A Cuban Welcome

(read the original text: Hjertelig Velkommen I Cuba)

The first political event that affected me was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Back then I was ten years old and didn’t understand what an impending nuclear war meant. I saw adults cry—not from emotion but from powerlessness. I understood the gravity of the situation. Something terrible could happen, and nobody could stop it. The Second World War was over, and in spite of the Cold War, we’d gotten back on our feet again and couldn’t imagine a new threat of the dimensions talked about in late October, 1962, at the very height of the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Last year in Sweden, I gave a reading which resulted in a heartfelt invitation to participate in the 9th annual poetry festival in Cuba: Festival Internacional de Poesia de la Habana. Though it wasn’t an official invitation in the usual way, I said yes. The statement “Though we have modest resources…” was no understatement, but in all the years since the missile crisis, Cuba has haunted my consciousness. If one is to see Fidel Castro’s Cuba, now is the time. One can only guess at what Cuba will become in a few years. Much will depend on the attitude of the Americans. Will Fidel Castro’s brother Raúl continue the current system, or will there be a dramatic upheaval leading to the levels of crime and violence now erupting in many Latin America countries?

I am picked up by Alex Pausides and his wife, Aitana Alberti, who present me with bouquet of yellow roses to welcome my arrival. We do not leave the airport, however, because we are supposed to bring Romanian poet Peter Sragher with us. But since he was given a new type of visa that is not yet recognized in Cuba, he is held back for hours without being granted the opportunity to contact officials of the festival. Alex, Aitana, a man from the writer’s union, my suitcase, the yellow roses and I all manage to lose one another a few times while searching in vain for the Romanian poet. We can’t find any information on him, and there’s nothing we can do. In the end, we’re forced to give up and drive to Havana. Festival officials are nervous because they had expected that he’d be on the same flight.

I arrive on May 24th before the start of festival so that I could, at the very least, get a glimpse of Cuba. At the hotel I fall into conversation with a man named Aribal, who drives me around the next day. The most incongruous buildings from the Spanish colonization reveal themselves as we drive along the coast in Old Havana, which is built around the port behind the fortifications. Historic houses from colonial times stand side by side and are at least as much a part of the “cultural heritage.” Magnificent and incredibly ramshackle they flank each other: turquoise, pink, green, blue and yellow—each corroded by the sea’s salt along the coast. Baroque, Rococo, and Classicist—equally and ruthlessly eroded. Even though an extensive restoration project is underway, there are sadly few resources available to do the work. It is dangerous to refurbish many of the buildings that are worthy of preservation, because only a fraction of the security measures required in the West can be found in Cuba. Shabby wooden scaffolds that are supposed to support wobbly walls and broken-up floors are of little use. Walking one day on the narrow streets that alternate between blocks of tall, newly erected apartments and old buildings, I encounter a man lying bleeding between the cement walls, felled by a stone on his head during restoration work. Those who live on the street flock to the site. Shivering at the sight, we stand in the tropical heat of mid-day. But nothing can be done…

These days, tourists are now more than welcome in Cuba. Most stay near the beaches or travel to the larger cities. If I walk out of the hotel alone, I hear: “You want to ride the horse?” And on every street corner: “Taxi, lady?” I decline in Spanish and try in vain to look like a native: “Helicopter?” After that, the questions fall back to where you are from. Many Cubans have “friends” in different countries, and that’s how a conversation can be initiated. If that doesn’t work, another angle is tried: “You are a woman very pretty.” Between readings I try to go around alone, but if I so much as peek at a map of the city, there are many who are ready to set aside their entire day to show me around.

Daviot, a young black man, claims that he’s a cook and that in his spare time he’s a guide for tourists. That he’s a cook I am unable to say, but he insists on helping me find Casa de la Poesia, which I am trying to locate. Festival officials haven’t given us as much as a single address. The locations where we are to read are so well known, they say, but what is the use when, apart from a few phrases, I don’t speak Spanish?

In order to not arrive too late to the evening’s reading, I walk around in the mid-day heat, when the Cubans know to stay indoors or in shade. For a long while I reject the young man, but as we suddenly find ourselves at the “Hotel Ambos Mundos,” where Hemingway wrote about the Spanish Civil War, I’m nevertheless persuaded to see the view from the roof. I give Daviot $5, but there’s an (imaginary?) little brother—cared for by a single mother—and powdered milk with good vitamins cost $6. Every time you begin a conversation with these “guides,” there is no end.

Food at Cuban restaurants consists of rice and black beans. Black beans and rice. A lot of rice with only a few black beans, a lot of black beans with only a little rice…Add to that perhaps a few slices of fried bananas á la French fries and an indeterminate cut of meat that looks like the sole of a shoe. At superior restaurants, there’s diced cabbage, a little slice of tomato, and a few paper-thin slices of cucumber, if things are going really well. You can go to distinguished restaurants and get what most Cubans cannot have, but why not live the Cuban way for a short time? You just have to remember not to sit too closely to a sidewalk grate; an unbearable stink rises up now and then from the city’s antiquated sewage system, which was never built to serve the nearly 2.5 million people…

Cuba is a rich and fruitful country, but many Cubans can’t get fruit and vegetables. Beyond rice, beans, and sugar there is often a shortage of foods…Nobody starves in Cuba, as they do in other places in the world, but I am surprised to find such a large shortage of foodstuffs.

In the narrow alleys, house doors are usually left open, since much of life happens on the street. Tiny rooms with beds, a few plastic chairs, a television showing cartoons, a ceiling lamp, and individual photographs on the wall. During the day, few family members are at home. Many men gather in groups in the squares under the shade of trees to discuss for hours. All the better if it’s the most recent sporting event. Shouting and disagreements and strong engagement! About two out of five grown men have no work. They have rice and beans and a roof over their heads, as each generation lives together, maybe eight people in all in two small rooms. The children go to school, and hospitals care for the sick. Why work when you can scrape by without? Many Cubans regard the system as patronizing, and see no opportunities, no future, where they can attain something.

The first days I am struck by the rare form of lightheartedness and joy that predominate in Havana. More than a few tourists return again and again; many consider Cuba the best place in the world. When you walk around for a while in the streets at night, you meet young people—not gangs, but happily wandering groups who shout greetings: “Hola, Amigos!” How many places like that are left in the world? But if tourists talk with Cubans, which the police try hard to keep its citizens from doing—as criticism of the system is not tolerated—a different light is shed over the state….

“You can think about what you’d like to eat for lunch tomorrow,” Antonio says to me. “I have nothing in the refrigerator today…” It is hot, hot, and he shouts unhappily: I hate the summer!” “And how long does the summer last here?” I ask. “Eight months,” he replies. Sweat pours from us. I offer Antonio a beer, but since his liver, at age 27, is already 30% reduced, he turns it down. We drink a lime soda instead. “And what do you when the refrigerator is empty?” “I go to bed without eating. It’s as simple as that!” Antonio’s fridge has also recently been stolen just like so many other pieces of his furniture; therefore he occupies another apartment (unlawfully). Antonio, bone-thin, often survives on a diet of the sea’s salty breeze and the nicotine absorbed into his bloodstream after the 25-30 H. Upmann cigarettes he smokes daily, even though they taste of gritty cigar ash.

When his furniture disappeared, his “friends” disappeared, too. An experience that is a big part of the reason why Antonio—like many other young people—has only one wish: to leave the island as quickly as possible. But when your income is only $5-10 dollars a month, the chance of getting a passport and plane ticket is next to nil. And to travel lawfully is difficult. Antonio’s father, who was once a close associate of Fidel Castro’s, separated from Antonio’s mother and then escaped the regime in a motorboat. With him he took stolen money, which he used to start another life: new wife, new children. They share only a superficial correspondence now and then, carried out in such a way that Antonio knows neither his father’s new job nor his place of residency, and therefore cannot seek him out. He will never see his father again, for his father will be killed if he ever returns to the island. Antonio has siblings he doesn’t know but whom he stubbornly regards as siblings, because that’s the way you think in Cuba.

With intense eyes, he recounts the week of interrogation he went through after his father’s defection, though Antonio had known nothing about it. It had been the police who’d revealed it to him; afterwards, they disrupted his meal times so that Antonio, who normally builds up hunger before he eats, lost all sense of time. Since he wasn’t the least bit hungry when a new dinner was served, he understood what type of physical pressure the officials would lay on him.

The best chance is for a young Cuban to fall in love with a tourist who’s the same age, to marry and move away. Next best is to find an old tourist to marry, particularly one who already has one foot in the grave. In the very least, there must be a person who can provide for the young immigrant at the start; otherwise it is not possible to emigrate.

Antonio had come up to me after a reading. He had heard me read and wanted to see more of my poems. Did I have books with me? He was small and slight of build and with radiant eyes insisted on getting more poems. I couldn’t give any to him because I needed them at the next reading. Now we sit, however, and drink lime soda from a can in a spartan café only very few tourists know but which is well known to him. Here he tells of his life while one street vendor after the next arrives in the cool room. I can purchase soft teddy bears, flowers exhausted by the tropical heat, a selection of dangling plastic toys and sun-bleached “pornographic photos” of couples kissing one another. “Too naughty,” Antonio says, grinning at these pictures. And he sends the old man away.

For hours, Antonio tells me about the poor district of Havana where he grew up, and where tourists are warned to stay away. So I forget to notice that he has long since emptied his can of soda. He gives a “report” on the female students who do their studies during the day, but who in large numbers are prostitutes at night. Many men have begun to bypass sex-trips to Thailand and instead travel to Cuba, because AIDS is not yet so widespread. He knows someone who gives about 15 blowjobs per night and 20 on the weekend, one U.S dollar for each. “She’s rich,” Antonio says. “She wears gold jewelry and has gold fillings in her teeth and fancy clothes.” I look at him. I hadn’t given much thought about the way he dressed. He’s wearing a pair of smart blue jeans that took him a few months to earn, a similarly nice white T-shirt, as well as a pair of expensive sunglasses resting in his hair. He points out that these are the only good clothes he owns. “A doctor,” he continues, “earns a quarter of what a whore earns.” From our first conversation I’d believed Antonio was a highly intelligent student. I didn’t associate him with poverty and hopelessness, but for each episode he tells, I see only disillusionment or gaze down into a still deeper abyss. He has a criminal background, but will protect me from the details; I only hear about the “petty crimes.” Besides, he is “clean” now, as he paid an official $50 to erase his data….As a young person looking to gain respect, he had to fight a few times every day. He is thin, but tough apparently. Running from elbow to wrist is a scar from a knife that had once sliced the underside of his arm during a fight. He’s good at “using” a baseball bat! He can become angry and really throw a good punch. And suddenly I see a whole new person sitting in front of me than the one who’d wanted to read my poems in the gallery where we met.

The time is now 11:00 p.m., and I am hungry. We continue into Chinatown, where he leads me through murky old streets to the only restaurant he knows. It is Italian-Chinese, though I can’t see many Chinese in Chinatown in Havana. When we are about to leave the restaurant, he grabs me nervously and ushers me in the opposite direction from the way we’d come. “Watch out!” he warns. “People in this area take note of when you pass them so they can rob you on your way back.”

I see a world stacked up against evil in every shade, I see Antonio resisting, refusing to be kept down, maneuvering through the cracks.

Pia Tafdrup
Translated by K.E. Semmel