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

342 OUT OF CAPTIVITYI wasn’t going to give up that easily. “We’ll speak to her in Spanish soeveryone knows what’s being said. We’ll do whatever, but what you’redoing is cruel and it’s going to cause problems for all of us.”Enrique pulled off his glasses and rubbed the kidney-shaped welt oneither side of his nose. “The orders are these: You will be on one side ofthe camp. Ingrid will be on the other. You will not communicate withher.” And with that, he walked away.On April 15 (a day you can pretty much always remember no matterwhat jungle you’re in), I was sitting in my coleta tearing apart an old pairof sweatpants. I had traded for a scalpel, and was using it and the salvagedthread to take in the waist on a new pair of sweats I’d been given.I was engrossed in what I was doing, when I saw a pair of female handscross my line of vision. Ingrid sat down and began helping me with myproject. We whispered hello and looked to see if the guards had noticedus. They didn’t seem to, so Ingrid and I kept on chatting—mostly justchecking in on each other and how we were doing mentally. At one point,she stopped plucking at the threads and put her hands in her lap.Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m so worried about my mother. She isnot well. She’s frustrated. I heard on the news that when Uribe canceledthe negotiations for the exchange, she said that he had issued adeath sentence for us all.”“I’m sure she’s trying to keep the pressure on the government. Shedidn’t mean that literally.”“Regardless, I’m afraid that what she said is true.”I took Ingrid’s hand and said, “We’re going to get out of here.” I toldher about the rainbow I’d seen shortly after we’d been taken hostageand the sense of calm I’d experienced.“That’s a nice story. A fairy tale of a kind. Pretty to believe but notbased on this reality.”Our conversation was brief and I didn’t speak to her again until sheasked to borrow my scalpel a few days later. I gladly lent it to her. I