Everyone has a different remembrance about where they were on 9/11.
All I can do is share my story:

Part One
My paternal grandmother, here-after affectionately referred to as "Gram", is called Ginny by her friends. She's an eternal red-head (thanks, Clairol), who was passionate about world travel. When my grandfather was alive, they traveled extensively through Europe. After his passing, she had one beau who took her on fabulous cruises. She also joined an organization called the "Friendship Force" where she got to travel with other retirees and see the world. It was with the Friendship Force that she saw Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, and Egypt (she was there once before the trip with me). She took me to Egypt on her last international trip.
From Dayton, we flew to New York's JFK via a stop in St. Louis. Yes, look at a map. There was no geographic logic to this St. Louis detour, but there you go.
JFK was a freakin' nightmare of an airport. The terminal we were in looked like something out of a post-apocolyptic movie set. Everything closed, gated off, empty, torn down. Dirty. The walls that should have had payphones were just dangling wires hanging from the drywall where the phones had been ripped out; the mirrors over the sinks in the restroom were ripped off -- one urinal was left in working order, the rest were gone, leaving gaping stinking pipes. This was the 'wonderful' New York City?


Our boarding of our TWA flight from JFK to Cairo was delayed: smoke from a warehouse fire in New Jersey blurred visibility for the pilots.

If I thought JFK's terminal was dirty, I hadn't seen nuthin' yet: the inside of the TWA jet was filthy. It doesn't surprise me one bit that TWA went out of business; I think they were already doomed and just used 9/11 as a convenient excuse.
Gram and I settled in for a rather un-eventful flight.
The first wonder of the trip for me was seeing the Mediterranean from the air as we descended for our landing in Cairo. Dazzling blue waters. Everything Homer said it was, and more. At first, I could just barely make out tankers and cruise ships, then smaller yachts and fishing boats came into view, bright white dots on the magical blue. What was going through the minds of our pilots then? I will never know. As we were flying over the Mediterranean, planes were flying into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Certainly our pilots were informed.
We, as passengers, were blissfully clueless.
The first image I have of Egypt, as we debarked the plane, is of a man in a white uniform holding a sub-machine gun.
That is the sight I saw as I stooped and looked out of our plane's window while we waited to disembark. Shit, I thought, this really is another world. 
If I only knew...

All of us who were identifed as belonging to our tour group were cornered together, like cattle ready to go to the slaughterhouse. We had no idea what the hell was going on.
We were hustled through a corridor of armed Egyptian military men. We didn't pick up our luggage, we did not go through customs. People in our group were shouting, "What's going on?" No one answered .

Through the spaces between the soldiers, we could see throngs of Egyptians massed around televison sets. Some Egyptians pointed to us and yelled, "Americans! Americans!" And they pointed from us to the tv. We were not allowed to stop and see what was happening.
We were quickly loaded onto a tour bus, and it barreled away from the airport.
The bus trip to our hotel took about forty-five minutes. It was dusk in Cairo, even though back in New York City, it was still morning.
The bus driver would not answer anyone's questions. He basically said, "No English."
What could we do? I sat and enjoyed the sights. It was my first glimpse of a foreign city, at sunset. Beautiful and amazing and full of people. People everywhere. Cars everywhere. Honking honking honking. Our bus driver didn't believe in stoplights, if we were even on a road that had such things. He just slowed down, laid on the horn, and went through the intersections. Cars got out of his way.
Night had fallen by the time we pulled through the iron gates into the compound that housed our hotel. The bus driver talked excitedly on his cell phone. As he stopped, a woman got on the bus. She was a beautiful Egyptian woman, in her mid-thirties. Dressed in a flowing flower print wrap and matching head scarf. She clutched a cell phone and a clipboard.
"Hello. My name is Sherri. I will be your tour guide. I must inform you that all activities for tonight have been cancelled. You are to report to your rooms, where your suitcases will be delivered to you. A customs agent will meet you in the morning, so have your passports ready. We will meet in the lobby at 8am. Until that time, I need to ask you to stay in your rooms."
"What's going on?" Yelled someone from the back of the bus. We all were thinking it.
Sherri looked at us.
You know she was not looking forward to this moment.
"America is under attack."