THE AMERICAN QUESTION : AN AMERICAN AMBASSADOR

an  american twilight

I

  was turning twenty five when I was asked to get an interview from Howard Isham. As an American ambassador at Port-au-Prince, Mr Isham was runing his mission with kindness and competence, Haitian authorities thought. At this time, I was doing a part time job at the Nouvelliste, the oldest  of the Haitian newspaper. A reporter eager to meet with important and famous people, I was proud to be there. Haiti was in peace.  I  was young...

I went to the embassy , an evening  of  July 1975, convinced that the ambassador had something to say at the eve of the 200 –year anniversary of his country’s independence and  at the midst of the Vietnam war. A couple years before, America  has been retreating   from Saigon at the relief of its own  national opinion. Mr. Hisham would probably consider this hot topic, that is, the ending war. I believed so, at least

Mr. Hisham, tall and well built, greeted me  with a little bit of paternalism. Sleeves rolled up, the forehead  
almost  hairless, the ambassador  talked about this two-century anniversary and other issues. I remember having brought up what once was called the yellow threat, with regards to China. Going on, the interview was considering the cold war and communism rise especially in Asia. “ The communist world once for all is  collapsing  ” the VIP across me concluded.

I was amazed, for two years ago,   the current president Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henri  Kissinger have been abandoning Saigon, a event known the world over as the fall of Saigon. But, while saying so, the ambassador was looking away and  not  at me as if  he wanted to talk for himself . It happened I came up with   another question that I didn’t remember. At that moment, going into  a kind of trance, M. Hisham started talking again to himself the way the priests  used toperform matins:

The United States have completed the…
The United States are the main democracy
The United States are the guardian of the free world
The United States used to fight…
The United States…the United States.


I was bemused and almost frozen while listening to such a repetition. The ambassador seemed to pray as he was reminding the US accomplishments in the world. Mr. Hisham has put aside every protocol to make sure I would never forget that moment. It was dusk. The sunset in the Haitian seaside was then as glamorous as in the early fifties at the famous bicentennial inaugural of P-au-P.


While the ambassador was telling his monologue, I glanced at the outdoors yard, where a marine dressed in gold and navy blue, has been lowering the American flag. When the marine received the flag, he took it and squeezed against his chest in a prayer like attitude, a move of less than 30 seconds. But, for me, it was like a prayer time, the ambassador and the marine setting up the ritual and the right moment, not only for the beginner  reporter that I was, but also to a would be threatening cold war enemy.


Since  then, I could never forget this evening July. I saw again Mr. Hisham at  one or two party receptions. Like at this interview, he was relaxed while talking about his country and confident that the US have fulfilled its historical mission in the world.