A Curious Event / Rebeca Monzo

It’s been several days since I published on my blog due to, among other things, a big accumulation of work and personal matters that have affected me. The last thing I published was related to the first of May and the impact it had on me.

In these days I have had to dedicate myselfthoroughly to my principal activity, handicraft, due to the heap of orders.Dividing this time with my usual routine and having to neglect my blog a little. Also as an extra, my collaboration was requested for a friend’s wedding, which I did with the greatest pleasure. All that leaving me little space for other activities.

Sunday arrived and far from being able to rest, I had to dedicate myself to household chores which were piling up, along with exhaustion, by the end of the week.

In the worst of the moments there appeared on the lower floor of my building a casual lookingyoungster who screamed my name even with spelling errors. I went down to see what he wanted and who sent him. He told me to look for my identification card because he had to deliver something to me. I climbed up to search for my identification but I forgot my glasses.

Look, they’re going to send you a package from Miami and I must take your information to make a delivery, he told me. He took notes on a long, narrow piece of paper like the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) use to cite you to the police, or the famous ballots. He speaks firmly here, and as tired as I was and wishing to finish at once, I signed thatstrip of paper without reading it. Take this CUC (1.00) to exchange for current pesos and you can pay the amount of the package when they bring it to you, which shouldn’t exceed 25 pesos.

When I climbed the stairs back to my apartment with that bill in my hands, I reacted, but the boy had already left. At first it made me laugh, but I immediately panicked. Suddenly I realized the error I had committed. I even came to think he was a State Security Agent disguised as bum, like they usually do. I ran tosend a message to the friend who I presumed had sent the aforementioned package of which I still had no news. What if I have signed on that little strip of paper that I have received it?

Maybe I even signed a promise to do CDR guard duty for a whole year?

Finally, in spite of knowing that I shouldn’t sign anything before reading it, I clumsily did so. Even more in our case, of the alternative blogosphere, in our own country we are constantly being attacked and defamed. What is done is done, it is only left for me to ask God to protect me and pray that all this has not been more than a curious series of coincidences.

May 9 2012