Diary – 5 November 2005

Baghdad

Just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, and someone’s definitely out to get us. Last week the Palestine hotel, home to many journalists here, was almost demolished by a particularly telegenic truck bomb. The neat mushroom cloud rose a thousand feet into the sky, shedding a geometrically near-perfect ring of falling debris about halfway up. It was terribly beautiful. Our security minders tell us that the attack was a sign that all journalists in the city are now fair game. Some of us have reacted by going into lockdown mode, retreating behind the walls of the world’s greatest fortress, Baghdad’s Green Zone, guarded by Georgian troops in American uniforms and Gurkha mercenaries hired by Global Security. The braver journalists, who still venture out into the wilds of Baghdad, slip under the radar screen by blending in with the locals. Most reporters wear Iraqi-bought clothes: marble-washed jeans, plastic flip-flops and horrible short-sleeved shirts, untucked, with a pack of Marlboro Lights in the breast pocket.