Abstract Can we ever understand the day when four civilian planes were turned into deadly weapons, killing thousands of people? Maybe not, and maybe ‘understanding’ in the sense of a historian would only equal an apology for terrorism. Nevertheless, these events need to be seen in a larger context, and it is this context which is being systematically silenced. There is an urgent need for explanation of what happened, and one has to make a strict distinction between such efforts at explanation and a justification, which I would never want to provide. My thoughts about this event and its consequences are no more than the reflections of an archaeologist who worked ten years ago for a humanitarian agency during the civil war in Afghanistan.Neither I nor many of my friends and colleagues feel that we can just go on with our lives as though nothing has changed. Whether in private life, seminars or the workplace, discussions about terrorism and its state-sponsored response occupy a primary position. In a graduat...