Ingrid Betancourt

“Ya había oído a los guerrilleros referirse a nosotros como «la carga», «los paquetes», y eso me había aterrado. No era una expresión anodina. Por el contrario. Buscaba deshumanizarnos. Es más fácil dispararle a un paquete que a un ser humano. Eso les permitía vivir sin culpabilidad el horror quenos hacían padecer. Ya era bastante difícil ver que la guerrilla empleara esos términos para referirse a nosotros. Pero que cayéramos en la trampa de utilizarlos nosotros mismos me parecía espantoso. Yo veía en eso el comienzo de un proceso de degradación que a ellos les convenía, y al queyo quería oponerme. Si la palabra dignidad tenía algún sentido, era impo-sible que aceptáramos numerarnos.”

“Encadenada del cuello a un árbol, desposeída de toda libertad, la de mo-verse, sentarse o pararse, hablar o callar, la de comer o beber, y aún la más elemental de todas, la de aliviarse del cuerpo, Entendí —pero me tomó muchos años hacerlo— que uno guarda la más valiosa de las libertades, la que nadie le puede arrebatar a uno: aquella de decidir quién unoq uiere ser. Ahí, en ese momento y como si fuera evidente, decidí que no sería más una víctima. Tenía la libertad de elegir entre odiar a Enrique o disolver ese odio en la fuerza de ser quien yo quería. Podía morir, claro está, pero yo ya estaba en otra parte. Era una sobreviviente.”

“Aquella tarde, bajo la maldita lluvia, acurrucada sobre mi infortunio, entendí que sin duda podía ser como ellos.”

“Comprendía, entonces, que la vida nos da montones de provisiones para nuestras travesías por el desierto. Todo lo que había adquirido de manera activa o pasiva, todo lo que había aprendido voluntariamente o por osmosis, volvía a mí como las verdaderas riquezas de mi existencia, cuando lo había perdido todo.”

“En poco tiempo, me volví adicta al diccionario. Me pasaba la mañana sentada en mi mesa de trabajo, con una vista inmejorable sobre el río, y viajaba en el tiempo y el espacio pasando cada hoja. Al principio, me dejaba llevar por el capricho del momento. Poco a poco, fui estableciendo una metodología que me permitía hacer investigaciones sobre un tema preestablecido con la lógica de un juego de pistas. No podía creer tanta felicidad. Ya no sentía el paso del tiempo.”

“Debía seguir caminando, seguir en movimiento, alejarme. Al amanecer volverían a iniciar la persecución. Mas en el calor de la acción me repetía «soy libre», y mi voz me hacía compañía”

“Mientras terminaba la correa que me había ayudado a comenzar,perdida en mis meditaciones, le agradecí en silencio por el tiempo que había dedicado a hablar conmigo, más que por el arte que me había transmitido, pues descubría que lo más valioso que tienen los demás para darnos es su tiempo. El tiempo al cual la muerte le da su valor.”

“If you believe what you say, words become reality.”

“I often think about her. One thing she said stayed with me, a dagger in my heart: "You know for me the most horrible thing of all is knowing that he will forget me."I lacked the presence of mind to tell her that it was impossible; she was simply unforgettable.”

“He who could hear my heart knew that I was crying out for help.”

“But the Indians gesture touched me. It was nothing, but it was everthing. It took so little to mane a difference.”

“He had to be okay. We had no choice.”

“I knew of no instruction manual for reaching a higher level of humanity and a greater wisdom. But I felt intuitively that laughter was the beginning of wisdom, as is was indispensable for survival.”

“He wasn't alive because he feared death. He was alive because he loved life.”

“I was beginning to think that in life there might be some suffering that was worth enduring.”

“The book in my hands became my trusted companion. What was written there had so much power that it forced me to stop avoiding myself, to make my own choices as well. And through some sort of vital intuition, I understood that I had a long way to go, that it would bring about a profound transformation within me, even though I could not determine it's essence, or its scope. In that book there was a voice, and behind that voice threw was an intelligence that sought to establish contact with me. It was not merely the company of written words that distiller my boredom. It was a living voice, speaking. To me.”

“Now I realized that life supplies us with everything we need for the journey. Everything I had acquired either actively or passively, everything I had learned either voluntarily or by osmosis, was coming back to me as the real riches of my life, even though I had lost everything.”

“I am alone. I am here. No one is watching me. In these hours of silence that I cherish, I talk to myself and reflect. That past, entrenched in time, motionless and infinite, has vanished onto thin air. None of it remains. Why, therefore, am I hurting so much? Why did I bring back with me this nameless pain? I followed the path I set for myself, and I have forgiven. I do not want to be chained to hatred or resentment. I want to have the right to live in peace.”

“It is said that the compensation for the effort courage, tenacity, and endurance displayed during the journey was not happiness. Nor glory. What God offered as a reward was only rest.”

“I already knew that I had the ability to free myself from hatred, and I viewed this as my most significant conquest.”

“There are things that are more important than life.”

“I told myself that I'd had life too easy, conditioned by an upbringing where fear of change was disguised as caution.”

“I no longer knew whether it was raindrops or my own tears that were flowing down my cheeks, and I hated to have to drag along this relic of a sniveling child.”

“In this condition of the most devastating humiliation, I still possessed the most precious of liberties, that no-one could take away from me: that of deciding who I wanted to be.”

“I was discovering that the most precious gift someone can give us is time, because what gives time its value is death.”

“I had not suffered enough to find the rage in my guts I needed to struggle to death for my freedom.”

“He looked at the world from above. Where I saw threatening waves, he saw tranquil water.”