Of a revolution, two.

I walked around the back of the police car before it pulled away. Abdel and Pilar were now both inside, if not free then at least together. He had squeezed into the center of the cramped backseat, next to the teenage prostitute whose flirtation and pleading at me through the car window had quickly jerked into confusion and fear seconds earlier. Ricardo, myself, and the car that had just rolled off with its human cargo inside were each older than the policia especializada officer that we were speaking to, the one that had started the confrontation. The one that had shifted the tenor of that Havana afternoon.

I type these words for you now rather than later. With an ending as unsurprising as this, why bother building to it?

Two hours earlier I was at my leftist best. If there is a second coming of Joseph McCarthy, a Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, or someone (God help us) nuttier that succeeds in resurrecting HUAC, my morning in Havana's Museo de la Revalucion was probably enough to get me blacklisted. Or exiled. Three stories of the Communist government's time capsule to posterity, complete with a giant park for relics of war vehicles. The typewriter Fidel Castro used to write "History Will Absolve Me," his brother Raul's combat boots, Che Guevara's rifle and beret, the yacht they used in the unsuccessful Granma uprising, Fidel's tank he commanded in the Bay of Pigs affair, the wreckage of the American B-2 shot down during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a memorial flame to the dead that fought for the Revolution. Everything the embargo is in place to keep Americans from seeing, from spending their money on. But certainly no more offensive than the Ronald Reagan Library, and with about as much propaganda.

With our last sight-seeing stop during our 3 days in Havana complete, Ricardo and I walked across the street to one the countless all-purpose tiendas that heavily pepper the city. An amalgam of rum, laundry detergent, beauty products, candy, toilet paper, toothpaste, hot food, and beer for sale; we came in desperate want of the latter two. Neither a free table nor another tourist inside confirmed that we'd made the right choice. Our food was ordered, our bottles of Cristal beer were already sweating from the omnipresent humidity, and each of us looked around for some small vacancy coupled with eye contact as an invitation to sit. Ricardo managed first, and I walked around to the table's other vacant seat, next to a chain-smoking man named Abdel. A table behind me opened four minutes later. A few more minutes of indecision on where to eat, a few more Spanish captions to Revolutionary photos I could have laboriously translated, either of us going to the bathroom again before leaving the museum, and I could be sure Claudia would have seen her parents before she went to sleep tonight. Actually, any of those things and I wouldn't even know who Claudia was.

Instead it was the four of us. Abdel and Pilar with their red and black cans of Bucanero Fuerte, Ricardo and I our green bottles of Cristal. We were each ready for our next round before the food finally arrived. Somehow the smoke of unfiltered cigarettes wasn't a bother, somehow I stumbled through a description of my tattoo in Spanish when asked by Pilar. An hour of good conversation, if difficult to hear with the rowdy neighbors and TV blaring early 90s salsa music videos. When Abdel went to speak to some other friends outside, Pilar told Ricardo and I about their 16 years of marriage, their youngest child a 2 year-old daughter named Claudia.

I greeted Abdel's return with "Claudia?"
"Si, Claudia," his proud smile unobscured by the nub of a cigarette between his lips. He immediately reached for his wallet and a poorly developed dark photo of her. Barrettes, one purple and one green at the bottom of arching side braids, giving her backlit head the look of a trophy to match her paternal identity as one. Conversation switched back to our upcoming trip to Trinidad, the city that every Cuban we'd met urged us to visit, a decision that greatly pleased the couple. Soon we were invited to join them for more drinks at an African-Cuban club, a generosity and an opportunity for something so off the tourist radar we could not pass up. We'd spent days with strangers trying to coax us to one tourist trap or another, their salesman routine as stale as it was transparent. No different than my experience in India, Thailand, Egypt, Prague, Rome, Amsterdam. Experienced backpackers recognize the chasm between bullshit and sincerity, and we knew that Abdel and Pilar were on the right side of that divide.

It took merely the width of the street to get in trouble. As we got to the opposite sidewalk, the very existence of our unlikely foursome of two very dark-skinned Cubanos, a Peruvian-Canadian with a mohawk, and 6'4" white guy in preppy shorts and laceless Chuck Taylors was all it took for Abdel and Pilar to be detained by a member of Havana's Special Police. Their response to every question I managed to translate mentally pulled my stomach lower. Pilar did not have her identification. Abdel's identification was worn, peeling, its picture admittedly sketchy-looking. Minutes of radio conversation passed between the young officer and his superiors before he allowed us to speak the calm words that would eventually set them free.

Ricardo calmed down a frustrated, indignant Abdel as my rudimentary Spanish helped the officer see my explanation for what it was: innocence... the truth. Ricardo's far more fluent corroboration of who we were and where we were headed was the lynchpin that set us all on our way. We walked again, apologizing to Abdel and Pilar profusely for causing them trouble. Pilar's response, a sincere assurance that it wasn't us, made me more disconcerted. It replaced my guilt with sympathy as she explained how they are constantly stopped for identification without proper cause. That their quite obvious African-Cuban heritage forces them to endure constant suspicion. We shook it. We assured them that the afternoon would be great. How Ricardo and I were really looking forward to this club, which according to Abdel would not be a long walk.... which was correct.

"Alto, identificacion."
Ricardo and I looked at one another then down at the officer behind the steering wheel who was speaking to Abdel. The words "no" and "fuck" are universal, as is exasperation. The officer looked at me long enough to acknowledge each of those three things from me but immediately went back to Abdel. Identical routine but this officer was more decorated than the first, I would guess just old enough to pre-date the Revolution, and clearly far less open to negotiations.
Ricardo busied himself with the officer's partner, Pilar with trying to wave down the first officer who initially stopped us less than a block earlier. I found myself looking around at those looking at me. The doormen at the expensive hotel we were in front of, the uniformed military guards at the museum's outdoor exhibition, the German tourists walking by. And the wide-eyed movement in the backseat of the police car; the officers' prior arrest. At fifteen too young for her profession, her insistent flirtation too much for both of those. Her presence really only served to disquiet me further, not just for obvious reasons, but also as an indication that this officer was not one to merely warn.

The first officer's arrival cleared up nothing, instead only prompting his superior to frisk Abdel and then cuff him, catalyzing furious shouting. He made eye contact with Ricardo and I as he was placed into the back of the car. He cut off our frantic apologies with a yell only partially directed at us: "This is the shit because of Fidel."

Pilar was next to him in the car just a few seconds later, choosing her husband over her own freedom. I stumbled another explanation to the officer. "No, no, no problema con nosotros..... Estan muy, muy simpaticos."
"Bien... estan muy simpaticos." He shrugged as he slouched into the driver's seat and turned his attention to the ignition and the sidestreet ahead. Too ashamed and guilty to attempt for eye contact with Abdel, I turned in disbelief and exhaustion to the girl beside him. Earlier she showed her own arrest was an annoyance and a joke, but the terror in her eyes confirmed that his was now more. I wondered if a younger, faded her was in a wallet somewhere in the city. The car drove away.

Ricardo's conversation with the first officer was almost over by the time I could focus on it. "They did nothing wrong-"
"Where are you from?"
"Canada."
"Canada. And there you can just speak against the government and get away with it?"
The irony answered the question for us. It took patience and restraint to keep both of us from pointing back at the Museo de la Revolucion and declaring: "They did."

I type these words in a casa particular, just after sundown, hours after I watched the police car turn the corner and Abdel and Pilar shrink away. I'm going to save this draft and place the file, like the others I have started in Cuba thus far, in a subfolder of a subfolder of an innocuously named folder on my desktop. A precaution I've never taken before in my traveling. Unless the absolute worst happens in customs leaving Cuba, they should be safe there.I type these words grateful that it wasn't me the officer asked the above question to; that I wasn't forced to lie about my nationality to a specialized police officer in a Communist dictatorship or be placed in the back of that already capacity squad car, an American caught with those in suspicion of being against the government.
I type these words hoping that Abdel and Pilar are okay. That once everyone in that car has calmed down and had their backgrounds run, that everything will check out. That Claudia will have her mother and father with her to kiss her goodnight. If not tonight then certainly tomorrow, and many after that.

I type these words with weight of uncertainty; at times the worst oppressor of all.


(***All of the above conversation took place in Spanish, but I translated the more detailed dialogue into English to make it easier to follow.)