Hemingway’s Cuba: The Old Man and the Sea

by Brian Francis Donohue
As the sun rises over the defunct fishing processing plant on the hill overlooking the bay, the backyard roosters settle into a late morning silence. Everyone in Cojimar, Cuba seems headed for the water. Old men pedal slowly along on Chinese-made Flying Pigeon bicycles, fishing poles balanced on the handlebars. Barefoot kids in tattered shorts jog toward the docks where their friends are already honing their splashless back flips. Families toting scraps of Styrofoam and inner tube floats head out to a rocky beach to pass the day wading in the iridescent shallows.
I am ...