Good Friday

The story behind the story.

Many people have expressed their concerns over my safety because I publicly air news items coming from Cuba as well as criticize fidel castro and his ridiculous revolution. You never know what they're capable of they say. Ten cuidado. Be careful. And I must admit, I've found myself a little more aware of my surroundings, a bit cautious, and have increased security of my home, as well as my person, if only to assuage my loved ones. I'm not paranoid, mind you, just careful.

So imagine my thoughts after receiving the following email yesterday:

Buenos dias Val,

My name is (withheld)and I live outside of
(withheld), NY. My father introduced me to your blog a few
months ago, and now we are both faithful readers.
I have a sort of strange favor to ask of you. Right
now, my father, (name withheld), is in Miami
coming back from a camping trip in the Dry Tortugas
Park. He has been trying to get in touch with you, why
exactly I'm not sure, but he just called me this
morning and asked me to email you and give you his
cell phone number so that you could call him.

It is: (number withheld). Please don't worry, my father
is a fellow Cubano, he came over to the States on the
Peter Pan flights in 1962. I'm guessing the reason
that he is trying to communicate with you is because
while he was camping at the Dry Tortugas, 14 Cuban
balseros landed and he was there for the whole thing.
He photographed the event and acted as a translator.

All sorts of caution bells were ringing. I kept hearing my father saying Be careful, Valentin. You never know what el caballo is capable of doing. What if my father and all the others who have told me to be careful were right. What if this guy wants to meet me to do me some harm. What if the guy is one of fidel's infiltrados, one of his moles that he has planted everywhere, especially here in Miami. For a moment I even had the notion that I would meet with the guy, he would knock me out somehow and I would wake up in one of fidel's jails or something. As you can imagine, I really wasnt sure what to do.

I emailed a response saying that I was busy and that I would try to contact the person in the afternoon. I must say that although I was a bit cautious, I really wasn't that concerned because the person also sent me a link to a website that had pictures of Cuba from a recent educational trip and these photos were astounding. (More on those photos a a later date.) But the pictures and the link notwithstanding, I thought it best to err on the side of caution.

I decided not to wait until the afternoon to call the guy. In my mind I was running down a checklist: Use *67 so that he can't see the phone number Im calling from. Meet in a public place. Don't let him know where you are. Don't give too much information...and so on...I felt like I was in some kind of espionage movie. Some kind of Cuban James Bond without the good looks, fancy gadgets and licence to kill.

But I made the call. Introduced myself when the guy answered.

"Coño, Val! Babalú!" the voice over the phone said. "Mucho gusto. Es un placer."

"Gracias gracias," I said. "The pleasure is all mine."

The voice over the phone was cordial and respectful. To me it was no longer the "man" on the phone but the "gentleman" on the phone.

And this gentleman on the phone went on to say how he had found my blog after the Herald article and been reading ever since. He thanked me for my hard work. Said he had told friends about my site.

I thanked him profusely. Mind you, still aware somewhere in the back of my mind that this could all be a ruse. That maybe he was ingratiating himself so that he could toss my ass on a boat back to Cuba.

"I'm an independent journalist," he said. "Used to work for the Herald years ago when I lived in Miami."

"I was in the Dry Tortugas working on a piece on scuba diving," the gentleman continued. "When 14 Cuban refugees washed ashore this past Wednesday. I took a ton of photos."

He went on to tell me about the refugees and their arrival at Fort Jefferson. How they were all practically naked. How they had all arrived and sat calmy at a picnic table. How he wasn't allowed to talk to them until the Park Rangers realized they needed a translator.

"Naturally," he said. "I called my old contacts in the Herald but there wasn't much interest. 14 Cuban refugees washing ashore isnt too newsworthy here, I guess. So I immediately thought of Babalú. Would you be interested in the story and the photographs?"

I was a little taken aback. I mean, here is a perfect stranger from the Northeast who not only reads my blog but has witnessed a story and then gone through the trouble of calling his daughter at home to email me here in Miami so that he could get me to call him so that he could give me the story so I could post it on my blog.

"I would be thrilled," I said. He told me he was driving back up to Miami from Key West at the moment but would be arriving in the city in about an hour. I was still at the office and asked if we could meet in the evening.

"I have a compromiso," he said. A previous engagement. "I came here through Pedro Pan in '62. Tonight I'm meeting two friends who also came through Pedro Pan and were my buddies. We haven't seen each other in forty years."

I think my heart broke right then and there. Not only has this man gone through all this trouble to meet me and give me a great story for my blog but he has practically just gotten off the ferry from Fort Jefferson and in a few hours he will be living what must surely be a very precious moment in his life.

Imagine having been sent to another country as a child and living in an orphanage for years with other kids in the same situation and then forty years later, after having built lives and families and careers and everything else, meeting these boys you left so long ago as grown men. Men with children and grandchildren. Men who have probably lived their lives thinking about those Pedro Pan days and asking themselves "I wonder how so and so is. Que sera de su vida? What kind of a life have they lived?"

However important the story of the refugess arriving at Fort Jefferson was, it seemed almost trivial at the moment. Those 14 refugees risked their lives for freedom and may very well have arrived in a country where they will be free, but somehow it seemed like the beginning of a story.

The real epic is in the lives of these three men who will just now see each other for the first time in 40 years. Their accomplishments. Their heartaches. Their nostalgia. Their lives. Their lives! How many times in these forty years have these men thought about those kids that were like brothers in that orphanage? How do they picture their long lost friends in their minds despite having possibly spoken over the phone many times? Who do they see when they hear their adult voices? Do they imagine an old man whose face they cant really make out or do they still picture them as a smiling kid in that old black and white photograph they all kept as the one tangible reminder of those days?

Later on in the afternoon I called him back. Told him I was off of work and asked if we could meet somewhere.

"I'm at a photo shop making you a cd of the pictures I took of the refugees," he said. I told him I could be there in a few minutes. He said he would be either at the picture place or the cafeteria next door. "I havent had time to eat anything all day." he said.

I was still a bit wary about meeting with this man despite our conversations over the phone and the fact that he was gracious and cordial and for all intents and purposes seemed on the level. Ten cuidado, Valentin, my dad's voice mulled over in my mind.

I arrived at the photo shop and he wasn't there so I walked a few doors down and walked into the cafeteria. I recognized him immediately. There he was finishing his cafecito, tanned, dressed in a pair of shorts and a tshirt just like anyone who had just gotten off a boat from a dive trip and driven for hours.

He looked at me, I looked at him. "Julio?"

"Val? You recognized me!"

"I saw the tan," I reponded. We shook hands both echoing "Encantado" at the same time. His white hair and beard contrasted against his tanned skin. He had kind eyes.

We made our way to the photo shop and chatted. About the blog, about the refugees, about the pictures, about the postcards he bought for the refugees to send word to their families, about the dive trip, about politics, about Cuba, about ourselves and our families. We stood for what must have been a good ten minutes talking like long lost friends in front of the photo studio people. Just a couple of guys that hadnt seen each other in a while covering every topic imaginable in front of perfect strangers.

I asked him if he would write something to accompany the pictures he'd just handed me in a cd. "I would be honored," I said.

He agreed. And perhaps recognizing that the story of the refugees couldnt wait, that perhaps there were some family members here that were sitting intently in front of the TV waiting for news of their family, and that there really was no better moment than the present to write that story he asked "Is there someplace we can go to write this right now?"

That's how it came to be that, despite everyone's concern for my well being and my father's Ten Cuidado, Valentin's, I invited a perfect stranger into my office and onto my computer to write onto my blog a story that he had just been a part of and that we both understood needed to be written.

And we continued to chat like old friends. Telling each other about our lives, reminiscing about family and friends and hearing each others thoughts about Cuba with winsome and with an understated sadness. I don't know how many times we looked at each other through watery eyes.

I sat there and watched this man, who not more than an hour prior had been a perfect stranger save for the words written on this blog, write a beautiful and touching piece about a moment in time that as a man he would probably never forget, but as a Cuban he probably felt he was destined to experience. He wrote the article about the 14 refugees landing on the Dry Tortugas with vigor. Vibrant. As if the words themselves had risked it all to find their freedom on the page.

And when he was done I think neither of us wanted that moment to end. We chatted some more, made our way to our cars and both probably realized that this experience, this small slice of our lives born out of pure coincidence was something we could never forget.

After more than a few minutes of our trying to prolong our solidarity, standing there, by our cars, I extended my hand. "Come on, Julio. You're just stalling now. Don't you have some old friends to meet?"

With that we shook hands, embraced like brothers and went our separate ways.

And all of this on Good Friday.

Posted by Val Prieto at March 26, 2005 06:30 AM

Comments

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