One World Trade Center soars 1776 symbolic feet above the memorial pools whose voids commemorate the absent presence of the North and South Towers. To visit on a bright spring day is to recall the blue sky of 9/11/2001, cleaved by images too shocking to acknowledge real, grieve the losses, marvel at the juxtaposition of horror and hubris, and wonder at one’s own good fortune. I lunched extravagantly with a friend at an Oculus restaurant, and dined that night at the East Village Ukrainian Restaurant, trying for solidarity but feeling pathetically inadequate. That morning we had taken the subway to Brooklyn to stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge, admire the Manhattan skyline, and join the hoard of selfie takers. Eight days later, gas, gunfire, terror, and blood changed the connotation of “Brooklyn subway,” and again left me wondering at my good life.

Hanna is a character in 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah’s 2011 novel, THE LAST GIFT, a tale of family secrets, late revelations, and the legacy of colonialism. Having renamed herself “Anna,” she writes to her brother Jamal as she processes what she has learned of her parents’ past: “My mind is crowded with my little thoughts when our world is full of so many unspeakable anguishes. Sometimes knowing about such things makes me ashamed to be well” (p. 278).

I know how she feels.