The
guards called Cereal into their office on the afternoon of Wednesday,
December 4th. He had been acting as my intermediator since his
Spanish was better than mine. He slowly walked out of the office,
into the compound, and approached me with a disgusted and sad look on
his face. He put a consoling hand on my left shoulder and said, “your
sister came to Managua and now she and Ben are flying back to the
U.S. Sorry.”
When
I heard that I felt like Benny had died. The feeling was not very
different than watching the Pediatric resident perform CPR on
Jonathon. I knew it wasn’t my sister. It was Angie. Someone made up
the story to throw me off balance again. At that point it didn’t
take much pushing.
The
mission to save my son was over. All of the pain, suffering, and
emotional turmoil meant nothing. I was not a Job who had his
overcompensating God. I was not an Odysseus who had his Penelope
waiting for him. In all the great myths, the man who struggles
against the gods and loses is not a Hero. He is a Fool.
They
let me out of the detention center after five days. They also told me
that I had to leave Nicaragua within three days. Where did that come
from? I
was there legally, with a passport and visa. I
still had three months left on my work visa and had committed no
crimes. I
didn’t buy, use, or sell drugs; and besides defending myself first
against a mugger in Managua and then a thug
in
Jinotega three weeks later, never hurt anyone. The only thing left
was that the mandate came from the embassy, specifically from James.
The gods still demanded their entertainment.
We
don’t need a Satan to explain evil. Humans are perfectly capable of
harming other humans. What did Embassy James gain from all this? Or
Jennifer Fay Marshall? Unsurprisingly, both continued to bash me long
after this tragedy was over. And I got kicked in the head one more
time.
