The Values that Make us Feel at Home

By Sabine Meyer

We spent our last night in Matanzas, a Friday night, at a drag show at Ruinas de Matasiete, a gay bar across the Rio San Juan and the train tracks from the center of town. A long wait introduced the night—our group took a long time to get ready and coordinated, we spent a long time in line for the club, we stood around for a long time as the show started—so my mindset was impatient and incurious as I entered a conversation with a Cuban acquaintance that joined us at the bar. Cuban rum, the late hour, and the darkness of the patio corner our group congregated in all contribute to a somewhat unclear memory of how the exchange began, but before I knew it, I was immersed in a discussion about creativity, growing food, and caring for one another without the blinds that consumerism imposes. This conversation caught me off guard because it touched upon the values I hold most dear, but took place at a moment in which I was least prepared to be receptive. As I found myself yelling the points of my worldview over the sounds of blaring reggaeton with a near-stranger yelling out his corresponding ones, I felt them solidify. I was reminded that moments of vulnerability, most often created while traveling, can be the most affirmative and defining. 

One of the strongest points that my Cuban friend and I agreed upon was the merit and necessity of community—doing our best to think of the needs of others. For him it seemed an instinct within Cuban society; for me it was a learned value that I saw as almost entirely missing in the US. I was often struck throughout our trip by how naturally our group seemed to fall into the dynamic of supporting and lifting each other up, paying attention to each others needs. Thinking back, I believe this was our way of evoking home in the absence of the physical spaces we were familiar with. 

On our visit to the publishing house and art and community space El Fortín, developed by Rolando Estévez Jordán, we broke off into smaller groups following our tour. It started pouring rain on the building’s courtyard and a few of us sought shelter in the book room. For close to an hour we read each other poems from the pages of El Fortín’s artfully crafted books. We sat on the floor, draped ourselves over chairs, leaned on desks, growing closer, physically and emotionally, as the rain outside got louder and Rolando's repeated offerings of “¿Alguien quiere cafe? ¿Quien quiere cafe?” chanted home into being from the kitchen. 

On our first day in Matanzas my roommate, the only fluent Arabic-speaker on the trip, told me “na’eeman” as I got out of the shower, teaching me this little praise of cleanliness for which English doesn’t contain the right words to express. Each day she would go on to greet me with sabah al-khair in the mornings and tell me tisbah ala khair as I dozed off at nights. My lack of Arabic knowledge left me unable to respond in the same language, but it isn’t the words that last but their translation into home that last in my memory. 

Looking back, I can’t always remember what language I experienced something in. As time passes, my memories get sifted until they’re more like a dust that coats the way I think about the world. Laura Ruiz Montes, a Cuban writer who spoke to us at Casa Vigia, told us “nos pasamos la vida traduciendo.” Translating is a continuous act that doesn’t just happen on paper but in our communications and interactions as well. Our exchanges with people where we come from tend to be fluid, and we are rarely prompted to take a second look at them. When we travel, however, unfamiliarities face us in such a way that throws off our easy equilibrium. We have to learn to settle into the rhythms of uncertainty and to approach our new world with curiosity. Without the ease of normality we can instead find comfort in the interactions that take us by surprise and remind us of the truths of our world and the values that make us feel at home.