If I were to come across the little golden fish, and it, with its fishy voice, told me I had three wishes to make, I’d need to be prepared. It occurs to me that the wishes shouldn’t be for my own benefit because everyone knows that those who wish for themselves are somehow punished in the end.

I should wish for Cuba, for Cubans, and maybe then the little fish—or its cousin, the tough little shrimp—would get me out of trouble.

Perhaps I could also stumble upon Aladdin’s lamp. I’ve always had luck finding interesting trinkets. If the genie were to ask me what I wanted, I’d need to know what to say.

In the ’90s, there was a popular joke about a man returning home after a long, exhausting day of work. Carelessly, he kicked an old object lying on the ground, picked it up, dusted it off, and, to his surprise, a genie, freshly steaming out of the lamp—because the object turned out to be the magic lamp, abandoned in the middle of Havana—granted him one wish.

The man protested at first, demanding his other two wishes, but the genie “set him straight,” explaining that he only granted one wish and told him to hurry up, as he didn’t have all day. Desperate, the man thought for a moment and, with a grimace, asked the genie for an apartment, as he had housing issues. At the climax of the story, the genie, utterly furious, yelled at the man, asking if he really thought that, had he had an apartment to offer, he would still be living in a lamp.

This is why the topic worries me. I’ve spent my entire life thinking about the three wishes. We even used to play with this idea at home when I was a child, imagining what we would wish for if the situation arose.

Once, I thought of using the first wish to ask the genie what the two best and most important wishes would be. That answer would cost me my first opportunity, but it would ensure I got the other two right. Now I realize what I really wanted was to turn the genie into Chat GPT. Perhaps, at that moment, I was already envisioning artificial intelligence without knowing it.

Another funny story, this time from Soviet folklore, tells of a fisherman trying to catch something with his small net at the mouth of a river. Caught in the old net was a little talking fish, who offered the poor man three wishes in exchange for being returned to the water.

Agitated, the man tested the fantastic creature with his first wish: “Let all the rivers in the world turn into vodka!” exclaimed the fisherman. “Granted!” said the fish. The man dipped a jug into the water, and upon drinking, was left speechless. It was the best vodka he had ever tasted.

Excited, the man shouted his second wish: “Let all the seas in the world turn into vodka!” When he heard that this wish, too, had been granted, he ran to where the river met the sea, and upon tasting the water, his joy was even greater because the vodka was even finer than before. The little fish then reminded him that he had one wish left. Desperate, the man ran back and forth along the small pier, and finally, resigned, said, “Fine, then give me a bottle of vodka.”

In Cuba today, the only “genie” you’re likely to find is the kind synonymous with decent frustration. “How I feel when you leave the bed unmade!” “How I feel when people smoke on the bus!” “I’m so fed up with the president!” and so on. It’s like a sweet righteous anger diluted with formal education.

No one grants wishes in Cuba—not at Christmas, not on New Year’s, not on Farmer’s Day. Maybe the Virgin of Charity, Our Lady of Regla, Saint Barbara, or Saint Lazarus do, but that’s a different level of spirituality. I’m talking about supernatural beings here.

So, I’ll take the opportunity to make three wishes for Cuba and Cubans, just in case I get lucky and come across the lamp, the golden fish, or whatever it may be.

I wish that in 2025 the lights won’t go out—not the lights in lamps, refrigerators, or bulbs, and not the light in souls, hopes, or pending dreams.

I wish that in 2025 voices won’t be silenced—that we continue to speak to mothers, fathers, partners, friends, neighbors, compatriots, the government, the leaders, the oppressors about what we feel, what we are, what we believe, what fills us, and what drowns us.

I wish that in 2025 there will only be floods of joy, blushes igniting cheeks, collapses of ill intentions, and penetrations that aren’t from the sea or pirates. Let marital beds shake and let family cupboards overflow.

This article was translated into English from the original in Spanish.