Francky said, “We’re fine. We’d like to talk to Fabby.”

“She’s sleeping,” the commander said and hung up. Ten minutes later, he called back. “Fabby is watching TV,” the commander said.

“I want to talk to her,” Francky said. Then he heard her voice: “Hello, Daddy.”

“Hello, Fabby. Have you been bathing and eating?”

“No, Daddy.”

The commander took the phone. “What do you have for me?” he said.

“I’m going to have to borrow some money,” Francky said. “I don’t have money. It’s the weekend. The banks aren’t open.”

“What will you give me?” the commander said.

“I will give you $3,000,” Francky said.

“Is that all she’s worth?” the commander said. “$3,000?”

“No,” Francky said. “She’s worth more than that, but I don’t have any money.”

“You don’t have any money yet,” the commander said.

“I will call you back,” Francky said.

There were no more phone conversations on Sunday.

***

For the third night in a row, people continued to come and go, and the living room stayed full. Francky’s mother and another female relative sat with Tania in shifts of an hour or two. All of them were sleepy, but no one wanted to lie down.

On Monday morning, the people from the Baptist church came and said they were going to have a church service in the living room. The preacher, a man named Bethany, said a prayer that was more like a sermon: “I don’t know why the thieves came to Francky and Tania’s house,”  he said, “but I want to say one thing. If it was because of the three trucks in front of their house, if they had three trucks before, then I pray that they will have six trucks after. We know those are service vehicles. We know they are used to serve the community. We know that if someone is sick in the middle of the night, we can go to Francky and Tania’s, and they will take us to the hospital.” It sounded like he was speaking to God, but it also seemed that he was sending a message to whomever the kidnappers had placed in the house.

At the end of the church service, Bethany asked Tania and Francky if they would like to say anything. Francky said, “I know that Fabby is not going to die. I know that I am going to see her again.” He quoted a Haitian proverb: The innocent never take the place of the guilty. “We know that Fabby has never done anything wrong,” he said. “She is innocent.” He said if they were going to pray, they should pray that he could find the money to pay the kidnappers and get his daughter back.

After the service, Francky’s sisters prepared crackers, sandwiches, and drinks in the kitchen. Francky had to pay for everything they served, so he told them to stop feeding anyone but family members. After he ate, he went to work, trying to put the money together. One after another, he called his cousins and uncles in Haiti and New York. They all said they did not have infinite sums of money. They asked Francky what the final ransom amount would be. Francky did not know.

Francky called the commander again and began to negotiate. It was not as difficult as he had imagined. The men at the UN said they thought the kidnappers would settle for $5,000, and as soon as Francky offered $5,000, the commander accepted. He told Francky to call him back as soon as he had the money.

He called his cousins and uncles again, and once they learned that he had negotiated a ransom of $5,000, they agreed to help. He went to visit some of them, and some of them brought the money to the house. The New York relatives sent the money via wire transfer, and Francky drove into town with four of his friends and relatives to make the transactions.

By 4 PM Monday afternoon, he had the $5,000 in cash. He sat in his truck near the police station in Pétionville and called the kidnappers. “Wait,” the commander said.

Francky called again at 7 PM. “Come get the money,” he said. “Call again at 10 PM,” the commander said.

He sat in the truck until 10 PM, and then called again.

“Who is in the truck with you?” the commander said.

“I have four people with me,” Francky said. “There are five of us altogether.”

“You need to be in the truck by yourself,” the commander said.

Francky told them to get out of the truck. Three of them walked down the street and got into a nearby car where another friend was waiting, but Francky’s friend Annes refused to go and lay down in the back seat. “I’m not going to leave you alone,” he said.

At midnight, Francky called again.

“We’re waiting for you,” the commander said. “Come by yourself to Delmas 83.”

Francky told Annes to get out of the truck and drove alone in the direction of Delmas 83. When he was en route, the phone rang. “Not Delmas 83,” the commander said. “Delmas 64.”

When he reached Delmas 64, the phone rang again. “Stop right there,”  the voice said. “You’re Francky?”

“Yes,” Francky said.

“Park the truck and get out.”

Francky obeyed.

“Lift your hands in the air and lift up your shirt.”

Francky did as he was told.

A man stood in the shadows underneath some bushes and called Francky’s name. He came out of the shadows, stood in the road, and reached out and took the black plastic money bag Francky held in his fist. It was dark. There were no street lights. Francky could not see his face.

He asked Francky one more time to lift his shirt and show he didn’t have a gun. Francky lifted his shirt.

When Francky got back into the truck, he saw two Nissan patrols approaching. The phone rang. “Are these the police you sent?” the voice said.

“No,” Francky said. “The only police I have is God in heaven.”

The Nissan patrols passed.

“Wait 30 minutes,” the voice said, “and we will bring Fabby to you.”

Francky waited 30 minutes. Then he called the kidnapper. “Where are you?”  he said.

“Go back to Pétionville, and wait there.”

By 1:30 AM on Tuesday, he was waiting in Pétionville in front of the St. Pierre Catholic Church. Annes rejoined him, and waited with him in the truck.

At 2 AM, he called the kidnapper, but no one answered the phone.

Every 10 to 15 minutes, Tania called, “Do you have Fabby?”

“Do you have Fabby?”

“Do you have Fabby?”

Francky continued to call the kidnapper, but now it seemed he turned off his phone. At 5 AM, Annes said, “It’s too late. They’re not going to give Fabby back today. Let’s all go home.” So they did, in a caravan, with Francky and Annes in the truck in the front and the other family and friends in the car in the back.

When they reached the house, everyone—family, friends, neighbors, and Tania out front—was waiting by the gate to see if they had brought Fabby home.

***
At 6 PM, the commander called. “Where are you?” he said.

“I’m at home,” Francky said.

“You need to come down to Pétionville now, and pick up Fabby.”

Francky called Annes. “I’ll be there in 2 minutes,” Annes said. They raced back the way they had just come, Annes now driving. A few miles down the road, they passed Francky’s cousin Kenaud, who said he wanted to come with them. When they reached the neighborhood of La Boule, Francky called the commander, who said he was waiting at the police station. When they reached the police station, Francky called again.

“How many people are in the truck with you?” the commander said.

“Two.”

“You need to come by yourself to Delmas 64, and pick up Fabby.”

Francky let Annes and Kenaud out of the truck and drove toward Delmas 64. When he was nearly there, the commander called and said, “Go back to Delmas 70.”

When Francky turned onto Delmas 70, he saw a man with a gun in his hand, standing on the side of the road. When Francky got close, he saw several gang members positioned around the street, waiting to see if he was leading the police to them. The man with the gun pointed a finger across the street. Francky didn’t know what the man was trying to say to him, what the finger meant.

When he looked in the direction where the finger pointed, another man came alongside the truck , opened the rear driver’s side door, and put Fabby inside. Then he gave Francky the sim card from the cell phone they had stolen from his house and had been using to communicate with him.

As Francky sped away, he turned around, grabbed Fabby, put her in his lap, and kept her there all the way to Pétionville. She was dirty, she had not bathed for 5 days, her hair was dirty and matted, she was wearing boys’ underwear and a dirty flower-print dress that was not her own, she was 2 years old, she smelled of moonshine, she was alive.

***

Pictures provided by Kyle Minor.

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