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Show The Great Escape • 12 and were thus one meter short. While the prisoners' vanguard rapped on the tunnel's ceiling, then compafieros in the living room above searched in vam for the source of the muffled tapping, which was dispersed by the meter of dirt between them. By the time they met up with the tunnel, they had dug up half the living-room floor, and their aim was slightly off, leaving a slight jog between upper and lower sections. Because of the extra depth, the prisoners had to hold up both arms and be pulled out. And thus, after an excruciating five-hour delay, the first prisoners started filing out. First came the men with the longest sentences and the Tupamaro leadership. "There was a companero we called 'One Arm,'" Arturo told me: He had a small arm with a deformed hand. When he gets to the end of the tunnel, they tell him, "Lift up your arms," and he lifts one. "The other one, the other one!" "I don't have another one." "Come on, we're not joking. This is no time to be screwing around." "Really, I don't have another arm." So they pulled on his one arm and he got stuck in the jog. And J when they saw him they apologized, "We thought you were messing with us." Arturo, who had grown up in the neighborhood of the prison, knew the Rial Castillos family, whose house the tunnel ended m. When Grandma Rial understood what was going on, said Arturo, she told her captors: "Tell Artunto to come give me a kiss." "But, Ma'am, can't you see that...?" And every few minutes: "Are they out yet?" "No, not yet, Ma'am, there's a complication." And she saw that they were tearing up her living room, but "Oh well, but when Artunto comes out, tell him to come and give me a kiss." She was wearing them out, and when I was getting near the tunnel exit, I heard, "Are you Artunto?" "No." "Are you Arturito?" "No." They made you put your arms up, then they pulled you out, and, "Are you Arturito?" And when I said, 'Yes," they stopped me. "Go give a kiss to that old bat. She's been driving us crazy." "And did you?" I asked him. "Yeah. I went and I gave her a kiss." |