In Response to the Question: Why Did You Come Back to Cuba?
HAVANA TIMES – I’m talking with a friend. One of those lethal ones. And he starts firing off a series of truths that begin hitting me hard, without him even realizing it. Like this observation, for example: “Lien, you know that surviving communism is for lions. This isn’t for the weak. This is for lions…”
And I remember that I have nothing of a lioness in me, not even a hair. And I feel, yes, that I’m going to perish soon. I can’t handle the blackouts, I can’t handle the rationed food—and the almost non-existent food—for my children, my dogs and cats, all of whom I’m responsible for. I can’t deal with the increasingly severe social disorder, those motorbikes blaring music through the streets like they’re trying to convince someone they’re still alive just by sheer force, as the Mexican people would say. I can’t handle a government so indifferent that it knows it can no longer lead the country, but just to cling to power, it’s capable of sustaining the kind of genocide it is carrying out…
My friend keeps talking about this and that and then starts badmouthing his sister. “Do you know what it means to have a trip to Canada, to go and come back?” he tells me, alarmed. Distressed. More than angry. All at once. I’m convinced he’s not alone—this is a nearly unanimous opinion. When someone leaves Cuban borders, there’s no reason to return. I remember that when my friends found out I had come back from a gathering of independent journalists in Europe, they asked me in shock: But what are you doing here?!
I told them I was afraid of having to eat from garbage cans, of facing the challenge of being a foreign woman—which isn’t easy anywhere—of falling into the hands of pimps and becoming a victim of sex trafficking… I was afraid of a thousand other things.
My lethal friend goes on, and this time lands a punch I couldn’t dodge: “Lien, you know you can’t give freedom to people with the soul of slaves. Only someone who carries freedom in their soul can be free…” That’s when I wanted to burst into tears. Maybe it’s that too—that I carry a slave’s soul, with a chronic learned helplessness I can’t shake off. I started to feel deeply sad.
“Lien, you know…” my friend kept going, venting, because right now we Cubans don’t have conversations—we vent about all the powerlessness we face day after day. And my friend thinks I have to know it all. And it’s not that I do—it’s impossible—but we are aware that our suffering, which is nearly universal, is something each one of us feels—greatly, slightly, more or less—but we suffer, no doubt. Very few escape.
We part ways, and a few days later I run into another friend. A young woman who spent 15 years in a religious order. We fall into the same conversation topics. We ask each other: what are we doing here? We are paying dearly—more than dearly—for the decision to return. We’re paying for it. I myself have told myself a thousand times that if I get another chance, I will never come back. She agrees, but also tells me that thanks to coming back, she was able to say goodbye to her father, who died of cancer. If she had stayed abroad, she wouldn’t have been able to do that. And that, she believes, is the only reason she’s grateful to still be on this infernal Island.
Some days have passed since those encounters, and I find myself helping around the house, accompanying my elderly ones (my mother and my aunt—my grandmother passed away recently) during the blackouts, for example, and this gives me a certain sense of peace. There are many ways to accompany someone, of course. But being physically present is still important for us humans. On that front, I’ll try to learn to forgive myself and stop reproaching myself so much.
Though at the same time, I admit there are many moments when all I want is to disappear from here and never come back for anything in this world.
The battles we must fight inside and outside of ourselves are turbulent. It’s impossible to get used to living on the edge. I see how crucial it is in these situations to have some kind of faith, and to entrust oneself to that divinity in which we believe knows, and can do everything, and therefore can help us. I’m aware that more than a few problems can’t be solved with good intentions alone. Rationality fails. May that faith continue to have a place, and allow us, despite everything, to build ourselves a better present.