From the Beautiful Thing and the Bitter Thing

By Sayli Sosa Barceló

Testimony of two of the first people diagnosed with AIDS in the province of Ciego de Avila.

On the radio, Polito Ibáñez’s music made them cry. Clarita and Evelio are both very easily hurt. With modesty and trust at the same time, they agreed to let me rummaging in their memories, as if it were an exorcism. The singer provoked them: I can lose my name on pictures / I can say the fault is mine, / but I wash the strange thing in dry rains, / and I invented details as silhouettes. / My ghosts are not indifferent voices / They are my eyes declining among people, / tangled in the skin of sadness.


Only then they released themselves and we left on a journey together.

"Yes, it has been difficult to accept it, deal with it, overcome it." But we are equal, right? "This is everybody’s  life," she says, while he, with a half smile adds: "I prepared for hope, because this is never overcome. You live thinking about tomorrow, hoping."

Clarita and Evelio are a couple with AIDS. They were among the first people diagnosed with this disease in Ciego de Ávila. They met after being infested, each with a different story. "They were the 80’s. My partner was returning from his mission in Africa. Then, the results of routine analyses confirmed the suspicions.

"Both were infested with the virus... We separated and I went to Havana to receive treatment. It was then I met Evelio. It seemed life would not leave us alone..."

So that you germinates within the encouraged / You live on Sunday in love. / so thet the useful lands on you in this hour, / so that you takes the violent thing off without delay, / so that your luck be my luck in the little / so that basically you discover a consolation deep down, / I will be with you...

"I was 19 or 20. I had returned from a mission in Africa and tests were altered. I was diagnosed with the HIV-AIDS virus. I felt the world was coming on me," Evelio recalls today, for whom the first moments were too difficult.

"Also for Clarita it was very difficult, because before, when I was diagnosed, to say AIDS was to say death, it was not seen as a long illness. I spent all the time thinking how Little time I had left. 'What can I do?', 'How much will I live?', ' What goals can I met?' In a situation like that you think everything is over, you think of your family, the people, what they will tell about you. Ignorance at that time was big, it's not like now. The first months were tense, hard. Really the person who has not lived  it can't know what it is."

And although I do not have a place / for the sofa / I won’t be a victim of anyone, / ain't gonna cry. / and even if I don't have a place / to find, / I turn my eyes to heaven / to stop thinking...

"It is very painful to not be able to have children of my own. Dreaming about that all my life and not to make it... But I feel batter because I gave that love to other people I adore, I love: my nieces very much. I think that in 20 years I have never thought to have a child and he were sick. "It is a too big responsibility."

"In another country – Evelio says - perhaps we weren't alive, telling the story. Imagine that a treatment for a patient with AIDS, in the world, can cost 10 000 or 12 000 dollars, and the State gives it for free to us. We don’t pays for medicines. If it wasn't for the revolution, I do not know what would happen, I can't imagine our life".

I ‘ll paint a destination of a cotton, / Don’t apologize to me, /What thing you try to spare me, / I am also a part of chance...

"I believe that youth acts very lightly, not only young Cubans, but in the world.They have to be deeper in their relations, they should meditate on what person they will maintain a relationship, or how it’s going to be and, above all, to protect. themselves You never think about what it can happen and AIDS can knock on any door..."

I know about the face of the rain on sidewalks, / A drop of illusion that burns / looking for some light in life, / between the beautiful and the bitter / I've known myself. / I can lose in the photographs, / I can lose all, / I can lose days... / but I have not lost myself...