Ardain Isma
CSMS Magazine
There are memories that do not belong to us alone, yet they live in us with astonishing clarity. They arrive through the stories our elders whispered on warm evenings, through photographs softened by time, through the reverence in a mother’s tone whenever she spoke of “ayè”—the yesterday that shaped who we became. For me, the Port-au-Prince of the 1940s and ’50s and the tranquil grace of Saint-Louis-du-Nord occupy such a place in the imagination: two shores, two moods, but one heartbeat of a country that once glowed with promise.
Before history turned turbulent, Port-au-Prince was a dazzling Caribbean city. Its gingerbread houses—miniature cathedrals of fretwork and elegance—cast delicate shadows on streets lined with flamboyant trees. Early mornings carried the fragrance of roasting coffee drifting from Bois-Verna, while the Champ-de-Mars teemed with pedestrians in crisp attire, strolling beneath an easy sun. Street vendors called out in melodic cadence, mixing commerce with poetry. In those years, the city was an intersection of refinement and simplicity, a place where laughter rose from courtyard gatherings and music from open windows stitched neighborhoods together.
The rhythm of life then was slower, gentler, woven into rituals that nurtured community. A visit to the Rex Theatre was an event, not merely a distraction. Sunday promenades along rue Capois offered both fashion and fellowship. And as the day faded, the city transformed into a lantern of golden hues, the glow of kerosene lamps and storefront bulbs shimmering off tin roofs and verandas. Port-au-Prince possessed an allure that was neither forced nor manufactured; it simply was, as natural and magnetic as the sea that framed it.
Yet if the capital dazzled with its cosmopolitan charm, Saint-Louis-du-Nord enchanted in a different register. There, time did not flow—it lingered. The narrow colonial streets, edged with worn stones and pastel facades, felt suspended between centuries. Afternoon bells from the parish church drifted over the rooftops like blessings, mingling with the scent of sea salt blowing in from the bay. Local fishermen, weathered by the sun yet graceful in their labor, pulled in the day’s catch as children chased one another along the shoreline.
In Saint-Louis, evenings were not measured by the ticking of a clock but by the quiet rituals of life: mothers sweeping doorsteps, elders recounting tales of maroons and merchants, and young lovers exchanging shy glances beneath the dimming light. It was a town that carried its colonial history not as burden but as atmosphere—an architecture of memory preserved in stone, wood, and silence.
What these two places shared was not monuments or wealth, but something much more enduring: a sense of belonging. They formed a tapestry of beauty and humility, elegance and resilience. They were landscapes that taught Haitians—urban and rural alike—that identity is shaped as much by the spaces we inhabit as by the struggles we endure.
Today’s Haiti bears bruises that those earlier generations could scarcely imagine. Yet returning to these memories is not escapism; it is a form of reclamation. Nostalgia, when honest, is a way of preserving what was good, what was luminous, what we hope to restore in spirit if not in exact form. It allows us to remember the Haiti that sang before it cried, the Haiti that dreamed before it stumbled.
Perhaps this is why stories of the old country continue to resonate across the Haitian diaspora. In cities across America, in living rooms where Creole lullabies still echo, these recollections bind families together. They remind us that we come from places touched by grace. Even when the present feels uncertain, the past offers a compass—a reminder that beauty once lived in abundance on our shores and may yet return.
In remembering Port-au-Prince’s shimmering boulevards and Saint-Louis-du-Nord’s quiet colonial charm, we do more than honor history. We honor the people who carried these memories with them as they crossed oceans in search of stability and dignity. We honor their hopes, their pride, their sacrifices. And we affirm, gently yet firmly, that Haiti’s story is far richer than its wounds.
For some of us, these places exist now only in the imagination. But imagination, too, is a homeland. And within that homeland, the sunlight still falls softly on gingerbread balconies, the sea still laps against Saint-Louis’s ancient stones, and the heart still knows exactly where it belongs.
Note: Ardain Isma is a university professor, novelist, essayist, and scholar. He serves as Chief Editor of CSMS Magazine and leads Village Care Publishing, an indie press dedicated to multicultural and social-justice-oriented literature. His works include Midnight at Noon, Bittersweet Memories of Last Spring, Last Spring was Bittersweet and The Cry of a Lone Bird – his latest novel which explores resilience, love, and the enduring quest for human dignity.
