Not Yet Sikat

“She then hit me with a confession that would both thrill and confuse me. She explained that in the months that I had been away in Iraq her role within the AUC had changed; she had joined the urban militia and become an assassin. Her job was now to eliminate informers and traitors.

So far, she told me, she had killed at least 10 people in the area. I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, Marylin looked at me through the smoke as I exhaled, waiting to see how I would respond to what she had just told me.

Strangely, her confession did not have the impact one would expect; I did not recoil in horror. The months I had spent in Colombia and in Iraq surrounded by violence had altered my perspective. I don’t think that I had become immune to death or suffering but I had certainly become less easily shocked. The difference between victim and victor, rebel and refugee, often felt like only a matter of perspective.

[...]

One morning, Marylin told me that the previous night she had persuaded a friend to help her decapitate and dismember a woman she had been contracted to kill. This was no informer, but, rather, a friend of hers who paid her to kill her boyfriend’s other girlfriend.

She described so graphically what had happened, with so little feeling, that at last reality kicked in. I found my feelings about her changing. The romantic light started to fade fast. She no longer seemed to be a legitimate part of a civil conflict but had evolved into a freelance killer, taking life in exchange for money – no more, no less.

Although I still found her sexually attractive and wanted to be with her, something else was ricocheting around in my brain. Some of the thoughts that would have occurred to anyone else much earlier were, now, at last, beginning to filter through.”

I’m not sure if this was the basis for the Pitt-Jolie movie “Mr and Mrs Smith” but it’s a fascinating and sad story. Continue reading here…