I was in Manhattan over September 11. I was in London over 7/7, and a beach (Ao Nang) in Thailand about 30 minutes before the tsunami.

I meet many people in their 20s or their teens and 9/11 and 7/7 are pieces of history. The US/UK withdrawal from Afghanistan is one sense a closing of a chapter that started on 9/11, as the US pursues Bin Laden and that involved hunting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. If you’d like to dip into this more I recommend Garrart Graff’s oral history book, Only plane in the sky, and recent podcast, Long Shadow.

 I recall 3 small reflections. 

 The smell and the noise. In particular the smell. The burning hair, acrid burnt plastic stench that moved in the wind direction. The smell hit your senses as a visceral reminder that something had happened, that there had been an attack. 

 The kindness. A distant acquaintance took me out of the city to the New Jersey suburbs. Everywhere I saw kindness. Shock, hurt and all the expected emotions. But I recall a great deal of kindness. 

 A bar at the end of the world. There was a scene that lives in my memory as “ the bar at the end of the world”. I don’t recall clearly, I think it might have been the Library bar at the Hudson Hotel. There were a mass of travellers with no where to go. Everybody was out of joint. Uncertain. Far from home. The vibe was mix of oddly relaxed - because what could one do - with a background current of tension but overwhelmingly with this - well let’s have one more drink as it might be the end of the world but - to my point above - mixed with kindness.

 I was lucky. Maybe I was also lucky to come across this vibe. At least in this version of the Inn at World’s End, it was fair old place to hang out. Not the place, but the people and the kindness of strangers.

I wrote in 2005:

I still believe one must live life 

And I quoted Jeffery Sachs writing:

“...“Yesterday when the bombs went off in London I was about a mile away. I therefore witnessed one of the greatest triumphs and resources of modern life against the backdrop of yet another heinous crime. Londoners reacted to the disaster not with shock, violence, or disarray, but with unfailing professionalism, industriousness, concern, and emphatically, civility. There were no pogroms, attacks on London’s large Muslim population, Rather there were statements of praise for the Muslim community, for its integral role in London life. There was no rush to judgment, no bluster, no jingoism, only the steady voices of British politicians directing a democratic response to this most undemocratic of deeds.

London, in short, showed even in a moment of real peril, uncertainty, and grief, that it is truly, uniquely one of the great centers of a world civilization, a civilization in which all races, religions, and creeds can live together peacefully, creatively, productively. I feel about London what I feel about my own home of New York City. Both are what mathematicians call a “proof by existence,” in this case a proof that globalization can work, that divisions among people according to religion, ethnicity, language, can be overcome through a commitment to common purposes among people living in close proximity…”