The scream
Ortiz, Dianna
THE SCREAM Dianna Ortiz survivor of political violence is often revisited by memories when least expected. Some time ago I was sitting next to a young woman on a plane who told me of her...
...At Kovler, we are lifted when we fall, cared for in our brokenness, empowered to take the most daring of all risks--to live...
...The Center exists as a sanctuary for survivors of torture, and for their families...
...But the Angel of Death passed me by...
...Like many survivors, I adopted behaviors to protect myself from these memories...
...To it, I owe my sanity, my life...
...It was at Kovler that I, and countless others, first came to see ourselves not as victims but as survivors, fragile and broken perhaps, but very much alive...
...How has Kovler been a healing presence for so many of us...
...I remember the scream that only I could hear...
...I remember this and much, much more...
...But at Kovler, I came to realize that my behavior was not abnormal, that I was not mad...
...Later, I remember how people, blind to torture and its effects, looked at me, as if I were a mad woman who had just popped out of Freud's notebook, while others were convinced that I was feeling sorry for myself...
...But can one forget, even momentarily, that which was, and that which still is...
...There is nothing life-giving left...
...We come mute, desperately seeking a way to unleash the silent screams trapped within us...
...I heard, I saw the screams of people being tortured...
...Survivors of political violence emerge from an environment of total control, victimized and powerless...
...instead I was reborn in an instant...
...I assure you, that scream etches itself into one's eternal memory...
...We have neither the freedom nor the right to forget...
...I remember the night I died, when the screams of other people were muffled, falling, finally, into dead silence...
...What Timerman remembers is the wracking cough, until one day it stopped...
...But Kovler recognizes something that we believed had been lost forever: the inner strength that our torturers and all their allies have not destroyed...
...The damage done to the basic foundation is so severe that the pillars of one's life come crashing down...
...I was witness to that rebirth, not innocent as some newborn, but fatally flawed, born in the image of those who raped and tortured me...
...I was that scream...
...Elie Wiesel says, "To forget would be an absolute injustice....To forget would be the enemy's triumph....The enemy kills, tortures, and disappears twice--the second time, in trying to obliterate the traces of his crime...
...We are left with fear, guilt, humiliation, helplessness, shame, nightmares, flashbacks, hideous memories...
...This article is based on a presentation she gave at the tenth mmiw, rsary of Chicago's Marjorie Kovler Center for Survivors of Torture...
...Dianna Ortiz, O.S.U., was abducted and tortured in Guatemala in 1989...
...This painting that you passionately describe is my life, the life of every woman, child, man who has been subjected to torture...
...The survivor feels more kin to the dead than to the living...
...This is the survivors' world, a world we wish to flee...
...Survivors of torture find themselves bombarded with the most intrusive memories...
...One painting in particular had captured her attention...
...To Kovler come survivors of political violence, dipped with the colors of despair...
...Can you imagine what that meant...
...But as that bright young woman described it, in one terrifying moment I witnessed again the unrelenting clutches of torture...
...When individuals become the target of political violence, their worlds crumble...
...Can you not hear the cries coming from those terrified souls...
...In that darkness, where so many have stood and continue to stand, transfixed by paralyzing fear, there flickers the faint light of a candle, the Marjorie Kovler Center...
...She spoke with enthusiasm of the painting's color composition, simplicity, clarity...
...I was not one of those lucky enough to close my eyes...
...I was contaminated by what my torturers had done to me...
...This strength, feeble at times, empowers us to confront our torturers and their allies, to use our experience to end the practice of torture...
...I remember the screams...
...I was taken to a place where there is no more pain...
...Others advised me to forgive and forget...
...I would drink twenty cups of coffee to avoid the nightmares that came with sleep...
...Forget...
...Some time ago I was sitting next to a young woman on a plane who told me of her dreams of becoming a painter...
...I remember it: no beliefs, no values, no friends, no family, no memory...
...Can no one hear them but those of us who have survived this hell...
...Bathing frequently, I would use A-Jax and bleach to disinfect myself...
...Kovler heard my scream...
...She had visited a museum in Oslo...
...The smell of cigarettes, the sight of a policeman, the barking of a dog, or simple eye contact can trigger memories of the torture chamber...
...I was, I am normal...
...Sometimes the past, like the future, is too painful to face...
...We reproduce The Scream with our lives...
...The painting, Edvard Munch's The Scream, is quite familiar to me...
...At Kovler, we recreate our shattered lives and deepen our alliance with those whom we have learned to trust...
...Trust in one's self, in humanity, and in God is shattered...
...Often times, I am asked what makes Kovler so special...
...Dear young artist, dear fellow humanbeing--can you not see...
...Commonweal 3 0 February 27, 1998...
...It is a candle in the darkness...
...What she did not mention was the subject matter...
...Jacobo Timerman, tortured in Argentina, remembers someone in the next cell, a man he never saw...
Vol. 125 • February 1998 • No. 4
