The rubber tread chafes slowly against the vinyl tile; a scraping sound elicited, times hundreds. Bodies snaking in clustered rows. The eyes of hope, the sagging shoulders of defeat, the curved lip ends of humour, they are all dotted throughout the landscape. You have been waiting in a giant mass of people in the basement of the Havana airport for hours now, pushing forward ever so slowly.
It seems the line several rows over is being attended to by two officials rather than the typical one. Should you switch to that line? It is a much longer line than yours, but it seems to be going much more quickly. You will wait for a little longer and keep on observing. Those two people just split their resources; he sends her to the longer line, he waits in yours. Who will win the race?
The aircraft doors opened and the wall of heat was punctured, leaking into the cabin. The airport looks unmolested by modernity, but in better shape than certain airport terminals in New York. You are walking as quickly as possible towards the Immigrations checkpoint. Everybody you pass is another couple minutes of extra time in Havana. You head down the stairs into a darkened chamber and that is when it hits you, you aren’t going anywhere quick.
The rubber tread chafes slowly against the vinyl tile; you are waiting in a giant holding tank.
More than sixty minutes has washed from the earth as you creep forward. The couple who split up seems about even at this point. So she is definitely going quicker than he, but does it make sense to jump back to that line now? There are a bunch more people added to the end now, having slipped away from their slow line, making that calculated gamble. But maybe it will end up saving you time—or not. You will wait a little longer and observe.
…
The immigrations official looks over the Cuban visa paperwork, the passport, the photograph, your face, the photograph. The stamp is mashed against the paper fibers with the loud thump, and slid back in return. Yes, the other line went much quicker, but you realize it doesn’t matter as you pass the official’s booth. There is now a second holding pattern, with less defined lines, less space and it seems just as many people as before.
Two working metal detectors and what appears to be roughly two lines, no, mobs, of sweaty passengers. Are you disgruntled, tired, angry or eager? Not many eager faces appear to exist anymore. You head to the terminus of the right line. Does it even matter? It curls around with so many bends; it’s warm down here. The rubber tread chafes slowly against the vinyl tile; hopefully no one is trying to smuggle in a rocket launcher tucked away in their carry-on.
…
“The British are coming! The British are coming!”
Your flight seemed to be one of the last to land in the last hour and a half, and so you were continually at the back of the hordes of people. That good feeling, that momentary refreshing lift when you turn around to find you have made “progress” measured by people behind you in exchange for the time spent…it’s not there. That giant room once filled with people an hour ago is now empty but for one girl who wanders like a trapped animal. Her photo on the immigration official’s monitor beaming. What did she do? Did she somehow get here without having a Cuban visa?
It starts as a drip, one person slapping the stairwell steps followed by another. A drip that quickly turns to a trickle, a flow and finally a flood—it must have been a British Airways flight from London. That room behind you is filling up again as you wait in the second purgatory. And soon they start flowing through the first checkpoint to get to where you are.
It starts as a drip. “Well, I don’t suppose there is much of a queue, Matilda”. Matilda and her entitled husband push into the fray, cutting the body of the snake in half.
“Excuse me, there is a line here,” yells out a gentleman in a German accent.
It turns to a flood. Once that third and fourth line has assembled, the remaining British Airways passengers survey the scene and decide that the lines that cut into the other lines are much shorter than the alternative, and they join.
Well, the British Airways passengers have just waited a while on the other side of the checkpoint and they want to get to Havana. You have been waiting for an hour and forty-five minutes and would much prefer to wait here at the airport for the rest of eternity.
You should go to Cuba to beat the crowds, the mobs, the masses. You are too late. Everyone else is there to beat the Americans—before the travel ban (by the country of the free) is lifted on its people (the free)—which concludes in everyone just taxing the overwhelmed Cuban infrastructure into the ground.
There were no rocket launchers found.
…
What is the best thing about waiting in two giant lines and exiting into a new world? If you said waiting in another line to exchange money, you’d be a sick or sarcastic yet realistic individual. Because after waiting with all the sweating, desperate eager passengers who have, by this point, probably forgotten the Cuban beaches, cigars and landscapes, who realize that there is only two money exchanges open and all the hordes need Cuban currency.
“There is no more English currency left,” yells the British man leaving, invariably to get on that scourge of a British Airways plane back home. You are upstairs on the departures level to make your currency exchange. All the mobs from before are downstairs at the arrivals booth. It’s the best you can do to speed things up in the sloth molasses of José Martí International Airport.
“No quid?” you hear the man stammer behind you, followed by the sigh, the pause and the “oh dear, I suppose we will have to get Euro then my love.”
Have these people been beaten down by the country of Cuba, happy to get out? The feeling coming in is that you’ve made a great mistake.
…
At this point, I’m not sure you care about the 1950’s Dodges and Chevys puffing outside in the Cuban sun. Actually, you spy your first one and dismiss it as meaningless. At this point, you just want to get settled. With Cuban pesos in hand, you slice your way past the roving bodies and slip into the Cuban heat.
Now its bargaining time, because the only thing you want to do now is bargain for taxi cabs after being bludgeoned by slow drip torture. You think they don’t know this? You hack the offer down out of principle, a twelfth round fighter hanging on the ropes.
Your grandfather said you didn’t need air conditioning when you could just roll down the windows and get air-conditioning that way. How many cars in Cuba have air conditioning? Pretty much all of them, as long as you are moving.
You are getting a lesson in the Cuban Communist Revolution you think. You never did take Spanish classes, and political Spanish is not what you have picked up in travels—slightly tipped off by the “reh-vah-loo-shi-ohn” and more tipped off by the giant hand-painted murals of Castro and Che, the driver excitedly pointing, and the flailing arms. He might not realize he is driving. What else can he be clamoring about—his dissertation on the ideals of metaphysical art theory?
Perhaps.
Oh, and you forgot to tell the reader that having exited the airport, all those negative thoughts that creeped upon you vanquished quickly thereafter. Do you have much recollection of the last two hours? Or did they sweep away in a warm Havana breeze.
You are in the Caribbean. You are on an adventure. You are in Cuba. Life is good.
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