the ex FMLN pal o' mine

Got up early in the morning to head to my next city. On the chicken bus a very nice man offered his paper for me to read and smiled. I read for a while, what I could, but then the bus started filling up fast and I couln't stretch out the paper. Soon we hit a small town that was having its' market day and almost everyone unloaded. The nice little man was still on and told me to move back a seat or two because I was tall and was sitting on the wheel well, my legs could stretch out more that way. Then a kid came on the bus selling candies, my little old guy bought a few and gave me two to enjoy. Then he asked where I was from and what I was doing, where I was going, the usual stuff. We got into a nice little conversation and he told me his name was Jorge Luis Matas, he even showed me his identification card, ha! Then we got into his story, which was amazing, and not in a good way at times. He is maybe 50 or a bit younger and had fought in the civil war back in the day. FMLN was the moniker for the left wing rebel group that opposed the ruling party. When in 1981, the US trained elite forces unit called Atlacatl Battalion killed an estimated 757 men, women and children in El Mozote, the FMLN kicked into full action. The exact number isn't known because almost everyone in the village died, even the babies and pregnant women were shot and piled into a mass grave. The war that encompassed all of this included rebels blowing up bridges followed by government backed death squads that decimated entire towns. And so on and so forth and lots of people died. The problem for me with all this was that Jorge was fighting for survival against US backed troops. He lost many friends and family he told me, but he blamed the government at the time, not me. "You are my friend", he said "why would I have problems with you?". He also said that he had no problem with the US government since the war had ended. Now he runs a small shop where he said, 'it's small, but it's mine'. He smiled the entire time we were talking except for the part where he told me he lost friends and family. It was incredibly hard to listen to him (as I asked him to repeat every other sentence) as he described how my country, my government had supported the people who killed his loved ones. And in the same sentence was smiling and calling me his friend. I mean how do you respond to something like that and what do you say to someone who tells of losing friends while calling you one. That was a tough one but i'm pretty sure that he really did think of me as a friend, crazy! We reached his stop, he said goodbye and took off. After he hopped off the bus he waved to me through the window, still smiling ear to ear. I was shocked at how genuinely friendly and excited to meet me he was!