The bomber blew himself up no more than a few yards away. First, a brilliant flash of orange light like a starburst, then a giant popping sound. A gust of debris, flesh and blood threw me from my chair as if I were made of cardboard.

I was lying on a bed of shattered glass on the floor of the cafeteria in the Iraqi parliament building, covered with ash and dust. Small pieces of flesh clung to my blue jeans. Blood, someone else’s, speckled the left lens of my silver-rimmed glasses. Blood, mine, oozed from my left hand, punctured by a tiny shard of glass.

“Are you okay? Are you okay?” asked Saad al-Izzi, one of The Post’s Iraqi correspondents, standing over me, his face framed by an eerie yellowish glow, his voice distant. I did not reply.

I had always thought about this moment. In Iraq, every journalist does. But I did not expect a bomber to take lives inside the Green Zone, the nerve centre of the Iraqi government and its backer, the United States. To enter, you must pass heavily armed US soldiers, Peruvian security contractors, bomb-sniffing dogs, body searches, metal detectors and several identity checks. Once you are inside, there are checkpoints sealed by concrete barriers on nearly every stretch of road. Then, more body searches, metal detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs and identity checks.

Saad and I had arrived at the parliament building at around 2 pm on Thursday. The cafeteria on the first floor was packed with scores of politicians, aides and others working to rebuild Iraq. There were Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, the religious and the secular, seated at glass-topped tables. Waiters served roasted chicken on beds of rice.

... contd.