“Why, God, why?”

“Ah ahhhahhhh,” someone screamed in pain.

By 2:45 p.m., an American security contractor inside the cafeteria was yelling: “Get out of here. Get out of here. Suicide bomber.”

I left the building. Then US soldiers arrived and made their way inside, past a man clutching his bandaged head, past a woman yelling into her cellphone: “Where’s Ahmed?”

The old man was seated in a chair outside the front entrance, his face no longer showing pain, only exhaustion. A woman fanned him with a piece of yellow paper. “Give him room to breathe,” she said to anyone who came too close.

At 3 p.m., two US soldiers approached me. One worked at the US military’s press badging desk, in a building right behind parliament. He recognised me.

“Are you bleeding?” he asked. I shook my head.

“Where were you?” he wanted to know. I told him.

“The Lord is looking after you, brother,” he said, and walked away.

By 3:30, US troops ordered everyone to a fenced compound filled with Humvees, a short walk from the parliament building. That’s where I found Hiti, the politician I had interviewed. He, too, was suffering from hearing loss. Dried blood marked his left cheek. Like many Iraqis there, he was edgy about being enclosed with a large group of people. He had lost faith in the security of the Green Zone.

“This is wrong. What if they planted a car bomb here?” Hiti said, glancing at the Humvees and the dozens of Iraqis there.

... contd.