Two tragedies

The attack Thursday on the Green Zone here in Baghdad was a reminder that nowhere in the city is 100 percent safe. The Green Zone covers roughly four square miles of what used to be the government district, and to describe it I'd say think of a chunk of downtown L.A. from Staples Center to USC blocked off and surrounded by concrete barriers and checkpoints. It's actually not that bleak. It's the only place where Iraqis and foreigners alike feel they can walk around freely. Or at least they used to.

Just as devastating to the people of Baghdad, however, was the attack that same day on the Sarafiyah bridge, where an apparent truck bomb exploded and collapsed a big chunk of the steel structure into the Tigris River. Ten people died, perhaps 30 were injured, and several cars reportedly tumbled into the water below.

The bridge, like the Green Zone, was considered a "safe" area. Built by the British about 70 years ago, it stood as a symbol of the city on postcards and posters during the Saddam era. It was truly beloved. It connected east Baghdad with west Baghdad, a predominantly Sunni neighborhood with a predominantly Shiite one. It was used by Iraqis of all stripes -- students, laborers, many of the people in our office. One of our colleagues, who fancies himself something of a ladies' man, remembered taking girlfriends for walks at dusk near the riverbank and stopping to gaze at the bridge.

Thursday evening, as we focused our energies on covering the Parliament bombing, which was front-page news around the world, I put the Sarafiya in the back of my mind. But my Iraqi colleagues didn't. As they hunted down information for me about the Green Zone attack, which terrified a community of Iraqi and American officials who thought they were relatively secure, my Iraqi colleagues talked about the bridge.

As much as the attack on parliament was a symbol of the war at hand, the bombing of the bridge seemed to symbolize the loss of a better time, and the feeling that ordinary people were systematically losing their own "safe" places. As a Los Angeles Times story points out today, there used to be 10 bridges connecting east and west Baghdad and now there are only 9.

We had the feeling yesterday morning that these kinds of emotions were missing in the immediate coverage of the Green Zone attack, when our story and many others focused on the stunning security lapse and what it meant for the highly touted U.S. "security crackdown" in Baghdad. Leila, our bureau chief, thought I should go and talk to people in the streets about their thoughts on the parliament bombing. I went with two Iraqi colleagues down the street to the site of a recent suicide attack in our neighborhood -- a car bombing that killed five people on a busy street less than a kilometer outside the Green Zone.

The people I met, who'd been there the day of the bombing and recalled standing just a few feet from the blast, had one thing to say about the parliament attack. "Let them feel it," said Abbas Fadhil, a 30-year-old butcher. An attack on the heart of the government could force politicians to do something about sectarian killing. "This could be for our benefit," he said. "This might help to unify their hearts and make them come together."

Maybe not politically correct. But they were the realest words I've exchanged with Iraqis outside our office in the few weeks I've been here. It's famously hard for foreign journalists to move around this city and talk to "real people." My short reporting trip yesterday, which lasted all of a half-hour (even that close to our hotel, we have to be careful), was more eye-opening than hours of phone conversations I've had with Iraqi politicians and American military officials. Abbas's comments led to today's follow-up story.