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Home at last Elian Leaves, The Bitterness StaysBy Rick Horowitz
Did you see that wave? I tell you from my heart, this was not the wave of a happy boy. It made us so unhappy also, all of us sitting for so many hours watching the TV in front of Lazaro's house, hoping every minute for some miracle. There was such sorrow here, and in all of Little Havana, but also anger, because we knew. We knew better than anyone that his wave was not a happy wave. This was when his father put him on the plane to go back -- his father, who never even let Lazaro and Marisleysis visit with him, or even talk to him for weeks and weeks! (I ask you, what kind of person keeps a little boy from relatives who love him?) So this was when his father put him on the plane, after the courts betrayed us and the politicians abandoned us, and he went on the plane and his father made him come back to the door to wave to those people. But this was not a happy wave. His hand did not move the way a happy hand moves. This was the way a machine moves, or a puppet. "Like a puppet!" we were thinking when we saw his hand, and also his face, which was not a happy face. Not even the government could doctor these pictures like they doctored all those other pictures, to make a smiling Elian for the world. This was on live television, and we saw what we saw. This was not a happy face, and yet he waved, like a machine, and I know exactly why: the brainwashing, and the drugs. This is the only explanation that makes sense. Not "tired." Not "overwhelmed." These explanations are ridiculous. This little boy did not want to leave a land of freedom, did not want to return to the dictator's land, so they put things in his food that made him not resist when the time came to take him away. Even before he got on the plane, this was obvious -- did you see how he stumbled when he walked down those steps to go to the plane? Does a little boy not know how to walk down steps? Does a little boy stumble? Not unless there are drugs, and probably also brainwashing. They will deny it, as they always deny it, but I am sure of this. That was when they left, but look also at the pictures when they landed. Did the boy run out of the plane, run with a big smile because he was so happy to be back in that place? Absolutely not. His father had to carry him off the plane, his father with his arms wrapped around so tight that we cried when we saw how he held him, like a prisoner! Either the drugs were so strong that Elian could not walk any longer for himself, or the drugs had started already to wear off so he realized what was happening to him and he refused to walk. But one or the other it had to be. And again he did not smile -- we all noticed this right away. He did not smile when his father carried him off the plane, and he did not smile when his grandfather held him up in the air, or even when all the little children from his school called out his name to him: "Elian! Elian!" These children, they were brainwashed also, I am certain, to get on the buses and come to the airport. Even so, even when all of them called his name, he did not smile, or only the smallest smile there ever was, and I know exactly why: because he did not want to get off that plane. He did not want to be there! He could see what was waiting for him in that place, and how he will be manipulated by people who are acting only for themselves, and who are willing to use a little boy to fight their own fights, and who are not thinking before everything else, "What is best for Elian?" Such behavior is almost unimaginable, and yet, as young as he is, he seems somehow to understand it. It is almost as if he has lived through it somewhere before. This I cannot explain. Posted 6/29/00. Come
back to "Rick's" for plenty of smiles -- fresh stuff right here twice
weekly!
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Rick Horowitz