A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid Read Free Book Online Page A

they own in the countryside they build condominiums that they then sell (prices quoted in United States dollars) to North Americans and Europeans. (The condominium style of building, ugly in any climate, is especially ugly in a small, hot place. Imagine these concrete, boxlike structures, stacked against each other as if they were tinned goods in a store with not enough shelf space, overlooking an expanse of three different shades of blue seawater. It’s true—condominiums degrade everything around them.) The Syrians and Lebanese own large amounts of commercial property in Antigua. They build large concrete buildings, and then the government of Antigua rents all the space in these buildings. Why can’t the government of Antigua build its own government buildings? What is the real interest paid on these loans made to the government? And are the loans made to the government or are they really made to persons in the government but charged to the government? What is the real rent paid to the Syrian and Lebanese landlords, for no one believes the sum quoted, even though it is quite high; for some of the spaces rented, the rent already paid could have bought the building (the library on Market Street) many times over. In the Antigua telephone directory, the Syrians and Lebanese have more business addresses and telephone numbers than any of the other same surnames listed. Antigua’s Ambassador to Syria is a member of a Syrian family. It makes sense. He speaks Syrian. But why does Antigua need an ambassador to Syria? The Syrians and Lebanese are called “those foreigners” even though most of them have acquired Antiguan citizenship. North Americans and Europeans are not foreigners; they are white people. Everybody is used to white people. The Syrians and Lebanese are not “white people.” They have no cultural institutions in Antigua—not even a restaurant. The Syrians and the Lebanese look as if they know that at any time they could be asked to leave, and perhaps they are right, for who knows how everything will turn out? A calypso singer’s sister’s body was found, with the head chopped off, near the island’s United States Army base. To this day, no one has been charged with this murder. A European woman was found murdered in her home out at Freeman’s Village. No one has been charged with this murder. A man, a government official who was gathering evidence of financial wrongdoing by the government, was electrocuted when he went to his refrigerator to get himself a drink. His son, who came into the kitchen and found his father’s body stuck to the refrigerator, was electrocuted, too, when he grabbed his father and tried to remove him. Father and son were given a double funeral, and practically all of Antigua turned out either as mourners or as observers of the mourners. No one can understand, to this day, how an ordinary refrigerator can electrocute someone who opens the door, unless it was fixed to electrocute someone who opened the door. In the months that lead up to carnival, the Governor General, a very stuck-up man, with an even more stuck-up wife, or a very ordinary sort of man whose wife does her own shopping at the supermarket, goes to England. The house in which he lives, Government House, is right across from the grounds where carnival events are held, and he goes to England because he can’t stand the noise. When he is away, the Prime Minister names a person, another man, to be Acting Governor General. This man is usually someone connected to the Prime Minister’s party. One year, the man who was Acting Governor General died while taking an afternoon swim in the swimming pool of one of the Syrian nationals. This man and the Syrian nationals were very good friends. He was a shareholder in their Japanese-car company. He was the one who had first brought them into government schemes. He died while swimming in this swimming pool. The Syrians had suffered a