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Twenty-five years have passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Like most people who were old enough to experience that day, I can still remember with remarkable clarity where I was and what I was doing as the news unfolded.

In my case, I had an unusually close vantage point: I was a news editor at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, watching the attacks take place in real time. My work would later give me a firsthand view of some of the consequences. A year later, I was reporting from Afghanistan, where the defeat of the Taliban had created an extraordinary, if short-lived, sense of hope. Two years after that, an assignment in the Netherlands showed me how September 11 was beginning to reshape European politics and attitudes toward immigration and national identity.

Here, I’d like to share some of those experiences: what I saw that day, where the story took me (us) and how it all looks now. My perspective is shaped by a career spent largely outside the United States. September 11 profoundly altered American politics and society as well, of course, but my focus here will be on the consequences I was able to witness firsthand.