MEMOIR | WRITING | CREATIVE WRITING | ESSAY

Exile

Becoming a castaway in my own city

“Whatever you do don’t say you like travelling! They’ll put you on a plane straight away.” My friends advised me.

The plane would have been Angola-bound. The ‘they’ would have been the Cuban army. The year was 1989. I was about to finish my further education.

And yet… I’d always dreamt about travelling. Why did I have to lie?

Cuba in 1989 was still in the throes of a tug-of-war between US government-backed South Africa and Portuguese ex-colony Angola. Whilst the fall of the Berlin Wall would arrive later in the year heralding an end to the Cold War, back home, Fidel was still sending Cuban troops to what had been for centuries one of Portugal’s most prized possessions.

I was seventeen, going on eighteen, slowly growing disenchanted with the political system, and thinking in extremes. Because, let’s face it, that’s a teenager’s world. Black and white, hot and cold, happy and sad. One minute I was the soul of the party (of which there were many!), next I’d be discussing Van Gogh’s alleged manic depression whilst dragging my feet.

My adolescent years were characterised by a belief that the intensity with which I was living at the time made me somewhat unusual. Then came the call for conscription. And just like that I was jolted back to real life.

Back then military service was two years long, down to one if we managed to get into uni. There were exemptions for students opting to go to medical school or train as teachers. Squeamish about blood as I was, I knew I could never work as a doctor. Pedagogics it had to be, then. Luckily, one of the courses I listed when it came to choosing my higher education path had the English language component in it. Still, I had to convince the army that I wasn’t suitable for the life they were bound to offer me.

At age thirteen I discovered rock. It’s interesting how we use the verb ‘to discover’ to refer to unexpected finds we come across and which have existed for decades, or even centuries, but which have just arrived in our lives unbidden. In all honesty it was rock that found me. I was besotted with my first girlfriend and she was the one who introduced me to heavy-sounding guitars and growling voices.

From then on rock became both fascination and salvation. That’s how I found myself in Year 10 befriending a bespectacled student who would go on to become one of my best mates throughout college (the word “college” in this context refers to British further education, not to American higher education, i.e., university. The UK has a bewildering post-secondary education system which I won’t go into because it’s not relevant to this story.)

Duhamel was geeky, arty and scrawny. I was geeky, an arts enthusiast, and on the slim side of things. We had a similar sense of humour: deadpan, cynical and satire-driven.

In Year 11 we decided to record on tape every single album Pink Floyd ever released. To give readers an idea of the magnitude of this task, rock in Cuba, if not banned outright, was frowned upon. My rocker friends were constantly harassed by the Cuban police. Some of them became rather acquainted with jails. To have long hair in the 80s in Havana was to look for trouble with the men in blue.

In addition, it was hard to get hold of rock music in Cuba in those years. The better way was always through someone whose parents travelled abroad and had the equipment to make copies of records. This was all part of the black market, the same black market that keeps the Caribbean island afloat in 2023.

Undeterred by all these obstacles, both Duhamel and I set out to achieve this feat, like two tropical versions of Quixote intent on overcoming whatever windmills we found in our way.

We were lucky at the beginning. Wish You Were Here (I still have that cassette, almost forty years after), The Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, Animals, and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn came easy. We had a contact whose dad was a sailor and went abroad a lot. Our dealer had tons of rock LPs.

Things got interesting after a while. It took us a while to locate Meddle, A Saucerful of Secrets, Ummagumma, and Atom Heart Mother. Then, there were the rarities, like Obscured by Clouds, a stopgap before the band produced the monumental Dark Side. Eventually we managed to accomplish what we’d set out to do. It took us all of the Year 11 and half of our Year 12.

When fifty-two-year-old me looks back on this time, I see a sixteen-, seventeen-year-old getting sucked into the vortex of a maze of lyrics that had nothing to do with, and, in fact, sat at odds with what was happening in my country then. It was almost as if Cuba, an island, was drifting away from me, an unmoored teenager. As much as I wanted to reach shore again, I felt safer in the space I’d carved out.

A flying pig above what I later found out was Battersea power station (irony of ironies that I ended up relocating to the city the cover references) symbolised travelling and an unbridled lust for life. This life had the word “travel” plastered all over it. Not travelling to a war zone, but travelling for leisure, to expand my horizons.

I used to let the words of Shine On You Crazy Diamond wash over me, always building up to the moment when Gilmour and I (for we were a duet back then, he just didn’t know it) hit those high notes, shouting out at the top of my lungs: Come on you raver, you seer of visions/Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

It was my turn to step into the little room. Three men were seated. I recognised the doctor straight away. His white robe had a couple of hard-to-miss stains. As I walked slowly towards their table, I tried to figure out who was the good cop and who was the bad one.

The cross-examination (for it felt like one) didn’t last long. I had decent grades in school, I was a responsible, law-abiding young person (meaning I’d never made any controversial remark about the revolution or its leaders), I came from a good family. Listening to this rundown of my qualities, I had to stop myself from laughing. If any of you knew what was blasting out of my old, battered stereo before I came, I thought to myself. Slayer’s Reign of Blood (Raining blood from a lacerated sky/Bleeding its horror/Creating my structure/Now I shall reign in blood). Both my little finger and my index did the devil’s sign under the table.

It was the doctor who saved me. I’d brought an old certificate hoping to be rejected for health reasons. Both officers (there was neither good cop nor bad cop; they were both bad) insisted that I had a future in the military, especially with my knowledge of English. The medical specialist went straight to the point. My stomach was a mess. I’d have to be put on a special diet whilst doing my military service. Would the army be ready to cough up for that? Looks were exchanged. My certificate was scrutinised again. The date on it was three years old. Would I be able to provide fresh evidence in two weeks’ time? Yes, I said. I was never a fan of endoscopies, but this was a matter of life and death. Literally.

I left the room and went out into a sunny winter afternoon, I turned the corner and headed up Colón Street, homeward bound. They never asked me if I liked travelling, but I felt as if I’d answered the question. And just like that two wings sprouted on my back and I flew over Havana like Pink Floyd’s pig whilst some of the words echoed in my ears:

Big man, pig man/Ha, ha, charade you are

You well heeled big wheel/Ha, ha, charade you are

And when your hand is on your heart/You’re nearly a good laugh

Two weeks later I presented an updated medical certificate. I was turned away on medical grounds. I never saw the doctor again, but to this day I’m eternally grateful to him.

Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner, on sale now.