Free The Domino Diaries by Brin-Jonathan Butler Page B

we?” I asked.
    â€œWhat is a normal day in a place like this, which no one will ever believe existed two weeks after it’s gone? Pick up a newspaper this morning in Miami, and things have never been worse here. Pick up our newspaper and things have never been better. That is the reality we live with every day of our lives. This is normal to us.”
    He was right: the only place where normal seemed halfway as slippery as here was in America. Guidebooks spoke of Havana as frozen in time like wreckage, but that was only true if you looked everywhere but at the people. When Napoleon first encountered the Sphinx he measured every inch of it. I didn’t know how to do that here. I didn’t have the right equipment. For the Cubans I saw, time had slowed in an entirely different way than I’d been told it would, along the edge of a blade. Life at the extremes is always slowed down, magnified, surreal. It was as if, all around me, forty-one years’ worth of Cuban society was in the backseat of a car Fidel had used to run through one of the world’s most profound red lights, and instead of finding oblivion as its consequence, it created a different kind of tragedy by just keeping going and going. It wasn’t long before that Fidel was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and was having charges brought against him in Spain as a war criminal at the same time. Communism had petered out everywhere else and given way to the real revolutionary force with legs that swept the planet: capitalism. But here everyone was popping a tire on communism’s last bend of memory lane.
    Still, I wasn’t sure how to approach the obvious question: Why hadn’t Lesvanne stayed in Miami? How had he gotten out? Why wasn’t Cuba’s answer to Sophie’s Choice something that devastated Lesvanne the way it seemed to everyone else?
    Just then Lesvanne’s name was hollered from down the block. We looked over and saw a large woman smiling as she held the hands of four little girls wearing red scarves and school uniforms at her sides. As I finished another glass of guarapo , Lesvanne patted my shoulder and headed in their direction to say hello. “I come right back. This is a close friend of my mother. I love this woman.” The construction workers and I watched him kiss the cheek of each member of the group and offer a bear hug to the woman that lifted her off the ground until she squealed and playfully flailed her arms to be put down. The girls all reached over to take Lesvanne’s hands as they walked back up the street toward me. Lesvanne introduced the group and each child stared up until I bent down to say hello and offered a cheek for them to kiss. I kissed the cheek of Lesvanne’s mother’s friend and she apologized before insisting the children were late for school and they had to leave. The construction workers around us waved at the children and the children smiled and waved back.
    â€œIs everyone here so comfortable with strangers?” I asked.
    â€œBut you’re not a stranger, you’re a visitor to our home.”
    â€œOne of the first things I was taught as a kid was not to talk to strangers. Stranger equals danger.”
    â€œBut this is not protection. This is just instilling fear. This is just propaganda. Of course there is a risk to trusting your environment. There are bad people and accidents in life, some are avoidable and some are not. But if you don’t trust there is a guarantee you will lose all things available to you only through trust. To sacrifice that for a false sense of security is protecting children?”
    I shrugged.
    â€œWell.” Lesvanne shrugged back. “If you have something to lose, that is very logical. In Miami I saw many walls protecting houses. Here all the walls are falling down. The nice cars in Miami all had alarms. Here almost nobody can afford a car. There the division is very important in their society and the fear of