Free Cuba and the Night by Pico Iyer Page B

America,” José went on. “ ‘At last I live in a country where each man seems to be his own master.’ ”
    “Ja
, but he also says, ‘I have lived inside the monster, and—’ ”
    “Sure,” said José. “But look at Fidel! Even Fidel loves America! You know he took his honeymoon in New York? You know when he was a student, he sent a letter to Roosevelt and asked him for a ten-dollar bill? You know he ate hot dogs in Yankee Stadium?”
    “You do not know this,” said Anna. “You have never been outside. You do not know how lucky you are. You do not know what the world is. You have hopes here, ideals.”
    “Hopes for what? For it to end?”
    “No. You have this faith. This sharing: every person helping every other person. Like members of the same collective. Like a kibbutz.”
    “Sure. Like a family. For thirty years, we are Children of the Revolution, children of a father who says that children must be quiet and must sleep without food and must be told what to do every minute of our lives. For thirty years, he’s telling us not to pray before our meals, and not to go to other countries, and howwe must never forget our obligation to our parents, and how we must give our lives for our family. For thirty years, we hear him say, ‘You are too young to think for yourself. You must wait. You must wait.’ If this is a family, Combinado is a family.”
    “You cannot believe that?”
    “I can believe it. I do believe it. In Cuba, you have to believe everything.” José was calming down now, he was getting quiet. “In Cuba, you believe everything or you believe nothing. Because everything is crazy. More divorces than weddings. More deaths than births. This guy’s in prison, but that guy’s in Miami. Nothing makes sense in Cuba.”
    “So you don’t believe Fidel?”
    “Sure I do. Sometimes I think Fidel is the most intelligent man in the world.”
    “No!”
    “Sure. Who else could make such propaganda for the
yanquis?
Who else could make all this country want to go to Miami and buy a Cadillac and listen to Madonna?”
    “Yes,” I said, unable to hold back. “But who else could help him the way the U.S. government has? They’re his best ally—trying to put bombs in his cigars, invading Girón and Grenada, so he can always tell the people that all the problems are because of the embargo and he’s standing up against Goliath. The two are a perfect league of thieves. Partners in crime.”
    José chuckled.
    “They deserve one another, like a snake and its poison. Fidel can’t live without an important enemy. The U.S. can’t live without a military threat. It’s a marriage made in heaven.”
    The girls were looking uncomfortable now. “So what do you do if you hate everything here?” Anna asked.
    “Get drunk,” said José. “Make love. Make music. We are like animals here. Sex and rum and sleep are the only things that are not in the ration book.”
    “So you want to live like Americans? Gangs. Drugs. People on the street. Bodies everywhere. A police state.”
    “I want to live like humans.”
    “Okay,” said Anna. “Thank you for the coffee. We must go.”
    “Thank you,” said Ilse, smiling all around, and the two of them let themselves out.
    “Too bad,” I said.
    “Is okay. Some are like that. They want to live here for two years. But after two weeks, they want to leave.”
    “But if you feel that way about the situation, why don’t you act on it?”
    “I do. Eleven years now, I am trying to leave.”
    “Why not do something more? About Fidel?”
    “And what then? Look at his friends—Ochoa, Raúl, the rest: first-class bastards. They are worse than him—they have only beards, no brains. Only guns, no ideas. And the imperialists in Miami? Forget it!”
    “So better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know?”
    “Sure. Better we wait. Better we do nothing. Most people here, they know only the Revolution. Maybe the other ways are worse. So we wait. Keep quiet. Find