WORDS Michele Gierck

Michele Gierck reflects that the surprises on our journeys, even those that take us through pain and dark times, can be as important as reaching a planned destination.

This story begins with an interview by The Age journalist Martin Flanagan in November 1999, three years after I returned from living in El Salvador, having witnessed civil war and its aftermath.

We were in my lounge room. Although I had a back injury that began rather innocuously only three weeks prior to the interview, and sitting was not comfortable, I could not resist responding to what I was being asked. What drew me into a war zone? What did I do in El Salvador? What are my strongest memories of war and post-war? What was it like being an advocate for human rights, and an interpreter of people’s often atrocious stories?

Answering such questions is not easy, but Martin Flanagan is a fossicker. He likes depth. The conversation with him, and his probing questions, prompted my memories, stories and experiences of El Salvador— stored away because they seemed to make little sense back in Australia—to surface.

Being listened to by someone trying to get a sense of who I was, of my spirit, perhaps even my soul, was a cathartic experience.

For days after the interview, I found myself thinking, ‘Oh, I should have told Martin that’, as I waited in a myriad of medical rooms trying to find out why my lower spine refused to hold up the body wrapped around it. And I became aware that my injury was not healing but rather worsening with time.

One day—November 16, 1999, to be precise—as I was left on an x-ray table, awaiting a full-spinal investigation, I began thinking about El Salvador, the people, the communities and the land I had come to love. And then it struck me that I should write a book about my experiences there—that it should be written from the heart. That thought could well have vanished. But it came to me on a special day of the year. Let me explain.

November 16, 1989 may not be a well-known date to most Australians but it is to me. I was in Melbourne at that time and I’d been translating human-rights denunciations from El Salvador for about six months when we received the news that six Jesuit priests, their cook, Julia Elba, and her daughter, Celina, had been assassinated in the grounds of the Jesuit University in San Salvador. Until that point I’d been happy to do a few hours of translations a week. But that event shocked me, as it did many other people around the world. It catapulted me into action. I could no longer just sit there. It was time to act, to stand with and accompany the people of El Salvador. There was no doubt. My time had come.

That event, or should I say atrocity, so systematic and so brutal, seemed to pierce something deep within me. Each year since then, on November 16, perhaps out of respect, I make my commitments to whatever form of social justice or contribution humanity I am able—no matter how small.

And so it seemed significant that the idea to write about my experiences came to me on November 16.

On December 22 that same year, unable to sit down, I picked up a pen, and a surge of words sprayed onto the page. It wouldn’t stop. I had never written before, but for the next two months I wrote around a thousand words a day. When my right arm strained and could no longer write, my left hand took over.

In between the stories I committed to the page were reflections. The earliest one took place in Nicaragua.

It was 1990. The war still raged in El Salvador. I was aware of what was happening through my translation work, but it wasn’t until Nicaragua that I had my first encounter with Salvadoran refugees, with el pueblo, the people.

I noted the tough conditions the refugees lived in: lack of water and medicine, the difficulties eking out an existence and the number of female heads of households. Yet there was also hope, a strong sense of community, and the desire to return to their homeland.

Then one Sunday morning, having joined the women for their weekly reflection group, which entailed listening to their personal tales of the atrocities at the hands of the Salvadoran military, I was stuck not so much by the horror of what they had endured, as the depth of their faith—personal and communal. I walked away wondering how people who had suffered so much could still believe in a God of Life. Something inside me desperately needed to know, just as I also knew that I would continue to accompany the Salvadoran people, to be in solidarity with them, in whatever way I could.

This was but one of many reflections that I handwrote.

After two months of furious writing, I realised that I had the first draft of a book. Had I known there would be many, many more drafts over seven years prior to publication, I may not have stuck with the project. But getting into things, sensing that’s the way, without knowing where it leads, is part of my nature. My back pain meant the active Michele, who I once had been, was now being written about by another Michele, who was no longer able to swim, drive, work, or even sit for prolonged periods. Rehabilitation was very slow, and often not straight forward, but I did improve.

In 2004, I finally resumed international travel, accepting an invitation to visit Rwanda and Kenya. I was elated at the thought of reclaiming my life. But upon return, the body spiraled into pain, more severe than I had known.

In desperation, I took to meditating each morning. In my mind I’d be in a little wooden one-room house with an earthen floor in the mountains of El Salvador, much like the homes I’d often stayed in. There was a potter with the most beautiful hands in the centre of the room. He always invited me to stay and rest in the colourful hammock, and when my pain was intense, he’d put his hands on my back. It was so soothing and provided so much comfort. The potter. He was such a healing man. Was he a Jesus figure?

Slowly I began to understand how, in difficult situations, the Salvdorans could believe in a God of Life.

And then it dawned on me that I now had more in common with the people of El Salvador than when I used to live there. I was no longer one who accompanies others, the one who was simply in solidarity with them. For the luxury of solidarity is that you can walk away, take a break, anytime. But I was now one who also suffered. And relief and rebuilding a functional life would take another couple of years.

Through physical pain, I realised what many Salvadorans I had lived among have long known. It is the day-in, day-outness of pain and suffering (in their case arising from war and poverty) that has the propensity to break you. The paradox however, and perhaps the most remarkable surprise, is that it can also actually transform you, breaking you open, leading you by means you would not choose … to deeper faith.

 Michele’s book, 700 Days in El Salvador was published by Coretext in 2006. Michele is available for public speaking engagements through www.bookedout.com.au .

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