“And here’s Adriana singing just for you.” But this is not the famous Voces del Secuestro radio station, and this isn’t Colombia. And I am not sitting on some scrap of canvas or drinking coffee or wondering when I’ll get a chance to shave. I am not expecting to grab my cloth bag with the notebook and pen, the dry highlighter, the small tin that used to hold mints. I am not walking through long wet grass that whips my face. I am not stumbling across the ankle-bending rocks in a dry river bed. Muffled words are not shouted from behind a green scarf, and I am not clubbed to the ground because I didn’t know I was being told to lie down. I am not being slapped across the face because I looked up at the wrong moment. I am not thinking This is not me in this body in this place forced to walk and squat, to be pushed around with the muzzle of a gun.
     One of the youngest Green Masks, a kid with pants rolled up around the ankles, was pushing Elsa around with the gun and it went off. His face came undone. It was a mistake. We all watched as she fell, just dropped out of the living moment, and her shirt grew red hibiscus flowers. And then she twisted onto her side, slipped out of her open eyes. The other Green Masks shouted. One of them hit the kid. Some of us were crying because we were all we had left and now we were fewer. But none of us went to Elsa, whose red shirt made the wet grass blacker than her hair.

     I am not dead.

     I am.

     I am someone who listens to the radio.

     We left Elsa in the wet grass and no one looked back. Some of the green masks stayed behind. Maybe they buried her. We went on walking. I thought they were leading us in a circle back to the place we’d just been. But when we got there it was different even though there were the same bushes and trees. The hut for the outside toilet had no door.
     When I raise my glass I salute those people, the ones who are still there. Lobo was dead for a day before the Green Masks noticed. We didn’t say anything. We were all we had left. We were angry with Lobo, but sad because he had diabetes and no medication. Well. He warned them. I took his glasses case. Lobo was a scientist. His voice played low notes and his pale eyes blinked through the wire-rimmed glasses. He talked about soil nutrients in the late evenings when I longed to see the sky. I didn’t mean to steal from him. I just wanted to keep him with me. But the others stopped talking to me after that. They turned their backs. Sometimes I’d stand near the window to watch the Green Masks sitting or lazily wrestling or cleaning their guns. I prayed a lot. Dear God, let the others talk to me again. Let them forgive me as I have forgiven the Green Masks.
     That part wasn’t true. I didn’t forgive the Green Masks. It was like being bored to death with fear. Nothing would happen for days. One morning or late evening, we are rushed out of the huts, sacks thrown over our heads.  Are we going to be shot? But we are made to march and march and trip over sticks and bush. Hours and hours of it, jabbed in the back with the butt of the rifles. Finally, they take off the sacks and we go on walking and sometimes I think I will lie down and say, Just shoot me.
     When they let us stop, we drop where we are. They shout because they want us inside the shack. We scramble in and I don’t even remember lying down or closing my eyes. And the next day it will be the same. I miss Lobo.
     Now, I am in this place. Caracas. Now, no one ignores me. I go to buy my newspaper, El Nacional, and the man wants to talk. All right then? Or What song is that? I carry my radio with me at all times. Or How’s it going major? He thinks I am an army person. The story was in the newspapers Ex-marine released! But I am not an ex-marine. They would have beaten me and shot me like they did with that other poor bastard. They said he was an American. None of us slept during the beatings. None of us ate, except for Nicon and he would eat if his own mother was killed in front of him. I hated God for what he let them do. Elsa, she was still with us then, said we shouldn’t hate anyone.
     While the beating was going on, the young Green Mask broke in among us and began hitting us with his gun and then wept. Said we should not judge. I didn’t care about judging. I just wanted them to stop so I could sleep. Elsa sat with him, the green mask. His head jammed between his knees, sobbing. She said ssshhh, ssshhh.
     It was his gun that shot her in the end. I wonder if he thinks about that, Elsa saying sshh sshh, not realizing that she will receive a bullet from that sobbing bundle.

     Look up at that bright city sun, that sun you can always count on to shine down onto these Caracas streets. I used to dream about this: my fantasy of one day walking along a street with no gun jammed in my back, with my arms loose and free instead of tied behind with wet, nylon cord. And I walk sometimes with a bag hanging from one hand. No one snatches it away. No one stands too close and breathes into my face. No one slowly fills their cheeks with spit and ejects it so hard it stings my eyes. Even so, I don’t make eye contact with people. Some habits are hard to break.
     I like the city. There are almost no trees here. If I had my way, I would cut down all the ones in the middle of streets, or in pots on corners. I would burn them down to the earth. Lobo loved the earth. You should have heard the way he talked about it. Such words; eutrophication, perennial water bodies, flooding, leaching. Those sounds are relaxing. You can say soil bulk density and let that phrase sit in your ear, turning over and over, the initial consonants, s, b, and the weighted d, leading you downwards into sleep. That’s what he did. Lobo gave us the gift of sleep.
     Words about the earth feel darker, quieter, than other words. Computer words, like upload, search, toggle, are full of small aggressive movement. You can feel them rushing to push at things, tugging information here and there. I prefer the calm whisper of pen against paper, or the firm clack of typewriter keys against paper. I am a poor typist but I enjoy the pleasure of seeking letters out, building them into words and raising the anticipation from can to cane and, in a mischievous back-flourish, chicanery.
     Here is the man with the green scarf again; his step interrupted with a twist. He half-bows to the left from some old injury. Each morning I see him. When I leave the building, I walk between blocks in convoluted paths, circling and even retracing my steps. I long to find a path that does not intersect with anyone I recognize. And yet I see him. His scarf is not the kind they wore in the jungle, but even so, it is pulled up over his mouth and covers half his face. It is the middle of summer. Of course, I tell myself, he is not a kidnapper. But sometimes he glances towards me, as though he will say something. I quickly turn my shoulder away so that his eyes cannot find me. I keep pepper spray and a whistle on me at all times.
     But this man can’t be one of them. He comes at the same time, tilting to one side and twisting as though he has forgotten something and wants to go back to fetch it, his green scarf slipping. Perhaps he has some horrible deformity that he struggles to hide. I, too, struggle as I shave each day. Such prominent eyes, and my face bones stick out like they are running ahead of me to accuse the whole world, Where were you when. My face embarrasses me. It has too much in it. I want a quiet face, one that doesn’t have so much expression. I want to tell people that I don’t feel excited or angry or afraid. I don’t feel anything, really.
     There are spiders in the sink. I leave them alone. Surely they are here for a purpose. That’s what Lobo would say. Lobo loved the small creatures of the soil. Each day I watch the spiders, unwilling to turn on the faucet. There are silken threads around the taps and these will spread to the two blue mugs on the draining board. One morning I will wake up to find the whole kitchen spun tight. I can’t have that. I remove the threads around the taps. The spiders must learn to stay in the sink.
     I keep the radio on all night. I have a small one I can carry with me. The apartment manager calls me Radiohead. The skater-boys whoop and make circles around me as I walk. But I am listening for the faint sounds that fade in and out from where I think Bogotá is. Sometimes I hear a whole word. Sometimes it’s just hiss. But even that soft noise tells me that somewhere out there is Voces del Secuestro, and somewhere someone’s name is called and someone remembers they are alive. We know you are there. We, too, are here and we wait for you.

     We were moved to another place. I was expecting it so I wasn’t nervous when the Green Mask stood at the door of the hut and motioned with his gun. The walking did us good. We had something to endure. We were moving somewhere, even if it all seemed the same. We were moving so we knew we were alive.
     When we stopped, they made us erect huts. We each had a hut. It was different from being herded into one small place; we were almost joyful at the prospect of space, privacy. We worked long after it was dark. There was a separate toilet hut and shower hut. None of us dared to think those were for us, but in the morning, they pushed us towards the huts. And that’s when the relief rose up and died at the same time. We were not to be marched off at a moment’s notice, but we were also here to stay.
     Nicon took an old scouring pad from outside the kitchen. He carefully unraveled it and twisted the strands into a long wire. He attached it to his radio, wrapped the other end with a stone and threw it up into the dense tree-roof. It didn’t fall back down. It was like watching someone throw all our dreams up to the ceiling. Then we waited until night. That’s when I heard Voces del Secuestro for the first time. Lobo, Elsa, and me, we were astonished. Even Nicon stood up and said, “Eehh! Can you hear that?”
     So now we knew. Not just we few in this part of the jungle, but all over Colombia. Everywhere there was jungle, there were the kidnapped. And from everywhere these women and their children sent messages. We are all fine. Your daughter ran a mile in under ten minutes. We fixed the hole in the wall. Can you hear him crying? This is your new son. We love you. Don’t give up. We are waiting for you.
     We were in church; sat with our heads down, not wanting the others to see the tears. I cried over and over at the same stories: the children who were going to cook their father’s favorite dinner when he came back, the wife who was using her bonus to fix the boiler for hot water. I learned how to listen beneath the story-lines, to hear the hesitations that said the wife was giving up hope, that she’d met someone else, that she didn’t forgive him for cheating on her, that the kids were in gangs, that they were being evicted, that they had to move in with relatives, that they had no relatives to move in with.
     They spent the whole night at the radio station for a chance to talk to us. You could hear the clothes they’d dressed in. You could hear them coaching one another to speak louder, more slowly. You could hear the hope as they repeated our names, to impress on us that we were here. Some of us simply repeated the word love over and over, reaching to softly touch the radio. When it was her turn, Elsa kissed the radio even though Nicon had been clutching it in his dirty hands.
     It was my mother who first spoke my name on the program. Six-thirty in the morning and we had listened all night to the names and the messages. She said my name as a question: Dilan? And my heart stood up and beat at the door of my chest. Then she said it again, firmly. Dilan. I am waiting for you. I have painted your room blue and taken down all those old rock star posters. It’s time you put up something decent. I suggest Doris Raecke. Remember that exhibition we saw?
     I hadn’t talked to my mother in eight years while I’d been traveling: North America, Sweden, Australia, places of white light and soft food that vanished as soon as you bit into it. Nothing like my mother’s wide plates of thick brown meat and plantains and oranges, meant to weight you to the earth, so you could never leave.
     But I didn’t want to be a cattle breeder or a pathologist, nor a doctor or preacher, and definitely not a coffee plantation supervisor like my father whose evenings at the plantation grew strange shadows behind the shelling machine, the women backed up against the wall, their overalls around their waists, my father’s pale, knotty legs straining and shaking.
     Other wives raised thin voices, threw cheap ornaments and wooden trays. Other wives packed a bag, linked their children’s hands together, stood at bus stops, chins lifted. My mother turned to her stove, asked if I’d seen the new Gonzalo Ariza exhibition, those beautiful trees, placed a postcard of “Mist in the afternoon” on the wall above the spice-rack. Never flinched when my father said he was moving in with the rich German woman; never spoke a word, three years later, when he moved back after the German woman threw him out. The cancer was already threading into his bones.
     I was 17. I wanted to know why she stood aside and let him walk back in. I wanted to know how she could share the house with him and his fingerprints of German küchen. But she said nothing, stirred the stew while he lay on the sofa calling for thicker pillows and softer blankets.
     I took the scholarship to North America and traveled steady years away from their misery. I sent no postcard, birthday card, Christmas card.  I wandered the streets on holidays, looking into store windows as though doing last-minute shopping. I had no beginning, no evidence other than plane ticket stubs that had arrived from anywhere. Over the years I fell into other names: Declan, Diego, Dwayne, names that drained me away. Eventually, I slipped sideways, back into Colombia, to Cali, south of Bogatá, and taught the colors of music to blind children. This was before I was pushed from behind, folded over and thrown into a van to lie on the floor, leaking thin streams of fear and piss.
     And into this empty bottle my mother poured her voice while I crouched in the black forest night air, everyone’s breath around me. She talked about my childhood, the neighbors, the parties. Her voice, crackling and low-pitched on the radio, was a voice that owned a house with electric light and curtains and a sofa with cushions. She made me look good. I felt such a rush of love for her. I longed for more of her memories so I could become the child she’d known.
     I became part of the nightly human body sculpture holding up the radio, turning it this way and that for the best reception. Sometimes we held agonized positions for hours, straining our ears to hear the voices coming to us from Bogotá. When I finally heard her voice again over a month later, I almost dropped to the earth with gratitude, my heart jumping, my legs shaking. How I loved her for her belief that I was still here.
     It happened to all of us as we waited; that jump of the heart, that loud beating that almost drowned out the plaintive scratchy voice. We strained to feel the breath from the mouths.
     She knew, my mother, when I was released. I was marched, alone, even further than I had been. I thought I should have at least had the chance to say goodbye to Nicon. But I was put into a plane and I thought they were going to throw me out. That’s what they do with some of the kidnapped. But one of the guards whispered I was going home. The family trustee had paid the ransom. I didn’t believe him until we touched down at the airport, until I stood outside on the tarmac, until uniformed men came towards me and took me into the terminal, until I had a shave and I wore new shoes and they gave me fifty dollars. I placed a call to the family trustee and thanked him. He said I should thank my mother.
     I should have gone to see her. I did wonder what it would be like to return to Bogotá, to the blue room with village scenes by Raecke, who wasn’t even a Venezuelan artist. After all, my mother was now my only family. But when they asked me where I’d like to go, I said Caracas.
     I didn’t know how to handle all that radio love. It was easy to cry in the jungle, but at the airport I wanted to be somewhere else. I didn’t know how long it would be before my gratitude would over-ripen. Maybe she’d start blaming me for my father’s sorrow again. If only I hadn’t left. If only I’d come home, if I’d made the attempt to travel endless miles through endless green, endless brown, over endless pot-holed roads in trucks and taxis with endless punctures. If I’d only said I’d loved him. Perhaps I didn’t love him enough. What is enough? Does the love for a kidnapped child substitute for the love for a husband? And had she always loved me this sudden, quick way of the voice melting into the microphone?
     I flew to Caracas, Venezuela, nestled just above Colombia’s ear. I didn’t look out of the window the whole way. Vertigo of the heart. Cowardice of the bowels. Nicon was still down there somewhere.
     When I raise my glass, I salute Nicon who lost so much weight that we had to drop the “Fat” from his name. Nicon, whose foul language so upset Lobo that he would walk away. But Nicon kept the radio alive when it failed. Nicon stole another wire scouring pad when the wire aerial broke. In the end, you had to admire the man.
     When I raise my glass sometimes I forget the wine inside. The glass is so clean. It shines like Nicon’s gold-plated tooth. I wonder if I should get one to honor him, but I am afraid of the dentist and a gold tooth is expensive.
     I miss them, Lobo, Elsa, Nicon, and the little guard who sometimes whispered things to us that he wasn’t meant to; the bickering that went on, the confusion over what they really wanted. I even miss the bully-guard who beat Lobo because Lobo was easy to bully. The bully-guard’s radio was nicer than ours. Once he found classical music, someone singing opera. I didn’t think I liked opera, but we all stood still listening to the woman’s voice lifting and falling like golden tissue. And when the bully-guard looked up and found us there he didn’t yell. His eyes were wide, astonished with tears.
     I raise my glass to all of them. I keep wondering if Nicon is still there or if someone came up with his ransom. I imagine him listening to the radio for someone to call his name. I thought of calling in to Voces del Secuestro, myself.
     And I wonder how long it was before my mother gave up waiting for me to arrive home, and finally went back to Voces del Secuestro. Three days ago I heard her voice and I crouched on the floor, mouth open, saliva dripping onto the carpet. And with the question in her voice, Dilan? Everything left: the bedroom wall with the water stains, the spiders spinning fractal dreams in the sink, my new shoes, my library card, my black Pilot pen. Everything released from me, spinning orbitals around my small, pointless, cluttered planet. And I was back, fingers clenching the dirt floor, unwashed, unshaven, torn shirt and pants while my mother’s voice said that she had painted my room blue, that she would keep it clean and empty for me.