Zaira-Bogotá

Comparing Zaira and Bogota is quite irresistible. As soon as I read that the invisible city consists on “relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past” I thought about my own city, and how this description applies perfectly to it. My father once said Bogota is an old man. He didn’t explain any further, but with time I have come to understand this metaphor thoroughly. Much like Marco Polo’s signs and emblems, this metaphor became primordial to me when attempting to understand the city, because as said in the book “emblems,…once seen cannot be forgotten or confused.”

Therefore, Bogota is like Zaira because “the city however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the antennas of the lightning rods… every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”

We see this in the streets of Bogota, where things are ever changing, but space is absolute. The buildings on the streets, publicity and bars might have changed, just like an aging man’s skin wrinkles. However, the streets- the space- where memories locate remain. The man’s body is the streets, superficially changing, but in essence the same. In Bogotá there are few places today you can walk by and are exactly the same they were twenty-five years ago. But every street is a setting for infinite memories. “A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira’s past.” Same case applies for Bogota. Bogotá is a nostalgic old man, whose memories are distant and beautiful because he was young in them. Every citizen has a special relationship with space, and no matter how much it has changed, it can still see it as it rests in its mind. My mother, an especially nostalgic woman, has often flashbacks while driving, where she sees the streets of Bogotá as they were in her youth. This goes to proof that everyone has its own version of Bogotá. To understand this city, we must look at its past.