The explosions sounded like two distant peals of thunder at 5.30 yesterday morning. Air raid sirens began howling, then the litany of rat-a-tat-tat from anti-aircraft artillery for half an hour.
Outside, street-lights still reflected in the muddy waters of the Tigris, and President Saddam Hussein's palaces were lit up across the river, rising above lush green gardens. But the beginning of the third Gulf War was mostly an auditory experience, with barking dogs, chirping birds and the muezzin's prayer call mixing in with the explosions. It seemed an odd time of day to start a war.
The early morning episode was so brief and inconclusive that many people were not even sure what had happened.
We have not seen shock and awe - yet. I encountered several human shields - peace activists from around the world who have volunteered to protect sites, chosen by Iraqi authorities, with their lives - in the al-Fanar cafe having breakfast. They did not realise the war had started.
But for those who prayed for a short conflict, President George Bush's new admission that the war "could be longer and more difficult than some predict", dampened relief over the relative mildness of the opening salvo.
Mr Bush said: "Coalition forces will make every effort to spare innocent civilians from harm," but he also accused President Saddam of "attempting to use men, women and children as human shields".
The fact that the first victim of the war appears to have been a civilian motorist bodes ill for the innocent.
The tentacles of the regime stretch into every nook and cranny of Iraqi society; the US leader's allusion to "human shields" could be preparing public opinion for the civilian casualties that may occur in the attempt to destroy the leadership.
Mr Frédéric Bonamy, the programme director for the international aid organisation Première Urgence, has gained access to all hospitals in Baghdad and has building contractors on call to repair operating theatres, emergency rooms and laboratories quickly, under bombardment if necessary.
But he hopes the relative restraint of yesterday's attacks means the group will not have much work. "I think the Americans will try to hurt as few people as possible," he predicted. "Not only do they have to get in here; they have to stay here. And staying among people when you've killed a lot of their civilians is not easy."
The Ministry of Information packed journalists into two coaches for a tour of the capital. We had understood we would be shown bomb damage, but instead we circled the city for two hours, watching police wearing helmets with camouflage webbing and kalashnikov bullet-belts direct traffic.
Armed men lingered casually around the dozens of sand-bagged positions that have sprung up in the last few days. When they saw the journalists, most grinned and raised their fingers in the V for victory sign. Would the same men soon make the same gesture for arriving invasion forces?
For the first time, I saw two armoured troop carriers with gun turrets, tucked away in side streets.
There was one Somali-style "technical" - a pick-up with a rifle mounted on top of the cabin; a dug-out in a park near Salaheddin's statue, and a few others in the grassy central reservations of Baghdad's boulevards.
But most of the uniformed men now so much in evidence in the city looked like middle-aged members of Dad's Army, overweight and armed with old rifles. They lazed on broken wooden sofas in the sun; one was having his boots polished.
The officials had wanted to show us the normality of their unscathed city on the first day of war. But this is an ugly city of crumbling, dirt-coloured buildings, streets littered with plastic bags, refuse and stagnant puddles.
The architecture of government ministries and headquarters is similar to that of the last city I saw bombed, Belgrade in 1999: concrete and glass monoliths, full of foreboding.
The US destroyed many of these Iraqi carbuncles in 1991, but those doing the targeting may be more restrained this time, to keep down the cost of reconstruction.
As the day wore on, more and more Baghdadis ventured outside. Traffic picked up. Boys played ball in an alley. A woman watered plants on her balcony. A little boy sat in a barber's chair, while a welder soldered next door.
These vignettes of normal daily life were temporary, illusory - as if Baghdad had been given a few more hours, by whim of the weather, or Pentagon planners.