Before being forced to flee Russia for fear of being recruited for the war in Ukraine, Cuban Carlos Jiménez lived quietly with Daria, his wife, in Kushelevskaya Doroga, Saint Petersburg.
They had met while studying philology at the Russian Hydrometeorological University, which, oddly enough, has a prestigious language and literature study program. Carlos already mastered the language because as a child he lived in Moscow for five years when his father held a position at the Cuban Embassy.
Now he is an admirer of Russian culture, among other things, as he confesses, due to the influence of his wife. With her he met Bulgakov ( The teacher and Margarita), the works of Dimitri Yemets, a writer for children and young people, whose novels are the most Russian he says he has read in his life. With Daria he met the Russian rock group Bi-2, which has become his favorite, and he has seen the best of theater, Russian and Soviet cinema.
The young couple is now in Havana. She, afraid of what might happen to him. He, very worried about what might happen to her. The nightmare began in Russia and has extended to Cuba.
One afternoon two armed men banged heavily on the door of the youth in St. Petersburg, looking for men for the war in the Ukraine. “At that very moment we knew that we could not stay in Russia”
One afternoon two armed men banged heavily on the door of the youth in St. Petersburg, looking for men for the war in the Ukraine. “At that very moment we knew that we couldn’t stay in Russia,” says Carlos. “We collected our savings, sold all our belongings, which were not many, and left for Armenia. We couldn’t ask my wife’s family for help because of being a foreigner I was not welcome there”.
More than a choice, Armenia was the first possible destination because Russia had already canceled almost all flights to other countries. There the prices of the lodgings rose like foam due to the number of Russians who were emigrating, which is why they had no other option than to travel to Havana at the beginning of January of this year, where Carlos maintains his official residence in the house of his parents. He knew that coexistence would be difficult due to ideological divergences, but he had no other option. Daria was not well received by Carlos’s parents either.
“On the morning of March 8, a uniformed man entered our room accompanied by my father. This time they didn’t knock on the door. It was an immigration officer. He said that my wife had been in the country longer than is regulated. for foreigners, but that was false because we had only been there for 55 days and the established is 90 days. He acted strange and aggressive. He could not specify the objectives of his visit and he changed his version saying that there were noise complaints, but without clarifying where it came from the complaint. He finally left an appointment for the other day at the Immigration offices of the municipality of Habana del Este. All the time he refused to speak directly to my wife.”
An hour after the alleged immigration officer left the house, Carlos received a phone call directing him to report to the local police station.
“At that station, where we had to wait for more than two hours, they took me to an office where they did not allow my wife to be present. There, three armed men lectured me about my misconduct and, most surprisingly, they had witnesses. A door opened and they entered. my parents who lied so much about me and Daria, but didn’t dare look me in the eye.”
The couple still had to attend the March 9 summons to supposedly air Daria’s immigration issues.
“That was not an Immigration office either, but a Police office. There they yelled at us, insulted us, threw chairs and hit tables, all to humiliate us and intimidate us. They tried to scare us in every possible way. They questioned me about the reasons why we left Russia and about my affiliations. About some friends that I have here in Cuba and who are considered troublesome.”
“They also argued that our marriage was not legal because we did not get married in Cuba and that because of this my wife could not live with me. They did not even allow me to translate for Daria, who hardly knows Spanish, what they were saying. When I tried to explain to her what was happening to her they told me to shut up, saying that only they had the right to speak”.
After hours of interrogation, they were given another appointment, this time to the central Immigration office and dismissed with the threat that they would pay for their insolence.
After hours of interrogation, they were given another appointment, this time to the central Immigration office and dismissed with the threat that they would pay for their insolence.
The first thing that occurred to Daria was to contact the Russian Consulate in Havana to ask for help. Since he had always heard that Cuba and Russia are friendly or brother countries, he assumed that everything would be fine, that it was a misunderstanding.
With the help of Carlos as a translator, Daria tells this newspaper: “I called the Consulate’s phone number and explained my situation, then a man gave me another number to speak with the consul on duty. When seconds later I dialed that number, he went out to the phone the same voice that, without hiding its laughter, let me know that they did not help traitors there.”
When they were finally seen at the Immigration and Foreigners headquarters, they learned a new version: they explained that the problem is that Daria was not financially solvent, which is also false.
“They told us that we have to leave the country soon. We don’t have tickets yet because we don’t know where to go. The situation we are in is difficult. We cannot stay in Cuba because we are being harassed by the Police, nor can we return to Russia because we wouldn’t be safe there.”
She says something in Russian that Carlos doesn’t translate directly. They hold hands and finally he says, “We’re afraid something terrible could happen to us.”
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