Freedom in the Bat of an Eye

Alfredo Fernandez

HAVANA TIMES — In just one day, I’m now free to leave the country. It seems I can now spread my stunted wings before a world that I’m still not sure really exists.

Whenever I see someone from abroad arrive here, I think this person really only wants to mortify me, like those characters at the theater who wear themselves out trying to get me to join their nonexistent reality.

This is why there too frequently comes an idea in my mind that my friends never really left this country, but that they’re just pranksters with bad tastes hiding behind the curtain, poorly staged, at the Havana airport.

I’ll think that they’ve been doing this, sometimes for decades, playing this joke in bad taste that everything is going well in their lives, or at least better than mine. And they do this, by the way, making it clear that I’m only a slave.

Actually I didn’t expect this latest news. I’ve spent so much time longing for it that I could barely process it.

It turns out that now I am approaching what is being a true citizen, almost to the point of being as normal and common as any other one on the planet, except for three or four other rights that I still lack — for once and for all — to no longer feel like a slave of a totalitarian and mediocre state.

Cuba is now experiencing a day that is similar to the one in 1886 when the news was announced that slavery was ended. The difference is that today, unlike in 1886, the slaves know what to do with their freedom.

As soon as the news was broadcast, a friend called me to tell me that the fare to the Dominican Republic typically costs about 300 CUCs and that this country is looking for professionals.

So, friends of the state, this time the slaves won’t be taken by surprise, like they were in 1886.