40 The Times Magazinehen I arrived in Havana, I
rented an apartment in Centro,
a neighbourhood so exhausted
by heat and neglect that it
reminds me of a rope that has
floated too long in the sea.
The rooms had high
ceilings and views across the
city, but the neighbours were
boisterous. I grew used to the
dogs barking, the tits and ass reggaeton dance
tracks, the expressive rows, but nothing will
ever extinguish the cries of a goose being
sacrificed in an Afro-Cuban religious ritual.
Getting up to my new home required a
six-storey journey in a cage elevator like the
one that carries Mickey Rourke to hell at the
end of Alan Parker’s Angel Heart and which,
with its frayed cables, always seemed on the
verge of doing the same to me.
With no automatic stops, it was tricky
to operate. So there was Miriam, the driver.
Miriam eschewed food in favour of a mobile
gambling app addiction and was visibly
starving despite the whole building’s best
attempts to feed her. We’d try to give her toast
or beans, but she’d want coffee and a cigarette.
Miriam carried her troubles up and down
in that cage. Getting stuck in there with her
during a power cut, especially in the noon
heat while carrying an overflowing bag of
used loo roll (the drains weren’t up to flushing
paper), could be soul-wearying.
It was all a long way from my life in
London where, until a few weeks before, I’d
edited a shimmering magazine full of lovely
things. That was a role that came with garnish.
After work, I liked to slip into Covent Garden
to see the Royal Ballet before sauntering over
to my favourite barstool at J Sheekey for razor
clams and chorizo.
And yet, by the end of 2017, I’d put together
350 magazines over nearly 7 years, and it
felt like enough. So I took some of the career
advice I liked to offer young people. I did what
nobody expected.
I resigned and said I was moving to Cuba.
You get a certain look when you tell people
that. “What next? Thailand?” one friend
asked. I decided not to wait around. “That’s
probably for the best,” said another friend.
“Otherwise, you’ll just be a sad old man in
Hackney without a good job.”
The air in Havana’s José Martí airport
baggage hall is hot and heavy. Returning
Cubans bustle, reclaiming the fridge-freezers
and 80in TVs they’ve carried back to avoid
the 60-year-old US embargo. Soon they are
channelled into the cola de las mulas, the mule
line. Here, goods are taxed by customs officers in
home-tailored uniforms and filigreed stockings.
Cuba wasn’t a random choice. I’d spent a
couple of months in Havana failing to write a
novel in 2004, and returned every two yearsfor the city’s International Ballet Festival.
I like Havana’s mercurial air. It feels a little
like the Casablanca of the film, a place where
the shifting tectonic plates of power create
fractures and fire.
For example, when I first arrived there were
100 fugitives from American justice living
here, including a rogue CIA agent, a famous
fraudster and four Black Panthers. (One of the
Panthers, Nehanda Abiodun, became a friend.)
Although many of the fugitives have since
died, there are still a few who move among
the political refugees (or terrorists, depending
on your point of view), sheltering from
America’s proxy wars in Latin America.
A Happy Valley mix of Europeans
also populate the Italian-run restaurants:
Falstaffian impresarios putting together
salsa extravaganzas, lefty fellow travellers
nursing corroding ideals, and sweat-stained
businessmen chasing obscure deals. This is the
milieu out of which I wanted to create a story.
Even the taxi journey into town provides
a jarring switch of paradigms – the wide road
filled with Fifties Chevys and Pontiacs, the
verges lined with communist slogans. Hasta
la victoria siempre! In London, it had been
big brands’ Mercedes carrying me to Bond
Street to discuss luxury advertising. Hasta la
Victoria Beckham!
The route to my rented apartment took me
along the Malecon, the corniche that separatesthe city from the Florida Straits. It was dusk
and the sea wall had become, as it does on
every calm night, the city’s living room.
Habaneros populated the wall like starlings
on a wire, flirting, chatting and drinking rum.
I was determined to become a Spanish
speaker to open up the city further. A friend
had put me in touch with a professor of
Spanish American literature, an expert in
the history and culture of the Caribbean.
Camila arrived the following day, a quietly
assessing gaze behind a waterfall of dark
Galician hair. She had just come from teaching
a class of American students about Caribbean
and Latin American revolutions. I asked
if she had a favourite revolution, a wisp of
condescension in my voice. “The Haitian
revolution of 1791, of course,” she replied.
I’d never heard of it.
This was exactly as I had imagined it. That
advice I would dole out to the young, back
when I was editing the magazine – no oneasks me for advice now – would go, “Don’t
do what the bastards expect...” By bastards,
I meant bosses, friends, everyone else.
Terrible advice, obviously, but it has
worked for me. I became the United States
correspondent of a national newspaper at- At 30, my first novel was published, after
taking a year off, which my more rational
friends had advised against. Now here I was
again, having forgotten the modifier I’d use
with mentees, “...within reason.”
I soon discovered that what works at
25 or 30 is less certain at 50. That’s an age, it
became clear, when the bastards are quite glad
to be rid of you, if they care at all.
Except for the spectacle. Everyone is up
for that. The Daily Mail called and asked if
I’d write about my midlife crisis. I said I wasn’t
having one. And I’m not. If it says “midlife crisis”
in the headline on this article, don’t believe it.
When I first arrived, I’d write from eight in
the morning until lunch and then spend the
day in search of the stories that give a book
life. There was only one certainty: tea at 5pm.
Camila would arrive and I would make a
pot of Mariage Frères (sometimes it’s hard to
let the old ways die). Then I would struggle
my way into the new language, using the
words I had learnt to find out more about
her. She did the same, setting me homework
(“tu tarea”) to write little stories about growing
up in the Scottish Highlands.
Meanwhile, on my forays into the world,
I’d hear Cuban stories as raw as fresh wounds.
One friend’s father drowned in the Florida
Strait. He was what’s called a balsero, or rafter,
attempting to reach the US. Her mother then
raised her, taking a job in a factory. One day,
one of her team members was accused of
stealing. My friend’s mother, as the responsible
manger, was also sent to jail. Somehow my
friend survived all this and became a doctor.
In London, when I was working on the
magazine, we would publish stories about
the struggles people faced, difficult issues that
have only grown in importance since: sexual
fluidity, trans rights, body dysmorphia and
egg freezing, for example. Each came with
its advocates and experts. The stories I was
hearing in Cuba seemed to emerge from a
WITHOUT TOURISTS,
THE ECONOMY IS
CRUMBLING. WE’RE
TOLD TO EAT TRIPE
SVEN CREUTZMANN