The Best American Travel Writing 2019

by Jason Wilson

  So it was much to my surprise that Dad, instead of wishing me safe travels, invited me to a café. Interesting, I thought.

  He brought with him his yellow legal pad and took notes in immaculate cursive. He sipped espresso and wiped coffee from his white beard. Dad never takes off his black Ray-Bans, which he’s worn since the ’70s—since his early days as a psychologist when he braided his hair and would arrive at the courthouse on his Harley, to give testimony as an expert witness—and his expression is often inscrutable.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said. “It’ll be a father-son adventure.”

  Double interesting.

  On my tablet I pulled up a satellite image of Nicaro. Tata told me their town had once been known as Lengua del Pájaro—Bird’s Tongue—for the way the sharp peninsula probed north into the Atlantic.

  “What? This is it?” He jammed a meaty finger into the screen. “Wow,” he said, and kept saying it, until a wet film spilled from the bottom of his shades.

  Soon, I’d recruited my brother, who was also uncharacteristically enthusiastic about the idea. He’s 14 years older than me and the fairest person I know, and as a marketing executive at a fast-food joint you’ve definitely heard of, he quickly applied his logistical mind to questions of planes, cars, food, lodging. Hell, we’d invite his wife, my partner, Dad’s wife, her son, and his girlfriend. We’d go in December and spend Christmas in Nicaro.

  Our cadre grew excited in the ensuing weeks, weighing vans versus a bus, Airbnbs versus hotels, and then: June 16, 2017, when President Trump gave a speech in Miami debuting his new policy for United States–Cuba relations and declared that we would return to the old rules, which more or less said, unless you’re a diplomat or a missionary, you can get stuffed. If we wanted to go, we’d have to do it immediately. Instantly, my brother was out—the burger industry needed him—and I have never heard him so obviously downtrodden as when he gave his blessing on the phone for us to go without him. Soon, we cut everyone else from the excursion. It was most important that Dad got to go, so he and I booked a 10-day trip to and from Havana in August; we’d take a bus from the capital to Nicaro.

  In the lead-up to our flight, I spent a lot of time not practicing my Spanish, despite the offers of my girlfriend, who had learned the language at cooking school in Peru. Like my uncles, I resisted working toward fluency; I was dimly aware that approaching the language now would start a process I did not want to begin in the States. Instead, I talked to Dad on the phone almost every day, and he recounted all the memories that were returning to him as he spent the evenings poking around Google Earth.

  And then, 30 days before the trip, my stepmom emailed me to say that since Dad left Cuba before 1971, he’d need a special HE-11 visa to get into the country. Otherwise, they’d consider him a long-lost Cuban citizen returned home, and they might keep him there forever. We were advised the visa process would take two months or more; there wasn’t enough time.

  I left four voice messages with the Cuban consulate in Washington, DC, calling on different days and at varying times to ensure maximum coverage. My father left two messages in Spanish. I emailed three times, in English and Spanish, and wrote an impassioned letter, complete with a scan of the HE-11 form, a facsimile of Dad’s passport, and a plea for urgency in the header on each page.

  We received not a call, not an email, not a written reply. For all I know, their mail slot went straight to an incinerator. Without the special visa, Dad couldn’t come. He had been thwarted, the last domino felled, his mood on the phone despondent.

  “I’d just gotten my hopes up so big,” he said. Dad had thought he’d closed the door on Cuba forever. Now I’d opened it just enough to slam it on his fingers.

  After all that, I’d go alone. The Great Loredo Salvage Mission, indeed.

  The plane descended upon Havana, and fear descended upon me. Me, my family’s lone emissary. I’d traveled alone plenty, but in the weeks leading up to the trip I had, as I often do, piled on the stakes. Not just a chance to deepen my novel, its make-or-break moment. Not just a chance to collect photos for my family—but a shot at becoming whole. A rising pressure of my own design.

  Humidity down the jet stairs. Thickets of plantain trees pressing in on the tarmac. Inside the hangar, the marble-mouthed Cuban Spanish I’d heard around dinner tables since childhood now alive in every throat, the sensation of distant cousins all around, that if I’d shouted Loredo a dozen heads would have turned, expectant.

  The taxi driver was the ghost of my father at 20 years old. Dark hair, crisp shirt, chewing gum, aviator sunglasses, ready to pilot a puddle jumper. Instead, he commanded, yes, a ’50s-vintage ride with tail fins, and asked me where I was from.

  The piping of my Spanish plumbing was rusted. I gave the answer that would become my catchall over the next 10 days: “I’m from the United States, but my family is from Cuba, a very small town far from here, called Nicaro. No one has been here in fifty-seven years. I am the first one.”

  I could have printed business cards.

  He dropped me off at my Airbnb in one of the city’s nicest neighborhoods, Vedado, whose grids of patinated mansions speak to its history of sugar-trade money. I would spend a week in the capital, then take a 12-hour bus ride to Nicaro and stay three days before returning to Havana to catch my flight home. I wanted a sense of the city, the country’s crown jewel, before venturing into the countryside, where the infrastructure would be more challenging. And three days inhabiting my family’s shadow felt like plenty.

  The Airbnb was owned by two Cubans who were, somehow, visiting family in Miami. I was met at the house’s gate by three dogs, a cat, a middle-aged woman, and a teenage girl. I got the distinct feeling that my arrival was the day’s excitement. Neither Ileana nor her daughter Melodí spoke a lick of English, but the mother’s Spanish was generous—I could understand less than half, but she was happy to prattle on and let my ear wrap slowly around her speech. “Your flight was good? You’re hungry? Here’s some avocado. Here’s mango juice—fresh.”

  I set my bag in the apartment above the garage, which held an ancient but functional Ford, and sat with my hosts on the outdoor patio under an ivy-strewn roof of corrugated plastic. I had arrived.

  For the next seven days I walked—Vedado, Old Havana, the rigid Soviet architectures. I spent hours scoping the seawall that guarded the entire coast of the city—El Malecón—drinking cold Presidentes and watching teenage boys handle fishing lines with the pads of their fingers. Mostly aimless, mostly quiet. I had once traveled to Marrakech, where in the souks I stuck out like a neon dollar sign, but here, if I didn’t open my idiot mouth, I blended right in. There were absolutely no advertisements—no FOR SALE signs, commercials, or touts—a welcome casualty of the Communist government. Instead, billboards of Che Guevara and José Martí. A mural of Castro surrounded by fawning children, the caption underneath painted by hand with a fine brush: LA HISTORIA ME ABSOLVERá.

  On a stroll through downtown I happened upon La Universidad de La Habana, where my grandfather earned his doctorate in medicine and was a peer of, unbelievably, El Comandante himself, whom my grandfather deemed “charismatic but strange.” A small square across the street corralled a pasture of cell-phone users. I’d heard of this—pockets of Wi-Fi, digital nomads hunched over at the watering hole. I forked over a dollar to a young man for the password and emailed Dad to tell him I was safe. Lineage of my grandfather, come all this way to bum a signal from the same place he earned his doctorate.

  Over time, I learned about waiting. I learned about la cola—the queue. Cuba proliferates with queues. One afternoon in the bank waiting to exchange currency, I deduced the rules. When approaching la cola, shout “El último?”—Who’s last?—and be persistent until someone raises a hand. Lines are not orderly. They are not strictly lines, in any geometric sense. They are a social bond. That person is first, this person is after that person, that person is after this person, and all I know is I will attach myself by the hip
to el último and follow into any darkness this world may hold.

  Half my time in Cuba was trying to figure out what any given cola was for, and half my time in any given cola was discussing who was next in the cola. Rations, bottled water, 10-cent ice cream. Get in line. Wait awhile.

  Many days, after my walks, there was nothing to do except sit outside with Ileana on the oxidized patio furniture, attempting conversation or not. I became fond of the yard’s menagerie. There was a shivering white Chihuahua called Dolly and a small brown torpedo-looking dog named Lambo. A young cat, Bambina, had just birthed five kittens, who stayed in a plastic, blanket-laden box in the outdoor laundry room. Best of all was Yero, an ancient boxer who had, without a doubt, the ugliest face I have ever seen. He managed only three teeth, all on the bottom row, which jutted from his underbite at impossible angles. His eyes were clouded and cried mucus. His nose—oh, poor Yero—his nose was a craterous crash-landing site on the moon. “Guasaguasa, viejo feo,” Ileana would say to him, affectionately. You dopey, ugly old thing.

  Often, overhead, thunderheads three times black. Rain patter on the corrugated roof. Drops plucking at shallow puddles. The animals would gather near. Then the rain would pass, and I would imitate Melodí’s ubiquitous dance practice with a buffoon’s ballet, tracing my toe in a semicircle across the wet cement to the tune of laughter.

  Every night, we played dominos. It was then that I trod and retrod the landscape of my Spanish. It must be said: Cuba is not the place to learn the language. Cubans tend to give up on each word halfway through, as though the mush-mouthed dialect has just woken up from a nap. At first, I understood only the half they didn’t throw away. But, slowly, I too learned to give up on words, to suggest their beginning and let my hands tell about the rest.

  One night, Ileana told me about the photos she wanted to have done for Melo’s quinceanera. She shuffled into the hallway and rummaged around the kitchen. When she returned, she placed some crumpled pages in my hand. I held what, to me, looked like the airbrushed, bubblegum photos one gets at kiosks at the mall. In the photo, a 15-year-old girl wore a teal dress with dated ruffles. “Melodí wants the Snow White dress,” she said. Melo blushed. Ileana told me every girl in Cuba had to have a quince photo, or else. I asked, “Or else what?” and she gave me a dark look. She told me she had been saving up money for two years. They cost 200 CUC, plus another hundred for the Snow White dress.

  You can’t talk Cuba without talking money. First, there are two currencies on the island: CUC and CUP (“kook” and “koop,” respectively). CUC is the foreigner’s currency and equates to the US dollar. CUP, on the other hand, is the local currency—moneda nacional—and is worth one twenty-fifth as much, about 4 cents on the dollar. Here’s some perspective: I knew by then that Ileana made 20 CUC per month, or 20 American dollars. That’s it, and it’s pretty standard. I paid $30 per night for my room—a very reasonable price for an American; more than a month’s salary for a Cuban. Or think about this: it will take Ileana more than one year of saving—assuming she spends no money on food, clothes, transportation, gifts, anything—to pay for photos that would take the average American less than three days to afford. Further: if America’s prices were adjusted to reflect Cuba’s, based on the median American wage of about $14 per hour, quinceanera photos in the States would cost $36,000. Tata’s jewelry would be worth many millions in Cuban spending power. Enough for a hundred thousand quinceanera photos.

  On the seventh day, the day I was to leave for Nicaro, Ileana told me that every Cuban has the dream of travel. Of course, visiting other countries is strictly forbidden by the Castro government. I asked her where she’d go, if she were allowed, and she said the state television network had produced a series of documentaries about cities around the world. Rome, Paris, São Paulo. Almost like being there.

  I pressed: “But where would you choose?”

  Her face warmed. “I would go to the Italian countryside. It is so beautiful there. The wine, the fields, the air.”

  I didn’t know whether or not to tell her I had been to Rome, to the South of France, to Morocco. I felt a shame bloom. I asked her if she thought the rules would relax, if she’d be allowed to leave the country in her lifetime.

  “Nos ahogan.”

  “I don’t know the meaning,” I said.

  Ileana was standing against one of the corroded walls of the house. Suddenly, she took both her hands and began to strangle herself. She stuck out her tongue. She pressed herself against the wall. I sat up and gripped the metal arms of the patio chair. Yero barked, wheezing and rasping like an old man. Abruptly, she stopped.

  “Nos ahogan,” she repeated. They choke us.

  That night, I boarded the Vía Azul bus bound for Holguín—11 hours away—where I would meet a taxi to take me the last hour to Nicaro. The back window had a sticker that read NEED FOR SPEED. More stickers of, improbably, bullet holes, riddled the cabin door. On each seat, in the blue fabric decorated with smiling cartoon suns, were written the phrases HAVE A GOOD TRIP!, GOOD ROAD!, and BEST VEHICLE! Ileana had given me four bread rolls for the bus ride, and I quickly ate Number One.

  Soon, night came. Condensation on the windows against the peroxide fizz of streetlamps.

  The rolling countryside, moon-dusted tobacco fields.

  We stopped at a way station. I got out to pee. The bathroom cost 1 CUC. I counted 90 cents from my pocket, dropped two coins, muttered “Fuck,” and got back on the bus.

  We passed midnight. I ate Bread Roll Number Two. The man in front of me reclined his seat into my lap, so far I could have given him a face massage. I angled my long legs sideways and fell into fitful sleep.

  I awoke at 2:45 in the morning for Bread Roll Number Three.

  A pothole jostled me awake again at the witching hour.

  By the time the sun crept over the windshield in the day’s early hours, we had arrived in Holguín.

  The station was small and loud, colas everywhere seemingly to no purpose. I had no idea what the driver the Airbnb had sent looked like, only that his name was Tony. I was milling around, making conversation with a backpacker from Australia, scanning the crowd for a likely suspect, when a balding man with glasses tapped me on the shoulder. “To Nicaro?” he asked. “I’m Tony. I heard you speaking English.” Tony led me to his car, a beautifully cared-for boxy red sedan, and we drove the final hour toward Nicaro. We passed through Cueto and Mayarí, the same route made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club lyric. Donkey carts and bicycles. The sun rose over a sign that read, BIENVENIDOS A NICARO.

  Tony drove me through town, pointing out the hospital, the church. I took a video. All I thought was, Remember all this, remember that horse, that boy, that hill, but I was overwhelmed and processed little. The lack of sleep, the magnitude of the occasion.

  We made it to the Airbnb, and I staggered to my room, barely greeting my hosts. I showered, drank a Presidente, and ate Bread Roll Number Four looking out the door that led from my bedroom to the back courtyard, which held two avocado trees, a metal swinging bench, and a view of the bay. I passed out and woke much later with sweat pooled in the hollow of my throat.

  The whole reason my family ended up in Nicaro was because my grandfather, as a young man, took a job as the assistant director of the town’s hospital. Papa did everything from suturing wounds to setting bones to delivering babies. Tata cared for their children, a strict and fiery mother. At that time, the town was hopping; its economic blood pumped from the American nickel factory, where white workers processed the mineral from a nearby mine by day and attempted salsa at Las Palmas by night. The factory was shuttered permanently in 2012, but in the 1950s business was good, and after the revolution Che Guevara, who harbored a passion for the industry, renamed Nicaro’s nickel plant after Comandante René Ramos Latour. He even visited in 1961, though my family was long gone by then.

  Before I’d left for Cuba, Dad had printed a satellite image of Nicaro and circled key locations. The church. The American C
lub—Las Palmas. The house. The hospital. The nickel factory. The place Pinto chased Dad into the ocean. I’d studied it. The map told its stories: Dad eating guayaba until he got sick. He and Papa entering the jungle with flashlights to hunt parrots. His brothers and sisters playing in the yard among the rotting avocados (too many to eat). The maids told the children to take care while carrying the trash down the darkened driveway; the night devil was fond of flame trees and spying on children, a red hand grabbing branches. Dad’s shitty childish handwriting that, after a teacher shamed him about it in class, he spent days and weeks correcting by moonlight in secret, until, on the next test, he looped his now famous cursive in his composition book. The teacher accused him of cheating, and when Tata heard she dragged Dad to the teacher’s office, chewed her out, then demanded her son write something in cursive for his teacher. With a shit-eating grin, Dad wrote, Me llamo Carlos Miguel Loredo Martínez, y yo escribo con el cursivo del Rey. That same king’s cursive was now scrawled across the map I’d folded and unfolded obsessively since I arrived in Havana, Dad’s memories from decades ago now anchored to coordinates, and me on the verge of crossing the threshold between fable and reality.

  My first proper day in Nicaro, I was greeted in the morning by my hosts, Xiomara and Omar—Tony’s parents—who looked after the guest spaces while the owner was away. I told Xiomara I was the grandson of Dr. Loredo, and did she know him? She’d heard of the family. She told me she’d make some calls and settled into the seat near the telephone and began working the rotor.

  Tatico, the cook, gave me breakfast. When I said who I was, he shouted, “Dr. Loredo!” His skin puckered with goose bumps. “He delivered my neighbor’s baby. You are a ghost come back from the past.”

  Tatico served me a thermos of espresso and a saucer of warmed milk. The sugar in Cuba is unrefined and fluffy, as though it has been pumped with air. Next, a coterie of hubcap-size dishes. A full plate of six scrambled eggs, hard cheese, soft cheese, and a cubic creature called jamón rápido—fast ham—which I regarded with suspicion. Another plate held half a watermelon. Another, four rolls and four pieces of toast. Another plate held a sweet, fried plantain—plátanos maduros. For dessert, an entire tin of canned peaches. I produced my dad’s printout of Nicaro landmarks and asked Tatico if he knew where I could find these places. He took my map in hand.