The Captain’s Story
HAVANA TIMES – He frequently went by the place where I sold my books. He’d stop, look at them, and we’d exchange a few words. That’s how we became acquainted. I learned that he was a retired military officer, had reached the rank of captain, and had served in Angola as a combat engineer for over two consecutive years. One day he told me a piece of his life that, I believe, reflects something that’s happened in one way or another to all Cubans.
He told me he completed his mission with honors, but then became ill from nerves. What happened to you? I asked him.
When he looked around, he answered, he’d see everybody dressed in a soldier’s uniform, for example; he heard shots whizzing by when he was sleeping. Things like that. But I recovered, he continued telling me, and later my commander in Havana sent someone to find me. I thought it was maybe to give me a house as a reward for my good conduct in the war. When I got there, though, I find out it’s to send me to Ethiopia. And I refused.
The officer told me: you know perfectly well what a refusal signifies in military life. An indiscipline is tantamount to desertion and goes in your file. Correct, I told my commanding officer, but before you go stain my file with desertion, read through it again. He said: It’s true – it would be a pity to damage your record. And he decided not to put anything on my papers, and I returned to Holguin.
I listened attentively and identified with his account. The many times they’ve called us in, and you think it’s for some recognition, but instead it turns out to be a request for further sacrifice. Here on the island of Cuba, logic often loses its way. I remember a time they called me on the phone to present myself at the Immigration offices of the Peralta suburb, very far away from where I live.
I came to think that it might be for a family reunification claim from my father, who lived in the United States. But it turned out to be Holguin’s Political Security Police, to ask me why I was writing for independent publications and not in Cubadebate – an official space for presenting the complaints and opinions that we Cubans might have.
That day, I had gotten out of bed on the wrong foot; my lunch had been a mango; I’d walked all over the place looking for work without finding any; and I had a virus that was killing me. My dear sir, I answered, because I write for where I want to write.
But what a shock! To discover that what I had thought was some good news, was actually the opposite. To remember what I hate being reminded of: “you’re being watched, and the freedom you exercise has serious consequences on your life in this homeland where you were born.”
Nonetheless, against all the predictions of those in power and their dynamics, one subsists, resists, and at some moment comes to believe it’s important to bear witness, to help others be more aware.
I totally understood the Captain. It happened to me. It happens, almost surely, to many men and women on the island of Cuba today. It’s a reality.