My Christmas Miracle

Caracas, December, 1999. I’d just been hijacked and robbed. I sat in the back of a car, my assailants nattering in Spanish about what to do with me. I saw the dim lights of a smoky barrio high above. Not there, I thought. I don’t want to end up there. Or in a ditch. It was pissing down rain—I’d never be found. We entered the city. Why didn’t they stop? I saw a sign, bright, festive, incongruously familiar. “Feliz Navidad,” I read, thinking I was dead. They turned at the sound of my voice. “Navidad?” one asked, suddenly grinning.

Image: Levoniust