Who’s Watching?

Who's Watching? / Yoani Sanchez
Posted on June 17, 2013

His own neighbor watches him. No one has confirmed it, he hasn't read it
any report, and he doesn't have any friends in the police who have
warned him. He's simply not stupid. Whenever he opens the gate to his
house, a white head peers out from next door. For every five times that
he comes and goes, at least three times he runs into the old man who
lives in the next apartment pretending to water the plants in the
passage. The pots are overflowing, but the improvised watcher continues
to add more and more water. Also he asks questions, a lot of questions,
on the most imponderable topics: Um… what you have in that bag, where
did you buy it? It's been some time since you visited your
mother-in-law, right? So he has his own private informer, an
intelligence cell — of just one member — focused on his existence.

The informing neighbor spent Father's Day alone. None of his children
came by to celebrate with him. The truth is, no one ever visits him,
other than two men with military haircuts. Because the old man is
reputed to be someone whom even his own family doesn't support. He is
"more alone than the stroke of one," say the other residents in the
crumbling building. In the middle of the afternoon the watched knocked
on the door of the watcher to give him a piece of cake. "So you can try
it, my daughters brought it"… he said, savoring the victory of feeling
satisfied and visited. A short flash of guilt shone from the eyes of the
nosy one. By nightfall he was already back at his post, checking who
entered and left the adjoining home.

In an unwritten, but very frequent, formula, most of the people involved
in the betrayal of other Cubans also exhibit a great frustration in
their personal lives. Not that every unhappy person becomes an informant
for State Security, but failure is a breeding ground that the recruiters
of informers take advantage of. With these individuals they develop
shock troops willing to destroy others. In the neighborhoods, the
extremists tend to be those with the most disastrous family and
emotional lives. It's not a rule… that's clear… but it's true more often
than not!

To his neighbor, retired, resentful and alone, they have assigned the
task to watch him. They have given him power over his life, an
ascendancy that he enjoys and savors every day. The power to ruin
smiles, to write reports that one day will haul off to prison this
unbearably happy father and husband who lives on the other side of the wall.

17 June 2013

Source: "Who's Watching? / Yoani Sanchez | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/whos-watching-yoani-sanchez/