By Lien Estrada

HAVANA TIMES – I’m doing what I call “stockroom work.” Dusting things off, organizing, setting aside some books to offer first… In short, a task that must be done sooner or later.

And I come across a work of fiction that catches my attention. As the good bookseller I aspire to be, I always try to take a look at the books I sell. But I pay special attention to fiction, since it’s one of the things I’ve always wanted to write. I always try to read all the works of fiction that come my way.

This book is by Yunier Riquenes García. It’s called La quietud (Stillness) and was published by Ediciones La Luz.

When I open it and read past the acknowledgments, I come across an idea about that subject so often used and abused in the way we Cubans speak: “resistance.”

If Fidel Castro had said it, I would have closed the book, and that would have been the end of it. But the words are Reinaldo Arenas’s, from “The End of a Story,” and they go like this: “Our time lies in resisting. Our revenge lies in outliving them.” It even made me smile.

The question is: How long have we been talking about this blessed resistance, and this bitter or sweet revenge? Because our Reinaldo left Cuba in the Mariel boatlift in 1980 and took his own life not so many years later—in 1990.. And I’m sure this whole business of resistance goes back to 1959, at least I think so.

I liked the idea, I have to admit.

Although it reminded me of a kind of revenge that a friend once suggested to me, and I think it’s the most beautiful of all: “Be happy.” And she’s right. But to get there, we first have to resist—and will have to keep resisting.

Read more from Lien Estrada’s diary here at Havana Times.