Turning 24 alone in Havana.

by Amara Amaryah (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Cuba

“Donde va?” asks Yamille, revealing the same impressed smile shared by most cubans when I explain that I am travelling around this city solo. I tell her that today, I don’t know. Tomorrow I will turn 24 alone in a city that has been calling me for at least 10 years now. For the first time in my lifetime, my mother and I will not share the same birthday; we will each have 5 hours to ourselves and the WhatsApp call will be sweeter for this reason. I will read the first ever birthday card to make me cry and it will be the first time that I leave the house in denim shorts mid-February. Before I leave the house, Yamille serves me breakfast, translating each fruit with intense detail. Fruta bomba is our favourite; she calls it the ‘woman fruit' and makes loads of gestures in case I don’t understand her. As she leans on the kitchen counter, the silver of her wedding ring and the gold of the others catch the sun, rivalling each other for my attention before she opens her mouth, surely to ask me why I choose to be alone on my birthday. Instead she she says in her slowest Spanish, “Havana is very safe. You’ll be fine. The men will leave you alone because you look very cuban anyway”. Confident enough, I step out into Centro Habana’s streets and the reggaeton from the taxis or the salsa music from every third house on Calle Neptuno or the rich baritone of the man selling bagged savouries as he crosses the road without looking, tugs me into the day. * “Where in the world are you from?” says Ed(uardo), one of the many men of the day to prove Yamille wrong. Ed walks in a way that seems as though he is dancing. I decide that he does this to see if you will smile or laugh so to judge how interesting a conversation he can have with you. I tell him that I am from Jamaica but was born in London and that I’ve come to Havana to celebrate my 24th birthday. Before he asks me why I am not celebrating with friends, I tell him that I plan on exploring Old Havana and maybe going to a salsa class that I discovered a few hours ago. “Wow, brave girl” he says in spanish this time, to everyone around us. It’s not a question but I want to answer that I chose to travel alone and that I know that seems selfish and not how I was raised and terrifying but it is what feels right, today and likely for the next few years. Ed interrupts our imaginary conversation and asks me if I have ever heard of Mark Anthony. When I say no he plays me his music and I sit in the plaza leaning into a stranger, listening to his favourite song playing tinny from a mobile. This is how I spend my last day as a 23 year old; listening to a stranger comfortable enough to sing to me. I spend the first few days of 24 too lost beside the malecon where the salty waters splash more violently than I have ever seen, to care. I catch the most packed bus of my life like a true Cubana, to go to what I had translated as a book fair and arrive to find what is actually just a funfair. I lie to an almost-friend named Isbel when he offers to take me salsa dancing for my birthday simply because I changed my mind. I spend valentines night in habana’s hidden club with a boy who taught himself English and French in less than two years. I spend my last day on Havana’s most precious beach and enjoy it even though it costs too much (time and money) to get to. I'm uncharacteristically 20 minutes away from almost missing my flight saying goodbyes and I do not think in my entire life I have ever lived as much as I did that week in Cuba. I say it is the consequence of letting myself be as alone as Havana allows without explaining why.