Cool last night, cold almost. 55 degrees on waking and wind, as if autumn has already arrived. But August hasn't ended even though the foliage suggests it has.
The end of the month is yet to come, as everyone who lives in or is from or once lived in New Orleans and towns scattered west and east, know. Saturday marks a terrible ten-year anniversary: the disastrous Hurricane Katrina.
As happened after 9.11, artists have responded to the events, and in the case of Lolis Eric Elie, who wrote this essay, have responded to the aftermath, making the terrible beautiful and immediate.
Lolis Eric Elie's
THE WHYS (The Reasons New Orleanians Came Home) was published in
The Bitter Southerner.
Some of us came back
because we lived in the old city — the Vieux Carre, Faubourg Treme, the Irish
Channel, Niggertown, the Marigny, the Garden District, the Warehouse District —
the 20 percent of the city that didn’t flood.
Some of us came back because we had a cousin or auntie and they
said we could stay by them until we got it figured out.
Some of us came back because we knew they didn’t want us back.
Some of us came back because we got tired of having to fight
just because we were from New Orleans.
Some of us came back because we didn’t think it would take that
long or cost that much or require so many tears and so many pained laughs to
fix just one house.
Some of us came back because we thought we knew for sure we had
enough insurance to fix everything.
Some of us came back because we didn’t believe that the
insurance company that we’d dutifully paid for decades would cheat us in our
hour of gravest need.
(If Dante Alighieri had endured the inferno of our flood, he
would have kindled a special fire for insurance companies!)
Some of us came back because we know what it means.
Some of us came back
because we didn’t want to keep saying Hoover or Pittsburgh or Sugarland when
somebody asked, “Where y’at?”
Some of us came back
because, have you ever been to Kalamazoo?
Some us came back
because it didn’t flood on our second story and we could live there while they
fixed the first.
Some of us came back
because we had rebuilding skills.
Some of us came back
because Richard Baker, the Baton Rouge Congressman, was right: “We finally
cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did.”
Some of us came back
to fight for our homes in the Lafitte, in the Magnolia, in the B.W. Cooper, in
the Melpomene, in those timeworn fortresses, those unflooded, moldless bricks.
Some of us came back
because the traffic in Baton Rouge was one reason too many to hate that place.
Some of us came back
because we had sharpened our clippers and smoothened our tongues and poised
ourselves to fleece the sheep, the desperate homeowners begging for help.
Some of us came back
because we felt a moral obligation to rebuild our city.
Some of us came back
because the arrow of our moral compass points permanently in the direction of
steal.
Some of us came back
because Yemaya, the orisha of the waters, was true to Her word and protected
New Orleans from the brunt of the storm (though it would have been nice if She
had told us that the federal levees were not in Her purview).
Some of us came back
because we believed Him when He said to us, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did
for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Some of us came back
because G-d said, “For the poor will never cease out of the land; therefore I
command you, You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to
the poor, in the land.”
Some of us came back
because the Prophet (peace be upon Him) promised us in Surah 2:215, “They ask
you, [O Muhammad], what they should spend. Say, ‘Whatever you spend of good is
[to be] for parents and relatives and orphans and the needy and the traveler.
And whatever you do of good - indeed, Allah is knowing of it.’"
Some of us were
inspired to come back by Rep. Dennis Hastert (may his sentence be a long one).
He said our city was seven feet below sea level, and we wished to visit this
twisted Atlantis of his dreams.
Some of us came back
because, as Pastafarians, we thought the Flying Spaghetti Monster would want us
to help in the rebuilding.
Some of us came back
because, as bad as things were, we didn’t believe the ancestors would ever
forgive us for being buried in Texas.
Some of us came back
because, if they didn’t have enough police to arrest the murderers, they
certainly didn’t have enough to arrest the fraudsters.
Some of us came back
because, even after Bush’s boys took their cut, and Cheney’s boys took their
cut, and the Shaw Group took its cut, there was still enough piss trickling
down the leg of the disaster capitalism for us to make us a couple of dollars
putting blue tarps on damaged roofs.
Some of us came back
because every year, at Carnival time, we make a new suit.
Some of us came back
because we’re Prince of Wales and we knew if we paraded, even two months late,
it would be as a healing balm unto the people.
Some of us came back
because, when we saw Prince of Wales Social Aid & Pleasure Club, we knew
God was in his heaven and New Orleans was still New Orleans.
Some us came back
because of the feeling we got visiting home that first Carnival after Katrina
when we saw the people, our people, in the street, being us the way we be us
when we gather like we do.
Some of us came back
because if we heard one more person pronounce it N’awlins ...
Some of us came back
because we’d rather be doing bad in New Orleans than doing good somewhere else.
Some of us came back
because we had promised ourselves, Everything I Do Gon Be Funky From Now On,
and that shit didn’t even much sound right coming out of your mouth in Topeka.
Some of us came back
because we didn't want those lazy Mexicans taking all our jobs.
Some of us came back
to prove that we were willing and able to work as hard as any Mexican.
Some of us came back
because, just like the Mexicans and the Brazilians and the Hondurans we had to
make that rebuilding money to send home to our wives and husbands and children
and friends because they were depending on us for their beans and rice.
Some of us came back
because there was plenty of copper in those flooded homes, ripe for the
stealing.
Some of us came back
because we were second story men by profession and there was plenty to steal on
unflooded second stories.
Some of us came back
because we thought the Saints would never win a Super Bowl if we weren’t
personally in New Orleans our own self.
Some of us came back
because seeing the city depopulated and dirty, desperate and quiet, awakened a
patriotism in us.
Some of us came back
because we wanted to end our high school career at the same place we’d started
it.
Some of us came back
because after kicking the French in the ass, and kicking the Americans in the
ass, and escaping the sea-born treacheries of the Thai fisherman, rebuilding A
Village Called Versailles was a pretty much a piece of mung-bean cake.
Some of us came back
because we declined to depend on the kindness of strangers.
Some of us came back
because we felt the crusts of bread and such from our rich relations would not
long continue.
Some of us came back
to give lie to the stereotypes about us.
Some of us came back
because the stereotypes about us were true.
Some of us came back
because we were angry that a massive federal effort was rebuilding foreign
cities laid waste by American ingenuity while an American city laid waste by
faulty American engineering was left foundering.
Some of us came back
because neither the food in Lafayette nor the music in Lafayette could make up
for the Lafayette in Lafayette.
Some of us came back
because we thought, maybe if we scrubbed hard enough, we could wipe that smirk
off of George Bush’s face.
Some of us came back
because, when we left, we left in a hurry and didn’t have time to heed Fran
Lebowitz’s advice that if you're going to America, you should bring your own
food.
(Oh, Mr. Aligheri! If
only there had been even a little salt taste in those other men’s bread!)
Some of us came back
because we won’t bow down. We don’t know how.
Some us came back to
collect the addresses of the displaced so that we could apply for their federal
assistance checks before they knew what time it was.
Some of us came back
because, unlike the Iraqi Americans, we were not allowed to vote long distance
in our local elections if we lived outside our home state.
Some of us came back
to help re-elect our mayor.
Some of us came back
because the only way we could move the city forward was to elect a new mayor.
Some of us came back
to bear witness.
Some of us came back
because our grandfather built this house.
Some of us came back
because, I’ll be got damn if I’m gonna let my cousins just take this house my
grandfather built right from under my nose.
Some of us came back
to prevent a land grab.
Some of us came back
to grab us some land.
Some of us came back
because we got a really good deal on some Stone Age marble.
Some of us came back
because you’re my piece of the rock and I love you C.C.
All of us came back —
like the people of New York after 9-11, like the people of Chile after 9-11,
like the people of Vietnam after the American War, like the people of
Mississippi after the 1927 flood, like the people of Lisbon after the great
earthquake, like the people of Harlan County during the 1931 coal strike, like
the people of Indonesia after the great tsunami, like the people of Los Angeles
after the Northridge earthquake, like the people of Haiti after paying
reparations to the French, like the people of Chicago after the great fire,
like the people of Rwanda after the genocide, like the people of Iran after the
Eisenhower coup, like the Cherokee after Andrew Jackson, like the people of the
Dominican Republic after the American invasion, like the people of Russia after
World War II, like the people of Guatemala after the CIA coup, like the people
of Cambodia after the Kissinger carpet bombings — because rebuilding our homes
and ourselves was our response to Camus’ one really serious philosophical
question, the question of suicide.
