Fidel Castro Ruz, the world’s longest-serving leader, officially turns 80 today. Fidel will not be celebrating as he has for as long as the world can remember, having suffered what I believe to be a stroke on July 26, the 53rd anniversary of the attack that he and hislittle brother Raul led on Moncada Barracks in the Oriente province of Cuba in 1953. I believe that Fidel must have suffered a stroke and enough paralysis not to be able to stand or even speak, contrary to the information that was given to the world by his ministers. I believe so because it is impossible for Fidel to have the energy and ability to speak and not do so. Speech is as essential to him as breath itself. Speaking is his life.“Tired of talking,” close friend and confidant Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote of Fidel Castro, “he rests by talking.” That is how I remember Fidel, and whatever has happened to him now, whatever has taken speech from him, that is how I wish always to remember him.

On an otherwise uneventful summer day in 1998, on the lawns of the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva, I was led through a motley entourage of admirers, curiosity seekers, security guards, and officials to meet Fidel Castro. He was walking. And talking. The lady who kindly led me to him quickly introduced me and another friend, and took her place in the entourage. Erect as a pole and a full head taller than I, his legendary beard glistening in the morning sun, Fidel placed his right hand around my shoulder and his left around my friend’s shoulder and continued to walk. And talk. He was not in his customary fatigues, the attire that the world has come to identify him with, and there was no pistol on his waist or anywhere in sight. That morning he was dressed in a sharp black suit and a tie the colour of which I no longer recall. He was in town for a meeting of the World Trade Organization.

All week long a great buzz had spread through Geneva that Fidel Castro was on his way. Would he actually arrive? Would he not? Would the Americans have him murdered? Would he have a whole army around to protect him? Around the city instant graffiti appeared on street corners and on bridge rails and billboards. “Viva! El Comandante!” read some of them. “Geneva loves Fidel!” read others. All this was curious, of course, since quite obviously the graffiti was the work of young people whose parents were probably only children when the legend of Fidel Castro was born. One could understand the enthusiasm and tense curiosity among my friends and acquaintances most of whom were middle-aged. Some of them were already in college when a weeping Fidel Castro announced that Che Guevara had died in Bolivia. Some were part of the protests in Europe in `68, and one or two might have been communists or anarchists in a past life. But what of the youths who left the graffiti around Geneva? What did those young people know of Fidel Castro? Why, at a time when the mightiest powers in the world still equated his name with that of the Devil himself, did the young people of Geneva seem to love him so?

Fidel did arrive alright, and when he learnt that a number of Cuban artists had works in an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the World Health Organization, he immediately accepted an invitation to visit the exhibition. I, too, had work in the exhibition and that was my reason for being there that fateful morning. He had no elite unit of sharp shooters around him. Save for a handful of plainclothes security which included a rather very short fellow whom we were told had been his chief personal guard since the revolution, and a few diplomatic and trade delegates, he was plain and alone, and although he stood inches taller than anyone else around, including his security detail, he was as confident as a priest and there was no hesitance in his steps.

As we walked across the lawn, his arm around my shoulder, Fidel paused briefly to give me an opportunity to speak. I spoke in English. Although he has never spoken it in public since America declared its embargo on Cuba in 1961, Fidel Castro has a perfect command of English. As a twelve-year old school child in Santiago de Cuba in 1940, he sent a perfectly hand-written letter in English to President Roosevelt promising to help him find the best iron ore in Cuba if he needed iron for ship-building. And of course as a young man he also spent time in New York.

“Sir,” I began rather haltingly. Fidel lowered his head ever so slightly so he could hear me clearer. “I would like you to know how much I admire and appreciate the work that you have done and the legacy of literacy and free health services that you established for the children of Cuba.” Though spontaneous they were, my words nevertheless sounded rehearsed even to my ears. If they did so to him, however, Fidel did not betray it. Instead, he straightened up, his arm still around my shoulder, and asked in Spanish; “De dondé estas, otra vez?” Where do you come from, again? “Nigeria”, I replied. “Ah! Africa!” he exclaimed, and from that moment on, the stage was his again.

In a measured, almost inaudible tone that Marquez identifies as a legacy of his upper-class, Jesuit education, Fidel Castro enumerated for me the work that Cuba has done in Africa since the revolution. He told me in precise detail how many personnel fought alongside the nationalists in Angola, how many served in Mozambique, how many went with Ché help in the Congo, how many worked in different parts of Africa as doctors and teachers. “We’ve done a lot of work in Africa,” he concluded, “Cuba will always be friends with Africa.”

Then, Fidel let go of my shoulder even as he looked into my eyes as if to say, so long. A tall, dark Afro-Cuban in plain clothes stepped between us from behind. Needless to say, I had other things in mind that I wanted to say to Fidel. I had many questions, too, some of them quite probing and perhaps not so complimentary. I wished to ask questions that would become even more cogent for me when, a year later, I visited Cuba for the first time. But that was not to be. My time with the legend was up. As I was pressed back into the crowd, someone else took my place alongside El Comandante while he walked on across the lawn, and continued to talk. Seconds earlier, a photographer had taken a picture of the group. A few weeks later I received a large black and white photograph in the mail. In the photograph was Fidel Castro on the lawn of the headquarters of theWorld Health Organization in Geneva, his arm around my shoulder. On the back, the photograph bore the official stamp of the information ministry of the Republic of Cuba.

For over half a century, speech was Fidel Castro’s greatest weapon, and those who know him well know that talking is to him like air is to others. Today, however, for the first time in living memory, Fidel Castro will not speak at his birthday. Many have gloated at his unusual silence. Many others around the world have been thrown into quiet grief. But the world will be listening today as it has this past fortnight, as indeed, it always has. And I will forever remember that tempered voice assuring me on a lawn in Geneva that Cuba will always be friends with Africa.

Feliz cumpleaños, El Comandante!

*PS This piece begins by mentioning that Fidel “officially” turns 80 today. There are many who believe that Fidel is in fact younger than he claims and that he exaggerated his age during the revolution so as to seem older and therefore more acceptable as a leader, same way that he exaggerated the number of columns in the Sierra Maestra during the revolution to create the impression that his forces were more numerous than they actually were and that ploy worked. His 1940 letter to Roosevelt in which he states that he is 12 years old appears to confirm that belief. Such stuff is quite consistent with the history of many leaders. At the international airport in Atlanta, Georgia there is a small, permanent exhibit of the personal belongings of Martin Luther King, among which is a pair of glasses with a note that explains that Martin bought the glasses because he thought they would make him look older and more respectable. He was only 26 when he took on leadership of the Civil Rights Movement. But he never got used to the glasses and therefore seldom wore them.