Introductory Note from City of Asylum:
City of Asylum Pittsburgh is honored to have hosted Cuban writer and journalist Jorge Olivera Castillo as a writer-in-residence since November 2021. Jorge has published six books of poetry and two short story collections and is a well-known dissident, whose work has been banned in Cuba. It has been a great privilege to welcome Jorge to Pittsburgh as part of our residency program and to witness how he and his wife Nancy Alfaya Hernandez, a Cuban human rights and women’s right activist in her own right, have flourished here. Jorge’s newest collection of sonnets, En el filo del horizonte (On the Edge of the Horizon) was written during his time in residency in Pittsburgh and reflects themes of love, resilience, the despair of political turmoil, and his experience as an artist living in exile. Jorge’s work has been translated into several languages, including Czech, English, Italian, and Polish.
Translator’s Note by Erin Goodman:
Hard Earth (Tierra dura) is a short story collection by Cuban writer Jorge Olivera Castillo made up of fictional accounts of a soldier in Angola based on Olivera Castillo’s own experiences. “It’s safe to say that this book is the fruit of a miracle,” says Olivera Castillo. “It’s not easy to emerge relatively unscathed from a civil war that took place in the jungle and that lasted for almost thirty years (1975–2002). The few truces that occurred in this period only heightened the conflict. I arrived at that forlorn place at the age of nineteen in the summer of 1981. For twenty-six months I survived in underground shelters, exposed to diseases that almost killed me, sporadic bombardments, insomnia, and hunger. The daytime heat was oppressive, nighttime was cold, and fearsome wild animals made the rounds in the dark early mornings. In short, everything one could imagine from a context where death was as natural as the remarkable duality of lush forests and dusty savannahs: the only landscapes I saw until the day of my much-anticipated return.”
By the time Cuba’s military engagement in Angola ceased in 1991, Cuban casualties numbered around 10,000 dead, wounded, or missing. In total, an estimated one million people were killed and millions more displaced as a result of the conflict. 2025 marks fifty years of independence in Angola, and fifty years since the start of the conflict that would last twenty-seven years. At the same time, the world has been returning to Cold War-era polarization, such that shedding light on another proxy war in Africa could be timely. These stories are told from a personal point of view, with very simplistic language and a matter-of-fact style that focuses on the implications of war on the psyche of young soldiers, rather than pushing any political agenda.
Erin Goodman
“The Feast,” from Hard Earth
The skinless, gutless monkey burned on the bonfire.
It was small, but that didn’t matter much. It would satisfy our hunger and that was enough. We were on the verge of a sunset characterized by thick reddish clouds that took on various shapes molded by the breeze..
“That one looks like a horse,” Arturo pointed his index finger toward the sky through the thin veil of smoke covering his face.
“I don’t think it looks like an animal. Hunger has stimulated your imagination,” replied René, crouching and turning the body of the headless primate on the wooden spit held up by stilts on each end of the campfire.
“It wasn’t an illusion. The cloud was in the shape of a horse. Look! Now it’s a crocodile,” he enthused with his arm extended in the direction of another discovery.
“Compadre, stop looking up there. Come back to earth, where our problems are. I don’t even have the strength to lift my head,” said Bernardo.
“I agree. An empty stomach is why you’re seeing a whole zoo in the sky,” said René.
“Nah. It’s just a distraction from the hunger pangs.”
“We’ll be eating in twenty minutes,” René added.
The announcement stimulated the salivary glands of two of the three soldiers.
It would be their first bite in the two days they had been in the jungle. They supposed they were the only survivors who had managed to escape the devastating attack from the enemy troops.
Since their successful fugue, they had been wandering aimlessly through the dense vegetation that camouflaged hundreds of animals, some less evasive than the monkey on their spit.
Arturo had led the hunt. He hit the target on the third shot. There was just one bullet left in the only magazine. René and Bernardo only had their sharp Russian Kizlyar knives. Their firearms were long gone: both weapons rested at the bottom of the Bomkula River, relegated to a memory of how they had overcome that obstacle in a frantic chase that had begun amid a hail of bullets and explosions of mortar shells.
“I need a break,” said René, pausing from spinning the animal’s rapidly diminishing flesh.
“From what I can see, there’ll be almost nothing left!” exclaimed Bernardo, getting up to take over the cooking duties.
“That’s normal, the volume decreases as it loses body fat. The point is to eat something, even if we’re not satiated,” said René. “So, is this the first time you’ll be eating monkey?”
“It’s my third time,” Bernardo interjected.
Before answering, Arturo made a face and sighed.
“Honestly, the first time I could hardly eat it,” he said. “That was about six months ago in Benguela. We hunted four monkeys slightly larger than this one. I only had one bite and I swallowed it practically without chewing. My world was turned upside down. Although I wasn’t as hungry then as I am right now…”
“Maybe this time you’ll wish you had more. Look how toasty it’s getting. It couldn’t be better. And who knows what’s ahead in the coming days. We need to replenish our energy. Nobody knows how long we’ll have to hold out. We’re in limbo. It seems like there’s no way out of this jungle, it’s like we’re trapped.”
“René, you’re right that when hunger strikes, there’s no room for scruples. How long until dinner?” Arturo joked.
Bernardo assessed the hunk of smoking meat without interrupting his circular arm movement. The monkey would soon be taken off the rod and divided up equally.
“The feast begins in ten minutes,” he announced, raising his voice slightly as if it were a special event. He had assumed the stance of a professional announcer with the palm of one hand cocked to the corner of his mouth to broadcast the news.
The darkness crept in stealthily, breaking the near picture-perfect twilight. The gentle, varied colors yielded to twilight’s menacing shadows.
The three men were minutes away from a fleeting but vital moment of glory. They would face their second nighttime foray, now with only one bullet left and a pair of knives. At least their hunger would be somewhat sated by the bland flesh of the monkey.
They would wholeheartedly celebrate the chance to break their fast and the fact that they were alive.
The sun showed its last flashes. Arturo, leaning against the trunk of an imposing tree, discovered the shape of another animal in one of the clouds blown by the wind.
It’s an elephant, he thought, without voicing the idea.
“I think we can divvy it up now. It doesn’t matter if it’s a little raw inside,” René suggested.
Bernardo agreed, grasping the wooden stick by both ends and bringing it next to the fire near the tree where Arturo sat.
The chunk of meat was about eight inches long and barely four inches wide.
“Any more time and we would have had to settle for sucking on the bones,” René commented.
“Well, it’s better than nothing,” said Bernardo. With a couple of deft movements he extracted the spit from inside the ape and unsheathed his knife from the right side of his leather belt.
Arturo accepted his portion unenthusiastically. Bernardo had carved the meat like a professional butcher.
The soldiers began to quench their voracious appetites. They were aware of its limits. Their emergency dinner was rationed and bland.
René bit frantically, hardly chewing. Arturo took his time between bites. He didn’t feel as voracious as his companions who were determined to gnaw it down to the marrow.
Night thickened over the jungle. The curved sliver-moon was dulled by the fog, giving it a melancholy hue.
“It was delicious, wasn’t it?” Bernardo exclaimed, before taking a sip of water from his canteen.
“I have to admit that it wasn’t bad,” responded Arturo, gnashing at the last piece of meat. “I didn’t savor it like you did, but it was worth it. Now we can hold out until we can hunt something else or find our way out of this labyrinth.”
“Don’t throw away the bone,” said René, holding out his hand.
“I expect your solidarity, mate,” said Bernardo with a wink to reinforce his message.
René looked at him sideways without answering, concentrating on breaking the bone.
“Here you go,” he said dryly.
“Are you upset?”
“No, not at all. Everything’s fine.”
Arturo was the first to lean back against the tree.
In just over a minute, the flames of the bonfire reignited. René had rekindled it with remarkable skill.
Each soldier took his place around the base of the tree. The bark of the trunk showed thick, perfectly outlined striations, shadowy in the gloomy night yet tinged with fine embers from the fire flickering over the mound of dry branches.
The evening was intense. Darkness weighed on their exhausted bodies, as they lay blissfully oblivious to the harsh intermittent jungle noises.
At dawn, the three lay in almost the same positions. The hyena’s first bite was to René’s abdomen. Not one had tried to defend himself. The herd feasted on their corpses.
Translated by Erin Goodman
Three Sonnets from On the Edge of the Horizon
I
At the edge of the landscape
goes life with its brightness and
solid shadows, stuck in old cloths
that claim to mask the wound,
that wind along the vast obverse
of the soul in its intermittent breath;
expatriated in an exilic flash
that ceases suddenly in its reversal.
The days, the seasons go by,
in the pupils of the crowd, lost
in the customary cycles
of speculating on the conditions
—abstracted, sitting, or squatting—
of a trip to who knows what village.
V
Like a spark of light that goes out,
in the slow passage of hours
that mark the beat of each dawn,
obsession is bred by certain virtue.
It seemed the radiance of a diamond—
sprinkled like holy water
over a sole parishioner who meditates
prostrate before an extravagant altar.
In reality, a confused gesture,
embrace rehearsed a thousand times,
the promise of future growth
uncovering the extent of abuse,
motivated by reasons unknown,
betrayal ever present, addictive.
VIII
The moor, the rope, the precipice
complete the dowry of vileness;
they offer us the crude certainty of
the universality of torture.
Greedy promises notoriously made
to serve us up on silver platters,
omens the prophet unleashes
with gestures revealing
a euphoria whose aim is the expedited
mutation of a spacious, rosy orchard
in a garden of bitter truths—
impunity without mitigation,
the insignificance of forgiving, and
the insufferable burdens the human back bears.
Translated by Jonathan Bennett Bonilla
Photo: Pedro Domingos, Unsplash.
