A Surprise Mourning Of Fidel Castro

by Elsa Osman (United States of America)

I didn't expect to find Cuba

“POR FAVOR, NO ENVÍE LOS CORREOS ELECTRÓNICOS. ESTAMOS LLORANDO LA MUERTE DE NUESTRO PRESIDENTE FIDEL CASTRO.” This was the email I received from my host, Carmen, 2 days before I flew to Cuba, aged just 18. I leant against the steamy window of the 253 London night bus and stared at the message on my iPhone screen. My lacking Spanish language ability was a sudden reality. I arrived in Havana on a hot evening in January and as I stepped out of the airport I blinked at the silhouetted palm trees against the setting pink sky. A friendly looking man in a red t-shirt emerged from a tiny, battered green ford, “Elisa?” He grinned, “Bienvenida a la Cuba!”. While driving, Michel spoke to me in Spanish. I picked up on a handful of words I knew, and responded in excited but terrible Spanish with unrelated information about the UK and my family. As we drifted through the pinky blue evening light, the streets of Havana Vedado felt like an underwater kingdom. The houses, all different faded colours and styles, were crumbling, allowing nature to take over and support them. Vines crawled in and out of cracks and around columns and fences. The cars that we passed were missing most of their windows, headlamps hanging off the front. By the time we arrived the lids of my eyes hung low and heavy. Carmen showed me to my room, speaking a train of Spanish which floated in one ear and out the other without ever touching my brain. As soon as she left I flopped onto my bed, staring up at the orange concrete ceiling and the flickering wings of moths against the filament lightbulb before my eyes sunk back into my head. I woke to a knock on my door and Carmen burst in. “¿Estas lista?!” She raised her eyebrows. I realised she had changed clothes. Carmen now wore a black velvet dress that ran over her hips to the floor. Silk gloves ran up to her elbows and pearls hung round her neck. “¡Lo siento- uno momento!” I gushed, entirely unaware of why I needed to get ready. Regardless, I frantically pulled a skirt and shirt from my backpack and shoved them on. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and followed her into the hallway. In the hallway stood Carmen, Michel and two other men, all dressed very formally. We piled into Michel’s tiny car and one of the men turned to me, “Hi, I’m Carlos”. “Thank goodness you speak English” I spluttered, “where are we going?”. Carlos laughed, “Carmen is the government minister for the arts, she has organised the national mourning for Fidel Castro’s death in the San Cristobal cathedral”. “Right” I nodded, “Okay”. In front of the venue, a man opened the car door and held Carmen’s hand as she gracefully stepped out of the tiny battered car in her high heels. Cameras flashed and Carmen stopped at every person to greet them. When inside, she ushered me, Carlos and Michel into a pew. A camera was positioned less than two metres from my face. I stared straight down the lens in a dream-like daze. “You see those guys”, Carlos pointed to the front pew on the other side of the cathedral, “Those guys are the highest Colombian government officials, they were at the peace treaty meeting with the FARQ just last week.” I nodded slowly. Trying to process where I was and who I was with felt like an immense ask; I instead relaxed into the mindset that this was all a dream. When the event was over, Michel drove us home in the middle of a storm. Rain flew into the broken windows of the car. I sat in the back resting my chin on the window ledge, listening vaguely to the sounds of Carmen's delighted nattering. As we drove down the Malecón, waves rose over the wall, higher than the lampposts, before crashing down on the roof of the car. Michel’s speed never faltered. It felt like the tiny vehicle was getting swept along the road with the water, sailing back to Vedado.