🎶 CUBA, MY LOVE — A New Wave of Musical Prose with Caribbean Soul 🎤📖 🎸

artwork & poetry specially provided by NS

CUBA, MY LOVE… — A Journey Through Ideals, Music, and Memory
After two peaceful days exploring the vibrant corners of Jamrock with Stan and Stella, their guest — the reflective Dr. Mihailov — made an unexpected proposal:

“Come with me to Havana. I want to introduce you to someone very special… My niece, Desita Alessio.”

What followed was more than a change in geography — it was a leap into the heart of contradictions. Havana, with its humid breath of time, greeted them like a once-great queen in worn regalia. There, Desita awaited: fierce, intelligent, rooted. A woman of ideas. Of fire.

🎭 A City of Decay and Romance
Her home was a colonial relic, standing proud in the Vedado district — a place where ambition and nostalgia live side by side. And just like the city, Desita carried a duality: philosopher and fighter, poet and pragmatist.

She wasn’t there to charm. She was there to challenge.

🔥 Debate Over Dinner — And Ideals
Under the rhythmic hum of ceiling fans and the distant chords of street guitarists, the quiet dinner morphed into a verbal sparring match between Stan, the realist, and Desita, the idealist. Dr. Mihailov listened like a referee of history, while Stella, ever the voice of calm, watched the flames flicker.

They debated communism and capitalism, war and revolution, Moscow and Havana, freedom and illusion. Theirs was not a dinner of politeness — it was a symposium of truths:

“Ideas are nice, Desita,” Stan said. “Until the shooting starts.”

“We argue because we still care,” Desita countered.

🎶 A Song for the Island
Just when tension thickened like Havana’s heat, Stan reached for a guitar and did something unexpected: he sang a Soviet-era song — “Cuba, My Love” — in Russian.

CUBA, MY LOVE…
After two days during which Stan and Stella showed Dr. Mihailov all the beautiful spots in Jamrock, one quiet afternoon they all sat together on the veranda, and he said:
— I haven’t rested like this in a long time. It’s time I return the favor. You invited me to your island, now it’s my turn. Come with me to Havana. I want to introduce you to a special woman — my niece, Desita Alessio. She is the daughter of my sister Boryana and her late husband Luis, a Cuban to the last letter. Born there, studied here, graduated in philosophy. She speaks Bulgarian but thinks in Spanish. A fiery soul, faithful to a cause many have written off.
— A communist? — Stan asked, narrowing his eyes.
— Not that kind, with portraits and slogans. The other kind. With questions. With principles. You’ll find her interesting, I guarantee.
Havana welcomed them with humid warmth, spread between decay and romance. At the stairs leading to the terminal, she awaited them — tall, with skin like coffee with milk, a red silk shirt tucked into black pants, and the walk of a panther. Her hair was braided into a long plait, her eyes dark, serious, almost piercing.
— Bienvenidos. I am Desita — she said in perfect Bulgarian with a soft, almost musical accent. She hugged her uncle warmly and for a long time. Then she nodded to Stella and glanced at Stan with a look that held both assessment and challenge.
— You are my guests. The car is waiting.
Her home was an old colonial house in Vedado — once an elite neighborhood, now a living museum of ambitions and decay. The façade bore the marks of time — cracks, plaster like old skin. Inside — high ceilings, fans, shelves full of books, and the smell of coffee, cinnamon, and rum. Everything seemed frozen in a scene from a film by Gutierrez Alea.
Dinner was modest but tasty: rice with black beans, fried plantains, toasted bread, and rum poured straight from a bottle without a label. They sat on the veranda, absorbed by the nighttime roar of the city.
— Tell me, uncle — she turned to Dr. Mihailov — did you have a good time in Jamaica?
— Incredible, unexpectedly good. Thanks to Stan and Stella, who created there a small informal community — EX. Refugees from absurdity. Like you — but in the opposite direction.
— I am not a refugee. I stayed. That’s the difference. — said Desita, sipping from her glass.
— Give them five minutes — Stella intervened, smiling. — A debate is about to start.
And indeed, it began almost silently.
— You in the West believe you won the Cold War — said Desita, looking Stan in the eyes — but there was no war. No battles, no equal confrontation. There was infiltration, dollars, illusions. We fell apart from within. Not because socialism didn’t work — but because people were seduced.
— It’s a miracle it ended without war. — Stan accepted the challenge — Because communism has no chance in peacetime. It’s designed as a virus — it either infects the world or dies in a cage. Without a world revolution, there is no communism. That’s why war is inevitable.
— Because without it, no one will voluntarily give up their wealth. Exactly! But don’t forget: who makes the wars? Who invests in weapons, stokes conflicts, trades democracy for oil? — Desita grew passionate.
— The same ones who once armed your revolutionaries. Or do you think Cuba survived all those years on slogans alone? — Stan replied.
— Cuba survived thanks to ideas. To solidarity. To discipline. Yes, and with help. But never with submission.
Stan leaned forward:
— Yes, yes. And with informers. With silence in homes. With a planned economy that plans shortages. Ideas, Desita, are nice. Until the shooting starts.
Dr. Mihailov took out a pipe he never lit and smiled calmly:
— How much weaponry did America sell Iraq before invading? How many died in the GULAG, and how many in Chile under Pinochet? History is like an old teacher — she hits with a stick on both hands.
Silence fell on the veranda. A man with a guitar passed by on the street, singing “Hasta Siempre,” while a dog barked at him from a rooftop.
— We argue because we still care. — Desita said softly. — That’s what matters.
Stan raised his glass, tilting it slightly toward her.
— Because if we stop, it means we’ve surrendered.
— And we — Stella added — are not those, right?
Desita leaned back, hands behind her head, and looked at Stan long without blinking.
— Then tell me, Stan… Why did the Bulgarians betray the idea? From first students, you became enemies. From brothers — to NATO’s chorus. Why?
Stan smiled dryly, almost sadly.
— Because people can’t believe in illusions forever. Once they recognize them as such. Even Zhivkov described “socialism” as a “premature baby.” And we… we woke up. A bit late, a bit noisy, a bit pitiful — but we woke up.
— Or you were bought. With cheap promises for expensive gains.
— No. We just stopped believing Moscow knew what was good for us. Because Moscow no longer knew what was good even for itself.
— The USSR fell, yes. But that doesn’t make socialism a mistake. They simply didn’t allow it.
— Not a mistake. A failure — yes. Because socialism, in its essence, cannot survive without a center. And when the center collapsed, everything around it fell apart. And Russia, Desita… Russia today doesn’t see socialism as a great idea. It sees it as a phase. Part of the great Russian saga. One of the dresses the mother — Matrushka Rus — has worn through the centuries.
— That’s an insult to all who fought!
— Russia today honors both Stalin and Nicholas II. Both — in gold, in churches, in mausoleums. What does that tell you about ideas? About memory?
— And Bulgaria? Who does it honor? Bai Ganyo? — Desita hissed almost spitefully.
— It honors him too, alas. But there are others. Radoy Ralin, for example. One of the few who didn’t sell out. Sharp, poor, rejected — but not bent. People respected him not because he was a party poet, but because he refused to become a party favorite. They called him “crazy” because he didn’t keep silent. But in fact, he was conscience. The true communist — not the one from slogans, but the man who believed not in Moscow, but in his own heart. And maybe that’s why they will remember him longer than any first secretary.
“Who acts honestly, doesn’t live easily.” — Ralin said this, and it still sounds like a bullet. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s true.
Silence followed. Only the ceiling fan monotonously sliced through the air.
Then Dr. Mihailov leaned forward and said calmly:
— Ideology, my dears, is like a river — born from need, full of passion, blind to its banks. But when it dries up, only stones remain in its bed — nameless, sharp, immobile. Stones of sacrifice, faith, cruelty. Stones from which we later build monuments. And sometimes — prisons.
Stella spoke quietly but clearly, cutting through the tension:
— I only know one thing: no cause, whatever it may be, can justify the suffering of the innocent. Man is above the system. Always.
She looked at each of them in turn, then smiled and added:
— The teacher Beinsa Duno says: “Only light brings freedom. Where there is no light, there is violence.”
Maybe before we argue about systems, we should ask ourselves — how much light is there inside us.
Then Desita fell silent. Then smiled — faintly, but sincerely.
— You know, uncle… I like your guests.
— Me too — said the doctor. — They are the kind who don’t run from difficult questions.
—I heard you play. — she turned to Stan with a smile — I have a guitar; will you play something for us?
Stan looked at the guitar in the corner. It was old, but the strings were new. Either someone played it recently or it was specially brought ready to play. A glance at the hostess’s fingers told him she didn’t play. So she had prepared a surprise. Then he decided to surprise her:
— You know, there’s a song dedicated to Cuba and Castro written by Pakhmutova...
— By whom?
— A famous Soviet composer. Talented. She wrote many songs… including this one… — and Stan took the guitar and, striking a passionate Latin rhythm, sang in Russian:
Cuba - my love!
Island of crimson dawn...
The song flies, ringing over the planet:
“Cuba - my love!”
Do you hear the measured step?
The barbudos are coming.
The sky above them — like a fiery banner...
Do you hear the measured step?
Courage knows its goal!
Cuba became a legend...
Once again Fidel speaks inspiredly —
Courage knows its goal!
Homeland or death! —
This is the vow of the fearless.
The sun of freedom burns over Cuba!
Homeland or death!
Cuba - my love!
Island of crimson dawn...
The song flies, ringing over the planet:
“Cuba - my love!”.
Desita watched with a mixture of passion and surprise. Her eyes were burning. Stella looked at Stan worriedly but saw no dry twigs to fuel the fire growing in Desita’s eyes and lowered her gaze, relieved. The doctor understood the brief drama and elegantly, with a smile, changed the subject. He asked his fiery niece to connect Stan with local musicians to organize one of their famous jam sessions on her territory. Finally, he ended with a cryptic quote from Radoy:
“Kinship is totalitarianism — you have no right to choose, but it’s real and eternal!...”
Desita smiled, now her eyes lively and mocking; the fire had gone out. For now.

TO BE CONTINUED

HERE`S THE SONG:

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