7am, Havana airport.
It's unfortunate when notable thoughts coincide with sitting on the toilet, because it's never particularly distinguished to say "I was sitting on the toilet and suddenly I thought...". Having said that, the toilet does seem to be over-represented as a location for realisations and epiphanies.
I am sitting on the toilet when I realise a weight is slipping off me, like heavy chain-mail coming off after battle.
The almost impossible task of conducting journalism in a totalitarian country is OVER.
It is relief, to drop these defenses. I can stop worrying about losing my discs, or having them taken from me. That nagging concern that I may not be able to deliver what I have promised is gone.
It was surprisingly easy - straight through immigration, where a thin black woman failed to say hello or goodbye, or anything in between. Straight through the metal detectors, where I thanked the Lord and J that I had decided against putting my memory stick in a tampon and inserting it. My bag went through without so much as a glance.
It makes having stayed up the whole night to delete photos and hide mini-disc tracks seem a little over-zealous. I've also thrown out half the contacts I made, rather than have them discovered in the exit process.
On the toilet, I also realise that this diet of bread and honey, special as it's been, is starting to affect my bowels. I have been hungry for two weeks, sometimes managing to stifle the pangs with bread. More on that in other entries.
On the way out, I look at the clocks of the world, seeing everyone's respective times always makes you feel so profoundly far from them doesn't it?
Especially when they get your city wrong.
Two young Norweigan girls are sharing their chips and regaling me with escapades in Trinidad when a man wearing a khaki uniform and a mono-brow comes up and asks for my ID.
"Maybe this is his job, checking on people in the waiting area", I think, "much like much of the other completely redundant 'employment' like the women who press the buttons in lifts for you, or the men in Mexico who wave their arms while you're parking the car and then ask for a tip."
I figure I may as well run on this premise, so I ask him what gate we're boarding from. We have a brief discussion about this, before he tells me to come with him.
I pick up my bag, and follow him. Hopes that he's one of the redundant-job people checking on my gate start fading when we turn down into a dark flight of steps into the bowels of the airport. We reach a room filled with florescent light and people in uniform.
There are four men and a woman, sitting beside my slightly limp backpack.
"Is this yours?" he says. Mate, we both know it's mine, why ask.
He opens the bag, and goes straight for my toiletries bag. F@*k. I guess I completely underestimated the Cuban X-ray system when I put a memory stick in my conditioner bottle.
In this moment, I know exactly how Renee Lawrence must have felt. With the minor exception that I don't have nine kilos of heroin strapped to my body, and that pictures of my torso won't be flashed across national tv for the next year.
It's the feeling that someone is looking for something that you have, that you've hidden. That thing is sitting between you, just waiting to be found. I can feel my heart, I didn't know it could beat so fast. I am so hot with this panic that I want to take my jumper off. I resist.
As he goes through my toiletries bag, I thank myself for not having embedded mini-discs in the lining, as I'd considered. Originally I'd planned to put the most sensitive ones under the orthodics in my running shoes, but discovered that they made a completely unavoidable and obvious rattling sound. Then I thought about the lining, but nothing says, "I DIDN'T WANT TO BE FOUND" like something hidden in lining. It's hard to pass something off as innocuous musical recordings when it's embedded in your toiletries bag.
Finally I decided on the pockets of my jeans, which I then rolled up.
He puts down my first toiletries bag, and picks up the second one with the conditioner bottle in it. He puts it aside.
He then shifts his attention to my hand luggage. He opens my wallet, and I realise that in all my deleting and throwing out, I completely forgot about it. It's full of business cards of people I interviewed.
I watch in slow motion as the woman pulls out the business card of a formerly-jailed dissident, who's out on provisional release. If his failing health improves, or he puts a foot out of line... police can show up at his house any day and take him back to prison.
She lines up all the business cards in vertical rows, and I pick up two of them and look confused. One is of the crazy lesbian who I decided against interviewing, and the other is of the dissident. Under the watchful eye of the three men in the corner, who seem to have no role other than monitoring my reactions, I somehow manage to slip it in the pocket of my cargos.
As the woman sets about the tasks of writing down all the names and numbers of everyone in my wallet, the man goes back to my backpack. He picks up my jeans, and is about to put them aside when he feels something hard. The discs. He takes them out and asks where he can watch them. "They're just audio," I tell him, "they go in this." and I pull out my recorder. He'll find it anyway, I may as well appear as if I have nothing to hide.
I start strapping up the earpiece, but he moves on. He reads the gay sexuality mag that Raul gave me, looks at my CDs, which are blank. "Why do you have these?". I tell him I'd planned to burn CDs, and neglect to add that Cuba could do with more than two CD burners in the whole country.
The heat coming from my body is overwhelming, this experience adds a whole new meaning to 'hot under the collar'. I actually have to take my jumper off. I'm wearing a low-cut top which doesn't help, as my breasts have shrunk due to lack of food for the past two weeks.
I've also got a new appreciation for the term 'shitting myself' because I really need to go to the toilet. There's the constipation problem solved, anyway.
If I go to the toilet, they'll think I'm stashing stuff and search me. So I can't do that because they'll find the business card that's in my pocket.
The woman is making progress, every now and then she asks for clarification. "Who's this?" the man asks, holding up the snippet of paper with the Bar de las Estrellas number. On the back is the name Rojelio.
Interesting. It's a drag bar, which is actually illegal. Every now and then it gets closed down for a month or two. If the police find out they've been doing interviews, it could be bad for them.... something I clock up as cosmic justice, as they charged me $150 dollars to take recording gear in, which is probably more than I'll earn for the story.
I hated Rojelio.
He finds the poem written by the boy in the street. I ask if he'd like to translate it for me. It's my only moment of 'fuck you' and he looks at me with disdain.
When he's finished with all my things, he picks up my camera. He doesn't know how to work it, so I show him. He goes through all my photos asking about various people and then gives the camera to one of the men in the corner, for his titilation. He then settles back with my diary.
He starts at the beginning. All my innermost thoughts and fears, leaving Australia, are now in his domain. He reads and reads, and I wonder whether I talked about work back then. Filing, the international desk, all those keywords.
Looks like he's settled in for the long haul, so I ask whether there's a chance I'll miss my plane. He assures me I won't and keeps reading but doesn't laugh at any opportune moments. Tough crowd, the secret police.
Finally he announces to the others that all I write about is food and music, and closes the diary. He starts putting everything back in my bags and we have a little struggle to close the zip. He tells me to settle down or everything will fall out.
Settle down??? It's taking all my willpower not to grab my stuff and run out of here. Finally we're done.
"Wait," he says, "Give me another look at the camera."
For fuck's sake.
I've had airport security incidents before, like the time I was arriving in Vancouver from Rio and accidentally admitted to having tried drugs at some stage of my life. I spent hours watching a cute customs officer in plastic gloves turning my entire luggage inside out. But this is different. This is a feeling of complete powerlessness in the face of some great force that's reached down to pick apart every part of my life and put the pieces back together in a bigger puzzle, a puzzle that affects Cubans I've met as well. I can't lie, because they can check everything. The simple fact is that everything I've done in Cuba is outside what the regime permits, and there is a net... gradually closing around this. They'll call the people on the business cards, visit the houses, follow all the trails. And I'll never get a visa again.
Right now, that doesn't seem like such a crying shame.
Finally I am strapped up, guitar in hand, mini-discs intact and ready to walk out. He holds out my passport, I take it.. and just to remind me of the score, he holds it for a second longer and then lets go.
I ask him whether I have to 'irme corriendo' (go running) for my plane. Really, that's what I want to do anyway. He tells me maybe just irte camindo rapido (go walking quickly), and I laugh, a little too loudly.
"Sorry for the molestation," he says. And I walk out into the darkness.
On the plane, I am freezing. I assume it's the shock but there's nothing I can do to warm up. The flight is a daze of sleep and hunger and shock.
And finally, when my feet are on Mexican soil, I permit myself a sigh of relief. I buy a Starbucks coffee just to say 'fuck you, Cuba', and yes, I light up a cigarette.
The ordeal is over.
