HAVANA TIMES – There was a knock at the door, I opened it, and was surprised to see a young man with a yellow postal package.
For years, decades, I hadn’t received anything through the mail service. It’s been a long time since I heard the whistle of any mail carrier, that sound that used to make my sisters and me jump in the 70s when a sealed envelope, impatiently torn open, a white envelope with two stripes on the edge: red and blue, indicated the sudden presence of our father, his flamboyant handwriting, and that world of enormous buildings and enchanting aromas, built in fragments (with photos and films), and called the United States. Sometimes the envelope included a postcard sprinkled with little angels and silver dust. Ah, Christmas! That other colorful and radiant universe that was forbidden to us.
In the 90s, receiving a yellow envelope could mean you had won the lottery (the visa lottery), and being selected would allow you to emigrate directly to the land of enchanted aromas. That’s how my younger sister left, and now she lives in Las Vegas (that city full of vibrant and unreal colors).
But this yellow envelope brought by the young mail carrier, I discovered with surprise, contained books. It was a selection made by my friend and colleague Lien Estrada, who took the trouble to send it to Havana from the province of Holguín. I felt moved and, like in childhood, I remembered how much of the sender’s intention is impregnated in the package. A goodness and tenderness are transferred with the weight of thought, feelings one no longer senses in this country where people only think
