"When you have no detergent, no soap to bathe, no oil, no rice to eat, it drives people crazy. ... You're constantly fighting to feed your family," Jorge Aluar, recent immigrant, on life in Cuba.
I first heard about Jorge Aluar a couple weeks ago, in an e-mail from a reader in Miami. Honestly, I didn't believe the story.
Until I saw the pictures.
And I saw Aluar's face.
The Associated Press tells his incredible story:
Jorge Aluar saw the 14 other Cubans on his boat, fainting and vomiting from dehydration and exposure on their eighth day drifting in the Caribbean. He decided to jump in the sea and drown.The man with "USA" tattooed on his chest had attempted suicide in a Cuban jail, drinking acid and asking a fellow inmate to cut his legs so he could bleed to death - bouts with despair stemming from his life as a man with amputated arms.
Doctors had helped him live. This time, the lifesaver was a best friend who left his family in Cuba to help Aluar make it here, who today bathes Aluar and helps feed him. He stopped Aluar from diving in.
"I told him he had to keep fighting because he has two children in Cuba," said Lazaro Jardines, 29, who arrived in Miami with Aluar almost three weeks ago. "If he took the first step in this process, he had to keep moving forward, until we all die or we all get rescued."
Aluar, Jardines and 13 others clandestinely left Cuba in March on a homemade boat - part of the steady stream fleeing the communist island. The boat broke down, and they spent 10 days adrift before they were rescued by a smuggler's boat and taken to Cancun, Mexico. Aluar and Jardines were held there six days until a relative in Miami paid $2,000 for their release.
A bus ride to Tijuana, a border crossing, a taxi ride to San Diego and three flights followed before the two men arrived in Miami with specific goals in mind.
"I want to replace my arms," said Aluar, 37. "After that, I plan to bring my wife and my children over. But what I want the most is to get new arms."
Read the rest of the story here.
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