NOTE #16 FEVER DREAMS IN CUBA

When I boarded a plane from Madrid to Havana on a cold March evening in 2013, seven thousand kilometres away from me, a man who was not yet very old was dying. Had he not died on the very day of my arrival, I would have experienced a very different Cuba. But I had no idea of this as I crossed the starry night over the Atlantic, full of anticipation, with an invitation to the Santiago de Cuba Film Festival in my pocket. I had always wanted to travel to Cuba while Fidel Castro was still alive. To get to know the sunny and shady sides of Cuba. But somehow, a curse hung over my trip.

When I landed in Cuba and visited the centre of La Habana, I was surprised by the unusual silence. The city was deserted and all the shops were closed. There was no music to be heard anywhere. My girlfriend Sonia and I wandered through half-ruined neighbourhoods for a long time, searching in vain for its inhabitants.

Eventually, we found them. A silent crowd carrying flags, surrounded by soldiers and uniformed police officers. My curiosity got the better of me and I asked the soldiers what was going on. They looked at me as if I had landed from the moon. Didn't I know that Hugo Chavez had died? This was the Cuban people's vigil in his honour. The whole country had been shut down, several days of national mourning had been declared, shops had been closed and all music had been banned. The whole country was collectively mourning a man who was a stranger to them.

But I had to get to Santiago de Cuba somehow. The buses weren't running, so our journey turned into an arduous odyssey across the whole country. I had come down with a bad case of flu, and the closer I got to my destination, the worse I felt. I tried to ignore my fever and take in the many impressions. But everything blurred in my feverish dreams.

All I remember now are the colourful houses along the desolate streets of Santiago de Cuba, which slope steeply down to the sea. On the other side of the sea lay Port-au-Prince in Haiti, where I had shot my film GAELLE three years earlier. The film was now being screened in the international competition at the Santiago de Cuba Film Festival. But I had become indifferent to everything and, in my feverish delirium, I slept through the screening of my own film.

The last thing I remember was the return journey to La Habana in the back seat of a completely overcrowded Cuban bus, where they had made room for me to lie down as best they could, gave me something to drink and some pills. The Cubans took touching care of me. In my apathy, I swallowed everything and slept through the entire sixteen-hour journey, while the fever raged inside me. When I woke up, I felt completely healthy and was able to fly home that same evening. I have never visited Cuba again, but I often remember that delirious bus ride when the Cubans rescued me from the flu.