IT WAS 6 PM on Christmas Eve and I missed Papá worse than ever. I sat alone on the edge of my mattress, staring down at his photo on my knee. It was my second Christmas since his death and the most miserable yet. At least the previous year I’d been angry at Papá’s killers. This year, I was simply depressed.
I looked out of the window remembering how, when I was younger, the townsfolk would erect an enormous Christmas tree in the plaza. People would leave gifts underneath for distribution to the poor. Fairy lights flickered everywhere. Families would walk through the streets holding hands.
But that year, not a soul walked the plaza. It seemed everyone was with their family, dining together. Everyone, that was, except me.
Mamá was with the Díaz clan at Javier’s hacienda. She’d offered to cook them dinner – they’d been good to her. I couldn’t tell Mamá about Fabián giving Camila cocaine or my conviction that the brothers trafficked drugs, so when I refused to attend she assumed I was being rude and stubborn.
‘When you’re ready to be civil,’ she said, ‘I’ll send our driver to collect you.’
Camila was with her parents and brothers. Unfortunately, I was no longer welcome in her home, and, anyway, it was too dangerous to visit. As for Uncle Leo, he was probably drinking with one of his teenage perras. I couldn’t even bring myself to answer when Palillo’s name flashed on my phone because I didn’t want to infect him with my sadness.
I turned on the television. Caracol News was running a segment on the latest piece of Guerrilla villainy: they’d celebrated Christmas by hijacking a plane and forcing the pilot to land on a public highway. Then they’d kidnapped all twenty-two passengers, including a senator.
Andrea, the simpering newsreader from the Díaz party, urged us on this holiest of nights to spare a thought for the thousands of men and women living in captivity around the country. Her voice-over continued while the television displayed images taken from Proof of Life videos showing hostages at the Guerrilla’s jungle camps. Imprisoned in cyclone wire cages, they slept on hardwood planks under thin blankets and ate from metal dishes like dogs. Their original clothes had rotted away thanks to the humidity, so they now wore Guerrilla camouflage. Many suffered from malaria or diphtheria, and their skin bore ulcers that never healed. Some had been trapped there for ten years.
The reporter crossed to a plaza in Medellín where the hostages’ families huddled in groups, holding a peaceful vigil to lobby the government to seek a negotiated solution rather than attempt dangerous rescue operations. They held candles and waved placards.
One placard – in red, childish writing – simply read: HOLA, PAPÁ! I LOVE YOU!
It was held by a little boy who’d never laid eyes on his dad. His father, a doctor, had been kidnapped at a Guerrilla roadblock while doing volunteer aid work in a remote indigenous community. His wife was pregnant at the time. The boy was now five, and his mother had shown him photos and explained how much his father loved him. She’d also instilled in him the hope that his Papá might one day come home.
‘We live with that hope,’ said the mother softly, barely whispering into the microphone. ‘Hope is the only thing that keeps us breathing.’
It was touching. It was gut-wrenching. And it almost flattened me to the floor with fury when they cut to an excerpt from an interview with Santiago, recorded months ago. In response to a question about the hostages’ horrific living conditions, he’d replied, ‘Our prisoners of war live in the same conditions as my soldiers. Here, everyone is equal.’
Was this how the Guerrilla, after their revolution, would make us all equal: equally poor, equally sick and equally miserable? In comparison to Santiago’s callousness, the mother’s dignity and defiance were inspiring.
The final interview was with a twelve-year-old boy suffering from leukaemia. I’d seen him on the news six months before. Lying in a hospital bed in a white gown, he was bald from chemotherapy and had a drip in his wrist. His last wish was to hold his kidnapped father before he died.
‘I’m sorry for interrupting your television viewing and for being so ugly,’ he’d joked, patting his bald head. ‘But I only want to see my father.’
Every week for three years he’d written two letters: the first to his father, telling him how much he loved him; the second to Santiago, pleading for his father’s release. In his most recent letters he’d begged simply for a temporary visit. However, since he didn’t know whether the letters were reaching either man, he’d called the television station, which had sent a reporter to his bedside. Although the boy was sick, he told the reporter that he’d trek into the jungle if he had to. Santiago should just tell him where and when.
That was six months earlier. Now, for this special Christmas follow-up episode, the boy had finally received a reply. He held up a letter on light-blue paper from the Guerrilla. Santiago was considering a unilateral release of his father on ‘humanitarian grounds’.
Smiling, the boy declared, ‘This is the happiest day of my life since Papá left us.’
Since Papá left us, he said, presumably to avoid aggravating the Guerrilla. He didn’t say, ‘This is the happiest day since terrorists chopped down trees to block a narrow road late at night, pointed their rifles at a line of innocent motorists and crosschecked their ID cards against a list of kidnappable people.’ He didn’t mention, although it had been written about in the papers, that his mother had been forced to plead with her relatives to hand over their life savings for the ransom. Nor that she’d suffered a nervous breakdown trying to pay their mortgage, feed two children and cover her dying son’s medical bills. Nor that his older sister had twice attempted suicide.
Stories like this moved me deeply. They formed a lump in my throat and made tears come to my eyes. But when Andrea, the sexy, lip-glossed newsreader, came back on, I tensed as she turned from her co-host to pout at the camera.
‘And let’s hope Santiago releases him.’
‘Yes, Andrea.’ Her co-host frowned and shuffled her papers before shooting back a similarly empathetic look. ‘Let us hope.’
As for me, I despaired. I wanted to scream at them, ‘Are you completely fucking insane? Can’t you see what’s happening?’
Santiago orders his men to hijack a plane and take twenty-two hostages. Then, with his next breath, he kindly offers to release one man whose son is dying, cunningly timing his response for Christmas to pluck at the nation’s heartstrings. How could this tiny, manipulative act of apparent kindness be hailed as a beacon of hope? It sickened me to the marrow of my bones and the tiny fibres of my existence. And I wanted to shout the truth:
It was not hope they were showing. It was tragedy. Pure fucking tragedy.
I snatched up the remote and fumbled for the OFF button before they could depress me even more. Silence filled the room. I stared at the blank screen, listening to my own breathing.
It was Christmas, but the world was not right. The world was simply not right.
And with Santiago alive, it never would be.