It seems not.

This week we in Cuba saw —parading before the TV cameras— dozens of Cubans who were deported from the Bahamas, after risking their lives to leave the country that they surely love.

I also have learned of a man from Cubanayagua or Sibanicu who herds camels in Egypt. He was found there by a friend of mine from Miami (from Miami?) who was touring the pyramids and suddenly heard a man leading a group of animals shout: ``Tercia, coronel, tercia!'' (Turn, colonel, turn!)

Some years ago I learned of a Cuban who works as a traffic cop in Moscow. In southern Angola, another Cuban runs a trinkets factory. In Helsinki, a fellow named Antonio has a hamburger stand next to the Hotel Marchi. And in Grand Cayman, six Cubans operate a bicycle shop.

But that kind of bizarre internationalism —that dramatic and silent diaspora that to Cuban society is as dreadful as war— is not the worst of it. Exile in Miami, Venezuela, Spain, the Dominican Republic, Panama, or Sweden is not the worst of it. What's worst is the desperation of thousands of men and women of all ages on the island who are trying to get out at all costs.

Here, the most militant revolutionary will surprise you by throwing a party after winning the visa lottery. Or an old Marxism teacher will "discover" a cousin in Florida and can't wait to pay her a visit. It's a national obsession, a vice, a path that many feel is the only way out of the bottleneck.

The Bahamas affair has rekindled the subject, and people on the street talk, argue, debate, and generally become indignant over the Bahamians' rigid position. A 68-year-old Cuban who retired from public service told me [about an acquaintance] not long ago: "If you had told someone in the 1950s that he'd have to take a boat to Nassau to start his life anew, he would have smacked you one. Imagine: from here to the Bahamas!''

Even if the Nassau government has the sovereign right to accept whomever it wants, many sectors of society see the deportations as a betrayal of the little people, those who are eager to find other surroundings or who feel endangered. The politics of state is not a palatable topic for street-corner analysts, so people are more sympathetic toward those who clearly are weaker and have risked their lives.

The spectacle of the repatriated Cubans, the strained language of the government's official announcement, and the wave of commentary and unease that has swept through Cuba shred the regime's prescriptions.

Those who chose to leave were humiliated by being forced to return. We all were humiliated, but the greatest humiliation should befall those whose actions compelled Cubans to leave Cuba. It seems to me that before one offers solutions to the world's problems, one first should look after one's people at home. Things being as they are, I will rephrase an old saying: "You can't be both a beacon to the world and darkness to the country."