All of Cuba celebrates Dr. Francisco Durán's birthday, spokesman for the Ministry of Public Health for the pandemic

June 6, 2020

It was 1:05 p.m. My grandmother, leaning forward in her armchair, turned toward me and told me something unexpected: "Alejandro, I think I'm falling in love with Doctor Durán." I answered with a Who?, more out of a need to verify than surprise, to check if my hearing, still somewhat dull, had correctly decoded that name.

"Doctor Durán… I think I'm falling in love with him, and that's definitely bad," she told me with a mischievous smile and a special sparkle in her seventy-something black eyes. I continued looking at her and I laughed too, though I didn't say a word while she, flirtatiously, detailed the peculiarities of her new love to me:

"He's a bit younger than me… but he's all there, and he works every day," she wielded her arguments like someone who knows a lot about good prospects and suitors from the twentieth century, and the surprise of her declaration made me think that she was happy being unfaithful to my grandfather, even if it was with a television love. Had she adapted to the new times?

And it is that nothing separates my grandmother from reality, always punctual to every news program broadcast on our channels. The National News, the magazine Real Time and Telesur are part of her daily programming, without ruling out, of course, the daily nine o'clock report with Doctor Francisco Durán García…

Yes, the Director of Epidemiology of the Ministry of Public Health, who can be considered the most popular figure in Cuba in 2020 or, at least, the one with the fastest rise to media prominence, thanks to his press conferences updating us on the situation of COVID-19 in the country.

It's true that his face inspires the confidence of a paternal being, of a grandfather who advises how to take care of ourselves in the face of adversity, and even though we can only see his eyes, we know that he wants the best for us, his people.

Perhaps those feelings of admiration and gratitude toward him transform into attraction for many people, especially older ones… Who could doubt it?, and perhaps my grandmother is not the only one who is "falling in love" with his gifts in this aging country.

Sometimes during this time of staying home, when I wake up late grandmother is already rocking in the armchair in front of the television; sometimes alone and other times with my grandfather, who is unaware of future "betrayals," fortunately not fatal ones.

She doesn't neglect her schedule —not even now that mine is disrupted—, and always when I wake up she places her forehead against mine in a "kiss from afar," as we christened it in the family…

Until that day when I woke up past one o'clock in the afternoon and the Midday News had already begun, and then she didn't even look at me, absorbed in the images on the screen, and the news I had for breakfast, instead of my usual glass of milk, was that naive revelation: "Alejandro, I think I'm falling in love with Durán."