Luisa Kislinger was working at the UN when the terrorist attack in New York happened. She was one of the last in the office when she answered a call: a Venezuelan mother was looking for help to find her son.
By Caracas Chronicles – Luisa Kislinger
Sep 11, 2021
The attacks on the World Trade Center found me living in New York. I was part of the Venezuelan foreign service, assigned to the Permanent Mission to the UN. What happened that day is widely known. There’s nothing I can add to alleviate that horror. But, since then, I have been accompanied by an anecdote that I have seldom dared to tell out of respect for the victims, including, of course, those who were viciously massacred and wounded, but also their families. After all, their lives were never the same after that day in September 2001. With the distance, and the experience and perspective that only time grants, I stand in a moment of my life in which I have learned that telling what happened out of respect and empathy, is also a way of honoring the victims.
Like most people that day, I was shaken by the events. I was in the building of the Permanent Mission, just a few steps from the UN headquarters in the heart of Manhattan. I had come to work early like any other day, when I came across the television images live broadcasting the attacks. Telephones collapsed, including mobile communications.
Shortly before noon, the city was an apocalyptic scene. A dazed crowd walked down the street. There is no other way to describe it than as a state of collective commotion. Most of the people I worked with had already left. The tunnels and bridges to New Jersey, where I lived, were closed, so I had to wait. Sitting in my office, the phone rang. It was an outside call. I took it. I knew there was no one to take the call at the front desk. On the other end of the line, a woman spoke to me in Spanish with a broken voice. The beginning of the conversation was awkward. She clearly wanted to say something that she couldn’t phrase. Her son was in one of the towers. A Venezuelan.
I was surprised. The call was totally unexpected, as was also unexpected that someone from Venezuela was inside the towers when the attack happened.
She wanted to know if we could help her. I don’t remember replying, but I do remember asking myself how I could help her in that moment of confusion. Little by little, she gained the confidence to speak. She told me her son’s name, but I only heard the last name: Boulton. Somehow, she knew that he and a young man of Indian origin, who worked in the same firm, were together trying to go down the towers. He and his wife had recently had a baby. She asked me to help her find him.
…
Read More: Caracas Chronicles – A Venezuelan at the Twin Towers
…