May 7, 1999
By Manuel Vázquez Portal, Decorum Work Group
HAVANA - The more I think about it, the more I find myself concentrating on an idea, that man has two hungers: the concrete and cruel one that makes the small intestine cry out and numbs the brain but can be easily satisfied with a piece of bread. The other, abstract and crueler than the first, makes the brain cry out, the hands shake, the senses keener and never is satisfied, even if bread is plentiful.
Some Cubans suffer from the first. Maybe they don't realize it nor know that the second exists. Other Cubans suffer from the second and, although aware that the first exists, don't pay it any attention. Those of us who suffer both are always impatient, worn out and perplexed.
One hunger is of the stomach; the other of the soul. The Cuban on the island, at least those who belong to that nomenclature, suffer daily that of the stomach and don't have the time, while trying to satisfy themselves, to feel the other. The Cubans in exile suffer from hunger of the soul. They hunger for their neighborhood, for a distant relative, for the forbidden motherland, for the dream they wanted to realize in that land.
Those who, in exile as on the island, have seen the comings and goings of the horse kicking over our dead, sowing over them, devouring each sprout, each tassel, making the weed of the two hungers grow at full gallop, know about the two pains at the same time.
To suffer from hunger of the stomach and of the soul has been the distinctive stamp of these long years. The Cuban has suffered at a single blow both hungers. He has become an expert in recipes to calm the intestine and a magician to dominate the spirit. When money has been short, he has invented an unusual snack. When he has lacked stimulation, he has invented a promissory dream. But the horse, in its comings and goings in our orchard, has trampled on the seeds so that there is no longer possible any germination, and the two hungers have been perpetuated.
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