I had looked for a shy Gabo on the Blvd San Germain feeling uncertain of himself or Alvaro Mutis with whom I may have shared Ave Archimedes in Brussels ?
Cafe de Flore? Cafe Deux Magots?
I will always remember my good friend ES telling me, remember you are not Simone.
I walked along the streets in Palermo where Borges lived and felt I was like a ghost wandering around looking for the hairdresser from Matanzas who has long since vanished from the street that bears the writers name ..
Eastern cities do not evoke that nostalgia, people are too busy living and the clutter and the noise bring you back to the harsh reality
I rather think of Biki Dude the nightingale of Zanzibar . A taxi driver who was surprised that I knew that name took me to the house where that songbird lived well into her nineties ..
But It was Havana that was and is my delight
It was Havana that was and is the moveable feast
The magic and surrealism, the intellect and the songs and the music and mysticism ..
they like arrows pierce my heart, make me bleed for this city which has seen its share of tragedies
San Cristobal de la Habana
where is the little girl who kissed me under the decaying arches along the Prado street .. she transported herself on the strength of her dreams to walk along some strange foreign street where a house and a car awaited her Good Luck NPF
cunning vendors of dreams with narrow shifty eyes
poets whose hearts are as big as the blue skies that you see
Did Blue Skies from Australia once descend to these shores ?
2023 is impatient
I want my Havana back
Go away whatever virus variant you are , who imprisoned us for two years with your glowing capacity for an early clear death.
I nearly wept on the steps that led to a delightful placed called CUBAPASION
its Belgian owner who had lived in Cuba for 17 years before the Pandemic and his lovely history professor wife .. did the virus drive him away ?
It was my custom, after my arrival at my house in Havana, to do the pilgrimage as the sun would be setting over the western horizon of the menacing sea that separates this island from that hungry giant to the North, ha ...the Last Train to Yuma
The pilgrimage was to CubaPasion
Young University students eager to bring your Piña Colada . and the lobster tail in Linguini ...
I have shared the tables with many friends, local and foreign .. As Gabo would have said: the smell of Piña Colada at CubaPasion always reminded this Maqroll of unrequited loves and passions unbridled that went galloping over whatever mountain range ?
Now the streets are quiet
Hotel Colina
Have you stayed there, asked Pico Iyer when I met him at Powells after his talk
now shuttered, the book store opposite gone.. and i longingly looked at the home of the social discoverer of Cuba, Fernando Ortiz where i had given lectures on more than one occasion ..
Havana has fallen silent
You couldnt walk 100 metres without recognizing some strand of music floating.. was it Enrique Jorrin who introduced the cha cha cha?
I fondly think of my friends Ibrahim Ferrer and the i can look at the house where Cachaito lived in the distance to the right ..
Who has done this to my city, this vibrant city where movements deliberately provoked sensuality, the steps of people were like honey dripping from a spoon ..delicious..
Where was that middle aged black couple who were walking holding hands along the Rampa ?
I miss all of you , then the noise and the broken tiles of the sidewalks and the potholes along the street L as I descend towards melancholia and the little park at Linea that once showered me with tenderness ..
I beg you, please return the music you stole from my city
the joyous physique of young loves along the malecon
the cunning bartenders and their diluted mojitos
and the history student who would bring me Piña Colada at Cuba Pasion under the watchful eye of the Belgian with a Cuban puro half lit in his hands
Bring me back La Dolca Vita along the Malecon with its knowledgeable Maitre d' where i had dined along with fine conversations with my friends from Yuma .. the north
I think the Maitre d' was called Victor..
Bring them all back to me
So that I can ask each of them the various fragrances
of Munich or Marrakech Madrid Milan
or their toils at Palacio de Jugos in Miami (whose owner was convicted for Drug dealing but now owns ten of them, Cuban ingenuity at its best)
As I carefully retraced my steps, I want you to know ,you, now breathing foreign air and speaking in other tongues, that I remain here, faithful to this eternal, charming, at times decaying belligerent city..
grateful for the moments of magic we shared..
