Ten seconds later there was a loud bang from below the car. The thing had decided to conk out in the one spot that I had most wanted to sail through at 100mph. The place where looking like an American can get you shot, burned and hung from a bridge. Ziad tinkered about, tried the engine and - gradually - I realised we were stuffed. As it got dark I sat inside and wrote possible last thoughts in my notebook. About people in offices who tell you things are bound to be fine, about the irony of a pro-invasion scribbler being lynched by an Iraqi mob here in the Sunni triangle, about what a coward I am.