An Old Friend Living for Decades in Sweden Returns to Cuba
I haven’t had to explain much. Reality itself has taken care of making it clear to her that the country she remembers no longer exists.
HAVANA TIMES — After more than two decades in Stockholm, a friend from my teenage years has returned to Havana these days. The death of her grandmother brought her back to an Island where she had spent only a few vacation days since emigrating. Acting as a guide for a Cuban who lives abroad is a bitter task. The first thing is to make it clear that the country they remember no longer exists, that the nation they treasure in their memory disappeared long ago.
During the first few days, my friend enjoyed everything. She told me she felt relieved to be barely able to communicate over the internet and hardly at all on her cellphone, after years of overexposure to social media in Sweden. She savored a mamey fruit and felt like she was in heaven. She tasted chirimoya and went into a trance. But that innocent joy soon came to an end. Reality began to seep in like corrosive acid through the cracks in her illusion.
Empowered by a foreign bank card, my friend decided to go shopping to prepare a family dinner. I accompanied her reluctantly, knowing that frustration is the product most frequently found in those dollar stores. We climbed the hill on Tulipán Street and then descended until we reached La Mariposa. Inside, all the refrigerators were empty. There was no meat, no butter, no sausages, and certainly no fish. My friend pouted like a Swede in distress.
Then, with that tireless energy granted by having eaten well for the last quarter-century, she told me we should go to a market on 26th Street. “I read online that it has Spanish products and is well stocked,” she explained. My face answered her with a skeptical expression.
We passed the Acapulco cinema, and she told me that was where she had shared her first kiss with her high school boyfriend. The dark lobby, the marquee without advertisements, and a faint smell of urine drifting from beneath the door brought her back to the present.
Near the Chinese Cemetery, a man under 30 years old, dressed in rags, caught up with us and gave each of us an azalea flower. “Something to eat,” he said immediately after handing us those fragile purple petals. My friend had no cash, but she gave him a bag containing a soft drink and a ham-and-cheese sandwich. The young man began to cry like a child, and she didn’t know whether it was from gratitude or because she had offended him by giving away her lunch.
“Those are the tears of hunger,” I had to explain.
Across from the building that was once Raúl Castro’s home, a façade painted an intense blue marks the dollar store in that neighborhood. A dozen people crowded on the small porch. There was not an inch of room left in the shade, so we waited outside in the sun. No one went in, no one came out.
“They’re entering yesterday’s sales into the cash register because they didn’t have electricity and had to process them by hand,” an elderly woman who was also waiting explained to me.
After half an hour, several people waiting to enter decided to leave. My friend’s face was bright red. I don’t know whether it was from the sun beating down on us or from the discomfort caused by so much nonsense. Then the power went out. Everything inside went dark.
An employee came out to explain that they could no longer process card payments because “when there’s no electricity, the card reader doesn’t work.” The Cuban-Swede beside me looked as though smoke was about to come out of her ears.
In most of the US dollar stores that the Cuban military has opened across the country, sales by magnetic card are suspended whenever the electricity goes out. After asking employees and managers, the explanation boils down to the fact that the POS terminal loses power and cannot communicate with the bank to process transactions. The cash registers also shut down, and every purchase must be recorded by hand on endless forms with original and carbon copies.
I do a quick calculation. A battery capable of powering the POS terminal and cash register for several hours would cost, at most, a few hundred dollars. In other words, GAESA loses tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars every day because it refuses to invest in small backup power systems. This combination of greed and stinginess has characterized the military conglomerate for decades. Quick to grab foreign currency from people’s pockets, it is also profoundly inefficient when it comes to improving its services.
Greed and neglect; depredation and incompetence—all bundled together in an olive-green uniform from which the businessman’s tie awkwardly protrudes.
Then my friend and I walked to another store of the same type in Vedado. A security guard shut the door right in our faces. There were no customers inside, but we still had to wait more than ten minutes outside.
Everyone with even a little power in Cuba tries to squeeze every last drop from that authority over others. Leaving us under the sun rather than allowing us into the air-conditioned hall feeds the guard’s sense of authority and perhaps even gives him a shot of dopamine. Forbidding, blocking passage, and scolding reinforce the tiny parcel of control held by guards, doormen, and members of the Protection and Surveillance Corps.
I sat down on the curb to wait. I noticed that of all the large glass doors this market once had, only one small door was open. The others had been sealed shut, and some were covered with metal plates to prevent stones from being thrown through them.
Castroism has always been afraid of the people. In El Laguito, they must have nightmares about a crowd bursting through the gates of the dollar stores, government ministries, and government palaces. Blocking the masses begins by walling off every space through which a crowd might enter.
My friend lets out a roar of desperation. I look at her, and her eyes are narrowed, she is biting her lower lip, and she is on the verge of uttering a curse word—no one knows whether in Swedish or in the Spanish of La Timba, where she was born and raised.
“Let’s go. I can’t take this anymore,” she pleads.
I haven’t had to explain much. Reality itself has taken care of making it clear to her that the country she remembers no longer exists.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.