Baghdad: Using up my nine lives

"After four months in Baghdad, I was finally able to get out. I am sorry for not updating this journal in a while, but things got very violent and exhausting there for a while. It was all I could to do to just get my pictures made, file and go to sleep. There was little time for calling home of checking email, much less writing all my thoughts down.
I had several close calls myself during that time period as well. About three weeks ago American troops shot up my car for no apparent reason. Alaa and I were approaching what looked like a US checkpoint and when we stopped to wait for a signal from the soldiers on whether we could continue to move forward, two soldiers ran toward us and shot our vehicle destroying our radiator, ac and fan. Four inches higher and this blog would never have been updated again. When I complained to the CPA about the incident, a soldier told me it was probably because of the kind of car we were in - a civilian Chevy caprice made in AMERICA. Ironic, but when you think about it, this shows the anger and distrust felt by US soldiers to the common Iraqi civilian.
Less than a week later, Alaa, Mitch and I were in my apartment having coffee and a car bomb exploded at the entrance to our building. The windows and doors shattered and the room was covered in dust, but we were ok. Mitch ran outside with his cameras to see what had happened, but I was too freaked to go. I just wasn’t prepared to see pieces of people, particularly because this time it would be people I knew. But after a few minutes, I regained my composure enough to go check out the damage. Fortunately, there were very few casualties as it was pretty early in the morning. Only a 12-year-old boy was killed who used to sell cigarettes and candy outside. Unfortunate, but not too bad an outcome when compared to the amount of deaths car bombs usually leave behind. And I will acknowledge that it is a sad day when the death of an innocent kid is not such a terrible thing when compared to expectations."