Cuba, I guess, was a bitter pill. Our frail efforts at visiting the “Real Cuba” as opposed to the “Tourist Cuba” only served to prove that we don’t like the real Cuba, and neither, of course, do most Cubans. We stayed in three different cities, two of which (Havana and Varaderos) are tourist centres, so the crippled, interior poverty of the country was absent from our experience but only hinted at as we took a cab from city to city, passing by thatched roof homes with working donkeys living on the front porch. Our time there was one guided by hustlers, zombies and dead-eyed bureaucrats. Of course they would hate us, seeing in us only a mythic, superhuman capacity– one that was randomly dealt– to change their circumstances without damaging our own in the least. There’s an obscenity to wanting to have a fine lobster dinner in such a context, a very obvious one, and that tension was everywhere, invisible yet humming. We were billboards from the west– white, covered in corporate logos and sufficiently arrogant as to not know a word of Spanish. You know, I wanted to feel some sense of gratitude for my “charity” but what I felt was resentment and entitlement, which is probably the way that it should be. But in each small moment when we encountered what we hoped was the milk of human kindness or just a native curiosity about another human, it quickly revealed itself to be a prosaic, economic transaction.
The world is unfair in many, many ways.
The airport felt like a miniature, a Fisher-Price toy but with real adults walking around inside. Everything had a quirky, taped-together quality to it, as if created by precocious children for a school project rather than sober-minded adults focused on industry. Women in short-skirted uniforms projected an aggressive, practically florid boredom and mangy dogs with character wandered about the parking lot.
I wondered what their names might be.
El Capatain.
One-Eye.
Fanta.
Rachelle and I were in the city of Matanzas until morning. It was a Friday night and locals, girls with big asses jammed into hot pants and Jersey Shore boys bleeding cologne, streamed by. Scavenging dogs rooted through garbage and cats flicked into the darkness of parks from which idling men hissed at Rachelle as we walked down the street. Occasionally, a person would stare from their front steps– hands on hips as if in challenge– and then suddenly, the moment broken by a parrot speaking language from the unseen foliage above.
We passed by a pizza place and an older man called to us from the patio.
“It is no accident!” he shouted. “No, the Lord makes no mistakes and for sure has placed us in one another’s paths!”
We couldn’t have been more curious and sat down with this man. He was 70 and had been educated as a boy in Virginia. He’d spent his life an inveterate gambler, alcoholic and adulterer, but he had been rescued by Jesus and believing that Rachelle and I were missionaries– so out of place, innocent and happy did we look—that he wanted to share his story and faith.
We ate pizza and drank wine while behind us the indifferent, possibly angry waitress watched music videos from the 1980s on the TV.
Blondie.
Phil Collins.
Lionel Richie.
Big Audio Dynamite.
“What did you gamble on?” I wanted to know.
“All of it, cock fighting, dice, poker. The devil had me in his grip.”
“Were you good at poker?”
With a little bit of pride the man leaned back, “Yes, I think that I was.”
“I am not. Tell me how to improve my game, even if it includes cheating. Especially if it includes cheating.”
“No, gambling is wrong and I can see you are not a cheater. This beautiful woman beside you is your watchtower.”
“She’s my lighthouse.”
“You are a lucky man, God has smiled upon you. He who loves with a pure heart and whose speech is gracious will have the king for his friend. Proverbs 22:11.”
And then he reached out and held my hands.
“The Lord brought you here to me so that I might caution you of Havana. It is a sinful place. Many are desperate and you will appear as a walking dollar sign to them. Alone without language you are vulnerable to their tricks. Be careful and trust in the Lord, trust in the salvation of all, for even I was saved.”
