A Thundering Silence

Translated from Spanish by Ezra E. Fitz, writer Felipe Restrepo Pombo’s “A Thundering Silence” is a personal essay that explores his discomfort with quarantining in Bogotá, Colombia, during the first wave of COVID-19 in April 2020. Restrepo Pombo is perturbed in particular by the silence of quarantine. He contextualizes this discomfort with a pre-pandemic story of visiting a small town while teaching a course at an Indianapolis university. Accustomed to the din of Bogotá, Restrepo Pombo sees the silence of quarantine as a challenge to his ego and vanity. Unlike the fantastical image of a fast-paced and thrilling apocalypse, the COVID-19 disaster has struck with a thundering silence. In the face of the ambiguity of the COVID-19 virus, humanity must confront disaster with docility and isolation rather than extravagant heroics. Although quarantine and sitting quietly at home in isolation is difficult for Restrepo Pombo, and he questions the feasibility of prolonged lockdown, he also comes to recognize how silence and solitude can bring valuable insight into the ways that humanity’s self-aggrandizing image of itself can lead to disasters that bravado is incapable of addressing.