Crossing the Borders of Time by Leslie Maitland

Author:Leslie Maitland [Maitland, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781590514979
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2012-04-17T07:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

INCOMMUNICADO

ALMOST TWO MONTHS after leaving Marseille, the San Thomé passengers disembarked in Havana. But as soon as their uncertain feet regained solid ground, the weary travelers were forced onto boats once again. The destination was no longer whispered: Casablanca. Not the teeming port they had left behind in Morocco. Rather, it would turn out to be a sleepy fishing village of the very same name, reflecting the fact that a white house—casa blanca—stood on the shore near its pier. Still, that did not alleviate the refugees’ fear and confusion, when instead of being released into the Cuban capital, they were ferried across the Bay of Havana, a channel so narrow it looks like a river. Landing in this unknown Casablanca, on the northeast side of Havana harbor, they were crammed onto buses that lumbered on unpaved streets past humble tin-roofed shacks and up a very steep hillside. At last at the summit, the refugees were shocked to be herded into a spartan detention camp called Tiscornia, which would serve as their home for as long as the Cubans decided to hold them.

In years to come, curiously, many of these refugees would remain baffled about where they were taken. Apprehension and unfamiliar surroundings so distorted their sense of the quick boat ride of less than a mile, from Havana across the sleeve of the harbor to the opposite shore, that it would loom in memory as long and mysterious. As a result, they would mistakenly claim that Tiscornia existed on some other island off Cuba’s coast. It was Cuba’s Ellis Island, they contended, a place removed from the mainland. From the vantage point of the camp, Havana had sparkled, a distant glimmer of freedom over the water. Once released from its confines, they had never returned. A small street sign on a rustic alley, Callejón Tiscornia, now provides the only indication of where the camp stood. Even in Cuba, its role in the war years has been forgotten.

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