Anguish in the Ruins of Mutanabi Street

"Come and see it," he yelled to five men delicately digging through debris. "It is his size." He broke into tears.

"This is your shoe," he yelled, looking toward the pale blue sky. "My son, I bought it for you."

He fell to his knees, sobbing.

The six men, all relatives, were hunting for a teenager's remains. The boy had been shopping for notebooks on Mutanabi Street, named for a 10th-century poet. They had been digging since Wednesday, morning till evening.

They stared blankly at the shoe. No one had the heart to tell the father the truth.

So they kept digging.

"Don't step hard," the father said. "Don't harm him."

At 9:15 a.m., Najah al-Hayawi, short with gray hair and a white mustache, emerged with his son from a building with smoke-covered Grecian pillars. The car bomb had exploded in front of their family's Renaissance bookstore, one of the street's oldest.

"We've been here since 1957," Hayawi lamented.

Hayawi's brother Mohammad, a burly Sunni Arab with twinkling honey-colored eyes, was killed. So was his nephew, the only son of another brother, Nabil. Nabil, miraculously, survived and was being treated in a hospital.

"We haven't told Nabil yet what happened," Hayawi said. "It will be difficult."

He walked away with his son. They passed a black banner with yellow writing. It said that the Hayawi family mourned the loss of Mohammad and his nephew, "who were assassinated by the cowardly bombing at Mutanabi Street."

At 9:23 a.m. the man searching for his son spoke again.

"You'll find him," he said to his relatives. "You will find his ID, his jacket. You'll find them just as you found this," he added, picking up the flattened shoe.

The men nodded and kept digging.

When asked how he knew his son was buried there, he replied: "My heart tells me so."

He wouldn't give his name. When asked his son's name, he answered: "His name is Iraq."

A few minutes later, he broke into tears again.

Iraqis passed him, gingerly stepping through the debris. Across the street from the Hayawis' bookshop, the remains of the Shahbandar Cafe sat silent. For decades, Iraqis had gathered there, waxing about politics and culture over water pipes and sweet tea. Beautiful black-and-white photos of Baghdad had adorned its walls.

At 9:48 a.m. Khalid Hussein was rattling off the names of the dead.

"I am trying to rebuild myself," he said. "We cannot leave Mutanabi Street. Outside of Mutanabi Street, we feel lost."

At 10:04 a.m., a man in a green shirt stood before a shattered shop, screaming for a man named Moean.

"Moean. Answer me back. Moean."

He fell to the ground, crying. A friend helped him up, and slowly they walked up the street, away from the debris where the five men kept digging.