For Post's Baghdad bureau, a shattering day that could have been even worse

BAGHDAD -- We ignored the first blast, just before 4 p.m. It seemed distant.

A man and his daughter sat on our couch in the Washington Post Baghdad bureau with a picture of his missing son. He wanted to tell me about his family's suffering.

"Don't worry. This is ordinary in Baghdad," the man, Abu Abdullah, told me after the blast.

We carried on.

The next explosion, minutes later, made our windows shake.

We got up. Aziz Alwan, one of our Iraqi reporters, dragged our guests, a colleague from National Public Radio and me to a windowless room behind the kitchen. We thought it was over, and I felt embarrassed that we had forced our guests into such tight quarters.

Then we heard shots and a third, deafening blast. The house, inside the compound of the Hamra Hotel, felt like it was collapsing. We heard screams outside.

Our office manager, Abu Mohammed, walked in, holding his bleeding head. One of Alwan's arms was wounded and his ribs were bruised. He told no one, ignored the pain and pulled others into the room, until he collapsed.

We had no idea who was dead and who was alive. A colleague who had arrived in Baghdad hours earlier was upstairs, changing after a shower, when the bomb went off, flinging her to the ground.

Someone pulled out a first-aid kit and wrapped Abu Mohammed's head. Another colleague, Naseer Fadhil, also suffered a head injury.

We waited together in the dark room, fearing more blasts. Ten minutes later, we walked out. I thought of all the ways this day could have been worse.

Sharp pieces of glass littered the floor. The chairs next to the windows where our reporters usually sit were pierced by glass. The couches where we had been sitting were covered in shards from the large sliding-glass door that opens into our garden.