The only exit that was open was the southeast gate, down on Seventeenth Street, and the streets were full of people. I saw college students piled into cars, driving slowly, honking horns, waving flags, two guys standing on top of a slow-moving car as though they’d conquered the world, and it occurred to me that they were only ten years old when 9/11 happened. They’d grown up in this reality and now they were reveling in the closest thing that the United States of America would ever get to a “victory” in the post-9/11 wars.
