The waters of the Ariari river flow placidly, like P.’s tears.
My hand feels like a lead weight on her small shoulder. Everything seems dramatically inappropriate—the superfluous words, the dense silence, the coffee cups scattered on the table, and my own damn hand, which I cannot seem to slide off P.’s shoulder. I am as if paralyzed and unable to do anything but listen. I involuntarily flare my nostrils in an attempt to breathe more deeply, trying not to cry, as my tears would truly be an unhappy addition to the list of “inappropriate things.” Only the rain seems to make sense in this desolate scene. The sun does not dare to peek through the clouds. I like to think it does so out of respect, and that the nature surrounding us tries to show its own form of solidarity, adapting to the context. So the river flows, the rain falls, and P.’s tears carve furrows on her wrinkled cheeks: everything flows, and I remain motionless.
P.’s daughter, C., disappeared in 2018, or, to be more precise, she is one of the 80,472 victims of forced disappearance (desaparición forzada) of the Colombian conflict.
C. would have turned 30 in August, P. says. My age, I cannot help but think. And her son would have been 4 years old, because when C. was abducted, she was five months pregnant. C. was found only thanks to P.’s tireless struggle, or at least what remained of her: her fingernails torn out, the skin of her soles flayed, her molars removed, her scalp cut off. She was raped, five months pregnant.
P. cries and tells her story. Her memories jump disjointedly from C. as a child to the day she disappeared. So P. narrates that day when, returning from school, C. asked her if she was ugly. My heart tightens in a vise. I realize in that precise moment how apparently insignificant adolescent details that dissolve in the adult minds of us daughters can instead be cemented indelibly and painfully in a mother’s memories. “You are worth a lot, C.,” is all that P. tells her, and no words could seem more resplendent in their beauty. I find myself wondering if I ever asked my mother if I was ugly. I surely did, and yet I do not remember the moment or the answer, and this hurts me. Why did I not pay attention? Why do these details seem so important now? What are the words that I should have treasured and that I let fade away? Did you remember them, C.? Did you remember your mother’s words?
P. shows me a photo; it is the entrance to the hospital in her town, named after her daughter. “It is my work,” she says to me, proudly. I look at the photo carefully for a few minutes, scanning one by one in my mind the large red letters that make up C.’s full name, so that her memory will not be reduced to a mere number in my mind in the years to come.
P. cries and says she is tired, tremendously tired, that she has “half-lived,” that she would have also liked to do other things in her life, that a mother’s love is infinite and that the pain of a forced disappearance is a fire that never extinguishes and that consumes cruelly.
P. angrily pounds her fist on the table between tears and declares that she is a warrior and that she will claim justice for her daughter as long as she lives, and I believe her blindly. P. is a small and sick woman, whose suffering has carved deep bags under her eyes and etched a map of wrinkles on her face. And yet, I can only feel small and paralyzed next to this woman and feel a deep and silent admiration for a strength that emerges powerfully in the midst of pain.
Slowly, the rain thins out and the sky clears. My hand slides off P.’s shoulder, and together we silently stare at the large logs dragged by the current. P. observes impassively that they look just like the bodies that were sometimes seen floating. I watch them slide under the surface of the water while the river continues its course undisturbed.
Everything flows, and I remain motionless.