The Seeds of Fiction (58 page)

Graham talking to French newsman Max Clou at the house of former Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo near San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic, following his 1963 trip to Papa Doc's terrifying Haiti

The first group of Haitian anti-Duvalier rebels training with antiquated weapons in the Dominican Republic in May 1963 for an incursion into Haiti that never happened

Above, left and right: A public execution ordered by Papa Doc in 1964 of two members of the Jeune Haiti resistance movement; Graham worked this into
The Comedians.

Bernard Diederich (with camera) talking to combatants on the Constitutional side in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, during the civil war of 1965

The Haitian Revolutionary Armed Forces, known as the Kamoken, in Haiti's pine forest

Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux, a Haitian priest of the Holy Ghost Order, celebrating Mass for Haitian exiles in the Dominican countryside

Kamoken leader Fred Baptiste (centre with hat) and his guerrillas sheltered in a small ‘chalet' in Santo Domingo

In the centre of Hispaniola, divided between the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic and Creole-speaking Haiti, were a few miles of highway called the International Road. Here, during the border trip in 1965, Graham tempted fate and insisted on taking a walk into Haiti where he was then considered an enemy of Papa Doc's regime.

Above: Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux at the border; not long before, his family had been seized by Papa Doc and ‘disappeared'.

Left: Fred Baptiste in 1965, around the time Bernard Diederich took Graham to meet the Kamoken at their base in an old asylum for the insane at Nigua, Dominican Republic

Graham and Fr Jean-Claude Bajeux during the 1965 trip in the company of Dominican soldiers at the Rio Dajabón, which forms part of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic; it is commonly known as the Massacre River as it has been the scene of a number of atrocities, most recently in 1937 when Dominican soldiers killed some 20,000 Haitians, many on the banks of the river.

The Hotel Brisas Massacre de Mariav de Rodriguez, named after the events of 1937, in the border town of Restauración