"How could they thank God?"

“Nairobi has been bombed,” said Amina Bakari, my Kenyan host mother. She was outside, as she was most mornings, preparing the fire in the small tin charcoal stove. Her voice was slow and calm, but the uncharacteristic silence that followed shouted her anxiety. Mama, as I affectionately called her, began to quietly chant Muslim prayers as she paced on the concrete behind her home. 

I’d woken up late that day, 15 years ago today. I was a 20-year-old exchange student living with a Nairobi family. I had planned to visit the American embassy that morning to mail letters home, because the post office was notorious for long lines. Two weeks before, my pale skin and American accent had granted me the privilege of dropping mail at the embassy’s front desk.

Neighbors said there were two explosions. The first was a hand grenade that brought out the curious. Then a truck bomb exploded in front of the embassy, and glass poured like rain into the eyes and limbs of the curious.