Out of Captivity : Surviving 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle

242 OUT OF CAPTIVITYwords. One night several months later, he came up to me and wantedto talk.“I was wounded in a battle.” He rubbed the back of his head. “I washit with a bullet here.”“You’re a lucky man to be alive, Eliécer. Very lucky,” I said.“It doesn’t feel lucky to me,” he said. “I would like to be one ofyou.”“One of us?” Marc asked. “A hostage? Are you serious?”“Not a hostage, but one of you. An American.”“I thought we were all just a bunch of immoral cutthroats—losers,bad guys ruining Colombia.”Eliécer’s expression was sheepish, but he looked me in the eye andsaid, “I was wrong. I believed what I was told, but now I believe whatI see. You’re good men. I see how you treat one another. I don’t thinkyou’d do some of the things we do to each other.”“What do you mean?” I asked.Eliécer looked away and blew out a sigh, “I no longer have a girlfriend.She is with someone else.”“That’s a tough thing,” I said. “The women here can be prettybrutal.”“Because of my injury”—he tapped his head—“I sometimes can’t—”He took his hand from his head and tapped his crotch. “No erection.”I was surprised that he would make an admission like that but feltbad for him. I looked at Marc, who said, “Maybe if you exercised orsomething. Got rid of some of the stress.”Eliécer shook his head. “It won’t do any good.” With that, he walkedaway.I felt bad for him, because in that environment, with the guerrillasliving in such close quarters, I knew that he was lying there at night,badly injured, feeling like shit about his manhood, and he had to hearhis ex-girlfriend getting the wood laid to her by her new lover.