In the early part of the years 2000s, I visited and stayed in the beautiful village of Baracoa in Cuba .. so much so that i was never away more than about a few days, when I went to the USA to work with the Native Indians. It was an epoca de oro, golden age for my stay in Cuba.
I had an open house and daily I had many many visitors. Friendships could be cultivated with octogenarians as well people on the other end of the life spectrum.
During the early part of the evening, children would drop by my house for a few minutes, listen to some music or watch a video or two (those were not that common in Cuba as they are now) and I would give them some soft drinks and biscuits as a snack.
I particularly remembered a quartet of girls, they were always together and now and then they would drop by and I might go to their houses also as I was by then friends with their parents.
I Q was one of those girls. Even though my last visit to Baracoa was quite a while ago, I had managed to keep in touch with a few people (out of the hundreds I knew) and I knew that IQ had gone off to Madrid, where some of her family lived. Over the course of the last two years, we exchanged some messages and made vague promises to meet, knowing that it was not going to be easy.
I was in Madrid a couple of nights ago. I was so happy when IQ suggested that she would meet me, along with another friend from Baracoa at the square in front of SOL, metro station. I was overjoyed and spent time waiting at the square observing the characters who inhabit that space. No one takes pictures or even looks at buildings and architectural treasures but they are all busy taking selfies .. Africans with distinctive shrill voices along with some maghrebian immigrants were selling something or other to the tourists and I did not find out, but I guessed it might be a Flamenco show or something of that nature.
Two girls emerged from the Metro and frankly there was no way I would have recognized them.
I was reminded of a second world war era song : Thank Heavens for Little Girls..
We had a wonderful time chatting, catch up on their personal growth, the other young lady was a doctor with International experience in Venezuela.
It was way past midnight when we finished a trago.. a drink.. at a touristy restaurant where an energetic middle aged argentine plied us with stories while we were concentrating on our conversations. A drunk Japanese man approached wanting to talk but due to the lack of a common language he backed away like a cat being chased away.
Such was the special night in Madrid with friends from Baracoa.
