My Friend Has Left for Spain
HAVANA TIMES – This happened many years ago, when I worked at the Municipal Culture Department in the accounting office as an accounting assistant. I often had to receive friends who were writers, playwrights, poets, and musicians who came to collect checks for their work.
On one occasion, a friend who was an editor and poet came in. After greeting each other and talking about when she could receive her payment, she told me that she wanted to become a mother. As a woman, with a biological clock more pressing than a man’s, she was already approaching the age when she had to decide whether or not she was going to have children.
This is an issue that, personally, I find very controversial. I decided long ago never to become a mother, not only because I come from a poor family, but because I am well aware of the country I live in, with its limited possibilities for living a dignified life, among many other reasons. So I asked her, “Do you really want to have children?”
She laughed and replied, “Yes, I know. So-and-so [a painter and mutual friend] asked me the same thing: ‘Are you going to have a child in this concentration camp?’” We laughed. True. He had put it better than I could. I never allow myself to give anyone advice, just as I don’t usually listen to advice myself, but my friend already knew my answer: “Please, don’t have your child here.”
My friend decided that she would. She had a girl. And I was happy for her. Because just as I believe one thing, I also believe another: people should be free to live the life they want. As long as it doesn’t affect me (like the decisions made by these Communists in power), they should be free to experience whatever they choose.
It turns out I just learned that this friend has emigrated to Spain with her husband and daughter. How happy the news made me!
The little girl will not have to endure—as I have, as thousands, as millions of men and women in this land have—the blackouts, the absurd and useless bureaucracy of this State (something that has been proven beyond a doubt), or the vileness of a group of men who always believe they are right and do everything possible and impossible to crush other ways of thinking. The girl will not suffer hunger, shortages, or the eternal refrain: “There isn’t any.”
I wish all three of them all the luck in the world. They will face challenges, but I trust they will be challenges that make life worthwhile—not the challenge of searching for bread because it has disappeared. And I hope, of course, that they fulfill their dreams. I’m happy for those who manage to escape.
Read more from the diary of Lien Estrada here on Havana Times.