Good News Can Still Arrive Even in Very Hard Times
HAVANA TIMES– The same garbage left behind by the recent Hurricane Melissa on October 29 is still sitting in front of our houses and everywhere else. Only now it looks more overwhelming, because it inevitably keeps piling up as time goes by. Christmas is already very close, and there are still no signs that municipal services will show up on the corner to help us deal with a situation that is no longer in our hands.
The blackouts are not being resolved either. And the statements from those who are in a position to tell us that this ordeal has come to an end are full of explanations saying that, for now, it will not be resolved.
It almost seems as if the State—or anyone at all—has nothing to do with these issues, and all that remains is to endure them stoically, because no one can fight against karma. Prices—especially food prices—are also reason enough to face life with fear rather than gratitude for having been born. And wages are not news: they have never been enough to last more than a few days a month (if we talk about pensions, we run the risk of becoming depressed).
Viruses—about six of them are circulating, a friend tells me. There may be more. Who knows? They attack relentlessly, all the time. And the aftereffects are the worst part. We walk around like zombies, because if our arms don’t hurt, then it’s our hands; if not our hands, then our feet, and our bodies are so weakened that the greeting becomes: how have the virusus treated you? Most likely, no one really knows which illness they have, because no one goes to the hospital. Why bother? The conditions there are so deplorable, and what reaches us from those healthcare spaces is so Dantean that it’s better not to even show up.
In the midst of this painful scenario (you have to live it to know it’s true, otherwise you wouldn’t believe it), the writer and poet from Las Tunas, Carlos Esquivel Guerra, has won the Franz Kafka Novel Prize with his work I Am Leopoldo Ávila. Obviously, even amid all the terrible conditions we live under—conditions that could cloud our eyes and hearts—this news cannot help but make me happy.
Of course it makes me proud! How good it is that, despite everything, a good man living in the eastern part of the country, with all the well-known challenges and many others left unmentioned, has managed to submit his work and see it recognized. The news cannot help but encourage us. In this hell, someone can do it. For my part, I feel it is unquestionably a reason to celebrate. Because beyond our own responsibility for having allowed this chaos we are living through to be built, we deserve, like any other people, some good news.
I was motivated to travel to Las Tunas, to meet the author and request an interview. But after 21 days with the virus (I assume and say it is Chikungunya, though I have no diagnosis. I am sure it is not dengue—another virus that hits hard—but according to friends and family I do not have its symptoms), when I think I am recovering, I relapse. At times I feel like I am back on the third day of the illness.
I still cannot close my hands, my arms continue to hurt a great deal. Some mornings I cannot even move my head and have to wait a few minutes, making a great effort, just to be able to get up. To do anything at all, it takes God’s help, because almost everything feels unattainable. If it were not for these health conditions, I would go meet Esquivel, congratulate him, and ask for the interview.
But current circumstances prevent me from doing so. Still, they do not have absolute power to stop me entirely. Thank God. Because it could be that when you feel very bad, nothing brings you joy. That is not the case here. Receiving this news, even in today’s Cuba, generates joy. We repeat: despite everything, even while feeling that we are on the edge of a precipice—perhaps feeling the precipice more than the edge—knowing that someone, in some way, makes themselves heard, and that what is heard is valid and valuable, and is recognized, and that this person is admired and loved by those who know them for their human quality and dedication to their work, truly must be a reason for gratitude. And it should not go unnoticed.