I remember exactly where I was when I learned the first plane hit the Twin Towers.

I was riding in a Durango headed south on Broad Street toward my office in Philadelphia. My mind envisioned a horrible, tragic accident.

I remember exactly where I was when I learned the second plane hit the Twin Towers. I had reached my office and was sitting at my keyboard, the same one I am using to type this column.

That was when I realized it wasn’t an accident at all. The few moments between those events represent the last, bittersweet stretch of time in my life when I believed that we are victims of random cruelty.

Learning of the second crash, and what precipitated it, forced me to confront the fact that there is something even worse than randomness.

Sept. 11, 2001, at exactly 9:03 a.m. and 1 second, I realized there was evil in the world.

It’s not that I wasn’t aware of the vicious nature of Islamic fundamentalism. I handled asylum cases where the Taliban made life hell for my clients.

I knew what it was like to escape the Iranian mullahs because you were considered a religious apostate. It wasn’t news to me that women who didn’t wear veils to erase their identities were slated for death. But the full measure of........

© Yuma Sun