“Everything in life comes to an end, except that line of dust that remains between the broom and the dustpan.” I read that phrase on a friend’s page, and at first, I thought it was funny, so much so that I almost burst out laughing, but later, that certainty crushed me and I remembered Kant with certain slyness, Kant, who was interested in “permanence”. And I started thinking of the permanence of dust a while later with a broom on my right hand, trying to hold it tight, and a dustpan on the left.

With every attempt to make the dust go into the dustpan, there were many dust remains left out of it and in front of it…, and then another attempt and again that line of dust persisted. The thing is that dust can be persistent and even impertinent, especially in Cuba. The dust that pesters us is persistent, much more than the persistent insomnia in Virgilio Piñera’s story. Our dust is everywhere, even in the wind.

Cuban dust, the dust of the last 60 years, is of an overwhelming persistence, so much so that it seems unending. We Cubans have a certain appearance of dust, of dust in the wind. The reason is that there is dust everywhere in this island, and it seems to have taken root, dusty roots. Here, dust refuses to go into the dustpan. Perhaps our dust is the most active of all the dusts there have ever been in the world, and the dirtiest one.