Outside, Iraqis — men and women, young and old — were huddled in groups. Some punched the buttons on their phones. Others wept. Most appeared stunned and solemn, deep inside their own realms, as I was.

At 2:40 pm, I followed dozens of Iraqis back into the building. I wanted to retrieve my tape recorder and notebook. I walked back up the stairs. The old man was gone.

Blue-uniformed policemen in surgical masks and carrying large flashlights searched for the wounded and the dead. I made my way to our table. A human leg, from the knee down, rested three feet from where I had been sitting. I stared at it for a few seconds.

The floor was a junkyard of humanity, a perfume bottle here, pieces of shirt there. Debris covered untouched chicken dishes. The sounds of shoes crunching shattered glass blended with the wails.

I found my dust-covered notebook. Some pages were splotched with blood. When I found my tape recorder, it was still running.

Later, I heard the vocabulary of a bombing’s initial moments:

“The rest, where are the rest?” someone screamed.

“Let’s go out.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.”

“Khalid, Hamada,” someone said, yelling out names.

“God is the greatest.”

“What is this?”

“Who is this?”

“Khalid! Pick him up!”

“Is there a doctor at the training room?”

“Yes, there is one.”

“It’s all a curse on us, Ayad. It’s because of the stealing, the corruption.”

... contd.