Havana, how you hurt me!

Havana, how you hurt me! / Yoani Sanchez
Posted on November 16, 2014

Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 16 November 2004 – To be a Havanan is not having
been born in a territory, it's carrying that territory on your back and
not being able to put it down. The first time I realized I belonged to
this city I was seven years old. I was in a little town in Villa Clara,
trying to reach some guavas on a branch, when a bunch of kids from the
place surrounded my sister and me. "They're from Havana! They're from
Havana!" they shrieked. At that moment we didn't understand so much
uproar, but with time we realized that we had come by a sad privilege.
Having been born in this city in decline, in this city whose major
attraction is what it could be, not what it is.

I am totally urban, a city girl. I grew up in the Cayo Hueso
neighborhood where the nearest trees are more than 500 yards away. I am
the child of asphalt, of the smell of kerosene, of clotheslines dripping
from the balconies and sewer pipes that overflow from time to time. This
has never been an easy city. Not even on the tourist postcards, with
their retouched colors, can you see a comfortable and comprehensible Havana.

Sometimes now I don't want to walk it, because it hurts me. I am heading
up Belascoaín, my back the sea that I know so well. I arrive at the
corner of Reina Street. There is a Gothic-style church, which as a
little girl I perceived to be lost in the clouds. I saw my first
Christmas tree there when I was seventeen. I walk though the doors,
skipping a little to this side and that. Water trickles down some stairs
and a woman tries to sell me some milk caramels that are the same color
as the street.

I see the traffic light at Galiano, but the pace slows because there are
so many people. A cop turns the corner and some hide themselves behind
the doors or slip into stores as if they were going to buy something.
When the officer leaves, they return and offer their merchandise in
undertones. Because Havana is a city of cries and whispers. Those
immersed in their own blather may never hear the whispers. The most
important things are always said with a nod, a gesture or a simple
pursing of the lips that warns you, "be careful," "coming over there,"
"follow me." A language developed during decades of the clandestine and
illegal.

Neptune Street is nearby. I hear an old couple in front of a façade
saying, "Hey? Wasn't it here where there was…?" but I didn't manage to
hear the end of the sentence. Better that way, because Havana is a
sequence of nostalgia, memories. When you walk, it's like you're
traversing the path of the lost. Where a building collapses into rubble
that remains for days, for weeks. Later, the hole is made into a park,
or a metal kiosk is built to sell soap, trinkets and rum. A lot of rum,
because this is a city that drowns its sorrows in alcohol.

I reach the Malecon. In less than half an hour I've walked the slice of
the city that in my childhood seemed to contain the whole metropolis.
Because I was a "guajira de Centro Habana," an urchin of downtown, one
of those who thinks that "the green zones" start right after Infanta
Street. With time, I understood that this capital is too big to know the
whole of. I also learned that those born in the neighborhoods of Diez de
Octubre, el Cerro, el Vedado or Mariano, shared the same sensation of
pain. In any event, Havana shows its wounds in any neighborhood.

I touch the wall that separates us from the sea. It is rough and warm.
Where are those kids who, in my childhood, in a remote little village,
looked at me in astonishment because I was a Havanan? Will they want to
bear this burden? Have they also ended up in this city, living among its
dumpsters and lights? Does it pain them like it pains me? I'm sure it
does, because Havana is not just a location inscribed in our identity
documents. This city is a cross that is carried everywhere, a territory
that once you have lived it, you cannot abandon.

Source: Havana, how you hurt me! / Yoani Sanchez | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/havana-how-you-hurt-me-yoani-sanchez/