Few people have lived with the long afterlife of 9/11 as intimately as Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Born in Mauritania and educated in Germany, Slahi spent fifteen years imprisoned at the US military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. His years in detention, and the experiences he endured there, would eventually become the subject of his bestselling memoir, Guantánamo Diary, a remarkable record of writing produced under extraordinary circumstances.

Slahi began writing during his captivity, with the help of his lawyers, Nancy Hollander and Teri Duncan, and editor Larry Siems, who helped bring the manuscript to readers. The book would later be adapted into the film The Mauritanian, starring Tahar Rahim as Slahi alongside Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch.

The film also grew out of a relationship that began soon after Slahi’s return home. Journalist and screenwriter Michael Bronner, who had spent years reporting from Guantánamo, travelled to Nouakchott shortly after Slahi’s release to begin working with him on the film. What began as a professional collaboration developed into a lasting friendship.

Twenty-five years after the attacks that set so much of this history in motion, Slahi and Bronner have reunited for a public conversation in Paris. Titled “Things We Lost, Things We Carry: Reflections on 25 Years After 9/11,” the conversation is the latest episode of the Radical Books Collective podcast.

Recorded before an audience of writers, editors, filmmakers, lawyers, and journalists, the conversation moves between the personal and the political, reflecting on what the past twenty-five years have meant—and continue to mean—for individuals and communities shaped by the events that followed 9/11. Among those in attendance were Olivia Snaije, Madhuri Sastry, Emmanuel Dongala, Lucy Mushita, Bassem Snaije, Anil Vassanji, Aurélie Daher, Khaled Al-Yemeni, Jérôme Tubiana, Vivienne Walt, Jeff Schaeffer, Adrian Blundell-Wignall, Janine di Giovanni, Ken Roth, and Melissa Thackaway.

The session was filmed and edited by Hassane Mezine and produced by Bhakti Shringarpure, founder of Radical Books Collective, an initiative that has created spaces for writers and readers to engage with histories and ideas that often fall outside the boundaries of mainstream literary conversation. Its programming has included the Sudan Syllabus series, as well as conversations with Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah and Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga.

This latest conversation continues that work. Through Slahi and Bronner’s shared history, it opens up a wider meditation on memory, friendship, justice, and the things people carry with them long after history appears to have moved on.

Watch the full conversation, “Things We Lost, Things We Carry: Reflections on 25 Years After 9/11,” on the Radical Books Collective YouTube channel.