“The Distant Sound of Revolution” by Jo Anne Wilson

I hear fireworks going off somewhere outside our hotel and lean far out the window to see them. But there is nothing to see in the ink blue, star-filled skies above Havana, Cuba. The night air is heavy with heat, humidity, and the salty smell of the ocean.

The babysitter hired to look after me and my siblings is dozing in a chair, my sister and brother sound asleep in one of the bedrooms. Mom and Dad went off to a nightclub show and casino a couple of hours ago and I am bored and indignant. I am almost ten – I know we don’t need a babysitter, especially one that does nothing but sleep.

More small explosions – another attempt to see the elusive fireworks. I stamp my feet impatiently.

The Havana we have seen over the last couple of days is lively, noisy, and aromatic. The night streets are full of laughing people and street musicians playing intoxicating Cuban rhythms, so surely it is not out of place to have fireworks.

It is summer 1958 and our family is on its way back to Canada from Jamaica. We had moved there for a few years while Dad helped build a bauxite plant in the hills of Ewerton for Alcan, the international aluminium manufacturer. 

Dad insisted we stop in Cuba on the way home. Cuba was famous for its music, its nightclubs, and its rum. A perfect way to celebrate the end of our stay in the Caribbean. Mom was a bit nervous. She had heard of a rebel named Castro who was creating some trouble, but Dad had faith in the power of our passports. “We’re Canadian. We’ll be fine.”

So here we are.

We spent our first days in Cuba wandering the streets of Havana. Instead of English or the lilting Jamaican dialect, we were treated to the rapid rhythms of Spanish and warm, welcoming smiles everywhere we went.

We walked along the Malecón, the legendary promenade through Old Havana that parallels a seawall smashed by endless waves that send tangy spray over anyone walking too close to the edge. And visited El Morro, the ancient fortress, complete with turrets, cannons and a moat, built in the 16^th century at the end of the harbour to protect Havana from invasions by enemies of the Spanish crown and attacks from marauding pirates of the Caribbean.

 We ate spicy Cuban dishes of chicken and rice in small, local restaurants and played in the pool at our hotel, the Havana Hilton.

Later we toured one of the city’s busy cigar factories. The overwhelming scent of the thin brown tobacco leaves lying in bundles is still in my aromatic memory banks and I only need to smell a cigar (a rare occasion now in 21st century Canada) to be back in the low-ceilinged hot room full of workers, mostly women, at long wooden tables, rolling and shaping the leaves into fine cigars.

Their stained brown fingers and nails almost blurred as they rapidly create masterpiece after masterpiece. Even as a kid, I knew how prized Cuban cigars were.

That was daytime, now at night, I’m hearing the small explosions from outside.

 I waken the babysitter and try to make her listen. I’m no longer polite.

“Where are the fireworks?”

She simply shakes her head and refuses to answer me. I keep pestering. I gesture with my hands and try to make firework sounds.

“Boom. Boom.”

 Finally, she answers in broken English: “No fireworks. Bullets. Rebels. Castro.”

I tell my parents the next morning about what I heard and learned; they agree that it’s a good thing we are leaving the next day.

 So, we five Canadians leave Cuba and return safely to peaceful Canada.

 Six months later, Castro captures Havana and takes over the country. A few days later a Toronto paper runs a picture of our Havana hotel, now named the Havana Libre. Castro sets up his headquarters here and the Soviet Embassy takes over two floors. Outside, one of the walls is the backdrop for a Communist firing squad as they execute former government supporters.

My brush with revolution. At ten I begin to understand that the world is not a totally peaceful place. Nine years later I will be in Russia as they celebrate the 50^th anniversary of their revolution —a story for another day. 

Jo Anne Wilson is a retired marketing executive and college professor who now devotes her time to family, friends, volunteering, travel and writing. Recently she decided to take the writing bug she’s had since her childhood and see what might happen when she devotes time and energy to it.

One of her fondest writing memories is of finishing a grade eight exam early and using the remaining time to write a story. The school principal “caught” her, was impressed with the story and read it to the entire school.

 See upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and four-day retreats here. 

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