Miami’s Cubans re-create the country they love through bodily sensation, reinventing life just as it was. In Cuba, the pizzas have thick, burned crusts and cheese only at the center because no one can get enough ingredients or anything but a deep aluminum dish to cook them in — and so, in Miami, with all the resources of capitalism at hand, Cubans make the same pizza. In Cuba, rural teenagers snack on huge, wavy crackers at school and chips called “chicoticos” at home, and so in Miami, Cubans crank out the same crackers and chips.

Yes, Miami’s Cubans re-create everything they can. But when I was there, I didn’t see the white plastic jug where my grandparents always kept olive oil and garlic for their toast in the morning. I didn’t taste the garlicky oil. I didn’t see the heat-scarred pot my family used to heat bathwater. No other water has ever washed me so gently. I didn’t hear the purr of my mom’s fridge, the sound that kept me company when I was home alone as a boy. I thought it scared the dead away.

No one can re-create that Cuba. I’ll never see it again. It was stolen from me forever.

Many of Miami’s Cubans drown this pain in a sea of nonsense. In the hopes of burying their homesickness, or the sorrow of the need they lived through, they embrace the other extreme: prosperity and luxury under capitalism. By now, this way of living is so exaggerated, so distinct, that it’s part of the community’s identity.

On nine of my 10 days in Miami, I ate various meals at various homes and restaurants that were served on plastic plates with plastic flatware, accompanied by water in disposable cups. When I asked why, everyone told me it was “so we don’t get anything dirty.” No one mentioned the environment. What was left of those meals went in the trash, since “no one eats old food here.” When I wanted to go somewhere, even — I swear — to the corner store for a drink, I was offered a ride, since “no one in Miami walks.” I shivered in every store, house, and restaurant I entered: The air conditioning was always set between 60 and 66 degrees Fahrenheit, though it was 92 outside. Friends and acquaintances bragged that they held two or three jobs simultaneously. Downtown, I saw young girls set up smartphones on tripods and pose alone. I discovered that my friend’s children, eight and 13, had a running game: Whoever saw the most Cybertrucks from the back seat of their parents’ car won.