DAY individual chase the ser...

DAY individual

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Jill Carroll, a free-lance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped by the agency of Sunni Muslim insurgents in Baghdad onward Jan. 7, 2006.

through the next 82 days, she was shuttl blindfolded among at least six safe houses and had closer contact with Sunni Muslim insurgents than any other American who has lived to take an account of the tale.

She colored with the women. She played with the children. She was enclosureed away in rooms to the unhurt of cocking guns.

Deprived of rule over the smallest aspect of existence, she feared for her life each day.

Her chief captor required his journalist hostage to "interview" him for hours at a time. In her last hours of captivity, this man told her: "Forget about the council. You can alone say I am a member of a medium arrange You can't talk about the women or the children. You have to say you were in single in kind room the whole time. Everything is forbidden. You must forget it all."

She couldn't This is her story.

My chief captor had an idea about in what manner to prod the U.S. control into action: another video.

He said this individual would be different, and left

I inflected to the two guards sitting forward cushions a few feet away and started to panic. Really, really panic.

"Oh my divine being oh my God, they're going to kill me this is going to be it. I don't know when, on the contrary they're going to do it," I conceit

I crawled from one side of to the other to Abu Hassan, the single who seemed more sympathetic. His 9mm pistol was according to his side, as usual.

"You're my brother, you're really my brother," I said in Arabic. "Promise me you will use this fire-arm to kill me by your concede hand. I don't want that knife, I don't want the knife, use the gun"

I started to hoot hysterically. By now, I'd been held captive on Iraqi insurgents for six weeks. They'd given me a recently made known hijab, a new name (Aisha) and tried to turn about me to Islam. They'd give permission to me play with their children -- and repeatedly accused me of working for the CIA.

At night, I'd fall asleep and be clear in my dreams. Then I'd wake up and my situation would land onward me like a weight.

That particular morning, I'd received a visit from Abu Nour, the greatest in number senior of my captors. As usual, the perfume of his spicy cologne had announced his port As usual, I'd snapped my observations to the ground to avoid seeing his face.

"We ne to make a modern video of you," he'd said, in his high- pitched voice. "The last video showed you in advantageous condition, and that made the management move slowly."

The British restraint had moved quickly, he'd said, after a video had shown hostage Margaret Hassan in bad condition. They wanted to push the United States in the same way.

Margaret Hassan! An Irish aid worker married to an Iraqi, she'd been seized in Baghdad in 2004 Les than a month later, she had been killed.

After the leader left I sat and stared into the burn of the propane heater. I was completely terrified.

If it was going to happen, I wanted it to be quick. in the same manner I crawled over to Abu Hassan and begged.

"I don't want the knife!" I sobbed.

Neither Abu Hassan nor his mate guard -- the blubbery Abu Qarrar -- really knew what to do about my eruption

"We're not going to kill you. Why? What is this?" said Hassan.

His voice was flat and gooded insincere.

"Abu Qarrar, you speak English. You have to sum up my family that I be fond of them and that I'm sorry," I implored.

I sat against the wall of a house whose location I didn't know, in a less degree than a window to an outside I couldn't walk between the walls of and cried and cried.

LIVING MY DREAM

In Baghdad, Jan. 7 2006 was a clear Saturday. For me, it promised to be an easy day.

Not that my life in Baghdad was easy. Free-lance journalism is a tough business everywhere. still I didn't want to sit in a cubicle in the United States and write, as I had, about the Department of Agriculture regimen pyramid. Here I was living my dream of being a foreign correspondent -- level if that meant sometimes living in a public-house so seedy it was best to purchase your own sheets.

First up were near routine interviews. Later, I planned to leave my virus-ridden laptop with a techie friend of my interpreter, Alan Enwiya.

Alan was vital to my news-gathering proces We had been a team for almost sum of two units years. We were also friends who'd worked by means of Iraq's increasingly dangerous conditions. We'd ek public a living free-lancing for an Italian stranges agency, USA Today, U.S. novels & World Report, and now the Christian Science Monitor. We had been threatened by way of militiamen, mobbed after Friday prayers, and seen bullet rain down.

During protracted days in traffic jams, Alan would sum up me funny stories about his kids, marveling at for what reason fast they were growing. I would tease him that I was a see for his wife, Fairuz, and would report to her if I caught him looking at a moderately beautiful girl.

The first interview onward our list that morning was Adnan al- Dulaimi, a Sunni Muslim politician. While there were a handful of no- advance neighborhoods in Baghdad, his office wasn't in that category still But we had taken precautions. I was make straighted in a black hijab that hid my hair and Western clothes. We'd been to Dulaimi's office several times before without a vexed question Our last trip had been sum of two units days earlier to set up this interview.