A Sunday morning car bombing

(AFP/Ali al-Saadi)
So much for the quiet of yesterday. It imploded by evening. A mosque bombing in Anbar. Indirect fire (or was it direct fire) in south Baghdad. Incoming or outgoing? No one seemed to know. Was it the airport? Or clearing operations in Doura, south of here? No one had any answers.

So we just ran around in circles like Borkon in the parking lot until we collapsed from exhaustion and the dust we'd kicked up settled back down to Earth.

Then New York forgot about us. We couldn't remember what we were chasing anyway.

Most of us went to sleep. Ahmed was still painting the hallway.

It didn't seem like fifteen minutes had passed before an explosion made our hotel shudder. When I pulled my curtains back, I could see the blast happened just opposite our compound, the Iraqi security forces were firing their guns in every direction, and it was already morning.