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

Fat Camp 407After Tom and Keith were searched, they returned to the hooch. Iwas still stunned, and I could tell that Keith was really angry.“In my five and a half years of captivity, I’ve never seen anything likethis,” Keith began. I could tell he was just taxiing down the runway. Hisanger was going to take off. “I’ve been in chains for months, I’ve beenstarved, pushed past my physical limits, had every one of my humanrights violated by the FARC, but none of that can compare to the feelingof having someone who is allegedly on my side collaborating withthe enemy. And for what? Because she wanted some notes and lettersback from you? You told her she couldn’t have them, and she couldn’tfind a way to get them out of you. So, like a schoolgirl, she went to theteacher to rat us out.”“I know. I know,” I said, “I think it was William. You know how he is.”It was a violation that went beyond any we’d seen before. With ahandful of exceptions, most notably when William had Richard put inchains, trusties never used their connections to the FARC against otherprisoners. With this stroke, the line between us and them had beenobliterated. These were terrorists we were dealing with. We’d had ourlives threatened by these people, and now it seemed as if she was usingthem to get some notes and letters back from me. I couldn’t believethat Ingrid was treating us like she was on the FARC’s side. It wasn’tlike her, but I could believe that William would instigate it.Worse, we had expressed our feelings for each other in those letters.Asking for them back was like trying to take back those thoughts andemotions. If I’d learned anything in captivity, it was that we all escapedfrom reality for moments at a time. Whether it was the Freedom Ride,thinking of our houses back home, or whatever, we all had places toescape to. Ingrid and I had gone to one of those places together, but todismiss what we innocently shared or to cast it as something we shouldregret or could do us harm down the line was a distortion of the truth.We’d done nothing wrong, and I hated what she seemed to be implying