When I returned to Cuba after a two-year hiatus in visits in 2011, my closest relatives like Tío Tiki confessed to having prepared themselves emotionally to never seeing me again. I had been the first person in my family to “return” to Cuba when I first visited there in 1995. After the shock of so many decades of living without my father and mother, relatives regularly confessed to expecting that any one of my subsequent visits could be my last: they feared getting too attached. In my case, I had not returned because of the birth of my son and while understandable, my absence evinced a kind of doble dolor [double pain] as my uncle relived once again the memory of losing his big brother to exile in 1964 and the idea that all the healing my visits provoked might be suddenly reversed. These pictures, taken by my former student-turned-spiritual brother, document both joy and relief. Puerta de Golpe, November 2011.
Photograph by Reny Díaz Arango.