Human Shield

by Leila Binder

Tragedy is delivered to me every day as if by diplomatic pouch. Without it I'm bored. I hate to admit that I get a rush when a new assignment arrives in my inbox, because I know it means that somebody somewhere has been killed, tortured, or imprisoned. I translate urgent actions for a human rights NGO. Right now I am working on a piece imploring president Uribe to intervene in the case of a few boys in a ditch with their tongues cut out.

I struggled to find the right words, words that gave the victims some dignity. A ditch makes one imagine a body being thrown; maybe a gully would be better.

Sometimes I cry easy tears, the kind one cries for movie characters. Sometimes I feel nothing.

I have always been sensitive to questions of interpretation. I was born on September 11, 1973, the day that the Chilean presidential palace was firebombed and Salvador Allende committed suicide. Or the day Allende was killed and the imperialist bastards in the CIA staged a coup. Or the day Chile was liberated from commie scum.

My mother dabbled in liberal politics as a hobby. She subscribed to dozens of left-leaning magazines, gave to charities, wrote to her congressman, and actually enjoyed signing petitions. She taught me hundreds of versions of the Allende story, while making it clear that only one was true. Eventually, she got around to teaching me the names of the colors and how to tie my shoes.

Last year, I did a stint as an international observer, six weeks in the village of Bojaya, northeastern Colombia. My job was to sit around doing nothing. My mere presence was a message to both the left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries that if any violence broke out, international media attention would follow. So it was no surprise that while I was there the village was as peaceful as summer camp. People ate, drank aguardiente, and scratched mosquito bites. I felt like I had some special power that repelled violence. Even when I visited some war-torn areas with a group of fellow observers, I never saw a bombing, a massacre, or even a garden-variety murder take place. On the other hand, to be perfectly truthful, a lot of shit seemed to hit the fan just before-or after-our tours.

Last night, I heard my roommate, Alessandra, come home with a man. They were whispering to each other in French. I think Alessandra has slept with half the underlings at the UN (men and women), and maybe a representative to the Security Council or two. None has ever stayed the night, eaten a meal, or showered in our apartment. I can't help resenting the fact that a woman who makes her living creating databases for human-rights abuses, who notices every half-eaten bagel, empty bottle of liquor...still manages to relax enough to get laid, whereas I find even masturbation too much of a bother.

People find her sexy even though she's occasionally mistaken for a man. Her hair is cropped short. She wears no make-up and sticks strictly to no-nonsense fashion. I make more of an effort. I use special herb conditioners to maintain my long hair. I wear a touch of eyeliner and plum lipstick. I'm ten years younger than Alessandra, but still, I feel, my sexuality doesn't register on most people's radar.

My next translation was about a journalist gunned down in his hospital bed. His murderers had finished a botched job.

The next, four men on a country road in the Magdalena Valley, Colombia, their balls cut off and stuffed into their mouths.

I wondered if Jorge and everyone back in Bojaya were safe. It was hard to reconcile my lazy memories of the place with events like these. Yet things like this had happened there and would happen again. I wondered if anyone missed me.

A sense of futility washed over me. Here, I was merely a transmitter of information. On better days, I believed in this work. Today, I was far too weary to believe.

I closed my eyes for a moment and saw computer-generated fonts, an Arial A here, a Courier W and P there. When I started seeing Wing Dings, I figured it was time for a break.

I walked over to an icy Washington Square Park, to revive myself. When I got back, the man had gone.

Alessandra knocked on my door. I had been dreading this.

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Sorry to bother you, but you forgot to do the dishes again. Remember we have rats. And, my oatmeal soaps. Could you stop using them, please? They're mine. You see. I grew up in a large family…"

I stopped listening. I knew what came next. I am tired of Alessandra's six brothers and sisters. It's not as if there hadn't been enough to go around. The truth was her parents owned a famous winery back in Australia.

True, her childhood had had its dark side. At 13, she had been raped by an uncle. And then sent off to boarding school.

I was raised by overeducated, underpaid teachers who stayed married in mediocre American towns. I was fortunate to have had an uneventful childhood.

"I'll do the dishes when I'm done."

"All right, I'll let you get back to work. Good night."

The sky was already brightening when I finished. I crossed over to the kitchen on Alessandra's side of the apartment, the side that gravity favored. I was sure that everything weighed 25 percent more over there. I started washing some glasses, but soon felt queasy from the smell.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm glad to have the kitchen as far away as possible from my room. Lately, I've found the smell of most foods disgusting. I can only eat exactly what I crave. If I wanted cheesecake or ma po to fu, I'd go hungry before eating anything else.

I'm down to 105. I haven't had a period in months. I feel silly getting dressed, a ritual I've always enjoyed enough to repeat several times before settling on an outfit.

I put on my favorite scarf, Algerian Tuareg-the blue dye stains my neck-and a mirrored Rajasthani dress.

I feel like I've draped a cloth over a ghost.

When I get back to my room, I glance at my computer. No new mail. Instead, a note from Alessandra is on my desk:

One thing I forgot to mention, Monica darling, I'd really appreciate it if you'd take out your rubbish.

I take three Valerian, put on an ocean relaxation CD, and lie down. Though I seldom sleep, I usually few hours. I allow my mind to travel the globe in vivid waking Valerian dreams four hours a day, and for now that seems to be all I need.

When I'd returned from Bojaya, New York was buzzing with paranoia. Now the country is gearing up for another war.

I put my TV in the closet months ago, unwilling to be spun into a fear of hypothetical catastrophes. I have protested every war the United States has taken part in since I was born, and nothing has come of it. If I'm going to be stressed out, I decided, it should be for a purpose. I would focus on my translations and blot out the rest of the world.

I find I am leaving the apartment less and less. Do I have pre-traumatic stress disorder? Virtual traumatic stress disorder? Perpetual traumatic stress disorder?

The next morning, I downed a double espresso to give me strength to straighten up the apartment. As I was dusting, I noticed some chocolate wrappers with gold gothic lettering on the living room table. Swiss chocolate. It was probably a gift from one of Alessandra's UN lovers. Alessandra was incapable of accidental messiness and must have left the wrappers there to make a point about my slacker dishwashing habits.

I have lost months of sleep over events continents away, while Alessandra, whose childhood had been so violently interrupted, manages to keep her life together, in her own anal way. Perhaps she thinks that by keeping track of everything from dirty dishes to massacres she can hold them in place, keep them in check, limit their disruptive force. Her own traumatic past has extinguished her sense of romance in the unexpected, whereas I thrive on it.

Two hours later, a knock on my door. Alessandra comes in and sits on the filing cabinet. She flashes me a look that says, this won't take too long, unless you want it to.

"Monica, could we have a chat? It seems like I haven't seen you in ages. "

She smiles. Perhaps she isn't going to yell at me.

"I'd appreciate it if you would flush the toilet every time you use it."

Alessandra's became drawn and severe. It's hard to believe she'd been smiling only seconds before.

I am tired of being treated like one of her brothers, like someone who crowded her, robbed her of privacy, exposed her shame.

"I know you're trying to save water, but I think you're going too far. I mean, you might as well run off and live in a thatched hut."

"That's not such a bad idea."

"I'm being serious."

"So am I."

I meet her eyes.

Alessandra looks at her feet and whispers, "Listen, you must be exhausted. Perhaps if we discussed this some other time..."

She lifts herself from her perch and saunters away.

I felt that if I stayed in New York any longer I might shrink to byte-size and accidentally e-mail myself away. I was fed up with translations, late-night delirium, feeling my ribs so close to my skin.

I had once felt that translating urgent actions, appealing to international law, was the only concrete thing I could do to stem the escalating cycle of violence that my own government seemed hell bent on perpetuating. Now, my job seemed like the antithesis of all that was concrete, meaningful, or alive.

I called up Peace Brigades International and arranged to go back to Bojaya with the next group of human shields.

Three weeks later, back in Bojaya, I'd gained five pounds of happiness around the hips. No one had been killed during my stay.

Most days, I was home alone with Erendira, the mother of the host family I had been placed with, while her husband, Juan, worked on a banana plantation and their one daughter still living at home was in school. We listened to the radio as we cleaned and cooked. Erendira sang along, while I worked in silence. I didn't know many of the lyrics.

In the evenings, I went to the only store to drink beer with the men. I liked listening to their stories.

I slept well. I was filled with a sense of purpose that I had lacked in New York, a feeling that made a concrete difference, not a virtual one.

Just to be annoying, I sent Alessandra a postcard with a picture of a tropical beach and wrote:
Plump, tan and happy in my grass hut.
M.

One day, I had the chance to go up river. I accompanied Father Jorge and his useless assistant, Mauricio.

While Jorge and I spent the morning packing the boat with supplies, Mauricio followed me around commenting on my fair skin, and ogling my breasts. He didn't lift a single box of powdered milk or rice. While he studied me, I studied Jorge.

He had the air of a scholar. He was short and wiry, his hair straight and black. He spoke with the precise, hesitant accent of the Andes. He was entirely too young and good-looking to be a priest.

Around noon, on our way to the village upriver, we were stopped by men in a slick new powerboat. They looked like they had just gotten back from a shopping spree at the Gap.

They asked a few polite questions. Jorge explained we were bringing supplies to a nearby parish. They sped away.

Jorge explained that the men were from Castaños paramilitary group, the Head Splitters, increasingly present in the region.

He told me of his father, who had survived La Violencia only to be gunned down at home on a Sunday afternoon while drinking aguardiente with his buddies. He had been warned: Castaño's men had sent him an invitation to his own funeral. He had refused to flee. He said he was too old to leave his country.

Back in Bojaya, as Father Jorge helped me off the boat, he gave me an unmistakable look, as if to make sure I understood that he wasn't gay. It wasn't much to go on, but it was something. For the first time in ages, my own sexual self came out of hiding. I felt relieved, although the irony didn't escape me that my inspiration was a man who'd made a vow of chastity.

As he walked me home, we passed the usual chickens, mangy dogs, dusty children, and brightly colored houses with tin roofs. It seemed that each family was trying to play louder music than its neighbors. I thought vallenatos were the most romantic music in the world.

As I entered her house, Erendira asked where I'd been. I shrugged her off. If she knew of my improper thoughts, I thought she might withdraw those motherly attentions she'd lavished on me, literally to the point of nausea, like forcing me to eat extra helpings of iguana.

One Saturday night a few weeks later, I drank beer with the boys till almost midnight. Though I knew Erendira wouldn't approve, I decided to walk home by way of the river. It was cool and peaceful. I took a short cut, heading back.

I was on the verge of getting lost when, sitting in the lamplight on the porch of a dismal shack, there was Jorge. What a relief.

He motioned for me to come up and sit in the chair next to him. He passed me a bottle of aguardiente. He didn't ask me what I was doing, wandering around in the dark, as I expected. Instead, he explained that the shack was his "secret home away from home," where he came sometimes "to think." And, apparently, to drink.

"Gracias, padre," I said, partly for his having appeared when I was lost, partly for his giving me a drink.

"Why do you call me padre?"

"That's what you are, aren't you?"

"Yes, but you never called me that before. And I wasn't always a priest."

"What were you before?"

"A student. I wanted to be an engineer, but I dropped out. The only thing I've ever built is the church here."

"So, why did you to join the priesthood? Isn't it unusual for someone so…young?"

"I was studying at the NACHO. You know, the National University. In those days, there were lots of demonstrations against the privatization of the universities. At one of them, two students were shot; one of them was a friend of mine. And, my father had already been murdered."

He paused, as if waiting for my response. I didn't know what to say, so he continued. "A lot of students were joining the guerrillas back then. There are only two things you can do in this country to make any difference, join the guerrillas or join the priesthood. So I joined both."

Though I had expected this all along, a wave of fear washed over me. Fear of what could happen to him. Fear of what could happen to me. It was hard to maintain the neutral reserve of an international observer.

I've always found revolutionaries sexy. Despite their actions.

He took another swig and gave me one of his fatherly pats on the shoulder.

When we had emptied the bottle, I kissed him lightly. One of those pecks I could take back later. Pretend I meant to kiss him on the cheek, but just missed. He kissed me back confidently. Like he had done this before.

He took my hand and led me into the shack. I could feel that we were near a bed with sheets and a mosquito net. A downpour began to pound the tin roof.

At first, we wandered in the no man's land between Jorge the priest and Jorge the man.

Does the church keep a database for sexual transgressions? I had a feeling it does. But I was tired of being an observer, weighing, counting, and drawing lines.

It was time to take sides and cross lines. As the rain died down, I climbed on top of him and held him tight. I was sure our moans carried through the heavy air toward the village.

Later, as Jorge slept beside me, I felt my invulnerability slowly dissipate.

For a few days, I didn't see Jorge. When we met again, he continued to tell me his father's story. "He was a drunk, God rest his soul. But he was kind and gentle, yet severe when he needed to be. He believed in a greater good. He did not believe in God, he believed in the People."

He stated this so regally that I half expected him to hold out his ring for me to kiss it, if he'd had one.
"Your father was a communist, too?"

"Yes. When he was young in Bogotá, he was a liberal. Later, after several of his friends had been killed by conservatives, he became a communist guerrilla."

So that's why they killed him, I thought.

"My father was a good man, Monica."

As he walked me home, we passed a group of old men I knew; they were sitting on a porch drinking beer. I said hello. They stared at me in silence. Usually, they smiled, seemingly amused by my presence. It was strange.

And Jorge stopped speaking to me as well. That, too, was strange, but I assumed he had a lot on his mind.

Back at the house, Erendira casually danced to a cumbia on the radio. Why not enjoy life now?

During the next two weeks, I stayed close to home and brushed up on my sancocho-making skills with Erendira. I memorized most of the popular songs on the radio, especially "Tu amor me hace bien." Erendira teased me for taking up singing all of a sudden. And she liked to pinch my new love handles. I had become pudgy.

When Jorge did not come to see me, I merely thought he was being prudent. It reinforced the feeling that Jorge and I shared a special secret. But as the days passed, I resigned myself to the fact that this was not a good sign.

One day, Erendira handed me a postcard from Alessandra that read:

It sounds horrific. What's so great
about lazing about doing nothing
while chunking up? Better you than me,
A.

I laughed, grateful to be far from her chore lists and Post-it notes.

A little later, when it had gotten dark, Erendira ran into the kitchen and pushed me, making me spill the sancocho I'd been stirring, burning my hand.

"What'd you tell him?" Erendira was clearly alarmed.

"Who?"

"The paras put up a notice in the square, for a limpieza." This meant cleansing. The paramilitaries would post lists of undesirables, anyone from their political enemies to common criminals, and kill any of them who didn't get out of town in the specified time.

"I thought they'd left the area."

"They have informants, like your amiguito Don Jorge."

Amiguito was the term that was used when an amigo was more than just a friend.

"But isn't he with, you know, the other side?"

"That's what he tells all the gringas. He knows that the Human Rights workers who come here lean left."

She gave me a self-satisfied look.

"You knew?" I asked.

Erendira nodded.

"How?"

"You weren't the first."

"Why didn't you tell me? And what about his father? Wasn't he killed by paras?"

"His father was a famous conservative politician. The M-19 guerrillas killed him. Even so, Father Jorge tried to stay neutral. But eventually they got to him. They told him they'd kill off people in his parish if he didn't help them. He didn't listen, so they killed one of his sacristans. We're not on the list. But some of your drinking buddies are."

A terror sank in when I realized I didn't know what kinds of things could be incriminating. I had told Jorge stories about the men I drank with, seemingly frivolous anecdotes. Though my role in provoking the limpieza was indirect and amorphous, my presence here may have indeed made a concrete difference in people's lives. A disastrous difference.

Erendira's husband, Juan, rushed in, yelling, "Did you repeat anything we've told you?"
He pushed me against the wall.

I said no. I wondered what he could be referring to. They had told me little of their lives.
Juan released me.

"That's right. There's nothing to tell. Now, get out."

When I returned with my bag, they hadn't moved. Their silence made the room seem empty. Juan looked at me as if I were a complete stranger. I looked back at him, waiting for someone to speak.

To my relief, Erendira approached me, kissing me lightly on the cheek.

"Que pena con ustedes," I said, to express my shame.

I gently closed the door and left them forever. It was not the fantasy thatched hut I'd described in the postcard to Alessandra, but I was sad to leave it nevertheless.

The daily cargo flight left in half an hour. On my way to the airstrip, Mauricio caught up to me. He walked with me and I was grateful for the gesture.

We passed the same chickens, mangy dogs, dusty children, and brightly painted houses I'd passed so many times before, accompanied by the same blaring vallenatos. Only I no longer found them romantic; now I felt the omnipresent fear I'd tried to blot out with all that loud music.

As the plane landed, Mauricio told me that his brother was on the list. I had been in such a panic that I had forgotten about the walking targets I'd left behind. I asked him if there was anyone I could take with me.

"There's no time. You'd better hurry," he said, gently kissing me on the cheek.

From the air, I watched the rushing river carve its red clay banks; I wondered how long before it would be filled with bodies.