By Noor-Jehan Yoro Badat
The first day of attacks on Baghdad by the coalition forces has left South African human shield Suraya Bibi Khan emotionally and physically exhausted.
Khan - of Lenasia, south of Johannesburg - told The Star from her hotel room on Thursday night that the first bombardment had begun immediately after she had completed her first prayers of the day.
Sirens had resounded through the quiet streets of the Iraqi capital, prompting her to head straight for a bomb shelter not too far away from The Palestinian Hotel, where she is staying.
But once there, she realised that a man she had befriended was missing. Instinctively she knew where he was - still at a nearby power station.
It had been destroyed by an allied bomb during the first Gulf War in 1991. Rebuilt, a couple of the foreign human shields had voluntarily chosen to station themselves there.
So Khan went there - and, as she had thought, her French friend Djelloul was there. He would not budge. He was also on a hunger strike and told her he was a man of peace and would even die for his beliefs.
Unable to persuade Djelloul to join her, she eventually went back to the bomb shelter alone.
After a while the all-clear was given, and Khan said she just "saw smoke".
Reflecting on the morning's events, Khan said that she was not as scared as she was angry.
"I was so angry with what Bush was doing that I had to cry it out, to let the anger leave me," she said.
"He has no soul, no conscience. What sense does the United Nations have in allowing a bully to run loose like this?" she said with pent-up emotions. Yet even though she was angry, she did not want those feelings to fester into hatred.
Later in the day, Khan took a walk in the streets and came upon a taxi driver. Relating his comment, she said that the taxi driver told her: "Ah, this is life - we have already experienced this before."
Opposite The Palestinian Hotel at the Sheraton Hotel, several other human shields from South Africa who had just arrived from Egypt were finishing supper when another siren went off. Thirty-five people rushed down to the basement.
The reality of the situation hit 23-year-old Suraiya Osmanessa from Johannesburg: "Even though we stayed down at the basement for only half an hour, it was the longest half-hour of my life," she said.