Havana
tales of an informal stay back in the day
Cuba is still different, but it was a different difference before the Cuban thaw
Inspired by only the most-on-the-nose Hemingwayan clichés, I started writing in that dark-green leatherbound Venetian notebook during my Cuban days. I think it was passable even, much better than this writing about the writing. But some pages in, a pickpocket on a bus made it disappear from my shorts like magic. They probably had more use for it though, and that notebook still had its best days ahead. I wonder if any other plots ever departed inside of it, or if it maybe helped manage grocery lists or start fires.
The reason I miss that diary today—no pen in hand, but a keyboard click-clacking underneath my fingers—is that I can’t remember my Havanan host’s name, and it was in there, and also our conversations. His knowledge was beautiful, none of that tacky stuff. Wise beyond his years and appearances. He knew life and love, not just this and that. His wife had given birth (to a little boy or girl I wanna say), only days before I ran into him in front of their little house, now home to a little family. I didn’t have a place to stay, and for someone with empty pockets it was all informal homestays in those last days before the Cuban thaw. A hush-hush operation. When I passed by their corner house, he whispered his offer like he was selling drugs. My room was upstairs, small, windowless, looking kind of like a barn's dim hayloft in my memory but certainly not much like that at the time. It did the trick, in any case, if the trick was sleeping.
He showed me around town and shared his life lessons as casually as his favorite back-alley pizza places. I recall him looking a bit like the guy leaning against a car in the picture below, and maybe that IS him, but probably not, and I think he was a little older and balder.
Something with an O and/or a B perhaps? It was an unusual name and I’m afraid it’s buried under too many generic names I've heard since. It won’t come to me in a million years. Ombebatu? One day I was leaning against the house, probably having a smoke, when a neighbor from across the street offered up her two adult daughters to me. One of them was breastfeeding a newborn. I politely declined. They were very casual about it, and somehow I felt that I was sadder than they were. Ombebatu? was always chipper, even when he lamented the bruises left by Castro’s firm grip, and he always ended by shrugging it all off with an “el Cubano inventa”—the Cuban comes up with something. Yes.
One night, the three and a half of us sat through The Hobbit with the baby contributing the least amount of watching, and me coming in a close second. Another night, I went out with Ombebatu?'s sister or aunt. Can't quite remember whether she was his aunt or the baby's. She could have been either, looking like she was in her 30s to 50s. She wore something best described as "unapologetically suggestive," reminiscent of a US-flag wrestling costume. She was a teacher, usually dressed pretty teachery, but had achieved—summa cum laude—not to look anything like a teacher that night.
Dissecting Havana with my feet during those first days, I tripped over quite a few of the political and economic implications wedded by the Marxian ideal, surprised by how divorced some experiences were from others, both for Cubans and visitors.
As we walked through the old town, it felt like eyes were following us all around, because they were. It wasn't so much that she made me feel like I was walking with a prostitute on my arm, but more that I felt like the prostitute. A silly little tourist being conned or something, or at least that's what I would have thought. If only they'd known that she was a teacher, and that I was living with her brother-nephew. She didn't seem to mind at all, proudly and loudly giving a lesson on her sexual history and love life, highlighting colorfully the chapter on that one man, the-one one, who was the only one she'd let do anything to her—explicitly not just to her heart. She did drop some hints at sexual favors, and I did drop some hints at being in a relationship.
When I moved from my homestay to an equally informal hostel not long after, it wasn't because of her, explicitly, just that I was looking for a different kind of company. I found it nearby, a little down the road, right near the Callejon de Hamel. Awkwardly nearby, because I had told Ombebatu that I was leaving Havana for a while, in a lazy attempt to not hurt anyone's feelings, especially my own. I loved to feel like a noble do-gooder, supporting a young family with a few bucks. The old couple that ran the hostel seemed privileged in comparison, even if only in that very local comparison.
Dissecting Havana with my feet during those first days, I tripped over quite a few of the political and economic implications wedded by the Marxian ideal, surprised by how divorced some experiences were from others, both for Cubans and visitors. The freedom of drinking, smoking, dancing, and singing in the streets came in handy for buoyant Latin American good timers; but, freedom of speech was severely restricted and internet access more limited than in China. CHINA! First concessions to private entrepreneurship had been granted; but, guesthouses and hostels weren’t really a thing yet (not to mention online bookings), meaning that my informal stay at Ombebatu's and the clandestine hostel was just the normal way to go about it.
And then there were the two! circulating currencies, making every purchase either very expensive or very cheap. A cab from the airport to the city center was around 50 CUC (the exact equivalent of $50 USD); but, the local bus got you there for a couple of cents in Moneda Nacional, which was an amount so little that it couldn’t be expressed in US dollar denominations. That Moneda would also get you a huge pizza for less than a dollar in the old town's little side streets, while bars and restaurants along Calle Obispo, the neighborhood's popular main vein, charged fancy CUC prices for their fancy names. Names like Ambos Mundos, Hemingway's hotel-home in Havana, where he lived for years. I could only afford a free visit to the rooftop terrace.
I don't remember exactly how I met Sinat, and I'm too lazy to ask her right now—we actually stayed in touch, and I saw her in Berlin recently, some ten years on. I believe I just ran into her and Armando when I went to Casablanca that one time, crossing the bay on a ferry that cost less than a cent. You'd land in a much quieter, much greener Havana, which is where Armando was setting up his eco finca. Sinat already knew him (somewhow) and helped him (somehow), and now he invited me into his house and project as well.
After exploring the fort area with Sinat—someone I've come to respect as a fellow slow traveler who measures trips in years, not months—we had dinner at Armando's. Rice, avo, fried egg and plantain, bread, juice. Simple but simply delicious, and a generous take on an economic meal. The next day, we all went to Cojímar, the former fishing village (emphasis on former) that inspired Hemingway to write The Old Man and the Sea.
Cojímar
Heming-way off
A few days later, I moved to that hostel. Turned out to be a hub for Chinese travelers, which was both surprising and unsurprising. I'd never met so many Chinese travelers anywhere, but then again, Cuba was a sensible destination for them. Eric was a little older, Iris a little younger, and Autumn cute. And then there was Amanda, an American with Indian roots, and the kind of woman all those songs are about, the impossible soulmate, intelligent and daring but also fatal. I had dated and loved her before, and now I couldn't overlook the big red flag her entire being was wrapped in. A spectacular person to spend time with though. One night—or maybe I should say one day—our conversation didn't end when the sun came up. We had just arrived at sexual preferences in a very platonic way, and she was talking about a belt.
"Hold that thought," I said. "I'm not getting a belt, just my camera."
The sun was coming up behind El Capitolio, and it reminded me of that tall tale people shared around in the streets of Havana: no building in the old town must look down onto El Capitolio, the former seat of government, and so it kept sticking out as the area's highest landmark. Funny enough, it looked like an identical twin of the one in Washington, but trumped (for lack of a better word) it in height.
It seemed unreasonable to go to bed with the sun rising, so we hopped on a morning bus leaving Havana eastbound towards Playas del Este. Somehow, we were still awake—one of life’s more awake moments at that—and still talking as though our survival depended on it, or at least the survival of that moment, fooling around in the surf like childhood soulmates with a secret, that American deserter and I.
It was one of those postcard beaches, at least on postcards, but as soon as a little cloud would come between the sun and your mood, it would all fade and yellow, snow-white sand becoming just sand, and turquoise water just water.
Back in Havana, we walked around Habana Vieja, peaking into abandoned ruins, trespassing where no one cared, she cooler than me but trying just a little too hard, me not impressing her much by being unimpressed. Amazed by the vast emptiness of the city's central station, we took some pictures.
At some point it was time to go and let go, of the moment, of the conversation, of us. After some 24 hours, we called it a day. Two days later, I called it a stay, and left Cuba eastbound to see about a French girl—as one does, trying to live a little, like Hemingway (mind the comma between "little" and "like").
