Kidnapped: A Diary of My 373 days in Captivity - Softcover

Kalli, Leszli

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074329131X ISBN 13: 9780743291316

Publisher: Atria, 2007

Synopsis

"It all happened so fast that even now, a month later, I still have trouble believing it, and I have to tell myself over and over again: Leszli, you have been kidnapped."

On April 12, 1999, Leszli Kálli boarded a plane in Colombia to work on a kibbutz in Israel, but she never made it. The plane was hijacked by a leftist guerrilla group and forced to land on an abandoned runway in the jungle. Leszli, along with her father and the other passengers, were held hostage for 373 days. Her diary reveals her innermost thoughts, darkest fears, and visions of hope.

Leszli vividly presents this painful time in her life: trapped, held at gunpoint, and never knowing if she would live to see another day. Although never close before, the bond between her and her father grows as they provide one another with vital support. Alienated as the only woman in her group, she maintains her guard but finds comfort caring for animals, including a tarantula living beneath her bed. As the pages of her diary unfold, so, too, does the incredible story of one girl's fight for survival against overwhelming odds.

About this title

About the Author:

Leszli Kálli was born and raised in Colombia. She has since left her native country and is working toward degrees in English and graphic design.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

The Diary of Leszli Kalli

In the Mountains of Colombia

Thursday, March 25, 1999

Today, for the first time, I opened the Bible in search of advice. My aunt always does this; she says the Bible sends us messages. This is her method: she opens the Bible, flips to a page, any page, and places her finger on a passage at random and interprets the message contained in the words she reads. This is what I have done today, and this is my "message": I know thy works. Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. For thou hast a little strength, and hast kept My word, and hast not denied My name. (Revelations 6:8-9). With all my heart I hope that the "door" is my trip to Israel. Can this be the message I have been sent? Thank you, God.

Wednesday, April 7, 1999

I haven't written here for a little while, because I was waiting for something to happen, something different. I guess I was hoping for some kind of change because right now my life is so dull, so boring. I get so angry when I look around me and am reminded, yet again, that nothing ever happens to me. Today, however, something has finally changed.

Firstly and most important, I am going to Israel. For how long? I don't know, but all I can say is that I am overjoyed; everything worked out and today I bought my plane ticket from Madrid to Tel Aviv. Today is Wednesday and I am leaving this coming Monday.

Dear friend, please forgive me for not regaling you with all the stupid details of what is going on in my life, but I figured I would only bore you with my stories. Dear God, You and I will always be together, in this life and in any other. You will always be my innermost being, my "self." Even if or when these pages come to an end, You will always be inside of me. The most wonderful thing about having You at my side is that with You all my fears, all my doubts vanish. I know this is true because You are my creation -- I have created You, or who knows? Maybe I just allow You to exist. Between us there is no need for goodbyes, and knowing that is a comfort to me. From now on, I will tell You all sorts of new stories about the things going on in my life. The next time I write to You I will be in Israel. Today I will be packing my bag and rest assured, You will be right there at my side. I love You. Leszli.

Wednesday, May 17, 1999

What happened, Leszli? Just when everything was going so well, just when you allowed yourself to feel happy that things were finally coming together, that the doors were finally opening...My God, what happened? Why did everything suddenly go black? Why didn't anyone stop to ask me what I thought of all this? I almost can't believe it: I should be in the middle of a kibbutz, telling you what a good time I'm having, telling you how grateful I feel that I have been given the gift of turning my dreams into reality...but no. Here I am, writing to you now, still in Colombia, a hostage of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional [ELN, National Liberation Army], in the middle of the jungle, a place that in many ways is much farther from home than Israel.

It all happened so fast that even now, a month later, I still have trouble believing it, and I have to tell myself over and over again:

Leszli, you have been kidnapped.

Dear diary, my one consolation is the knowledge that you are still with me, as always. You can't believe how strange it is for me to write to you from this place. Actually, I have had to start a new notebook, because the rest of you is back with my suitcase, and here I am, starting a new page in a new diary. I couldn't take you with me in my carry-on bag: it was so crammed full of things that there was no way to fit you in, and since the blue suitcase was so huge, they didn't let me bring it on board, and off it went into the baggage compartment. Please forgive me; I imagine they must have read you by now.

You are and will be the only vehicle I have for expressing my feelings. The last time I wrote you I was free, and for a long time I didn't write at all because I figured you were as bored as I was with my empty, monotonous life. And so I swore I wouldn't write again until something worthwhile happened to me.

From this point on I am going to tell you everything. Every last detail I can remember will go down on paper, now that (thank God!) I actually found a piece of paper, and am able to write some kind of summary of my days and nights since April 12.

In brief, this is the story: last year I received a kind of proposal from one of Salvador's friends to visit a kibbutz in Israel. It sounded like an incredible plan -- for a long, long time I had been wanting to go on some kind of adventure. I wanted to do something that would allow me to break free from the hellish, boring routine that my life had become.

As you know, every weekend I would get together with my girlfriends to go out to the latest "hot spot," but inside it all made me feel so empty. My life went on like that until the end of December, which is when I got serious about this idea. From that moment on, I put all my energy toward turning it into a reality -- I even held raffles to raise money because at home we weren't in the best shape, financially speaking. The one good thing was that at least my flights were free, because my father is an airline pilot, and wherever his airline goes, I can travel for free. The one bad thing, though, was that my father wasn't very keen on the idea of me going to Israel -- the thought of me, the apple of his eye, his pretty little girl, all alone at the other end of the earth...he hated the whole thing. At first he said no outright -- it was a crazy plan, no way would he support it, he said. The best thing I could do, he said, was go to college and forget all about the trip. Every time he said it, though, it only made me want to go more, because that's the way I am. I have always been rebellious that way.

After thinking it over, I told him that all I needed from him was his permission and the plane tickets from Bucaramanga to Bogotá and Bogotá to Madrid. Nothing else. The rest of the trip would be my problem to deal with. Well, mine and my mother's -- my mom had promised to help me with everything else; she's always supported me in things like that, in everything.

I pulled everything together, but two weeks before the trip, I started having dark, dark dreams. It's odd, I've always felt that dreams have this strange way of predicting things that might happen...

Anyway, though, my bags were packed, my tickets were ready, my dollars saved up, and all I wanted was to get started on my big adventure in Israel. Once I was done with the kibbutz, I planned to spend a few days in Egypt and Greece, two countries I had always dreamed of visiting. People had told me how to swing it so that it wouldn't be too expensive. Then, when it was all over, I would come back to Colombia to do the sensible thing and start college here. What more could I ask of life? Every night I prayed to God, asking him to help me achieve this goal that meant so much to me.

On the night of April 11, I had a long talk with my mother. Among the many things we discussed, a comment slipped out:

"Mommy, I'm scared," I told her.

"Leszli, that's not like you," she said. " I've never seen you scared. Now I'm worried. "

"Oh, no, no, forget it," I said, to calm her down. "I don't know why I said that. It must be the jitters -- you know, normal pre-trip jitters."

On the day of my trip, I woke up at 5 A.M., and said goodbye to my older brother Nandor, who was working at a hospital. His shift started at 6 A.M. He hugged me and said, "Take care, honey."

After I showered and got dressed, I sat down and talked for a little while with my mother and my sister Carolina. The plan was that

my father would fly with me to Bogotá, where he would put me on the plane that was scheduled to leave for Madrid that same night at 7:05 P.M. Our flight to Bogotá was scheduled for 2 that afternoon.

We were sitting in the living room when the phone rang. It was my father.

"Hi, sweetheart. Listen, we're going to have to leave earlier. The 2:00 flight was canceled. Are you ready?"

"Yes, I'm ready."

"All right, sweetheart. I'm on my way, then."

I said goodbye to my mother and my grandmother, and went downstairs. My sister was coming with us to the airport; she would bring the car back home after we took off. My mother didn't come with us; she and my father were divorced in 1986 and, as you know, they can't stand to be in the same room together.

Once we had picked up my father and we were on our way to the Bucaramanga airport, my father said:

"Sweetheart, you know I think this trip is really a bad idea, everything was arranged so quickly and...I don't know...I just don't think you should go, there have been so many obstacles along the way, and I can't help but think that it means this just isn't the right thing for you to do."

I laughed out loud at that.

"Oh, come on, Dad! Are you kidding?"

We pulled up at the airport. As we sat around waiting in the cafeteria, he said it again, much more seriously this time.

"Listen, Leszli, there's still time to turn around."

"I'd say you turned around and went crazy, that's what I'd say!"

We checked in, and they gave me my seat assignment: 12F. My father would be next to me in 12C.

I could hardly believe it. There I was, sitting in a Fokker aircraft, on an Avianca flight from Bucaramanga to Bogotá. I had pulled it off after planning the entire thing in record time. Finally my trip was becoming a reality. I gazed out the window, content. The seats next to me were empty. The plane took off and the first thing I did was look out the window and up at the sky, to have a silent conversation with God: Thank you, God, I said. Finally this is truly happening. Thank you so much.

That day I would leave South America, and the following day I would leave Europe and land in the north of Africa. From there, I wo...

About this edition

• Publisher: Atria
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 074329131X
• ISBN 13: 9780743291316
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320