Letter from Bogota 11, September 2001 by Donna DeCesare

Donna DeCesare, Colombia 		"Donna we are so sorry," my friend Maria Fernada began, her voice trembling.

At first I couldn't take in what she was saying. I was engrossed in editing my negatives for a UN exhibition on Human Rights in Colombia and was only half listening. But her tone grabbed my attention, something about the world trade center. Images of the 93 car bomb attack surfaced in my memory. "It's not like that, turn on the TV," she told me.

Stunned I watched New York's twin towers imploding live on Colombian Television. At that same moment my youngest sister Louise was also watching, but not on TV. When she heard the crash and screams, she rushed to the window of my New York City apartment transfixed for several hours by the view from my fire escape.

Usually I am the eyewitness. I bring the reality of far away human rights abuses or war home in my photographs. Today our perspectives reversed. A kind of violence that had existed only in abstract for my sister and most New Yorkers became a lived reality as they watched the landscape of our city, our country, the entire world change irrevocably.
When my sister finally got through to me her first words were to let me know that she and the rest of my family were safe. Quivering sadness permeated her description of her act of witness, her efforts to help-- giving blood and taking food to rescue workers. She reminded me with quiet irony that this was happening on the anniversary of the Chilean Coup. My sister has never been to Chile. But she will now imagine history with a different dimension of personal resonance.

We Americans think of ourselves as "can do." And we New Yorkers especially believe that surviving in the Big Apple makes us some of the toughest, most experienced and knowledgeable people on the planet. But today's intimate experience of vulnerability and suffering joins us firmly with the rest of mankind.

Roaming the streets of Bogota later in the day I was comforted by the compassionate condolences of complete strangers. This is Peace Week in Colombia. There are banners hanging from public buildings proclaiming: "Say yes to Peace." Colombians understand the suffering of terror and violence better than most people. They know from deep experience that vengeance is a poison that leads to more violence. My friends in other parts of Latin America know it too.

Today they join us in remembering and we must join them in saying yes to life.