Not so long ago I had one of those dreams that verges on the limit between the sweet fantasy and the fierce nightmare. I had arrived to an apartment that, as hard as I try to remember, I never get to realize exactly where it is located or who owns it. I just remember it was a mucky apartment like the ones in Old Havana or Centro Habana, with unpainted, chipped walls, cracks about to validate the gravitational theory. Anyway, the door opened and I got in, screaming because I was happy or under the effects of alcohol. That night I had gone to bed after some drinks, so that my subconscious betrayed me and I was screaming, which is unusual in for me. In the apartment there were a few people who were, obviously, my friends, but I cannot remember them either. One of them forced me to shut up, but I kept on screaming because I was happy, very happy, only God knows why. My friend grabbed my shoulder and asked me again to shut up. “Fidel has died”, he said. I laughed out loudly, how he could be so naïve, I asked him not to play games with me, but he repeated it was true, that He had died, he wouldn´t play with such matters. I told him, still laughing, that I had to see it, that seeing is believing, and my friend pointed towards a corner. There was no dividing wall between the living-room and the bedroom. At the end, and next to the wall, there was a small bed, like those in the hospitals and a corpse (it had to be a corpse) covered with a white blanket. I have seen that image repeated in hundreds of films, so that dreaming about it has not too much cinematographic connotation, it is not an image I could take great delight in. During the dream I could have become serious, maybe beginning to believe that certainly the Boss had died, although there still existed the possibility of a joke: under the blanket there could be maybe pillows, anything, and not the body of the Commander in Chief. My friend whispered: “Go and see”, and he was saying that with fear, as if he himself could not believe it. I started approaching step by step and looked back from time to time but there were no laughs or a face that could betray the joke. I got to the edge of the bed, kneeled down (as you are supposed to do before such a corpse) and raised the blanket. Under the blanket was, indeed, Fidel Castro himself. And just when I was starting to believe he was dead, and not even with time to react (astonishment, confusion, happiness, joy, pain, sadness, fear) he opened his eyes, placed his forefinger against his lips and, with a sarcastic smile, maybe a wink, he made “Sushhhh”.
That was not the first time I dreamt of Fidel. In other occasions I had told close friends and relatives about my dreams with the Commander in Chief and just after those dreams I had thought about the intensity of his presence and what it means for my generation and maybe also to other generations, but I can only write about mine, or maybe I can only write about myself. Probably one of the first images I saw was his, repeated in black and white (Krim 18) in a neighborhood where there were no more than three TV-sets. I imagine that my mother, staunch communist, used to sit in front of the television to make me sleep and he was always there. It was 1975: First Congress of the Communist Party, an event that would strengthen and redefine the ideological, ethical and moral principles of the Revolution. It was 1975 and the Political Administrative Division was already being drafted (passed in 1976) that severed the geography of the Island (read: its history), and at the same time ripped off that sense of belonging from many people, among them, those from my hometown that used to belong to Camaguey and later it came to be part of Las Tunas and I have to say that there was a time when my fellow countrymen felt they did not belong to any province at all, a situation that still persists among the eldest. So that we became a history-mutilated and neglected town, assuming a new history under the hallucinogenic effects of the triumphant Revolution that, back then, granted the power to people and induced us to think we were all equal. And in every moment Fidel was there. In the school (in every school as far as I can recall) his photograph repeated in the walls, in houses, in the streets, the newspapers, magazines, and of course in the mobilizations, marches, parades and demonstrations his image was always in hands of someone who bore him like a banner, faithful portraits or even drawings presenting him like a prophet of Abraham´s caste. The bearded giant (like a wise man of some antique council) was everywhere, “in every second, in all visions” and that permanence still remains. They taught us that Fidel was a father, but I never believed it. I knew I was born, naturally, after my parents´ copula and not because Fidel appeared, in a divine way, with eccentric lights, and mediated between them so later my mother (who is a saint but not virgin) conceived me. But I did hear, as a child, many of my friends and cousins repeat ingenuously that Fidel was their father (“daddy Fidel”), and even today children of this generation are instilled with the idea that Fidel is like a grandfather, “grandpa Fidel”.
If I had to list the indelible presences of my existence, the Commander in Chief´s would take up the first three. I could be in a far-off country some day and his image will still come to my mind; anything would bring him: a tall, bearded man, the green color, some olive sprigs, inquisitor‘s eyes, long fingers (also inquisitor), a phrase of “deep political content”, a dais, someone behind it putting up the microphones or wearing a white guayabera (he does not wear them, but his bodyguards do). Even if someone speaks about Cuba, probably before remembering my parents and those landscapes, he will show up. Just like when a Cuban hears the word “revolution”, he only thinks about the Revolution, because they taught us that it was the only possible revolution and that way, in us, the real meaning of that word got out of order. So that where it should be read “change”, reads “stagnation”; where should be read “transformation”, reads “immutability”, but where it reads Revolutions is always read Fidel and where it reads Cuba is always read Fidel. That is why for us Cubans is impossible to separate patriotism and Fidelism. And there another concept escapes from us: the homeland is Fidel. In Cuba, to treason the homeland is just going against the ideas of the Maximum Leader. So that, if one day there is a war in Cuba, we would not be fighting for our country but for Fidel.
It should be terrible, I think, that during my final day, and as I have seen him so much, as I have had him as breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, when I will be dying, in that moment when I will be modulating my last death rattles, he could show up again. I promised someone I loved very much that my last thoughts would be of her, that in my deathbed I would be thinking about her, but now, after thinking about what Fidel´s presence means in our lives (in the life of every Cuban, no matter where he is) I cannot guarantee to my beloved that it will be her image and not Fidel´s the one I will see that fateful and tragic day. Because Fidel´s is not a transitory, ephemeral presence, as it can be the presence of many people we know in our lives. His is a long-lasting presence like the Island itself, tangible like those cracks in the walls, painful like a labor, traumatic and schizophrenic as the Revolution itself.
That was not the first time I dreamt of Fidel. In other occasions I had told close friends and relatives about my dreams with the Commander in Chief and just after those dreams I had thought about the intensity of his presence and what it means for my generation and maybe also to other generations, but I can only write about mine, or maybe I can only write about myself. Probably one of the first images I saw was his, repeated in black and white (Krim 18) in a neighborhood where there were no more than three TV-sets. I imagine that my mother, staunch communist, used to sit in front of the television to make me sleep and he was always there. It was 1975: First Congress of the Communist Party, an event that would strengthen and redefine the ideological, ethical and moral principles of the Revolution. It was 1975 and the Political Administrative Division was already being drafted (passed in 1976) that severed the geography of the Island (read: its history), and at the same time ripped off that sense of belonging from many people, among them, those from my hometown that used to belong to Camaguey and later it came to be part of Las Tunas and I have to say that there was a time when my fellow countrymen felt they did not belong to any province at all, a situation that still persists among the eldest. So that we became a history-mutilated and neglected town, assuming a new history under the hallucinogenic effects of the triumphant Revolution that, back then, granted the power to people and induced us to think we were all equal. And in every moment Fidel was there. In the school (in every school as far as I can recall) his photograph repeated in the walls, in houses, in the streets, the newspapers, magazines, and of course in the mobilizations, marches, parades and demonstrations his image was always in hands of someone who bore him like a banner, faithful portraits or even drawings presenting him like a prophet of Abraham´s caste. The bearded giant (like a wise man of some antique council) was everywhere, “in every second, in all visions” and that permanence still remains. They taught us that Fidel was a father, but I never believed it. I knew I was born, naturally, after my parents´ copula and not because Fidel appeared, in a divine way, with eccentric lights, and mediated between them so later my mother (who is a saint but not virgin) conceived me. But I did hear, as a child, many of my friends and cousins repeat ingenuously that Fidel was their father (“daddy Fidel”), and even today children of this generation are instilled with the idea that Fidel is like a grandfather, “grandpa Fidel”.
If I had to list the indelible presences of my existence, the Commander in Chief´s would take up the first three. I could be in a far-off country some day and his image will still come to my mind; anything would bring him: a tall, bearded man, the green color, some olive sprigs, inquisitor‘s eyes, long fingers (also inquisitor), a phrase of “deep political content”, a dais, someone behind it putting up the microphones or wearing a white guayabera (he does not wear them, but his bodyguards do). Even if someone speaks about Cuba, probably before remembering my parents and those landscapes, he will show up. Just like when a Cuban hears the word “revolution”, he only thinks about the Revolution, because they taught us that it was the only possible revolution and that way, in us, the real meaning of that word got out of order. So that where it should be read “change”, reads “stagnation”; where should be read “transformation”, reads “immutability”, but where it reads Revolutions is always read Fidel and where it reads Cuba is always read Fidel. That is why for us Cubans is impossible to separate patriotism and Fidelism. And there another concept escapes from us: the homeland is Fidel. In Cuba, to treason the homeland is just going against the ideas of the Maximum Leader. So that, if one day there is a war in Cuba, we would not be fighting for our country but for Fidel.
It should be terrible, I think, that during my final day, and as I have seen him so much, as I have had him as breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, when I will be dying, in that moment when I will be modulating my last death rattles, he could show up again. I promised someone I loved very much that my last thoughts would be of her, that in my deathbed I would be thinking about her, but now, after thinking about what Fidel´s presence means in our lives (in the life of every Cuban, no matter where he is) I cannot guarantee to my beloved that it will be her image and not Fidel´s the one I will see that fateful and tragic day. Because Fidel´s is not a transitory, ephemeral presence, as it can be the presence of many people we know in our lives. His is a long-lasting presence like the Island itself, tangible like those cracks in the walls, painful like a labor, traumatic and schizophrenic as the Revolution itself.
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