Far and Away: Reporting From the Brink of Change Read Online Free PDF Page A

reciprocity. Any new relationship is disruptive on both sides. Rather than avoiding and minimizing this disruption, I began trying to open myself to it. Sometimes the engagement was profound; often, it was happenstance. While I was good at fitting in under anomalous circumstances, I had to acknowledge my differences and accept that others noticed them, too. You can’t fit in with people by pretending to be just like they are; you fit in by engaging in a dialogue about your differences, and by putting aside the assumption that your way of life is in any way preferable to theirs.
    Because Castro had for many years insisted that Cuba was atheist, then allowed his country to be more moderately secular, and finally met with the Pope in 1996, the celebration of Christmas was still tentative when I visited Havana in 1997. Over the preceding decades, New Year’s Eve had become something of a family-centered celebration to make up for Christmas; now, people were just beginning to ponder the notion of more ebullient festivity, and I decided to act on that emergent vigor. Friends and I found an apartment in Old Havana, in a pretty rough area but with twenty-foot ceilings, decorative columns, detailed cornice moldings, and a balcony looking out over the ancient buildings across the street. If you want to get to know a strange country quickly and deeply, there’s nothing like organizing a party. At Cuban parties, the dancing starts when the party starts. Agorgeous black lesbian ballerina named Marleni led me to the center of the room. “Music is the most important thing there is for me,” she confided. “It makes me feel things.” We were feeling things anyway: six Brits, two Americans, and thirty or so Cubans (diplomats, doctors, artists, television personalities, foundation directors, musicians, hustlers, students), all gathered to celebrate our various ideas of a new beginning. We soon lost our self-consciousness—the mojitos were very helpful—and at midnight, we leaned over the balcony and poured buckets of water into the street to wash away the old year and welcome in the new. Everyone in the nearby houses was doing the same thing, though some people had only sherry glasses and others had barrels of rainwater; someone even poured out a mojito. We loaded a heaping plate of food and a drink to leave outside for the Santeria gods. Then we ate again, and then we danced until dawn, as everyone in the streets seemed to be dancing when we stumbled back home at sunrise. The Cubans loved our party because it was so American, and we loved it because it was so Cuban.
    In 1993 I went to South Africa to report on its burgeoning art scene. Before my trip, I had arranged a rental car and bought a road atlas. My plane arrived late, and the airport was all but closed when we taxied to the gate. I was the only person from the flight hiring a car, and I reminded the sleepy man at the desk that I’d arranged ahead of time for one with an automatic transmission. I’m no good with a stick shift under the best of circumstances; South Africa has left-side driving, and I’m none too good at that, either. I was going to be thumbing through maps as I went, and it was an era of carjackings, when you had to be vigilant every time you stopped the car, ready to speed away through a red light in a threatening situation. The rental guy disappeared for twenty minutes, then came back and said, “Okay, boss, we have one automatic car.” I signed the paperwork and we stepped outside, where I beheld the largest white Mercedes I had ever laid eyes on. So much for fitting in.
    It was still illegal for white people to enter the black townships, and when they did so nonetheless, they were usually accompanied by a black person who knew the way around, since there were no maps of these districts. One day I went to Soweto to interview a painter.He met me at the township entry and guided me to his studio; when we finished, he said that the way back out was so