October – Cubaperiodistas

2024-10-03 18:46:04

October 2, 2024.- It is a hot morning in Havana, luckily I have electricity and a good connection, it seems like something elementary, but it has become unusual on the rebellious island, punished by the United States with the most inhumane, cruel. and a long ban on history, for sin to be free and sovereign.

Because of the time difference, I take advantage as I wait for news from my brothers in the middle of the horror in Gaza and Beirut. I ask Doctor Fayez if there is news about the director of the Hospital, Dr. Muhammad Muhanna, who was kidnapped in December by the Israeli army. Fayez is a young Palestinian doctor who graduated in Cuba, he treats children, pregnant women and anyone who comes injured or requires care at the Al Awda Clinical Surgical Hospital, in northern Gaza.

– Nothing is known yet, he answers me and puts a sad face in his answer.

—Were you able to go to your parents’ house in the center of Gaza?

–We don’t have a house anymore, it was destroyed, I live in the hospital. My parents had to move to a refugee camp in southern Gaza.

He sends me a photo of himself and other doctors attending a birth. Fayez has not left the Hospital since October last year.

For every 100 children who die in Gaza, another 100 are born Respond from Gaza

Fayez asks how we are doing here, in his other homeland, he sends love to everyone. He tells me that he is very busy now and that he will send another photo tomorrow, he leaves me a Palestinian-Cuban hug and heart.

Dr Fayez (centre) with his colleagues. October 2024, a child was born from Gaza.

I feel kind of embarrassed by my tendency to blackout for a few hours and the intermittent connection. Gaza makes us reevaluate everything. Even the glass of water we drink is missing for the children Fayez looks after.

October, a month of historic revolutions, continues to make a difference. Just as before and after October 7, 2023, which questions the dehumanization of the world in which we live, there is also a beginning on this October 1, where a woman, for the first time in the history of Mexico, who A. a woman of science and conscience, firm and brave, she leads the United States of Mexico and at the inauguration ceremony she promises to work for the poor. Our joy was the inauguration day of Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico.

October 1st when Iran directed hundreds of missiles at the headquarters of the fascist Israeli army and the Mossad in occupied Palestine. “Iran has not been at war for 45 years and has not declared it. We do not attack civilian targets but military targets” “In response to the martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and the martyr Nilforoushan,” declared the military and religious authorities of Iran, in response to the selective assassination of their best leaders.

Although Fayez promises to send me a current photo from his hospital in Gaza, I write to my friends in Beirut who hardly sleep these days.

–This is a horror, answers Mohamed, Beirut is destroyed.

I ask Kifah, whom I met in the Sabra-Chatila refugee camp in Beirut, during a visit in October 2015, about the situation.

–We had to move from the refugee camp, abandon our homes, because there is no safe place. The destruction in different neighborhoods of Beirut is complete.

—We were unable to begin the tasks of removing debris from the streets due to continuous bombing. The hospitals collapsed.

I ask about the comrades of the Democratic Party of Lebanon and the Communist Party, whom I met during the battle for the freedom of the five Cuban patriots and about the leaders of the House of the People.

The majority fighting alongside the Resistance, others have fallen, everyone from their rightful place, Kifah answers.

I ask about the beautiful building in south Beirut where I stayed.

-It was completely destroyed, nothing remained of it, only the smoke from the bombs and the dust. They unleashed a barrage of vacuum bombs, they didn’t even leave debris, they pulverized everything. There were no leaders living there, there was no arsenal of weapons, they were just families, workers, professionals, neighbors for life, who were forced after the first bombing to move.

A chill runs through my body, I’m looking for photos of that visit not so long ago. And I see the refugees and the orphan girl who only asked me: “Don’t forget about us.” What will become of them all?

As if yesterday, I see Kifah handing me the red scarf with the image of Che that a Palestinian mother brought to the prison where she was held for seven years in Israel. “He helped me get through those years,” Kifah said. He gave it to me to help us against us. The scarf was in the hands of our colleagues in Venezuela when the 2017 guarimbas burned the Chavistas alive; It went into the hands of our Brazilian sisters when Lula was imprisoned in Curitiva.

He must return to travel again today, from hand to hand, from resistance against Gaza and Beirut, to our Palestine and our Lebanon.

That visit confirmed my convictions, and my spiritual, cultural and political views. I have always been focused on the brutal attack of imperialism towards Latin America and its forms of expression in old Europe. Like all conscientious people who embrace the values ​​of peace, people’s self-determination and the protection of human rights, I have always maintained my unconditional solidarity with occupied Palestine. Hand in hand with my partner in the struggle, my soulmate, my sister Wafica Ibrahim, I arrived in Beirut that October. Wafi, as we all affectionately call her, heads the José Martí Cultural Association, is a member of the FDIM, coordinator of the Lebanese chapter of the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity for the People, and a liaison. for Latin American countries, as the Latin American director of the Pan-Arab Network Al Mayadeen TV, whose president, the famous journalist and professor Ghassan Ben Jddou, leads with excellence and is also known for his unconditional solidarity with Cuba.

With my sister Wafica in Beirut.

It was thanks to Wafica that I was able to get to know the immense cultural wealth of Lebanon closely, its streets and churches, its coasts hit by the Mediterranean Sea, where beautiful music festivals took place. I learned about their spices and sweets, their music, their respect for all religions, and the strength of their resistance.

Wafi was waiting for me at dawn at Beirut airport, always cheerful and loving, she welcomed me with open arms. On the way to the city I noticed the trenches guarded by young men from the army, some with sandbags, others with barbed wire. I asked if something was happening … Wafi answered with his usual calmness: bridges and places of interest can suffer terrorist attacks from the Zionists.

Since 2006, when Lebanon responded triumphantly to Israel’s war, the trenches are still there. As dawn broke as we entered the city, I saw posters and parades in the streets with images of martyrs. In Lebanon, fighters are honored in the same way as in Cuba. I had a real sense of the ethical, moral and political value they mean to both communities, across the distances that separate us. I learned that the universal language of those who fight is immediately understood by the smile and the hug they receive for us. In the tea they offer us, like the Cuban coffee cup. I also learned what Abel Prieto, president of Casa de las Américas, reminds us today, that imperialism and Zionism are twin brothers.

Far from us, from Havana that I love so much, I want to be there with Wafica, so respected by the Cuban people, and so respected by the free press, by our social movements and our -political organizations. Wafica has such a great soul, because of her extraordinary work and solidarity, we are loved by the noblest and most worthy leaders. And today I don’t have enough time to answer everyone who asks about Wafica from so many countries…

It’s midnight. I speak to her to give her strength, but she is the one who gives it to all of us. So that he reaches heroic Gaza, the Beirut that stands, all the workers of the Irish Language League Al Mayadeen that they continue to transmit in the midst of the bombs so that the truth reaches the world, to Kifah and all the Refugees, to the orphan girl who asked me not to forget them, to Fayez and her children, to the prisoners all in the fascist prisons of “Israel”. In that strength and resistance to life the hope is growing that we will laugh again and talk about our lives without asking how many of us have been killed today?

Palestine-Lebanon and Cuba meet with the same heart, the heart of those who resist and will never surrender despite the endless damage of imperialism and Zionism. It is a great source of pride for the entire free press that two Cuban journalists from Prensa Latina who came to Beirut in 2022, witnesses of so much pain since October of last year, are reporting on from there. One day they were asked if they wanted to return, they answered like Martí: “I want to spend my lot with the poor of the country.”

From that building where Wafica’s house was and where I stayed, destroyed by the hatred of fascist Zionism, where there was so much life, joy, books, portraits, jasmine and spices, furniture and those little things that we keep in our dtithe , which seems to hold a special place in the heart and has an incalculable value, which contained the most sacred of the Cuban Revolution in one of its rooms. From that beautiful building that no longer exists physically but can never be erased from those who lived there, I am left with the flowers of Beirut, the beautiful flowers of Lebanon that our Lebanese sisters and brothers gave me one October afternoon. Those flowers from the land of cherr, just 90 miles from the land of olive trees, that are born again sooner than later, like the children of Gaza.

To Wafi, my friend, safe as she works with all the pain on her back, may love and solidarity reach all her brothers who are struggling around the world. In this Cuba that welcomed you as one of its most worthy daughters, your home will always be. (Taken from Cuba in brief).