Dariel Suarez
Protest
Originally published in The Bare Life Review
We rode through the fog wearing faux-leather jackets that we’d eventually have to perch on our shoulders or shove under our armpits. Fall mornings in Madrid were always much colder than afternoons. In Cuba I never had to consider such nuisances, just account for the occasional rain. On any other day we’d be on the 9 train, transferring at Puerta de Arganda and falling asleep during the long commute to the heart of the city. But Modina had convinced his mother that a friend at the university needed to move some heavy boxes. “He got ripped off the last time he changed apartments,” Modina said, the lie so palpable in the halting rhythm of his voice that when his mother replied, “Poor boy!” I thought she was being sarcastic.
The Citroën rattled its way down the highway, an immense forest of fog surrounding us. I’d seen fog like this in Matanzas as a child. I’d walked in it, disappointed by the fact that, though I couldn’t see ten meters ahead of me, I could still make out my hands. I’d always associated fog with invisibility, and you can’t think of yourself as invisible to others if you see yourself through the haze.
We were on our way to a protest. Gaby, Modina’s girlfriend, was seated on the passenger side, her head reclined against the window. She was staring into the distance, as if a 1960s French director were filming a close-up of her profile. She seemed aware of how the light caught her amber-hued hair—the sort that in Cuba gets people to call you rubia—and the emerging tension in her green eyes.
I wondered whether her mind, like mine, had temporarily lost itself in the fog. I’d been trying to decipher Gaby’s thoughts since I’d met her two weeks ago. She didn’t initiate conversation or care for debates. She seemed content articulating her opinions, questions, and jokes in a disarmingly casual tone. I didn’t for a second think that tagging along with us boys was enough for her. I told myself she was resigned to the circumstances. Her sister had committed suicide the previous year. Santiago, Modina’s best friend, had told me. The suicide was one of his marijuana-laced confessions during a trip to the local market.
Santiago was with me in the back of the car, slumped forward like a drunk. He was transfixed by his cell phone’s screen, watching a report on Real Madrid, a team I despised with irrational fervor. That’d been my drug-fueled confession to him while returning home from the local market. He’d laughed it off then, and in hindsight I was grateful: on a clearheaded night he might’ve challenged me to a fistfight. Right in front of me, Modina’s black hair was splayed over the headrest, extending down to the collar of his jacket. He looked the way he intended it: like a stiff-lipped rocker, one better fitted for 80s heavy metal. He was into The Ramones, Iron Maiden, Evergrey. He was unbearably pedantic, and justifiably so: he could dissect a band’s style and influences even though he didn’t play any instruments. My older sister had tried introducing me to rock music when I was thirteen, something rare in Cuba, but I’d dismissed her attempts. Now I couldn’t compete with Modina. I understood the allure, why Gaby was into him, and this bothered me even more. I took solace in knowing that our friendship wouldn’t last a lifetime. Also, the minute I landed from Cuba, he and his mother had welcomed me into their lives. I could put up with his snobbery.
Modina and Santiago deemed themselves part of the Indignados movement, a small group of social activists who had led many protests since the spring. Like a doctor delivering a grim prognosis, Modina explained that after winning the national election, the People’s Party and its leader, Mariano Rajoy, had fucked everyone royally with their “austerity measures.” I’d seen the phrase in newspapers, evoking in my mind things like modesty, personal responsibility, the Cuban National Assembly of the People’s Power. It sounded a little communist to me, but then Rajoy’s party was composed of right-wing conservative Christians. They had accepted a bailout from the European Union. “As a result,” Modina explained with the cockiness of an economics expert, “the massive budget cuts and tax increases are going to drive the nation into a deeper recession. And we’re already about twenty percent unemployment.”
I conveyed disbelief and alarm, but considering I’d left my own country eyeing a transitory stay in Spain before hopping over to the United States with a fresh doctorate degree, I felt but a moderate amount of sympathy.
“Since you weren’t allowed to publicly express your disapproval toward your government in Cuba,” Modina said as his closing argument, “you might as well experience what it feels like here.”
I hated the proper way he’d worded it—and I presumed that if I were arrested during a riot I could be deported—but it was the essence of Modina’s notion, that I’d never experienced such a fundamental right, which planted a seed in my brain.
I was on the cusp of turning twenty-seven and starting my PhD in Literature at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Modina and his family had agreed to host me for the first six months so I could save up a large portion of my fellowship money and move in with roommates. I’d served as their tour guide in Cuba during a week-long excursion of the island. They’d stayed at my place one night; ate a beans and sweet potato dinner and a coffee and stale toast breakfast the following morning with my mother and grandmother; saw our disintegrating mattresses with rusty frames, cracked floor tiles, taped-over window panes; heard about my dreams of becoming a literature professor. Modina was studying Political Science at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid at the time. He was the one who informed me about the literature fellowship at the Complutense. For this, and for hosting me, I would always owe him and his mother a debt that could never be paid.
“Where are we parking?” Gaby asked, rotating her head slowly toward her boyfriend. She pinched her lips, as though his answer could only ever be unconvincing. Modina didn’t look at her. The index and middle fingers of his left hand twitched, causing the unlit cigarette wedged between them to almost slide from their grasp. He tapped his thumb on the steering wheel. “Atocha station,” he said. “We’ll walk from there to El Congreso.”
“Smart,” Santiago said, still watching his phone. “Street parking will be impossible.”
The city’s recognizable landmarks began to appear around us. The whipping sound of the wind subsided as we exited the highway. I could hear the opening riff of Savatage’s “Strange Wings” vibrating faintly from the speakers. I observed the streets, searching for signs of unrest, for banners and flags and angry-faced mobs, but all I saw were small groups of people strolling down the sidewalks, no urgent purpose in their steps.
It took us five minutes to find parking at Atocha, which Santiago declared a sign of good fortune. Good fortune as in, we’ll topple the government tonight? I wanted to tease. But I knew better than to disrespect another person’s country when my own had gotten away with making a mockery of every Cuban for half a century.
Gaby asked Modina where we were meeting his friends in the same listless manner as earlier. I had no idea who these friends were, or that we were supposed to meet them in the first place. I understood now that I was an afterthought. Modina had convinced me to tag along because he wanted an audience. He wanted to flaunt what his people were made of, how they were willing to demonstrate their rage and fight for their ideals. Cubans had mostly fled the island, some of us settling in Spain and butchering the Spanish accent in our eagerness to embrace La Madre Patria. I didn’t subscribe to any particular global beliefs, being too poor, cynical, and individualistic to care. I couldn’t be certain that these things were actually going through Modina’s mind, but I decided that they were. Maybe Gaby had sensed something similar. Maybe she cared about what I was feeling, the situation I was being whisked into without much consideration. Modina had described—with almost sociopathic glee—how he’d gotten into altercations with the police at previous protests. Gaby glanced at me as we walked to the station’s main entrance, where Modina said his friends would be waiting. Her smile was sad, resigned.
The friends were named Federico and Erik Lavezzi, two Argentinian-born brothers Modina had met at the Wurlitzer Room. They were metalheads and guitar virtuosos of a rare breed, according to Modina. Their band, First Descendant, was nearing a record deal. “They’re going to be touring Europe within months,” Modina said. The lead singer, Ramón Bala, predictably nicknamed Bullet, was a Spaniard whom the brothers had met in Buenos Aires as kids. Bullet owned a home studio and had enough money to put together a decent demo, hence why the Argentinians crossed the Atlantic and set up shop in Madrid. When we met them at the entrance to Atocha, I could’ve sworn they were twins, but it turned out that Federico was two years older. Or was it Erik? Their hair was longer and more voluminous than Modina’s, and unlike the rest of us, they had backpacks strapped to their bodies. They wore spike-studded bracelets and military-style boots. Their teeth were tar-spattered, the rim of their lips dry and their cheeks sunken.
“Bullet stayed home with a fever,” one of them said. “We’ll make sure to beat up a few cops in his name.”
Modina introduced me as a Cuban in desperate need of democratic release.
“We’re not allowed to protest over there,” I explained, assuming the brothers might not be well versed in international politics.
“What would you want to protest?” Erik said. Or was it Federico? “What we need here is a revolution, like Castro’s.”
I chuckled, and so did Gaby. Emboldened by our identical reactions, I added, “Argentinians are familiar with dictatorships, no?”
Modina suddenly made a joke about Rajoy and the European Union, then about Bullet and how he always got sick at the most inopportune times. It was clear from the awkward way he was nudging the topic elsewhere that he’d sensed my discomfort, or maybe he just wanted to dismiss my not-so-subtle dig. Either way, I was grateful when the group began walking down Paseo del Prado, the conversation veering into a more banal route.
As soon as we passed El Jardín Botánico and Museo del Prado, we were joined by throngs of protesters. The crowd grew larger when we reached the Fountain of Neptune roundabout. A dark-haired woman in front of us was sporting a long Spanish flag as a cape. The coat of arms occasionally bounced off her buttocks and billowed like a parachute before bouncing again. Someone was carrying a blown-up photo of Rajoy’s face decorated with Mickey Mouse ears, unintelligible letters scrawled below the headshot. I detected a quiet excitement in the murmuring of certain pockets, while in the distance someone’s garbled voice boomed indignantly from a megaphone. I became aware of my rapid pulse, of the temperature rising on my neck and the rim of my ears. A lanky boy whose skin shone with the natural luster of adolescence hurried past us. He had identical fluorescent green and pink bands looped around his wrists. As he tried to make his way through the increasingly congested street, he bumped into a middle-aged man whose flannel, tucked-in shirt and thick glasses made him look like a used bookstore owner. The boy apologized before continuing. The man thrust his hands into his pant pockets and ambled ahead as if on his way to the park.
Large metal barricades had been strategically placed at the entrance to Plaza de las Cortes, between the red-bricked Thyssen museum and the historic Palace Hotel, a massive building that reminded me of Old Havana’s architecture. The authorities didn’t want us reaching the congressional headquarters. We squeezed our way to the front, Gaby and I trailing the guys, until we were about five meters from the barricades. From here I could see a group of policemen on horses facing the protesters. Many of them had large plastic shields, their elbows and knees covered by black pads. The sight of their plastic-visored heads and long batons disturbed me. My encounters with Cuban authorities had always been contentious, largely because those uneducated commie bastards loved taking out their frustrations on anything resembling cheerful youth. But these Spanish guys looked the part in ways that made the Cuban police look undersized and infantile. I was grateful for the barriers, though they began to feel insufficient as a multitude continued assembling behind us.
“These tíos never disappoint,” Santiago said. He lifted his phone and aimed it at the cops.
“If you see the one who gave you that nasty welt last time,” Modina said, “point him out.”
The Argentinian brothers agreed. “We’ll give that motherfucker special treatment,” one of them said.
The officers’ features were indistinguishable behind the thickness of their visors and the midday light reflecting off them.
Gaby grabbed my shoulder and brought her lips to the side of my face. I leaned in her direction until the air leaving her mouth felt like a caress on my ear. “Santiago got beat up badly,” she whispered. “He cried like a baby that night.” She followed this up with a chuckle. I reciprocated, our shared amusement over someone else’s pain a form of bonding.
For the next couple of hours, people shouted platitudes about injustice and inequality. Some hurled insults at the officers, who, based on their body language, mostly laughed them off. A few energetic souls gave their best shot at starting a chant—“El pueblo unido jamás será vencido”—which caught on after a while. A horse occasionally neighed or shook its head. Once, an officer petted his horse’s mane. I wondered how long horses could stand there before they grew tired, before human interference began to eat away at their patience. Maybe they’d stand there forever, until they crumbled from the weight of their own exhaustion. I thought of domesticated animals and their broken wills, centuries of biological instinct squashed for our sake. I decided that bringing horses into the equation was as cruel as anything the rest of us might ultimately do.
The sun rose, then began to dip. Though the air remained somewhat cool, the sheer size of the protest elevated the temperature, as if the accumulation of bodies were creating its own microclimate. The entire roundabout had become a field of raised fists and flapping banners. I began to feel hungry and thirsty, and it dawned on me that we hadn’t discussed how long we’d stay or how we were going to get food. I hoped that someone else in the group would eventually complain, but the Spanish eat much later than Cubans are accustomed to. I’d have to mention something to Gabby, my only ally. She’d remained quietly equidistant between Modina and me.
Modina walked behind one of the brothers and unzipped his backpack. The whole maneuver had been meticulously choreographed, because in a matter of seconds we all had in our possession a sandwich and a bag of chips. Modina and Santiago each held what looked like a thermos but turned out to be large water bottles for the group. Improbably, the water was still cold. I slowly grasped that the plan was to remain at the protest the entire day, and that perhaps dinner was in the other brother’s backpack.
The early afternoon was fairly uneventful. A couple of news helicopters hovered above us, and I pictured a close-up of my head showing up on someone’s television across the globe. Would the Cuban government air any footage on the eight o’clock broadcast? Was there any chance my mother and grandmother would recognize me, their blood pressure surging until they’d need to call the nurse next door?
A civilian van had crawled its way into the center of the crowd. A gray-haired woman was hanging out one of the doors, grasping a megaphone at an upward angle. She shouted what must have been, judging by the occasional whistling and clapping, a mildly inspiring speech. I couldn’t hear much on account of the helicopters and the people who were standing closer to the barriers, who’d started verbally heckling the cops and rattling the metal barricades. The sun’s heat was hitting us in full force. Even the horses had begun getting restless. I noticed that we hadn’t taken off our jackets, and that given the circumstances, we wouldn’t at any point. Modina, Santiago, and the Argentinians joined in pulling at the barricades. Gaby and I lingered near them, guarding ourselves against those who were trying to rush to the front. A long white pole swayed gracefully above our heads, the striking yellow and red of the Spanish flag fluttering as it descended. Once parallel to the ground, the pole was jabbed forward like a spear through the barriers. Two officers attempted to grab hold but comically failed, one of them stumbling down as if his feet were tied with rope. All who’d witnessed the embarrassing display bellowed in unison, the bulk of their voices so derisive and raw that it sounded like a sustained scream.
The space around Gaby and I narrowed. We huddled together, her arm wrapping itself around my waist as we were shoved toward the action. A number of people kept yanking and kicking the barricades. I wanted to ask Gabby, “What do we do?” but I sensed in her sturdy grip and unmoving jawline that she was in control. I could trust her. One of the officers barked and the men marched forward, shields propped up to their chests. Without warning, they swung their batons at the hands still latching on to the metal barriers. The crowd’s roar morphed from scorn to a collective shriek of shock and anger.
The officers removed a pair of barricades and spilled into the crowd in a tight triangular formation. Gaby jolted backwards, as though an animal had unexpectedly jumped a zoo fence, and shouted at her boyfriend, “Modi, don’t let these fucking pigs get you!” From the tone of her voice I could tell that it wasn’t fear compelling her to retreat. It was caution. Modina and the brothers tried pushing ahead, but the sheer force of the shields and swiping batons kept them at bay. Whenever someone approached the cops or threw an object in their direction, a small faction split from the unit and chased the person down, peppering them with blows until other civilians came to the rescue. Santiago recorded some of it on his phone. He tauntingly howled at the officers whenever they retreated, “Así, hijos de la gran puta! Así!” By my count, four civilians were dragged behind the barricades and swallowed up into police vans. Someone bleeding profusely from their eyebrow scurried by us, flanked by two people who asked him to keep his head low, as if protecting him from paparazzi.
The gulf between the officers and us broadened. An older man resembling Pinocchio’s Geppetto stepped between the two masses. He was saying, over and over, on the edge of tears, “This is not the way! This is not the way!” He directed most of his plea to the authorities, sometimes locking his hands in a prayer-like posture. “NOT…THE…WAY!” Remarkably, the policemen and civilians stopped their onslaught, maybe due to exhaustion. Within a few minutes, the officers had returned to their original spot and the barricades were back in place.
The guys joined us again, their faces gleaming with the sweaty glint of adrenaline and testosterone. “That’s how it’s done, Cubanito!” Modina declared with a proud grin. He went to Gaby and kissed her. Santiago ruffled my hair as if congratulating me for performing a heroic task alongside them. I quickly realized that they’d asked Gaby to watch over me.
As sunlight faded, we were suffused by the unnatural glow of streetlamps. Our dinners really were in the other backpack. We ate voraciously and in silence. The crowd was no longer massive. From above, it must have looked like a constellation of circulating groups tramping on discarded banners and signs. There was a considerable amount of trash on the street, but not enough space for any trucks to sweep it up. We sat on the ground and locked arms with strangers, linking a human chain that stretched the length of the barricades. The horses were gone. I was happy that they hadn’t been used in the scuffles.
Gabby was next to me, the nook of her elbow intertwined with mine. Modina was on the other side of her. He was strategizing with Santiago what to do in case the cops dared to reprise their mistake of opening the barricades.
“How are you feeling?” Gaby asked me.
“Tired,” I said, somewhat embarrassed.
“It takes a while to get used to it,” she said, and my heart sank. Was she subtly ridiculing me, like Modina? Did she think of me as weak, as lesser than?
“How many of these protests have you come to?” I said.
She stared ahead and pursed her lips, the muscles and bones on her face creating a thoughtful expression that seemed too defined for our age. Maybe she’d inherited it from one of her parents. “Four or five, I think.”
My gaze remained on her profile. She sighed at nothing in particular and wiggled her nose. My attraction to her was shallow and impulsive, but it made no difference. The entire process of moving to Spain had bestowed upon my life a surreal quality, which I’d readily embraced. My infatuation was as ephemeral and juvenile as a daydream, but it felt implacable.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said. I can’t explain why I uttered these words, why my mouth chose them as the translation of the unfiltered message my brain had sent, “I really like you.”
She shifted her eyes and said nothing. I wanted to offer an explanation, an excuse, an apology, but I couldn’t speak. It was as if a knotted rope had been meticulously shoved into my throat. The more I tried to respond, the more I suffocated. Then she smiled. Nervously. Vulnerably. Her lips quivered a bit.
“Did they tell you how she did it?” I shook my head. They hadn’t. “Pills. A fistful of them.” I didn’t dare say anything. It wouldn’t have been enough.
“Part of me was aware of the possibility,” she continued, maybe to completely dispel the mystery, to change the landscape of our future conversations. “Vero had a permanent gloomy side, like she’d been born sad and there was nothing you could do. You ever meet anyone like that?”
“It’s possible,” I said, “but no one comes to mind.” She nodded. “Must be hard being away from your family. Do you miss them?” “I do, but it’s—” She cut me off, smiling again. “It’s not the same.” I thought of my own sister, levelheaded and joyful. I’d always been the recipient of her care, her good intentions. There must be depths to her, places of unrest, confusion, unhappiness, cruelty, but we rarely spoke about them. I felt like a selfish fraud, a failure of a brother, but grateful for the opportunity to still see her, to one day do away with any guilt.
Gaby and I took in the night air, imbued with the faint smell of gasoline set alight, though we hadn’t seen any fires. We glanced at each other in five-second intervals, as if attempting to cling on to the promising plot we’d started weaving. A linguist friend of mine had once taught me the world’s most succinct word: Mamihlapinatapai. Stemming from an indigenous language in South America, it roughly means a look between two people who wish the other would initiate what they both desire but which neither is brave enough to begin.
She briefly unfastened her arm from mine and softly stroked my wrist, the top of my hand, the grooves between my knuckles. Then she glimpsed over my head and said, “Here they come.”
Guided by an assistant, a cameraman began walking sideways in front of us, filming a sweeping shot of the human chain. Modina, Santiago, and the brothers hollered at him. I thought about my mother and grandmother: I’d have to call them the next day, in case a close-up of my mug showed up on Cuban television after all.
“My mother’s going to have a heart attack if she sees me,” Modina said, and I almost replied, “Mine too.”
“Another arrest and they’ll kick you out of the university,” Federico or Erik said.
“Is he serious?” I murmured to Gabby.
She tilted my way. “Modi has been wanting to drop out of school for a while.”
“What is he going to do?”
“No idea. Getting a job is out of the question with how things are in this stinking country.”
“And I traveled across the ocean to attend a university. Ironic.”
She chuckled with a kind of erudite confidence. “I’m not sure that’s irony, exactly.” I was on the verge of responding with my own brand of snarky humor when several streams of white smoke twirled over the barricades. The smoke flowed copiously from the canisters as they hit the pavement, barraging our nostrils with an acrid stench—a mix of vinegar, bleach, and what I can only describe as snot. We rose like a wave as a battalion of uniformed men frantically yanked the barriers and stormed the roundabout. Even in the poor artificial lighting we could see the blue lettering taped to their shields: POLICIA.
Modina and Santiago stepped backwards. Their stance—legs nimble and fists tightened, like vintage boxers—showed they were ready to engage. Federico and Erik pounced on the advancing officers, ricocheting off the shields and barely avoiding the batons. Gaby and I managed to cover our mouths and noses with the collar of our T-shirts, our jackets rendered useless by the gas, but we didn’t run, not even when I saw an officer charge toward me. I staggered and may have mumbled something as he snatched the sleeve of my jacket and began drawing me to him. I resisted as much as I could. I wasn’t going to let him drag me past the barricades without a struggle.
He tugged me for a few meters, and I pictured the end to what would undoubtedly become a short-lived visit to Spain: the nape of my neck squeezed by the officer’s oversized hand as he shoved my head into a vehicle; my bumpy, handcuffed ride to a police station for processing; the conversation with whoever was in charge of intimidating the Indignados, in which they’d learn my legal status, laugh at my idiocy and irresponsibility, and assure me of my impending deportation; the conversation with my mother and grandmother, both disappointed but secretly happy to have me back; the return to my devastating routine of scrambling to find foreigners for guided tours, of having early morning beers with my friends from middle school, the ones sufficiently dumb or unfortunate to still be stuck in Cuba; of staring at my mother’s patched up table cloth late at night as I ate leftover rice and beans in her grease-encrusted pot.
Another person joined the scramble, raining down blows on the officer’s forearm. It was Gabby. She succeeded in releasing me from the guy’s grasp but found herself caught in it. A dark mass slammed into the policeman’s flank, causing all of us to topple like bowling pins. It was Modina.
“Run!” he yelled, writhing on the ground and cradling his own shoulder.
Gaby got up with a martial artist’s dexterity, and we huddled as we’d done earlier. She was coughing and gagging, which caused me to notice that tears and mucous were beginning to drip down my face from the gas. Through blurry vision I saw Santiago come to Modina’s rescue, but the downed officer was already scrambling up. He tackled Santiago from behind. Santiago’s phone smashed on the asphalt. Several cops jumped into the fray, restraining him and Modina before hauling them away. Their jackets disappeared among a cluster of shields and helmets as Gaby and I witnessed the Argentinians launch their next attack. One of them was wielding a baton, likely wrenched from an unlucky officer.
Gaby clasped my arm. In a voice clogged by slimy fluid, I could make out, “Let’s get out of here.” It must have taken me a second to react, or perhaps I was refusing to move, because she began pulling with all her strength, much harder than she should’ve needed to.
