A bus just exploded, my boss told me; get home as fast as you can. All transport is down, and stay away from the streets. My friend Pete and I packed up our computers and left Starbucks, jumping as a bus drove by, empty and ominous. We stopped for cigarettes and I paid with shaking hands, my stomach hard and tight, my lungs heavy. It was a familiar kind of panic, subdued and not urgent but panic nonetheless. It's the kind of panic that comes over you when you realize that you are out of harm's way, but that someone has inexplicably come in and toppled the fragile security you've constructed. I grew up in Washington DC, living through the horror of 9/11, thankfully, a safe half-an-hour away from the Pentagon. I remember the terror of that day clearly, as if it happened only last week.

The ritual here was the same. School officials came around to make sure we were all accounted for. I sat in front of a television for hours, halfheartedly discussing theories with friends, watching the same pictures over and over. The bus at Tavistock square, ripped open like a can of sardines, all twisted metal and smoke. The woman, her entire face burned, being helped away from a Tube station, her face covered in a gauze mask. She looked like the walking dead.

Tony Blair came on television live from the G8 Summit in Edinburgh. He looked pale and shaken, and his mouth was pulled tight. He spoke slowly, in fits and stops, his voice wavering as if on the verge of tears. He announced he would return to London that afternoon, but that the summit would continue. In the basement kitchen we all breathed a sigh of relief, feeling better because Tony was coming back. If it was safe enough for him to return, then the worst was over.

By five it was all too much, so I ventured out of the building with another friend. It poured, in such a typically London way that it lifted my spirits almost as quickly as it soaked me to the bone. We took refuge in a bar, The World's End, and laughed and drank and celebrated life until the sky cleared again.

As we walked back to Central London, heads fuzzy from drink and the other pleasures Camden has to offer, we began to meet people. There were hundreds, thousands even, all over the streets, waiting at bus stops, carrying beers or sandwiches. "Excuse me, do you know how to walk to Edgware Road from here?" an older man holding two briefcases asked us. We didn't, and we told him so, apologizing profusely. "Oh, that's alright," he replied kindly, "Are your families all okay?"

That's when I almost cried, tears springing to my eyes for the first time that day, and for all the right reasons. The kindness of the complete stranger in front of me, who I couldn't even give directions to, stunned me so much that I almost couldn't breathe. No one had been nice to me after 9/11. No one had asked about my family, no one had asked about my friends. People were too wrapped up in their own personal grief to think of others. I was too; I don't remember asking anyone I didn't already know to be affected if they were okay.

And as I realized that, I also realized that the same conversation was happening all around me, dozens of strangers talking to dozens of other strangers, offering them food or drink, asking for help and getting it. People offered shoulders to cry on, ears that would listen. We told him our families were fine, asked him the same question in return and received the same answer. We wished him luck and went to a bus stop to wait for the bus to take us home.

The sky was painted with an incredible sunset, all purples and pinks and oranges. My friend and I planned a picnic for the next day and some fun for that night, and settled in to wait. Across the street a man in a business suit cracked a joke and his entire bus stop burst into hysterical, genuine laughter. I turned to my friend a smiled, gesturing to the happy bunch. "What a wonderful place," I sighed. "What a wonderful place.