One day, a ragged man with a pallid, haggard face confessed to Juan that the sound of his own screaming was waking him up every night. He and his brother-in-law had worked together on a construction crew in San Salvador, and both belonged to a union. They were kidnapped one day after work, detained together while National Guardsmen tortured the brother-in-law. The man told Juan that the soldiers had made him watch when they finally shot his brother-in-law in the head. The survivor’s guilt was almost worse than the memory itself.
