I go back to the island. Going back has become part of a routine, a ritual of reunion with my roots. Alive there, but I am and will always be here. And here I have two of my essentials: my mother and my son.
I arrive and go for a walk; I’m going to the boardwalk to say hello to Yemaya. From there, to wander around and take photos, lots of photos. I try to feel the pulse of Havana, a city that is increasingly strange and alien to me. In my walks, in any corner, avenue or alley, life gives me random encounters with people I love and love me, people I haven’t seen for a long time.
One of them occurs on Obispo street. A former Valle Grande prison inmate rushes at me with open arms and his best smile. I met him during my military service, back in 1991. He was in prison, I was on the other side of the bars; But that didn’t stop us from being friends. He is a guy who came out “of marginality”, he has not returned to tank and now he is an honest go-getter who moves between naive painting and literary workshops. Somehow, and although it is said a lot, art saved him. I’m glad to see him and that, so many years later, he continues to hug me with the same affection despite the screwed-up circumstances in which we met.
I meet friends from high school, a civil servant turned self-employed, the son of a great partner of my father, colleagues from the old guard and a thousand adventures and misadventures. I’m talking to another friend, someone who holds a special place in my heart for the kindness, patience, and love she poured out as my son’s nanny. She tells me that she has been a mother again. She’s glad to see them all and they’re glad to see me. She feels great.
There are also the encounters with strangers; people posing for me, smiling at me, exchanging a joke as they pass or they ask me to buy them a box of cigarettes (they pay for it, but they only give one per person). Those encounters also make me feel at home. And those who tell me to take care of myself; that with a camera on my shoulder I am first-class assaultable material.
Beyond personal stories, everyone, known or not, talks to me about “the thing.” The eternal and aggravated shortage. Robberies and assaults in broad daylight. Prices. Yes, the prices triggered by a mammoth inflation, and that very few can assume. The luckiest, overflowing with euphoria, tell me that they have found a sponsor and will soon pass “to a better life”.
I walk, look, portrait and reflect. I see the island, the city, a little bit better than a year ago. I see people less apathetic and aggressive. I see older and less young; fewer cars and more motorcycles or tiny electric cars. I see fewer queues and, luckily, the much-vaunted violence is only an urban legend for me that I hope will continue to be. And I think that “Havana is shot”, as always; fucked up as always, waiting for better times that never come.
Another —impersonal— encounter takes me to the beginning of the millennium. Walking along Zanja I am surprised to see on the sidewalk a postcard of the rafter Elián in the arms of his father, perfectly preserved. The piece of cardboard makes me travel back in time, to those years of marches and stands in which we chanted “We want Elián, we want Elián”, and I have the feeling that the island is frozen in time. That we have more or less the same anxieties and sorrows as in those years, but with fewer dreams and illusions.
I have a few days left on the island. I hope the encounters continue, fortuitous or planned.
