WEBVTT

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I had a wonderful friend that I
made there, Margarita Herrera.

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And she worked at la UCA,
the Jesuit university

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in the capital, the
university at which the Jesuit

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priests taught,
who were murdered

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by the Salvadoran
Army in 1989, six

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Jesuit priests, their
housekeeper, and her daughter.

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But at the time,
they were alive.

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And one of them was Padre
Ellacuría, and he was very,

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very, very intelligent.

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As Margarita would say,
nobody understands him.

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He was from Spain, and
he was an intellectual.

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And Margarita would
take me over there

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to talk to him and
the other priests,

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and she would do her work.

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And this is what
happened one night.

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"It was growing dark by the
time we left the grounds.

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But we felt light-hearted
as we walked to the car.

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Margarita playfully teased me
about what I had understood

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and not understood
about Ellacuría's ideas.

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He's a genius, she said.

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No one understands him.

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Does Leonel know where we are?

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I remember asking.

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But I don't remember
what her answer was.

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I remember that she
rolled the window down,

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lit two cigarettes,
and handed one to me.

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Her lipstick was on the filter.

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We now felt that we were
practically sisters.

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That evening, we'd
planned to meet

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with some of Margarita's friends
and a few European journalists

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who had arrived in the
country several weeks earlier.

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We would listen to reports
of what they had seen,

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and we would tell
them what we knew.

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There would be Coca-Cola
and potato chips.

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We were still in the clothes
we had chosen that morning,

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so yes, we did look bourgeois.

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But I would never have been
able to run in those shoes.

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I could barely walk in them.

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Margarita pulled out
of the parking lot

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onto what I would call a slip
road, narrow and unlit, a road

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that wound around la UCA.

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She was still laughing
and teasing me

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when, suddenly and in a grave
voice, she said my name.

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And the car was
flooded with light.

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She pressed the
accelerator to the floor.

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The vehicle behind
us was following

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so closely that a person could
have leaped from one roof

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to the other.

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Margarita sped into a
tunnel of darkness ahead,

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and the vehicle
behind us sped too.

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Escuadrón de la
muerte, she said.

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It is the death squad, Carolyn.

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They are going to capture us.

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I turned around to
watch the other car

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but couldn't see for the light.

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Margarita, I remember calling
out, can you go faster?

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No, Carolyn, I cannot.

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This is as fast as I can
go, and I think I'm lost.

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There's the city ahead of us.

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Drive toward the lights.

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We sped.

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The other car sped too.

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This was going to
be it, I thought.

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Now, when it wasn't expected,
after a day of talking

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about philosophy, and god, and
the practice of liberation,

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I wanted to be brave.

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I did not feel brave.

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I had no weapon.

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It would not have helped.

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There was no last chance
to do anything over again.

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Are you afraid, Margarita?

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Yes.

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They were still
behind us when we

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reached a heavier-trafficked
road, behind us

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when we got to the roundabout.

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And that was where
the honking began.

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Other cars whose drivers
saw what was happening,

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other cars pulling
into the roundabout,

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slowing down, blocking the
way of those who followed us.

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And all the while,
horns honking,

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and even some cars stopping and
people getting out of the cars.

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And then there was an
opening, and we took it.

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All the way to the house of
the friends of Margarita,

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we didn't breathe.

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And then the door was
opening, and we ran through it

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from the front of the house
to the garden in the back,

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where the journalists were
standing around in the dark.

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I sank to the floor, pressing
my back against the wall while

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trying to catch my breath.

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There was a Bird of
Paradise growing there,

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where the terrace ended
and the wet lawn began.

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Would you like to drink
some water? a woman asked.

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Everyone else was
standing off to the side

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when she knelt and gave
me the cold glass that

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slipped through my hands to
the tiles and fell to pieces.

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Margarita lifted
her arms in the air

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in a gesture of asking everyone
to please leave us alone, just

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for a minute.

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Just a minute, while
we catch our breath.

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They want to know what
happened, she whispered.

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Tell them nothing happened.

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You can tell them this
because nothing did.

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We are all right.

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