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

48 OUT OF CAPTIVITYalong to snap you out of it. In the past, that something had taken theform of a prayer or other thought about my faith, my family, or myfriends. After I was done crying, I walked toward where the FARC weregathered around the fire and cooking pot. In order to get there, I had tocross a field of empty cellophane saltine cracker wrappers. They wereeverywhere. One of the big bags in the storeroom I’d slept on sat outin the open with packages of crackers cascading out of it. The FARCguerrillas sat around on the ground stuffing crackers in their mouths.And they weren’t doing it a single cracker at a time; they were takingstacks of five crackers and cramming them in there. The sound of theirchewing and the sight of crumbs flying everywhere was so ridiculousthat I almost forgot about my despairing thoughts.What also helped was being, for the most part, off my feet and outof my boots. Without the confinement my boots enforced, my feet ranriot. They swelled and throbbed before my eyes like a cartoon thumbstruck with a hammer. There were times when I was so fascinated withmy feet that I started to feel they’d taken on a life of their own. I wassure the FARC were looking at me as a source of amusement, watchingas I stared at my feet. With our shared ridiculousness as an icebreaker,I felt comfortable enough to accept their offer of soup.I was handed a spoon and an aluminum cup. I sat down on the logbench where I’d had my mini-breakdown just a few minutes before.This time, instead of facing the mountains across the way, I sat lookingdown the slope toward where I’d emerged from the jungle the previousnight. The sun was directly overhead and I had to squint againstthe bright noon light. The soup was thin and a rainbow of grease, likea small spill of gasoline on a wet driveway, swirled around its surface.I could see parts of chicken sitting on the bottom of the cup. The firstsip tasted vaguely of chicken, as if one had recently passed by the potand left some chicken essence in the air and some had drifted into thebroth. It was warm, it was food, and I spooned a few more swallows of