The Best American Travel Writing 2013 by Elizabeth Gilbert Page A
Authors: Elizabeth Gilbert
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faces. In the most Spanish faces you could see flashes of the Old World stock that supplied the island with settlers: the equine noses, the long mouths, at times a Middle Eastern cast, features I knew from my wife’s family pictures.
On the sidewalk a young bicycle-taxi driver named Manuel approached us, a well-built kid in jean shorts and a tank top, about 19. He said he knew an ice cream place that was still open. We set out through the night. Many of the streets were dark. It was chilly already, and the six-year-old huddled against my side. It was one of those moments when you know that you are where you’re supposed to be. If your destiny wavered, it has at least momentarily recovered its track. We ate our chocolate ice cream at an outdoor bar, under a half-moon.
On the way back to the hotel, Manuel asked what I did. When I told him I was a reporter, he said: “You’d hate it here. There is no freedom of expression here.”
He launched into a tirade against the regime. “It is basically a prison,” he said. “Everyone is afraid.”
The things he said, which I had heard many times before—that you can go to prison for nothing, that there’s no opportunity, that people are terrified to speak out—are the reason I can never quite get with my leftie-most friends on Cuba, when they want to make excuses for the regime. It’s simply a fact that nearly every Cuban I’ve ever come to know beyond a passing acquaintance, everyone not involved with the party, will turn to you at some point and say something along the lines of, “It is a prison here.” I just heard it from one of the men who worked for Erik, back in the hometown. I remarked to him that storefronts on the streets looked a little bit better, more freshly painted. It was a shallow, small-talky observation.
“No,” he said, turning his head and exhaling smoke.
“You mean things haven’t improved?” I said.
“There is no future,” he said. “We are lost.”
The six-year-old kept asking me what Manuel was saying. I was doing my best to describe
el sistema
. Interesting trying to explain to a child educated in a Quaker Montessori school what could possibly be wrong with everyone sharing.
We passed the museum with the
Granma
, the leisure boat that in 1956 carried Fidel and Raul and Che and Camilo Cienfuegos and 78 other Cuban revolutionaries from Mexico to a beach on the island’s southeast coast. The cruiser was all lighted up with aquamarine lights, in a building made of glass. It looked underwater. Manuel stopped the bicycle-taxi and gazed on it with obvious pride.
“There’s always an armed guard in front of it,” he said, nodding his head toward a young man in a green uniform, who was standing with a machine gun over his shoulder.
“They’re worried that someone will try to blow it up or something?” I said.
“They’re worried that someone will steal it and go to Miami,” he said.
There was a time Mariana took me to Cuba, and we went to a town called Remedios, in the central part of the island. It is one of the most ancient Cuban cities. The church on the main square dates from the Renaissance. When it was restored in the 1950s, the workers discovered that under the white paint on the high ceiling was a layer of pure gold. The townspeople had safeguarded it from the pirates in that manner. We stayed in the home of a man named Piloto. A friendly bicycle-taxi driver, who introduced himself as Max, told us that Piloto worked for the government and rented out his spare room only in order to spy on tourists, and that we should be careful what we said there. But all we ever got from Piloto and his wife was a nearly silent politeness and one night a superb lobster dinner. My most vivid memory of Remedios is of being taken to the house of an artist who lived there, a woodcarver. The bicycle-taxi driver told us that anyone who had “a great interest in culture” needed to visit the home of this particular artist. The next day he
On the sidewalk a young bicycle-taxi driver named Manuel approached us, a well-built kid in jean shorts and a tank top, about 19. He said he knew an ice cream place that was still open. We set out through the night. Many of the streets were dark. It was chilly already, and the six-year-old huddled against my side. It was one of those moments when you know that you are where you’re supposed to be. If your destiny wavered, it has at least momentarily recovered its track. We ate our chocolate ice cream at an outdoor bar, under a half-moon.
On the way back to the hotel, Manuel asked what I did. When I told him I was a reporter, he said: “You’d hate it here. There is no freedom of expression here.”
He launched into a tirade against the regime. “It is basically a prison,” he said. “Everyone is afraid.”
The things he said, which I had heard many times before—that you can go to prison for nothing, that there’s no opportunity, that people are terrified to speak out—are the reason I can never quite get with my leftie-most friends on Cuba, when they want to make excuses for the regime. It’s simply a fact that nearly every Cuban I’ve ever come to know beyond a passing acquaintance, everyone not involved with the party, will turn to you at some point and say something along the lines of, “It is a prison here.” I just heard it from one of the men who worked for Erik, back in the hometown. I remarked to him that storefronts on the streets looked a little bit better, more freshly painted. It was a shallow, small-talky observation.
“No,” he said, turning his head and exhaling smoke.
“You mean things haven’t improved?” I said.
“There is no future,” he said. “We are lost.”
The six-year-old kept asking me what Manuel was saying. I was doing my best to describe
el sistema
. Interesting trying to explain to a child educated in a Quaker Montessori school what could possibly be wrong with everyone sharing.
We passed the museum with the
Granma
, the leisure boat that in 1956 carried Fidel and Raul and Che and Camilo Cienfuegos and 78 other Cuban revolutionaries from Mexico to a beach on the island’s southeast coast. The cruiser was all lighted up with aquamarine lights, in a building made of glass. It looked underwater. Manuel stopped the bicycle-taxi and gazed on it with obvious pride.
“There’s always an armed guard in front of it,” he said, nodding his head toward a young man in a green uniform, who was standing with a machine gun over his shoulder.
“They’re worried that someone will try to blow it up or something?” I said.
“They’re worried that someone will steal it and go to Miami,” he said.
There was a time Mariana took me to Cuba, and we went to a town called Remedios, in the central part of the island. It is one of the most ancient Cuban cities. The church on the main square dates from the Renaissance. When it was restored in the 1950s, the workers discovered that under the white paint on the high ceiling was a layer of pure gold. The townspeople had safeguarded it from the pirates in that manner. We stayed in the home of a man named Piloto. A friendly bicycle-taxi driver, who introduced himself as Max, told us that Piloto worked for the government and rented out his spare room only in order to spy on tourists, and that we should be careful what we said there. But all we ever got from Piloto and his wife was a nearly silent politeness and one night a superb lobster dinner. My most vivid memory of Remedios is of being taken to the house of an artist who lived there, a woodcarver. The bicycle-taxi driver told us that anyone who had “a great interest in culture” needed to visit the home of this particular artist. The next day he
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