Even Silence Has an End

by Ingrid Betancourt

  No one, however, was able to name any of the thousands of birds that crossed our sky. I’d been surprised to see kingfishers, egrets, and swallows, and I was delighted that I could recognize them just as if they were flying out to me from the pages of a picture book. The parrots and parakeets with their brilliant, deceptive feathers were outraged by our passage. They flew away from their shelters, then returned as soon as we went by, giving us a chance to admire their magnificent wings. There were also those that flew off like arrows, skimming the water alongside us, as if they were racing our boat. They were little tiny birds with marvelous colors. Sometimes I thought I could see cardinals or nightingales, and I remembered my grandfather watching out for them for hours from his window, and now I understood him, the way I understood so many things I hadn’t taken the time to grasp before.

  One bird fascinated me more than all the others. It was turquoise, the underside of its wings was fluorescent green, and its beak was bloodred. When I saw it I alerted everyone, not only in the hope that someone might be able to tell me its name but above all from a need to share the sight of this magical creature.

  I knew these visions would remain etched forever within me. But not as good memories, for good memories are only those you can share, especially with your loved ones. If only I had known the name of that bird, I would have felt I could bring it back with me. But there, nothing was left.

  We finally reached the end of our journey. We had sailed down a wide river, which we then left behind to head up a secret tributary hidden behind thick vegetation and winding unpredictably around a small hill. We disembarked in dense jungle. We sat on our belongings and waited while the guys went at it with their machetes to clear a space for our camp.

  In a few hours, they built a wooden dwelling with a zinc roof, closed on all sides, with a narrow opening for a door. It was a cage! I was afraid to go in. I anticipated that this new walled-in space would exacerbate the tension between Clara and me.

  After my third escape attempt, when Yiseth had recaptured me near the river, a group of six guerrillas, including Ferney and Jhon Janer, erected an iron fence all around the cage. At night they locked us in with a padlock.

  Behind the metal fence, the feeling of imprisonment plunged me into unbearable distress. I stood there for days praying in an attempt to find an explanation, some meaning behind my misfortune. Why, why?

  Ferney was on duty once and came over. He handed me a tiny radio that he could just squeeze through the mesh of the fence. “Here, listen to the news, it will take your mind off things. Hide it. Believe me, this fence hurts me more than it does you.”

  After they had locked us in like rats, they spent several days digging a hole behind our cage, taking turns. At first I thought they were setting out to dig a trench. Then, when I saw that the hole was getting deeper and that they weren’t digging it all the way around the cage, I concluded it must be a grave, so they could kill us and throw us in. I had not forgotten that FARC had threatened to assassinate us after one year of captivity. I lived in terrible dread. I would have preferred for them to announce my execution. Uncertainty was eating away at me. It was only when the porcelain toilet made its appearance that I realized they were merely building a cesspool. They had just finished digging nine feet down, as they’d been ordered. They thought it was great fun to jump into the hole and climb out again without any help, just the strength of their arms, slithering up a wall so smooth and shiny it looked polished by a machine. Someone came up with the idea of letting me have a go, too, and I refused at once, adamantly.

  My obstinacy only served to get them all the more excited. They pushed me in, and I found myself at the bottom of the hole, frightened yet determined. They had placed their bets. Everyone was shouting and laughing, eager for the show to commence.

  Clara came up to the hole and gave a doubtful look. “She’ll make it,” she predicted.

  I did not share her conviction. Ultimately, however, I proved her right, with much effort and just as much luck. The joy of the two guerrillas who had placed their bets on my success made me laugh. For a moment the barriers that kept us apart had fallen and another division, subtler, very human, had surfaced. There were those who disliked me because of what I represented. They saw in me everything that they were not. And then there were the others, like Ferney and Jhon Janer, the ones who were curious to know who I was and who were ready to build bridges rather than walls. And there was Clara, who had played the referee this time, and who had come out in my favor. In spite of the tension between us, she had wanted me to succeed, and I was grateful to her for that.

  This interlude of peace among all of us helped us to prepare our first Christmas in captivity. We had to let bitterness flow between our fingers like water you can’t hold back anymore.

  To me the most unbearable thing of all was the distress I must be causing my family. This was their first Christmas without my father, and without me. In a way I felt more fortunate than they were, because I could imagine them together on Christmas, which is also my birthday. But they knew nothing about what had happened to me, and they didn’t even know whether I was still alive. The idea of my son, Lorenzo—who was still a young boy—of my teenage daughter, Melanie, and of Sebastian, already an adult, all tormented by the horrors their imagination might construe regarding my fate was driving me mad.

  To escape from my labyrinth, I busied myself with making a manger from the clay that had been dug up for the cesspool, molding figurines dressed in the tropical bulrush that grew abundantly in the surrounding swamps. My work attracted the attention of the young girls. Yiseth wove a lovely garland of butterflies with the metallic paper from cigarette packs. Another came to cut out cardboard angels with me, and we hung them from the tin roof just above the manger. Finally, two days before Christmas, Yiseth came back with an ingenious system of Christmas lights. She had obtained a supply of little flashlight bulbs that she’d fastened to an electric wire. All it took was contact with a radio battery and we had Christmas lights in the middle of the jungle.

  I was surprised to see that they had also decorated their caletas for the occasion. Some of them had even put up Christmas trees, the branches draped with surgical cotton and decorated with childish drawings.

  On Christmas Eve, Clara and I hugged each other. She gave me some soap from her supply. I made a greeting card for her. We had somehow become a family—and as is the case with real families, we hadn’t chosen each other. Sometimes, like that day, it was reassuring to be together. We prayed and sang our few villancicos, traditional Colombian carols, and we knelt on the ground by our makeshift manger, as if our songs could take us home again even if just for a few moments.

  Our thoughts bore us far away. Mine traveled to another space and another time, to the place where I had been a year earlier with my father, my mother, and my children, amid a happiness I thought was unshakable—and that only now could I fully appreciate.

  Lost in our meditation, we had not noticed that there was a crowd behind us: Ferney, Edinson, Yiseth, El Mico, Jhon Janer, and the others had come to sing with us. Their strong, steady voices filled the forest and seemed to resonate ever louder, beyond the barriers of thick vegetation, toward the sky, beyond the stars, toward the mystical North, where it is written that God dwells, and where I imagined he could hear the silent quest of our hearts only he could answer.

  EIGHTEEN

  FRIENDS WHO COME AND GO

  We had a new recruit. William and Andrea had captured a baby monkey. One evening when we had just set up camp for the night by the river, we saw a family of monkeys swinging from branch to branch in the treetops, stopping just long enough to throw sticks at us or piss to mark their territory. A mother with her baby hanging from her back clung carefully to make sure her baby was holding on. William shot the mother. The baby fell at his feet, to become Andrea’s mascot. The same bullet that had killed its mother had injured its hand. The little animal cried like a child and licked its fingers, not understanding wh
at had happened. Now it was tied by a rope to a bush near Andrea’s caleta. Rain had begun coming down, and the little monkey was shivering, all alone, looking wet and wretched. I had a small flask of sulfonamide in my belongings that I’d managed to hang on to since the day of my abduction. I decided I would treat the baby monkey. The little animal was screaming with fear, pulling on the rope and nearly choking itself. Bit by bit I took its tiny hand, all black and soft like a human hand in miniature. I covered its wound with the powder and made a bandage around its wrist. It was a baby female. They had baptized it “Cristina.”

  Once we settled into the camp, I asked for permission to go to say hello to Cristina. When she saw me coming, she would call out with joy. I would keep something from my morning food ration to give to her. She would grab it from my hands and run off to eat it with her back to me.

  I heard Cristina shrieking violently one morning. The guard explained that they were bathing her because she smelled bad. Finally I saw her coming at a run, dragging her rope behind her and moaning with sorrow. She grabbed hold of my boot desperately, looking behind her to see if anyone was following. She then clambered up to cling to my neck and eventually fell asleep with her tail wrapped around my arm so she wouldn’t fall.

  They had given her hair a military haircut that they called la mesa (the table), which gave her a flat head, and they’d dunked her in the water to give her a good rinse. Cristina’s bath became a regular torture. Andrea had decided that the little monkey had to get used to her daily grooming, like a human being. Cristina in response would shit everywhere, which made Andrea and William hysterical. Whenever she managed to escape, she came to me. I cuddled her, I talked to her, and I trained her as much as I could. When Andrea would come to get her, she would shriek and cling to my shirt. I had to force myself to hide my sorrow.

  One day the guy who brought the supplies in the motorboat brought with him two little dogs that Jessica wanted to train. I never saw Cristina again. Andrea came one evening to explain that she and William had gone deep into the forest to release Cristina. It made me very sad; I’d grown so fond of Cristina. But I was relieved that she was free, and whenever I heard monkeys overhead, I would look up in the hope of seeing her again.

  One night when I was again prey to insomnia, I overheard a conversation that made my blood run cold. The guards were joking together, saying that Cristina had been the best meal Jessica’s dogs had ever had.

  Cristina’s story shook me profoundly. I was so angry at myself that I hadn’t done more to help her. But above all I knew that I could not afford the luxury of any attachment while in the hands of the FARC, as it could use one to blackmail me and alienate me further. Perhaps that was why I tried to keep my distance from everyone, in particular Ferney, who was often kind.

  After my aborted escape, he had come to see me. He felt terrible about what his comrades had done to me. “Here, too, there are good people and there are bad people. But you mustn’t judge the FARC on the basis of what the bad people do.”

  Every time Ferney was on duty, he managed to start up a conversation, taking care to speak loudly so that the entire camp could follow. His invariable topic was politics. He justified his armed struggle on the basis that too many people in Colombia lived in poverty. I answered that the FARC wasn’t doing anything to combat poverty—on the contrary, the organization had become an important cog in the system it was claiming to fight against, because it was a source of corruption, drug trafficking, and violence. “You are becoming a part of this,” I argued.

  He was born nearby. He came from a very poor family; his father was blind, and his mother, a peasant, did what she could with a small acre of land. All his brothers had gone into subversive activities. But he liked what he was doing. He was learning things, had a career ahead of him, had friends among the guerrillas.

  One afternoon he escorted me to work out in the gym Andres had built on the border of the camp. There was a jogging track, parallel bars, a horizontal bar, a hoop for practicing somersaults, and a beam three yards from the ground for practicing jumps. Everything had been built by hand, by removing the bark from young trees and fixing the bars to sturdy trunks with lianas. Ferney showed me how to jump from the beam to land properly on the ground, which I did—in spite of my fear—just to impress him. I couldn’t keep up with him when he did push-ups or other endurance exercises. But I beat him in some of the acrobatics and exercises that required suppleness. Andres joined us and gave us a demonstration of his strength that confirmed he’d had years of training. I asked to use the gym on a regular basis, but he refused. He did, however, allow us to take part in the guerrillas’ training, which started every morning at four-thirty. Some days later he had parallel bars put up near the cage for Clara and me to use.

  Ferney had intervened in our favor. I thanked him.

  “If you find the right words, the proper tone of voice, and you ask at the right moment, you’re sure of getting what you want,” he replied.

  After a quarrel I had with Clara, Ferney came over to the fence and said, “You’re letting it get to you. You have to create a distance; otherwise you’ll go insane, too. Ask them to separate you. At least you’ll get some peace.”

  He was very young—he must have been seventeen. And yet his remarks made me reflect. He had a generous soul and an uncommon sense of honesty. He had gained my respect.

  Among the things I lost in the raid was the rosary I had made out of a wire that I had found lying on the ground. I decided to craft a new one by removing the buttons from the military jacket I’d been given and using bits of nylon thread I had left over from my weaving.

  It was a fine day in the month of December, the dry season in the jungle, the best in the year. A warm breeze caressed the palm trees, filtering down to us through the foliage, bringing a rare sensation of tranquillity.

  I was sitting outside the cage, in the shade, working furiously in the hope of finishing my rosary that same day. Ferney was on duty, and I asked him to cut me some little pieces of wood to make a crucifix that I could hang from my rosary.

  Clara was getting lessons in belt weaving from El Mico, who would stop by to check on her progress from time to time. As soon as her teacher left, seeing that Ferney was bringing the little cross to me, she stood up, a tense look on her face. She dropped her weaving and threw herself at Ferney, as if she wanted to tear his eyes out.

  “So you don’t like what I’m doing? Go on, say it!”

  She was much taller than he was, and she was taking a provocative pose, thrusting her torso forward, which obliged Ferney to duck his head so as not to brush against her body. He gently took his rifle to put it out of her reach and withdrew, cautiously stepping backward, saying, “No, no, I like what you are doing a lot, but I’m on duty. I can’t come and help you right now.”

  She pursued him for a dozen yards or so, provoking him, shoving him, lunging at him, while he continuted to move backward to avoid physical contact. Andres was alerted by the other troops and came to order us back into our cage. I silently complied. Maturity had nothing to do with age. I admired Ferney’s self-control. He trembled with rage but had not reacted.

  When I shared my thoughts with him, he replied, “When you carry a weapon, you have a responsibility toward other people. You can’t afford mistakes.”

  I, too, could choose how to react. But I was often wrong. Life in captivity had not removed the necessity to act in the right way. It was not about pleasing others or gaining support. I felt I had to change. Rather than try to adapt to the ignominy of the situation, I had to learn to be a better person.

  Drinking my usual hot drink one morning, I saw a red and blue flash overhead in the foliage. I pointed to show the guard the extraordinary guacamaya that had just landed a few yards above us. It was a huge parrot, a vision of paradise with carnival colors, and it sat watching us, intrigued, from up on its perch, unaware of its extreme beauty.

  What had I done? The guards sounded the alarm, and Andres hurried
over with his hunting rifle. The bird was easy prey; it was no feat to kill this magnificent, naïve creature. A second later its inert body lay on the ground, a pile of blue and orange feathers scattered everywhere.

  I took it out on Andres. Why had he done something so pointless and stupid?

  He answered, spitting his words out like a machine gun, “I can kill what I want! Especially pigs and people like you!”

  There were reprisals. Andres felt that I had judged him, and his behavior changed abruptly. We had to stay within six feet of the cage at the most and were not allowed to go to the rancha or walk around the camp anymore. The bird ended up in the garbage, and for weeks its beautiful blue feathers were scattered all over the camp, until the new rains brought the mud and buried them completely. I vowed to be cautious and keep quiet. I observed myself as I never had before, and I understood that spiritual fulfillment required a constancy and rigor that I needed to acquire. I had to watch myself, to stop repeating the same mistakes, I concluded, keep my impetuous nature in check.

  The days had been warm. The streams had all dried up, and the river where we went to bathe had decreased by half. The young people played games of water polo in the river with the plastic balls they had saved from roll-on deodorants. They looked like miniature Ping-Pong balls, and they vanished easily in the water. The battles to catch them degenerated into free-for-alls that were always fun. I had been invited to play with them. We spent a few afternoons like children. Until the weather changed and Andres’s mood with it.

  The rains brought bad news. Ferney told me he was going to be transferred to another camp. Andres had taken an intense dislike toward him, accusing him of being too kind and standing up for me. Disheartened, Ferney said to me, “Ingrid, you must always remember what I’m going to say to you: If they treat you badly, always respond with goodness. Never lower yourself, don’t react to insults. You must know that silence will always be your best response. Promise me that you will be careful. Someday, I will see you on television when you will get back your freedom. I am waiting for that day. You do not have the right to die here.”