I can no longer know how many times this year it has become impossible for me to deliver the text I had planned for this space. Around the night in Havana, this column was going to paracole today: the night that was and is no longer. But now I can’t write about bars and bizarre creatures because the night hasn’t been left out this weekend. The night is inside. I carry it and almost all of us Cubans carry it, weighing ourselves in body and spirit since last Friday, after the explosion at the Saratoga Hotel. A night that has been growing as the number of reported deaths and injuries grows, as new images of the catastrophe appear on phone screens.
Anyone could have been among the victims. Us. Or our relatives. Our friends. Calling, writing, inquiring about each other have been the acts that remind us of our extreme vulnerability. As if we still need the reminder. As if the pandemic it would not have already fallen on the entire planet to show us that we are all equally vulnerable.
Now we Cubans are in mourning —again. I —again— can hardly compose this column. Also, it’s Mother’s Day. We want the flowers, the light, the hope. I want to hug and I do. But the ballast in the body is so strong that each gesture is a bit slow and listless.
I am mother and daughter. However, these days, I have felt like a bag of despair about to burst. An attack here, another there; that bitter tiredness that leaves me fighting so much and always bumping into the whip of the white supremacist who does not forgive my being and being in what he believes is his domain. They have also been traveling days, which have exposed me to sorrow inside and outside the island. When I am in Havana, some friends from Philadelphia are glad that the news from the United States does not reach me with too much force: the Supreme Court about to strike down the right to abortion, conservatism advancing, inflation skyrocketing, shootings in the subway, in the streets, schools; I don’t know, the horrors happen so fast it’s hard to remember them all. When I’m in Philadelphia, it’s my mother who unravels her torments for me on her phone: the constant multiplication of prices, the intense exodus, the sadness of the people, that hopelessness in the air. In Brazil, I could feel how much violence is deployed by a privileged minority to keep the majority in complete dispossession, how disposable their bodies are. From Europe comes not only the belligerent whirlwind but also the vertiginous rise of the right, escalating hatred. Everywhere we feel the same injustice, the neglect of some, the indifference of many, the pain of the majority. So afraid! Or worse, terror. Above all, throughout the world, the weight of the Russian invasion in Ukraine and the ravages of the coronavirus that — although it seems to be moving away — has not yet completely abandoned us.
I don’t know how much longer we can resist.
Every day we receive new blows. We tip them to each other. Do we think we are immortal? We attack each other and destroy the environment, we deny love, compassion and patience. Arrogant, we walk around the world devastating, evicting and discriminating. Or, victims of the excesses of others, we are consumed by impotence and bitterness. Violence takes over our streets. Death, whether due to illness, accident or voluntarily caused, constantly accompanies us on our way, even if we persist in pretending it wasn’t there. However, on occasions like the one that afflicts us now, it is impossible for us to forget that we always carry it inside. We are human, life and death travel together through our arteries; Why then persist in drowning what we have of life? why kill, why repress, why strike, why enrich oneself at the expense of the poverty of others, why not listen, why mistreat, why hate?
There comes a time when it no longer matters where or in whom the fault lies. It is difficult after all to reach the point from which the evil was radiated, the first mistake made. And what is the use of finding the origin of chaos when life leaves us?
I don’t have the strength to write anymore. I don’t understand the world.
At the edge of the sea I have gone as usual. I was looking for answers, protection, because with Yemayá I always find ways to believe in the future possibility, when it abandons me. But these days I do not know what happens that nothing consoles me. I couldn’t tell if the gods have decided to abandon us, fed up with our arrogance, with our little respect for the humanity that has been granted to us. Or maybe it’s just me with a heart so tired that I don’t think it’s possible for me to take one more hit, one more bad news. Maybe that’s why they can’t calm the waters for me today. I wander from one side of the planet to the other, but in none of its corners do I find the amount of encouragement that guarantees me always being able to get up after each attack and be ready to receive the next one. For now I’m miraculously getting it, but I don’t know how long it can be.
And it’s Mother’s Day, then. And while I write, or try to write, I get messages of congratulations and I congratulate at the same time. I dedicate the few forces that remain to me to receive and transmit the good energy that can circulate among humans. I am a mother, I am a daughter, I insist. It’s a fortune. My responsibility as a mother helps me face adversity and fight against my enemies, throwing at them the fury that Olokun is kind enough to offer me when he wants. Being a daughter gives me the opportunity to receive the love and care of my mother when she gives it to me. One position makes the other possible. My mother nourishes me, I am the sustenance of my son. And from one to another, here we go. Receiving and giving.
So it is that, despite the mourning in Havana, of so much planetary death, of the many blows that as a black woman and professional I have received and continue to receive; despite my rage against the powerful and selfish, those who discriminate against us and long to suffocate us; Let’s celebrate this day. Let’s honor the dead. Let’s give them the flowers. May lilies, sunflowers, gladioli, carnations and butterflies, lilies, roses and marpacificos abound, for those who are not here and for those of us who are still alive. Let us acknowledge death today and celebrate the life that still animates us.
Tomorrow, we’ll see.
