Because the Rain Does Not Exclude Us

By Veronica Vega

HAVANA TIMES – A storm suddenly broke out, and I had to run to close everything up. But it’s hard to “close” a house when so many window shutters are missing, leaving openings where the rain pours in by the bucketful.

Everything in my room got soaked: the mattress, a painting that the wind sent flying, books, even money and photographs…

Fortunately, the cardboard boxes I had turned into fantasy “palaces” for my cats were only splashed by the rain.

After improvising a way to seal the window with plastic bags and scraps of wood, I had to spend a long time mopping up all the water.

The lightning made me jump with fright, and I watched my cats disappear into hiding places, trembling.

How could I not remember the special emotion that every rainstorm in my life has brought, ever since I became aware of the world?

The rains of my childhood, shared with my mother and sisters; those that caught me and a partner at the beach; those my son and I enjoyed when we had just moved into this apartment, standing on the balcony and feeling that gentle yet wild force, that promise of summer whispering to us, assuring us of perfect happiness. A world full of miracles, mysteries, and encounters yet to come.

My thoughts drift toward the past and into the mist, where certain dreams still hide, resisting the demolition imposed by an ever more crushing reality.

But rain is as pure as a child’s laughter. Nothing can stand against that renewal that comes and fulfills its purpose, just like spring.

We believe again. Against all odds, we dare to imagine that the future will find a way to satisfy us.

That it will bring us a country where electricity is not a luxury, where water flows through the pipes and freely from the faucets. A country with reliable public transportation. With prices that don’t force you to choose between buying a broom you need and the cooking oil you cannot do without.

A place with continuous internet service instead of spasmodic connections, where conversations revolve around projects and plans rather than comparing how many hours each person has been without electricity.

A place where hospitals do not smell of neglect, of the cruel judgment poverty passes on those who face adversity…

To once again feel the simple pleasure of getting dressed to go out. To socialize—why not?—to laugh, to waste a little time and energy. To simply loaf around…

To lean out of an undamaged window and gaze upon a city that has finally escaped the curse of stagnation.

Sometimes I see Cuba as a ship that has been anchored for decades, held back by heavy, rusted chains beneath the water that keep it from sailing.

A ship that never quite sinks, but never truly floats either, merely suspended in the fog, laden with ghosts.

The world around it, with all its lights and dizzying pace, seems to belong to another orbit, another galaxy.

Another flash of lightning and I think of everything people would like to shout, to express… A rage that has had more than half a century to evolve from vague unease into questioning, and finally into the certainty of being victims of systematic injustice. If only the price were not so high: an arrest, a threat, a trial, a prison where one languishes amid ingratitude and collective forgetfulness.

I remember a children’s story about a widower with several sons and one daughter who marries a wicked woman. She possesses hidden powers that she uses to transform the children into birds, forcing them to fly away. The sister cannot tell her father the truth because, if she does, the spell will become permanent, and her brothers will never regain their human form.

When she can no longer bear the secret that consumes her, she digs a hole in the ground and screams into it.

I wonder what would happen if everyone here who longs to scream but is silenced by fear entrusted their despair to the earth. What would become of the sum of so many cries? This island would crack from end to end. And I wish it were an earthquake that could cleanse the homeland… leaving only the just to survive.

At last the sky has fallen silent, leaving the air with a strange freshness that seems to pass through every town and every era. The light becomes magical through the Tyndall effect as it floods the moisture suspended in the atmosphere.

If the rain continues to repeat this ancient ritual that makes us no different from the rest of the world, then we can still have hope.

There has to be a way for the chaos that tramples us, day after day and night after night, to stop being controlled for the benefit of a privileged few—for their impunity.

There has to be a reverse movement that dislodges everything and restores it to a functioning order for the vast majority.

And because I feel that moment is already so close—like the sprout that has already broken through its seed beneath the earth—I once again find the strength to endure this new 24-hour blackout until the meager dose of normality returns.

Three hours of electricity are not enough to make ice in a freezer that has already turned to water. Or to wash clothes, cook, clean, check messages, browse Facebook, or take care of business on WhatsApp before everything collapses all over again.

Read more from the diary of Veronica Vega here on Havana Times.