Java Cabana

In a Cuban café, somewhere in Manhattan

A dazzle of light from a room full of crooked mirrors, Ibrahim Ferrer — the sound of son.

Her insatiable giggle is entwined with his thoughts as he treads the borderline of reality where every abstraction gains some form of solidity. There is absolutely no fee while the café is charged with laughter, talk, and music.

The decomposition of his ancestors dog him at every turn of phrase, every word which seems to connect with the music, and in the pockets of his black guayabera, nestled comfortably next to a pack of cigarettes, are bits of folded paper with premature poems written on them.

He tells her his father used to listen to this music and how he loved the brass, the rhythms, and she looks at him, her head tilted to one side, questioningly.

But you’re Sicilian, she says.

Go figure, he replies.

In a flash, thoughts of his childhood comes rushing in, with its gold walls, Spanish lamps, Afro-Cuban Jazz, Bossa Nova, and Flamenco on the stereo, the painting of the bullfighter his artist cousin created for his father hanging on the wall because of his love for the bullfights on Channel 41, a bottle of sangria on the coffee table, and his uncle and grandfather’s ever present guayaberas on their backs in the tropical Miami heat. Yes, they are Sicilians, from a place where Spaniards ruled for centuries, a place where Arabs once built one of the largest mosques since the mesquita in Cordoba.

He tells her they both have more in common than she realized. This elastic landscape in which they both reside often stretches beyond the horizon.

The coffee flows, the music blares.

All the old invocations are served up in meter.

The air is hot and charged with life.                              

New York City, November 2005