- Angelique Chrisafis, Paris
- July 12, 2008
Learning to adapt: Ingrid Betancourt answers questions during a news conference at a Paris hotel. Photo: AP
FOR the past seven days, Ingrid Betancourt has engaged in an extraordinary frenzy of tarmac reunions, presidential meetings and public speeches sparking an international outpouring of emotion, while readjusting to sleeping in a bed and smelling perfume after being held in jungle captivity by Colombian rebels for six years.
But she admitted euphoria was beginning to give way to exhaustion. "I know that it's like the roaring of the waves, I know it's coming and it's getting closer, I know that it's time for me to just stop. I don't want to be submerged by depression."
Ms Betancourt, France's new Joan of Arc — and possibly Colombia's future president — was speaking in her first major newspaper interview since her rescue.
Since landing in Paris to a rapturous reception last week, she has rushed between plush Paris hotels and parliament buildings, all the time clutching the makeshift rosary that she made from string while chained up.
Her pallid skin and long, thin hair, and — under the cuffs of her smart suit — her skin scarred from chains, are hard-to-erase signs of her six years in captivity. She will not cut her hair until all the hundreds of hostages still held by the FARC rebels (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) are free.
Although she has so far refused to be drawn on the extent of the physical and psychological "torture and humiliation" she endured, she said that one day she would outline the truth. "I know that I have to give testimony about all the things I lived," she said.
"But I need time … The only thing I've settled in my mind is that I want to forgive, and forgiveness comes with forgetting."
She has said her captors treated her with exceptional malice because the Marxist guerillas saw her as coming from an established political family and because of their own treatment in Colombian jails. She said her treatment had shown that every human being had an "animal" inside them.
She learned how "in any situation like the ones I experienced, perhaps any of us could do those kind of cruel things. For me it was like understanding what I couldn't understand before, how for example the Nazis, how (things like that) could have happened."
Ms Betancourt, overcome with exhaustion on Thursday, was helped into her interview by her daughter Melanie, stepson Sebastien and her sister Astrid, who said Ms Betancourt would now retreat with her children to "fill in the jigsaw puzzle of six missing years".
The Colombian former presidential candidate, who has joint French nationality after marrying a French diplomat, will stay in France for the time being and will not say when she will return to Colombia, for security reasons.
When she was kidnapped in 2002, she had been campaigning for the presidency against the drug-trafficking and corruption that underpins one of the most violent societies in the world. She received regular death threats and her teenage children had to be sent abroad.
Even in France, her security is high. She has said she is taking time to adapt to beds, to hot water that "hurts", and particularly to the smell of perfume.
In the jungle she was often under foliage, unable to see the sunlight for days, or forced to march for up to 25 kilometres at a stretch, covering about 300 kilometres a year. She made five escape attempts, the first lasting only a few hours, when she realised she did not know how to cope in the jungle. When caught, she was chained by the neck and forced to stand for three days.
After that she was chained for 24 hours a day — the only woman with other prisoners who were male soldiers from the Colombian army, who often had not seen women for years.
She has said that obtaining a needle and thread or any small object with which to amuse herself was nearly impossible because the guards treated her as an enemy. Other hostages would pass her things. Her key possession was a Bible.
At the beginning of her ordeal, she was given a piece of cauliflower wrapped in a scrap of newspaper. Eager for something to look at, she spread out the paper to see a coffin and realised it was the coverage of her father's funeral. He had died a week after she was kidnapped. She has described feeling suicidal and racked with guilt over his death.
She learned a lot from her fellow hostages, including three Americans who joined her group after a few months. "It was very difficult for them. Only one spoke the language."
The Stockholm syndrome of identifying with captors is far from Ms Betancourt's experience. Those who know her in Paris say she maintained a startling clarity.
"I'm landing like a parachute in the lives of others. They have their own lives, their daily activities, and I don't have anything.
"Six days ago I was chained to a tree. Now I'm free, and I'm just trying to understand how I'm going to live from now on," she said, in tears.
On Monday, Bastille Day, she will receive the Legion of Honour from President Nicolas Sarkozy.
She has described how in the jungle she tried to wear red, white and blue on July 14, how she taught fellow prisoners the Marseillaise and gave French lessons.
GUARDIAN
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/world/i-want-to-forgive-says-betancourt-20080711-3dqm.html?page=-1
