What's in a name? Date? Place?
I recently visited my aunt, to whom I owed some quality time prior to leaving the country. During the course of the week, I asked her questions about her side of our family as we purportedly have roots in the Asturias and Galicia regions of Spain and I am unfamiliar with that region and not-so-distant family history; she deferred most of the queries to my mother, who she claims is the family historian. When my grandmother passed away in February at 95, my aunt, who made all the burial arrangements, called my mother to confirm where my grandmother had been born for the obituary. Since my mother wasn't home to answer the phone, my aunt went with Galicia, Spain. Turns out my grandmother was born in Cuba; her elder sister was born in Spain.
Twelve years ago this summer, my father died suddenly of a cerebral aneurysm in the early evening of July 25th in Miami. At the time, his three daughters were scattered across the country with me living in New York, another recently moved to Massachusetts for graduate school, and the youngest at a wedding in the Midwest with her boyfriend. My mother kept him on a respirator until the next day, when we had all flown in to pay our respects and to facilitate organ donation. That was the 26th of July.
My father was a political scientist specializing in Latin America and an anti-Castro, pro-democracy Cuban American; his date of death simply could not be shared in history with the Castro brothers. Together with Che, Fidel and Raul named the revolution that eventually toppled the Batista government, The July 26th Movement, to commemorate a failed attack on the same day in 1953 that landed Fidel and Raul in jail for two years. There was no way in hell my father's death could be remembered on this day. The death certificate says the 26th. The headstone is engraved with the 25th.
And then there is the matter of my arrival in the gulf in a mere 10 days. Like Bengali culture Jhumpa Lahiri describes in her novel,
The Namesake, many Latin families baptize their children with a formal name and nickname them something totally different, using the nickname in the house and within the family. That distinction blurs throughout childhood in situations like athletic events when said parents enthusiastically cheer on their kids, hollering the nickname that teammates and coaches likely don't know. I always preferred my nickname to my given name and legally changed it accordingly a few years ago.
I got a little nervous about the name thing in the spring when, as a foreigner, I was required to submit copies of my academic credentials and other personal documentation to my prospective employer. Of course, my documentation is in both the given and the legal nickname. Despite sending copies of the court papers and explaining the situation, the Ministry of Labor issued my work visa to my given name, which is no longer my legal name and which is not reflected on my passport. The correct visa was requested a few weeks ago and the fear is to entering the country with a tourist visa, should the work visa not be properly issued in time. The colossal hassle to straighten that out, during Ramadan, when half the country is on holiday or working part-time is a headache I am desperate to avoid. I am envisioning the great stand-off in a week or so, when I may refuse to board the flight until my visa is correctly issued. Unfortunately, it seems I have to sweat this small thing ...
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