Ingrid Betancourt on shades of grey and tough decisions

Columbian politician Betancourt was captured by FARC guerrillas during her presidential campaign in in 2002. She had run on an anti-corruption platform, and one of her campaign activities involved handing out condoms on the street, something which her dad was a bit uneasy with. The gesture was intended to indicate that she’d keep people safe from corruption – she’d say to people, “If you vote for me, it’s like you’re in a condom.” I’m pretty sure something here was lost in translation, but you get the picture. “Why was your party called the Green Oxygen party?” interviewer Peter Mares asked. “Because, if you’re in politics in Columbia, it’s like you can’t breathe [for the corruption],” Betancourt explained.

Betancourt, beautiful and sophisticated with long, black-stockinged legs, has a warm, intelligent, animated face. She spoke passionately, articulately, and with perfect diction, even sounding out the ‘h’ in her ‘whys.’ As she retold the story of her capture, as she has done many times including in her book Even Silence Has An End, I wondered what effect the constant re-telling would have on someone who must surely still be suffering trauma – is it therapeutic, or ultimately damaging? Perhaps cognisant of this, interviewer Peter Mares asked his questions carefully and respectfully, occasionally looking down at his well-thumbed copy of her book, which was extensively peppered with post-it notes.

Betancourt’s a great storyteller – using well-timed pauses and bringing out ominous little details, she evoked a palpable sense of dread as she retold the story of her capture. She was captured while she was attempting to travel to San Vincente del Cagua as part of her campaign. The area was thought to be quite safe – flooded with government military and with helicopters buzzing overhead. The President had even decided to hold a press conference there, presumably to illustrate his powerfulness in driving out the FARC. Presumably for this reason, Betancourt said, he didn’t want the presence of an opposition politician and withdrew her security escorts at the last minute. She decided to go anyway, realising that if she acquiesced, the President would control the rest of her campaign.

Because of the strong military presence, nobody thought FARC would be audacious enough to set up a roadblock. And Betancourt didn’t expect to be targeted by them – she’d been sitting around a table with its leaders, joking and talking about politics, only weeks before. In general, it’s difficult to tell the difference between FARC and the military – they both wear the same khaki uniform – but Betancourt had been told that you had to look at the boots – the army’s were leather and FARC’s were rubber. So when she was stopped at a checkpoint that day, she gazed down at the rubber boots of her apprehender and realised she was in trouble. Picturing those boots in my head, I had flicker of the sick, queasy, limp, shaky feeling she must felt at that time.

Betancourt explained the moral ambiguity of the capture situation. In one sense, she said, you could say that the captors were the evil ones and the captives the good ones. ‘That’s true,’ agreed Mares. But no – the reality, Betancourt explained, was vastly different – there were shades of light and dark in both. The guards, some of whom were as young as 12, were regularly replaced. Some became friends, and she noticed some of them struggling with their conscience. What’s more, they spoke to her of the misery of their situation, situations of hunger – at least, working for FARC, they were fed every day, even if it was only rice and beans. But their behaviour deteriorated the longer they stayed there – “they could be quite humiliating.” This evolution towards cruelty was perhaps a result of their progressive indoctrination by FARC, the gradual entrenchment of a hostile groupthink, and constant threats of repercussions if the hostages were to escape.

The situation was also difficult with her fellow captives. Apparently – and I haven’t had time to look into this properly – that some of them have written books that were quite critical of her. But Betancourt spoke of the difficulty of maintaining your integrity in trying situations, and how what seems like a practical decision to make in the moment may not be the right one in the long term. For example, on the first night they were captured, they were in a compound with lots of lights and surrounded by barbed wire – it reminded Betancourt of a concentration camp. One of the guards yelled something along the lines of ‘give me your numbers’ and the captives started yelling out their numbers. Betancourt refused to comply with this dehumanising edict, requesting that they call her by name instead. For this, she attracted considerable resentment from fellow captives, who accused her of being a Prima Donna. And you can understand why they acted like this – there’s nothing that makes you feel worse than when something you know does something which implicitly questions a decision of yours that you feel uncomfortable about.

Like everything else, the jungle was both darkness and light. It was the impenetrable site of her captivity, but also provided a cloak for her escape. It was a source of diseases and bugs, but also gave her thoughts a clarity, pace, and rhythm. The river was like a highway through the jungle, allowing her to escape, but also a black, threatening pool of water teeming with unsavoury creatures like piranhas. Betancourt said she became very good at planning to escape – snaffling materials like fish hooks and flotation devices (water containers). Ironically, when she finally did managed to escape with one of her fellow captives, they caught heaps of fish but then realised they didn’t actually know how to light a fire! Her companion was diabetic, so Betancourt chopped up the raw fish in an attractive arrangement and then presented it to him, saying, “Look, it’s sushi,” and popping it into her mouth, “Mmm… delicious.”

At the end of her talk, Ingrid Betancourt was asked how she sustained her spirit during six years in capacity. “Love,” she said, and something along the lines of “Love is the answer.” This prompted a slightly awkward silence amongst audience members, who may, like me, have been flinching at the cheesy-ness of this Barbra Streisand-associated phrase, however apt. Or perhaps they were just moved. She went on to talk about how focusing on those moments where you gave or received love from family or friends helped salve her sense of self, which became bruised as a result of the hatred she received from others. Faith, too, helped – Betancourt is a Christian and carried a bible on her the whole time. Betancourt explained faith as a greater version of love – love from God or whatever higher power you believe in.

Betancourt was also asked what Columbia should do about the FARC, who are no longer negotiating. There are two possible reasons for this, Betancourt explained. It could either be because they are simply a drug cartel – and have no interest in politics anymore – or it may be that there is no central control. In either of these scenarios, she saw the only possibility as military intervention. Her view is surprising, especially as she acknowledged that unless the root causes for widespread displacement of people and poverty were addressed, another FARC would be likely to spring up. But if a war were to commence, wouldn’t it make it even harder to address these root causes? I guess there is no real right answer.

Mares concluded by asking her about the politics of hostage-taking. By advocating for her release so vociferously, did the French government, her family, and other supporters play right into FARC’s hands, by making her more valuable as a hostage? Not at all, Betancourt said firmly, explaining that it doesn’t really work that way. She reminded us that twenty of her fellow captives, who are not high-profile at all, are still in captivity.

It’s so rare to see an Australian politician, or any politician really, who so obviously practises heart politics. I mean, with a few exceptions, half the time, it’s like they forget why they’re even there, I mean, on a human or emotional level. In this context, Betancourt’s obvious passion, combined with an ability to advocate clear, considered solutions, offers welcome inspiration.

DavidMitchellwhipped

Last night, while we were waiting for the Wheeler Centre’s David Mitchell talk to start, my friend and I were talking about geeks who come full circle. That is, when they’re at school or whatever, they’re not really comfortable in their skin – their geekiness is like an itch or something that they try to hide – but when they grow up they become one with their geekiness, and it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

I came to this talk with almost zero knowledge of Mitchell. In general, going to author’s talks when you haven’t read the book is highly recommended – it’s more surprising. I have a copy of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet on my floor, and am now burning to read it.

The predominant mood last night was Swoon. Michael Gawenda, the Wheeler Centre guy, almost seemed a bit fluttery and stuttery himself when he introduced Mitchell, although that could have been for other reasons. And Jenny Niven, the Program Manager at the Melbourne Writers Festival, who has this beautiful, lilting, Scottish accent, was gazing at him almost lovingly the whole time. You got the feeling that she had devoured his whole oeuvre, and was just dying to ask something like, ‘You know, I still can’t understand why you killed off that minor character in page 500 of your unpublished manuscript, the one that nobody else has read yet, and yet it worked so perfectly?’

Mitchell seemed like a bit of a blank canvas when he first emerged from behind the curtain – storky, with a sticking-up fringe, cotton slacks, and daggy lace-ups. Like, he could have gone either way – been kookily funny; quiet, serious, and academic; or completely disengaged.

Mitchell said that the decision to write about late 18th century Dejima, a tiny island of Dutch traders in the bay of Nagasaki, was a mistake. Why? Novels thrive on coincidences and chance meetings, and the Japanese government’s policy of strict segregation between the Japanese and the Dutch was completely antithetical to that. Only a very select group of Japanese families were allowed to mix with the Dutch, and they weren’t even allowed to learn each others’ languages. But in the end, after thinking about elaborate plot contrivances to bring the two together, he realised that the solution lay within the problem. ‘Memo to self,’ he said, ‘The solution lies within the problem.’ A useful dictum, methinks, but what the solution was in this case, I’m not sure – I’ll have to read the book.

Figuring out what happened in the 18th century required both hard research – what were the major historical events of the time – and soft research – how was a room lit, how did they heat themselves, how did they shave, how did they bath, what did they eat? So you’ve got to work all this stuff out, he said, and then hide it, otherwise you’ll have a sentence like, ‘Jacob, I’m not sure if we should use the whale oil lamp, because that might be very expensive… maybe we should use the pig fat candle.’ It’s not easy to write a novel, he pointed out, when you have to check Wikipedia every time you write a sentence. He also had to think carefully about language. At first he thought it needed to be completely archaic, but after writing a few pages of that ‘slew,’ he realised it sounded like Black Adder and nobody was going to want to read it. Eventually, he realised he had to create his own ‘bygonese’ — an inaccurate but plausible language – with a different type of bygonese for the Japanese and the Dutch. Anyway, here’s an essay he wrote about writing historical fiction – have a read if you’re interested.

At first, I thought Mitchell’s disarmingness was incidental, and then I realised this guy was actually quite self-aware, conscious of his need to entertain the audience. When asked about his elaborately constructed plots, he said it was really an atomistic process, and then rejected this terminology, ‘It’s too late in the night for that kind of language… ok, it’s more like Lego.’ He’d started as a short story writer, and then gradually built up from there. Did he plan his novels? No, ‘life’s too short to plan a Lego cathedral.’

Mitchell’s stutter seemed almost cultivated, as it usually preceded some selection of the perfect adjective or a cracking metaphor. He fielded quite a few sycophantic questions from the audience, like ‘in XXX novel, which hasn’t been mentioned enough tonight I don’t think, there are so many great ideas in each chapter. Aren’t you concerned about using up all your good ideas at once?’ There was a little pause, a nod of the head, and then he’d be fluently expounding about how when he first started writing, he was dead-scared of committing the novelist’s cardinal sin of being boring, so he tried to fit in as many ideas as he could. Now, he was content to really work hard on developing the one plot and set of characters. ‘Now I’m growing a pumpkin whereas before I was….popping doughnuts.’ A look of glee at the marvellous metaphor he’d selected and then he mimed making doughnuts with his fingers.

They’re making a film out of Cloud Atlas, with Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, and Nevin asked Mitchell something along the lines of whether he was concerned if it was capable of fully realising the potential of the book. He said that that was really up to them, and he didn’t mind as long as they paid him the money – but at the same time, he’d read the script and was really excited about it, ‘I think it could be at least a good a film as my book is a book, however good you think that is.’ He was quite pleased with his own quip, deeming it the quote of the night.

It was really quite lovely, sitting and listening to Mitchell in the cosy, elaborate, Athenaeum theatre with its mellow lighting and all the other like-minded audience members in their woollen scarfs. Almost like meditating, I could just focus on his voice, his beautiful constantly gesticulating hands, and the warm, lilting, interjections from his interviewee. A welcome end to a day in which I’d had a spate with my colleague at work, whom I’ll dub Lolly Boy (origin of the nickname is another story), because he’d call me ‘Young Lady’ one too many times. Removing distractions, turning your phone off, and absorbing interesting thoughts and conversations, without having to participate, is a welcome reprieve from the grinding mundanities of the office day.

At the end of the show, there was this mile-long line of fans trying to get their book signed, so my friend and I decided to get a sneaky glass of red wine and then come back. Serendipitously, when we returned to the Athenaeum, there were only three people left in the line. It was this young girl, the one who had asked Mitchell an earnest, kind-of-cheesy but still cute question about whether it was lonely being a writer. She was with her mum, and the mum was being kind-of-embarrassing in a way I recognised. We could hear something along the lines of, ‘My daughter taught English in Japan and she really.. and it’s really…’ and this just went on for ages. Mitchell, of course, was being really interested and polite and warm. When the mum finally retreated, he said to the girl, ‘Your mum’s lovely. Kind of intense, but worth having.’

Then my friend went up to get her book signed. I just hovered behind her, trying to look cool and all-knowing, but not desperate. Mitchell said sympathetically, ‘You guys must have been waiting for ages.’ ‘Actually, we just popped off to get a drink,’ we said, feeling pretty shiny. Mitchell wrote flourishingly with a black texta all over the inside cover page, and I commented, trying to be cool again, ‘That’s a pretty flamboyant signature.’ My friend gushed about how good his book was, and I think he tuned out until she said, ‘I had to take a few deep breaths after I finished it,’ at which point he re-engaged and smiled at her thankfully. We left, and his Wheeler Centre minders swooped in on him, looking concerned that the signing had gone on for so long. They were probably, like, ‘David, are you OK? It’s been a long night,’ whereas I think he was loving it.