By Matt Lavin

During a weeklong visit to southern France this summer, I met a young man from Tel Aviv who was spending a few nights on the coast before returning home. We were roommates in the Auberges de Jeunesse, so we naturally began exchanging stories about where we came from, what we had seen so far in Europe, and what else we planned to do before heading home.

About five minutes into our fairly superficial conversation, Emile seemed a bit anxious. He cautiously opened his mouth and asked a question that must have been in the back of his head from the start.

“But, also,” he said, as if it connected to our previous discussion, “where were you on 9/11?”

I told my story, indicating how I had been a senior at St. Lawrence University in northern New York on that unforgettable day. I woke up, took a shower, and put on the Today show, to see what many Americans saw just before 9 a.m. that day. I told him how I roused my friend Leif, whose father worked in the city. I told him how my friends and I smoked cigarettes and drank Scotch at 10 a.m. and went crazy for several months afterward. Then I asked him the same question he had asked me.

“I was at home, and I had just made some food, so I sat down on the couch and was relaxing, watching TV. At first, when I saw these images, I thought it could not be real. No one thought this could happen in the United States. So I was watching it, and I thought, this is the best TV show I’ve ever seen.”

My first instinct was to take offense, but I held back with the hope of understanding his point of view. Only nineteen when I met him, Emile must have been in middle school when the tragedy took place. And the events that took place that day were indeed the nightmarish scenes of a thousand disaster movies come true.

Emile was one of a dozen people who asked me where I was on 9/11. I met people from Britain, Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and France. People across the globe remember that tragedy, and they care about it. My experience was not consistent with any rumors to the contrary.