The Mapiripan Effect

Sitting in the tiny rocking chair that occupied one of the corners of my tiny, rented room, rocking myself back and forth, I was having an argument with myself about whether I should open the little black book.

It had been a difficult day. I was coming out of a job interview that concluded in a new rejection. It was the forty-sixth rejection I had received in the six months of my life as an immigrant. Rejection came in all sorts of flavours: “You don’t have any prior work experience in this country.” “You don’t have all the qualifications required for this job.” “You are overqualified for this position.” “You don’t speak French well enough.” “Preference is given to citizens.” My enthusiasm of the first months quite rapidly turned into frustration, and frustration turned into fear and anger and desperation.

That forty-sixth rejection pierced my self-esteem to a point of physical pain. It was a cold day in October, and it was raining heavily, but I was in no rush to find shelter. It seemed like the perfect weather to camouflage my tears. I left the building and dragged myself down the downtown streets, in the rain, slowly as if I were carrying a heavy weight on my shoulders. The plans I had made when I first immigrated revealed too ambitious, and the realization that life is never what we plan for made me feel naïve and stupid. I built my dreams as a skyscraper and they were collapsing in front of me like a house of cards, in slow motion. I felt defeated.

The city emerged deserted before my eyes. I could perceive in the air the classic musky-sweet smell of the fallen leaves, but I did not see anybody around me, or behind me, or in front of me. It was just me, walking in the rain, lost in the reminiscence of a future I dreamed and that would never become a reality. New beginnings are like double edged swords, and the one I had chosen was stabbing me unmercifully.

And suddenly, like the wind in the middle of a hurricane, someone ran forcefully into me from behind and knocked me to the ground and out of my thoughts. The city and its lights became visible again. I found myself surrounded by people running in all directions, going to different places, living their busy lives. While still on my knees, I gazed around, trying to locate the person who had pushed me. People seemed to be moving around at excessive speed, except for her. When no one appeared to notice me, the little girl was standing there, on the sidewalk, at about 100 meters away, looking at me. Her eyes found mine, determined and with no curtsy.

“Hey! Come back here!” I summoned her as I hoisted myself from the ground. As I attempted to walk toward her, I stepped on something slippery that almost made me lose my balance. My ankle twisted and it forced me to take my eyes away from my target. It was then that I saw the little black book wrapped in a plastic bag. I collected the bag quickly and looked up again to reengage with the little girl. She was still standing there, almost reachable, but she turned around and ran away, almost furtively. I tried to follow her, but she rapidly disappeared into the busyness of the street.

By the time I arrived home, I had forgotten about my failed dreams and my forty-six rejections. I changed into dry clothes and sat on the rocking chair, with the little black book in my hands, still wrapped in the plastic bag, debating whether to open it. I did not want to intrude, but if it were my book and I had lost it, and if it were important to me, I probably would have wanted the finder to look for clues to locate me and return it. After much consideration on the ethical implications of reading a notebook that was not mine, I decided that finding the owner outweighed my fear to invade her privacy, so I opened the plastic bag and took the little black book out. I opened the cover and saw what looked like a family photo glued to the first page. The little girl that interfered with my need to feel sorry for myself that fateful afternoon seemed to be in the picture, but I couldn’t be sure. I flipped the page and scanned the book throughout, quickly realizing it was somebody’s journal. It had entries from August 1997 through October 1999, with the name Juliana Manrique showing at the end of each entry.

The little black book told me the terrifying story of a girl who used to live in Mapiripan, a small rural town in Colombia, where she lost her father and brother in a massacre perpetrated by a paramilitary group. Fleeing the country was her only chance of survival. Juliana came to Canada with her aunt, but it was not clear who was responsible for bringing them to safety. Her words, however, revealed the anguish and hopelessness of someone who has been long enough in this world. For Juliana, “safety” did not mean “happiness”. She missed the times when she could sit at the table with her parents and siblings, even if it were just to have a plate of rice. She missed the days when she would go outside and play with the local kids, unaware that every single one of those occasions was a life-threatening enterprise. She didn’t understand why she had to be separated from her mother and come to a place that seemed too far away from everything and everyone she knew and loved. It was apparent, from the level of sophistication of her writing, that Juliana was only a child when she wrote in it, but the life that she had to endure made me seriously question my entitlement to complain about anything. Suddenly, the tiny room I rented, the little money in my pocket, the forty-six rejections, the loneliness that always accompanies the journey of an immigrant became small inconveniences. I felt ashamed of having complained so much about how miserable my life had been. After all, I came to this country on my own accord and was free to leave at any time.

I wondered how the little black book ended in the hands of the girl that stumbled upon me earlier that day. Juliana’s journal had left me grief-stricken and it shattered me to think that there was another girl out there enduring a similar journey. Even if the little girl was not the journal’s author, it was her property. I needed to find her. The quest for her location began.

Months of online research and more than one hundred phone calls took me to a man, Marcos, who had been granted asylum in Canada in August 1997, together with other fellow Colombians. Juliana and her aunt were part of that group, and Marcos recognized Juliana on the photo that I showed him. Juliana and the little girl that dropped the black book appeared to be one and the same. Juliana would be in her twenties in 2010, when the little girl crossed paths with me. I thought that Marcos’ memories had to be wrong, but I was then more determined to chase the little girl down and return Juliana’s journal to her.

Marcos pulled a box out of the closet and looked through the mementos he kept in it, until he found a list of people that he met at the time he fled Colombia. He kept in touch with some of them during his first years in Canada. They gave each other a sense of belonging in a place where everything was foreign to them. But each of them had to go through their own struggles to settle and survive, and in their search for a new purpose, life inevitably broke the thread of violence and fear that had temporarily sewn them together.

I returned to my little rented room armed with the list and the hope that someone would still answer the phone if I dialed the numbers written in front of each name. And the stars aligned in the universe. I found Alejandra Manrique, Juliana’s aunt. I wrapped the black book back into the plastic bag and took the train to Montréal, where Alejandra was living, convinced that this visit would give me all the answers I had been looking for. Nothing could prepare me for the truth.

Juliana had vanished in October 1999. The investigation into her disappearance revealed that she was last spotted walking down the streets in downtown Ottawa in a rainy day. Some witnesses claimed to have seen her in the same area many times, always in October, always in the middle of a cloudburst. A theory developed that Juliana was trying to return to her mother in Colombia and that she may have encountered foul play. A theory that was never confirmed.

Alejandra didn’t know that Juliana kept a journal. Her heart felt as though someone were squeezing it like a soft ball of dough when I put the journal in her hands, and she found the family picture inside. The little girl in the photo was Juliana. Marcos’ memory was not wrong. Juliana was also the little girl that ran into me that October rainy day in 2010, when I came out of that interview rejected for the forty-sixth time.

Alejandra looked for her purse, took out her chequebook and wrote a cheque in my name for twenty thousand dollars. She extended it to me, together with a flyer. “I raised this money long time ago, so I could offer a reward for information that would help me find Juliana,” said Alejandra, and continued: “I want you to accept the reward, because, in a way, you have helped me find her.”

10 more years have passed since I met Alejandra. I think about Juliana every day. I sometimes am faced with new rejections, but I understand them differently now. Whether the little girl that abruptly collided with me in the street that day in the fall of 2010 was a product o my imagination or a ghost, she was real to me, and she decisively changed me. Juliana was desperately trying to get out of her misery, and she took me out of mine that day. She forced me to wake up from my lethargy and gave me a purpose greater than myself. I am now a private investigator helping people find their missing loved ones.