Still Here in Cuba

Rosa Martinez

HAVANA TIMES — As of late, I haven’t been able to sleep all too peacefully, it must be the daily worries that have multiplied since I find myself out of work. The fact of the matter is that my nights are filled with strange dreams, sometimes nightmares, like the one I’m about to recount.

I found myself on a boat, which didn’t appear to be very safe, as I heard someone say that if it started to sink then we should throw the food and water supplies overboard and that we’d also end up throwing over two elderly men within the group.

“After all, what are these old men going to do there but get in the way”, said a white weakling cruelly, who I later discovered was called Miguel.

“These two aren’t going to do anything here nor there”, he continued blurting away and not paying any attention to the negative response his words provoked in his fellow travellers nor the look of fear in the old men’s eyes.

After three days which seemed months, putting up with Miguel, throwing food and water overboard, tolerating an annoying drizzle at first, then a fierce sun that could crack a stone afterwards, we arrived at what appeared to be an abandoned island.

But it wasn’t abandoned at all, we came across many people there, but they spoke an unknown language, although words here and there seemed somewhat familiar.

However, we didn’t stop at the coast, we carried on inland to see if someone could give us something to eat.

We arrived at a kind of cafe where apart from coffee thay also sold, according to the information that I could make out, hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches…

Someone from the group had, I don’t know how, money from this country, and paid a snack for everybody. And I was trying a slice of bread with I don’t know how many layers of steak, when my husband woke me up saying that it was late.

I looked around me, I looked at him, and then I knew that I was still in Cuba, and to top it all off I was absolutely starving.