Hostage
I have been fascinated with the news of Ingrid Betancourt’s rescue from FARC, her Columbian captors. They kept her and many others in the jungle for seven years.
I watched her interview with Larry King the other night. She spoke haltingly. She apologized for her English. Something n her eyes caught me. She seemed both pained and impassioned. She looked—I don’t know how else to say it—like truth.
In my sheltered world, I cannot imagine Betancourt’s experience.
When King asked her about her initial capture, she said,
Well, the — it’s difficult to understand how just by like — I mean immediately you are into another situation. I mean you are a free woman and then you become a prisoner. And when you become a prisoner, immediately you receive orders, all kind of orders — sit here, stand there. I mean that’s it. You just you don’t have the possibility of — I mean even moving to take your bag or anything without asking permission.
Throughout the interview, she would not give specifics of the horrors she experienced and saw. She said, “There are things that have to be, you know, I mean, I think that many things happen in the jungle that we have to leave in the jungle.”
So when King asked her, “What was the worst thing you experienced?” She did not give a specific answer. Instead, she answered in the abstract, and her answer made my heart go cold:
“I think that the worst thing is realizing that mankind—that—that—human beings can be so horrible to other human beings.”
Normally, in writing, we have a rule: show, don’t tell—the idea being that the concrete is more powerful than the general. But her general statement about humankind knocked the wind out of me. Perhaps it was the look of her there in that Paris Hotel—so humble, so kind, so forgiving and so utterly astounded “that human beings can be so horrible to other human beings.”
Comments
I completely agree about King’s questions, and I love your phrasing: “my heart felt like it was being pinched.” Yes! I just wanted him to stop. She was so clear about her boundaries, and he kept pushing them. As to the possible agreement between Columbia and the US—I watched a news conference during which one of the choreographers of the rescue insisted over and over that this was a Columbian plan/effort only—no outside involvement—no US connection. I remember thinking, “Why is he being so forceful and adamant?” I believed him at the time, but your comments make me wonder…
Jan Jul 12, 04:47
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I, too, have kept my eye on Ingrid Betancourt since I watched the release last week. I have wondered many times through the years if she would ever be set free, so when I saw her getting on the first helicopter I was both shocked and elated. How is it that someone could go through all that she has (not like I really know or can even imagine) and come out of it so beautiful, both physically and spiritually? While I understood why Larry King asked those pointed questions, I couldn’t help cringing. Ingrid knew exactly how to answer him and still my heart felt like it was being pinched as she did. On a totally different note, I do think it’s awfully coincidental that this “rescue” came the day before the Fourth of July and will now be part of Bush’s LEGACY. It was so clear that an agreement was made between the US and Colombia. They have wanted to be able to do business with the US for years. Letting those Americans go must have been the price they paid. Cynical, probably. But I do believe that is the truth. Ingrid says that God was involved, but I tend to think it was the god Greed that did it.
Anita Jul 11, 07:13