CPTnet
September 7, 2004

IRAQ: The explosion

by Greg Rollins

There is a gap in my memory that feels like it is a year, but is less than a
second long. At one end is the thought, "When will David and Mabel get
here" at the other is "What was that explosion?" The explosion on September
1, 2004 shook me, made my ears ring and made time unstable. I turned around
and twenty meters away a wall of dust enveloped the street. The dust
dispersed quickly. In the middle of the road where someone had placed the
explosive device, the concrete median had been blown to pieces.

     The next thing that I noticed was that the explosion left everyone
around me dazed--children and adults alike. You could see it on their faces
and in their body language. They slowly shuffled away from the blast sight
while they constantly looked back. People yelled at each other, to each
other and through each other. Others said nothing but stared. Somewhere
behind all this, two Iraqi men ran, carrying a wounded third.

     Not far past the blast was a stopped car. Its back window was blown in
and the back bumper blown off. The two men inside climbed out in unsteady
shock. The passenger stumbled away while the driver stood and looked back
and forth between his car and the U.S. soldiers a block away. The driver
put his hands on his head as if he expected the soldiers to arrest him, then
he put his hands down and shuffled off the road.

     I watched all this shock around me through my own shock. Time sped up
and slowed down. The light was too bright and people moved too fast. I saw
young boys walk up to the broken median for a closer look, and I watched a
middle-aged Iraqi man crying as his friend led him by the arm down the
street.

     Those who stood further away when the blast happened were less shocked
then others. A block away the U.S. soldiers slowly approached, their
movements more cautious than stunned. I had noticed the soldiers before the
blast but had thought nothing of them. One often sees patrols of U.S.
soldiers parked at the side of the road. David Milne later learned from a
soldier that an Iraqi told them about a suspicious person atop a dilapidated
building ahead. The soldiers had called the Iraqi police to investigate but
had not foreseen the explosive device.

     Many of us around the blast were lucky. The bomb was small. Few people
sustained serious injuries but one person died. Those who did receive
injuries were only a block and a half from a hospital. My shock wore off
with time, as did the shock of the people and on the street. When I returned
home, I tried to think back to the moment I heard the explosion but found
only the gap in my memory.

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