A few minutes later, things on the street returned to normal; the crowd began to disperse -- just another afternoon in the city. And because I had heard several smaller blasts before in Baghdad and it wasn't clear what the latest blast entailed, I -- like many others -- didn't think too much of it. After finishing my drink and more conversation with the street vendor and another customer, I made my way to a money changer I wanted to interview.

The store was guarded by a young man with an AK-47; when a customer entered, he stood to attention. After the interview, I went outside and hailed a cab. That's when I learned about the explosion I'd heard earlier: The United Nations offices had been bombed. The cab driver was hysterical. "They hit the U.N., they've hit the U.N. They must get out, they must get out." He was an older man who looked to be in his 60s, well-spoken but overly excited; he could not restrain himself.

It was immediately clear to me who he was referring to. When he said, "They must get out, they must get out," he wasn't talking about Saddam loyalists or Arab fighters who have supposedly crossed into Iraq. He was speaking of the Americans. It was the United States, he said, that was responsible for the anarchy that now characterizes Baghdad; not because the U.S. military and the CPA have failed to provide security but because their very presence is destabilizing. His perspective -- which I heard repeated a number of times by many different types of people -- stands the traditional thinking on its head. From this perspective, it was not a question of more soldiers, different types of forces (military police instead of regular army), or different countries such as India, Turkey or Pakistan contributing troops. Unless the United States leaves Iraq, he was saying, Iraq will not experience stability.

The bombers had targeted the leading international organization -- as far as I was concerned, it had nothing to do with the U.S. military occupation. These were innocent civilians who were killed and injured. And this was disturbing, too: I was planning to visit the United Nations and to meet with staffers there the next day. Only when I returned to my hotel did I learn the full extent of the death and destruction. The BBC was airing footage taken from inside the U.N. building at the time of the explosion. The scenes were horrific; bloodied bodies and hysteria. I recognized the man who had sat next to me on the flight from Amman walking out of the building dazed and badly shaken. He was one of the lucky ones.

It was on CNN that I learned that Christopher Beekman had been killed. I won't forget this -- the reporter was Rym Brahimi, a CNN veteran whom I'd met the last time I was in Baghdad. I saw her standing on the balcony of her hotel in front of the famous square where Saddam's statue fell on April 9, and when she delivered the news about Beekman, the floor fell out of my stomach. I knew him.

I had met him in December 2002. He was UNICEF's program coordinator in Iraq, and he'd briefed the small delegation of American religious leaders I had traveled with about the health and education conditions of Iraqi women and children before the war. A Canadian citizen, he'd worked for UNICEF in Kosovo and Ethiopia before coming to Iraq. What struck me about Beekman, even in that first meeting, was his commitment. His life was devoted to improving the situation of women and children in developing nations. His was not a wild dream hatched in the basement of the Pentagon about making the Middle East safe for America by bringing democracy to Arabia.

With this terrible news, the risks and the devastation were no longer abstract. This was not a violent act of terrorism that I read about in the papers or watched on television. I'd heard it myself, felt the concussion. And Christopher Beekman, someone I had met and whom I was supposed to meet again, was dead.

My immediate reaction to the delayed news of the U.N. bombing and Beekman's death was not outrage; it was fear. I was unnerved, confused, scared. I could have been there, I thought. I could have died. All of the worries that had gone through my head in Amman came rushing back to me. Later, I would be furious about the U.N. bombing, angry at both those responsible as well as the CPA and U.S. military for failing to provide sufficient security. I was indignant that the United States had shirked its responsibility under international law by failing to provide security as the occupying power. This was inexcusable, criminally negligent. But at the time I was just scared, scared for my own safety. What am I doing here, I thought? What in Baghdad could possibly be worth risking my life for? I realized I wasn't a war reporter. I was an academic and a coward and quite comfortable with my cowardice.

I decided to leave Baghdad before the situation got worse. I knew rationally that in Baghdad I was more likely to be the victim of violent crime than a terrorist attack, but I simply wanted to leave. I had had enough. And my appointments at the U.N. would certainly be canceled, and the bombing, at the very least, would disrupt my other research plans. I wasn't the only one in a hurry to leave Baghdad. The United Nations, the Red Cross and other smaller NGOs evacuated many of their personnel to Jordan immediately after the attack.

I determined to get out, and within two days, I was on a flight. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be so happy to arrive in the clean, orderly and sleepy city of Amman. As soon as I arrived, I took a cab to the Intercontinental. After checking in, I headed straight for the pool and found myself in a different world. Thursday is the end of the work week in much of the Muslim world, and the pool was teeming with hyperactive upper-middle-class Jordanian and Palestinian children and a few foreign tourists. It was a gorgeous day and I was alive.

Baghdad is the closest thing I've ever experienced to Thomas Hobbes' "state of nature" -- his description of life, before the invention of the political state, as "nasty, brutish and short." What so many of us take for granted -- the existence of government and the provision of law and order -- simply doesn't exist in Baghdad today. Yet the state -- which always exists in the background of modern life -- is the invisible cement that allows peaceful social intercourse. Without it, criminal activity flourishes and the only check to the use of force is force itself.

If fear can be debilitating at the level of the individual -- multiplied many times over, generalized to the level of society, it can lead to social paralysis. It is corrosive of trust, the bond between individuals and the very fabric of society. That is precisely what Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi resistance wants, and more and more in recent weeks, they seem to be winning. And the United States, thus far ineffectual against the attacks, seems to be losing.

Fear inhibits the return to normalcy -- from everyday aspects of life such as going to school or work in the morning to the willingness of Iraqi businessmen to invest in the country's future. Fear is in many ways the worst enemy of America's stated goal of building a democratic society. And fear in Iraq affects the willingness of other nations and international capital to invest in Iraq as well as the willingness of NGOs and aid organizations to remain in the country.

Baghdad, of course, is not "a war of all against all." It is a city of 4.5 million people, the vast majority of whom are trying to live their lives as close to normal as possible. It is a place of traffic jams and markets, commerce, leisure and festivity -- as well as criminal activity, danger and violence. When I was in Baghdad a couple of months ago, I enjoyed ice cream every evening -- outside -- close to my hotel, along with thousands of other Baghdadis: parents and children, young and old, men and women. It was a gesture of hope, I suppose: a sign that even under duress, life can be sweet. These days I wonder how long their hope will endure. And, perhaps strangely, I find myself contemplating a return to Baghdad in December, hoping to find a city where fear has given way to peace.

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