Not too far from this dark basement, where we were being held, the trial of the four members of the Working Group of Internal Dissidence was taking place.

Tania wanted to be present at the trial because she is a first cousin of Vladimiro Roca, one of the accused. Odalys wanted to cover the trial as a journalist, and Dulce Maria, a retired librarian and dissident, wanted to be there because she felt that she had the right to show a gesture of solidarity with the accused.

I also wanted to follow the trial as a journalist, as a Cuban citizen and as a friend of the four intellectuals being tried. Yet I was jailed with eight common prisoners accused of violence, assault, armed robbery and pimping.

Of course, many ideas crossed my mind, and I experienced many feelings during those 30 hours in jail. As days go by, however, it is the shame and sadness I feel for Cuba that stays on my mind.

I ask myself, what are these professional and decent women doing in a police-station cell? What is going on in Cuba that honorable daughters of this country, belonging to three different generations and from different political origins and upbringings, may be arrested on the streets and placed in a cell with women accused of prostitution and armed robbery?

I felt more pain for the imprisonment of those three friends than for my own jailing. This is because I perceived their punishment as a symbol anticipating a sacrificial pyre.

Tania and Odalys -- like Marvin Hernandez, who had been imprisoned for 48 hours and began a hunger strike in Cienfuegos -- have demonstrated professionalism, integrity and discipline while going through this exercise of independent journalism in Cuba.

A few hours after being relatively free to go home, I was to have a unique ``meeting'' with Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello [one of the dissidents being tried]. There she was in my living room, the brilliant economist who loves poetry and good music, wearing her prisoner's uniform -- on my TV screen. A state broadcaster was insulting her, calling her a stateless person and a ``marionette of imperialism.''

Since Marta's ``visit'' was so peculiar, I almost commented aloud to her about a note that she sent me from the Manto Negro [Black Cloak] prison at the end of 1998. ``Here we are,'' she had written, ``without any apparent solution but with a lot of faith in God, because there is nothing impossible for Him.''

Marta asked me to put together for her ``some material on neoliberal business globalization and the financial crisis in Asia. I want to state my opinions on the subject.'' A strange request from a woman in prison, it's true. Marta's presence in the kind of Cuba that we have can be disquieting and odd.

Her note concluded: ``Say `hello' to Blanca and tell her I recall her great coffee. I hope God allows me to drink some of it soon, sitting in your living room.''

There I had been with Tania, Odalys and Dulce Maria in the jail, and Marta later ``came'' to my home, and I couldn't even offer her coffee.