In 2006 I flicked through a travel book and came to rest on the pages that homed Cuba. Immediately I had a rush of nostalgia, like the long lost and expatriated veteran coming home. Only I was a stranger to this place. I saw pictures of chipped paint and crack facades revealing beneath the era of the colonial empire. And that of the new world, ironically the world of the 1950s with USSR branding and mid-century American cars. I wanted to go there beyond in place and time. I wanted to get lost in its paved streets and hapless routine, like the people had, staring from their crumbled terraces, expected nowhere and with no place to go. . 40 minutes into arriving in Havana I found myself outside a ration shop. I was with a man
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