It seems, in my mind, only yesterday, when we, the Cubans who were leaving the country, could no go back. We were leaving, and when we were hugging our loved ones and our friends who dared be faithful to us until the end, we acted just like one who knows that is going to die. Is there anything more definitive than death? At least that was the way that I, and many who are here now, experienced it.
I remember the day I left. The hours kept passing ever so rapidly. At home we caught each other glancing at the clock which, until then, we thought was moving in slow motion. With eyes reddened by the silent crying of the night before, we pretended not to be conscious of the time, of the hours that were left before we would leave our home forever. Before, it had been the waiting, the long years of insecurity, of anguish, of forced labor, of long lines in front of the Emigration Office of El Laguito, or of Marianao Boulevard. Wherever the masters of our destiny decided to open an office, they filled it with uniformed men who did not look us in the eye, who called us "citizens," and who used sarcasm, cynicism, mockery and even insult or threat if they had a chance. Those were the days when we were still "gusanos." Does anybody remember those days? I have not been able to forget them.
Now was the time to say good by forever. We did not have to wait anymore. The day had come and in a few hours our eyes would be looking at a sky different from the one that we had looked at since we were born. In a few hours we would have to march at the rhythm of different peoples, we would have to learn new routes to come home, we would have to get the nose used to unfamiliar smells, and to shrink the heart in a corner in order to be able to keep on functioning in automatic pilot.
That day, so long awaited, came sooner or later to all of us who are now here. All of a sudden the hands of the clock became alive and the minutes piled up against each other in their quest to arrive at that instant in which we had to say good by forever. At least, in my time it was that way. I know, things are not that way anymore, but then it was different. That is why, even today when I write these lines, I feel a lump in my throat and a blur in my vision. Memory is so able to recreate the moments that we pretended to let go to sleep. I have to admit that it was an unforgettable day.
There remained my eighty-year old father, my mother, my grandmother, my friends Olga and Cuqui, both in the role that I gave them in life and both saying good by to me forever. Olga, a mulatto like my mother, the one who consoled me when my mother's discipline did not permit me to understand certain things, the one who died without my ever seeing her again. Cuqui, my accomplice, my confidante, the one who carried little notes for me, my school mate, today lost in some Havana neighborhood.
That afternoon there also remained my peasant and illiterate grandmother, the one who gave me the wisest advice in spite of her apparent ignorance, the one who cured me with her teas, including the very last one that she made me from the flowers and leaves of our own garden to calm my nerves. I never saw my grandmother again either. She died shortly after I left, as my father also died. I don't know how to get to their graves. In my time, one did not go back. I said good by to all one April afternoon twenty five years ago and I have never gone back to tell them "I'm here, I have returned."
There, in that house, remained part of my childhood and my adolescence, like the jasmine vine, clutching to the columns of my terrace. There remained my last good by to all that had been my life until then. But I left convinced of the finality of my circumstances and proudly accepting them. I carried with me an identity that was already forged. When I left, I knew very well that I would not be able to ever come back. The same government that still rules the destiny of Cuba, was the one which then determined my fate. With that conviction I left, carrying with me the only thing that was mine: my two daughters.
Behind remained my books and my old doll dressed in blue. Behind remained my Emerson radio from which I listened to Nocturno so many nights, and the trees that I planted at the end of the yard which must have flowered in white and in yellow many times by now. I left my things and my loved ones. I left a government that mistreated me and made go like a third class citizen. Some of my relatives still remain there. The same government still remains there...
Translated by Margarita García