Dreaming of Varadero

By Miriam Bradman Abrahams

Issue of Sept. 19, 2008

The news bulletin was disappointing to say the least. Tipped off by my internet home page, I ran to the remote to punch in CNN. Daytime TV is an activity I shun except for earth shattering reports, and my heart was skipping beats, palpitating loudly against my chest. As I watched the repeating newsreels of indignant Cubans in Miami and the pronouncements from the small Caribbean island 90 miles south of Key West, I groaned at the same-old, same-old. Nobody had seen Fidel Castro for many moons, his brother Raul was now officially in power and our government was reiterating the seemingly endless ban on my right to travel there. Perhaps it will be lifted with the election of a new president?

My family and I have been fortunate to travel to interesting spots in the world; for bar mitzvahs and weddings in Puerto Rico, biennial gatherings with my husband David’s family in South Africa and a one-time reunion with friends in New Zealand. And so many wonderful visits to our spiritual home in Israel. In fact, Israel is where I met my husband, while living there and contemplating aliyah.

Despite all that travel, I have continuously yearned to visit my birth land for as long as I can remember. Although my memories of the place are borrowed, they are nevertheless ingrained in my cells. I can sing along to Guantanamera and can’t help but shake my body to the rhythms of Cuban salsa. I request my mother’s specialty, arroz con pollo for my birthday and every other occasion, and regularly treat my family and friends to picadillo, frijoles negros, yuca con mojo y platanos fritos.

I’ve heard stories about the vibrant Zionist community that my relatives were part of in the 1950s and know the buildings still hold the echoes of their music and dancing. I have studied the small, discolored black and white photos of my babyhood, and can picture my uncle’s peeling, simple home in Havana. I can feel the incessant heat of the tropical sun and imagine the beautiful waters and powdered sugar sand of Varadero beach. That famed beach has trumped every other one my family has visited for the 46 years of my life since I immigrated at age one as a refugee to this revered land of the free. I have long memorized the mantra that absolutely no stretch of turquoise saltwater can hold a candle to Varadero.

We have been lucky to live close to Atlantic Beach on Long Island and I have spent the past 14 summers coaxing my children to the ocean’s edge. I eagerly dip my index finger at the shore to take a taste of the super salty froth of the surf. As small children, my kids imitated my ritual and I figured no harm was done by our sampling a drop of the brackish brew.

I’ve bent down for a taste as we have walked long stretches of the cold, white, beige-grey, tar flecked sands of Long Beach, Jones Beach, Fire Island and Montauk. We’ve enjoyed visits with our Cuban ex-pat family in balmy San Juan and to my husband’s subtropical birthplace, Durban on the Indian Ocean and the breathtakingly beautiful ice cold Atlantic waters of Capetown. Israel’s Mediterranean shore has added to the saline tastes I can identify, and the uniquely poisonous flavor of the Dead Sea is one I will never revisit. But I always wonder what the water by Havana’s Malecon would feel like as it whooshes over me or how I would savor a tangy drop of Varadero Beach’s Eden-like waters.

I became truly enamored of the idea to travel there when I initiated correspondence with my first cousin, Eduardo while he was still in Havana back in 1999.

He was working on an escape route for himself from that mythical island to Israel. His brother had already left to Spain and he was eager to be on his way with no regrets. He typed on a computer he had patched together from scavenged bits and pieces to fill me in on his life and of my uncle’s, whom we’d been barely in touch with for nearly 40 years. There had been a physical and ideological break between my grandfather and uncle but I knew I could recognize him on sight from a photo of me as a baby in his arms in 1962. After all he is the spitting image of my Abuelo Julio, only much taller. I finally met my uncle, Tio Salomon in 2001, when he was sponsored by my parents for a long planned visit to New York many years after the death of my abuelos. In the meantime, Eduardo e-mailed me grainy photos of the beaches, reassuring me of their exquisiteness and verifying my relatives’ tales.

Over the years I’ve hinted to my parents about my dream of a short flight from Miami to Havana, perhaps a quick guided tour, but have been repeatedly quashed by my father’s fearful resolve against such an escapade. I am eager to see all those nostalgic places I’ve heard and read about, well before the ambiance changes for the global sameness of a McDonalds and Starbucks on every corner. But my father swore he could never step foot in that place nor allow my mother to accompany me there, regardless of the fact that my adventurous Tia has come and gone unscathed, effusive from her travels. Going alone now with a passport branding me as a native of that Caribbean Xanadu could cause my father life threatening nightmares I wouldn’t care to take credit for.

El Comandante en Jefe, the all-powerful, charismatic commander in chief is retired, but his rule lives on through his brother, causing some diehard immigrant Miami-Cubans continued bitterness. So I wonder, when will I be able to book my ticket as a loyal American citizen and dutiful daughter? My family and I have traveled to some political hotbeds in the world for the sake of family and adventure, causing my father much anxiety, and a visit to this beautiful, tranquil island wouldn’t help his peace of mind. And so I wait for the right legal opening, a miraculous moment when I can dip my finger in the blue waters of Varadero and taste its unique flavor on my long awaiting tongue.

Miriam Bradman Abrahams is an executive board member of Hadassah’s Nassau Region, One Region/One Book chair, Jewish Book World book reviewer, longtime HAFTR PTA Book fair chairwoman and active member of Congregation Beth Sholom of Lawrence. A resident of Woodmere, and the mother of three teenagers, she is currently writing her father’s memoirs.