I came up with more innovative survival tricks. My greatest fear was being followed by gunmen or kidnappers as we left an appointment or the hotel, which everyone in Baghdad knew was teeming with Western journalists and contractors.
Sometimes, I would dress down, like an Iraqi laborer, and walk off the hotel compound with Nadeem, my interpreter, holding digital cameras, recorders and notebooks in a decrepit plastic bag. Our driver would pull up, with a little "taxi" plate on the roof of his sedan. We'd pretend to haggle with him for a few seconds before getting into the car.
A little facial hair, a Middle Eastern complexion and local clothes helped me blend in, as long as I didn't open my mouth. But there were far more close calls than I care to remember.
Once after interviewing truck bomb witnesses in downtown Baghdad, we were briefly stopped by the police.
"Who are you? Where's your identification?"
We cleared up the confusion, only to stumble into greater peril.
"They're American journalists!" one Iraqi cop announced to his superior, amid the huge crowd. It felt like all eyes were on us as we briskly walked away.
I was scarred, tired and adrift in a sea of sandbags, razor wire, blast barriers and gunfire. Death became part of my daily rhythm.
Mornings I awoke to the dry thud of explosions across the city. The metallic clang of weapons loading signaled preparations for an afternoon trip to the grocery store. Night fell, and after days that stretched 19 hours, I fell asleep to the sounds of automatic gunfire.
I rarely mentioned the close calls to my wife.
"How was your day?" she asked on the phone.
"It ended up being fine," I replied.
My goal was to prevent Iraq's troubles from flooding into my life or those of the increasingly demoralized Iraqis I worked with. But inevitably, Iraq began inundating my waking hours, even when I wasn't in Iraq.
On a holiday in Sri Lanka, the ongoing battle between government troops -- dominated by the majority Sinhalese -- and Tamil separatists obscured the beach and sun.
"Where are you coming from?" the driver of the tiny three-wheeled tuk-tuk asked us.
"It's none of your business," I snapped at him. "Just drive."
"What are you doing?" Delphine chastised me. "He's just trying to be nice. And you're not in Iraq."
