Part 8 • A new enemy

(Page 5 of 5)

"We killed an Al Arabiya journalist," he said, his face drawn, his eyes hard. "She said the mujahideen are bad."

It was unclear if he meant that he himself had participated in the killing or if it had been done by men from the larger group of mujahideen.

They'd frequently assured me that I wasn't going to be killed. But clearly there were times when their rules for jihad allowed them to kill women, and to kill women journalists.

As I learned after I was released, the well-known Al Arabiya newswoman Atwar Bahjat and two colleagues were abducted and killed by gunmen while they were interviewing Iraqis near the bombed Samarra shrine.

I bounced from house to house over the next few weeks - mostly between the clubhouse and a new house west of Fallujah - and the guards grew incredibly agitated. They would bitterly complain to me about being stuck with guard duty. Abu Hassan - the guard with the suicide vest - would sleep and eat little. He was always on edge. He would fiddle with his 9mm pistol obsessively and leap to his feet to peer out a window at the first sound of a helicopter or barking dog.

	ATWAR BAHJAT: Jill Carroll's captors said they killed this TV journalist on Feb. 22. AFP/GETTY IMAGES

He spent his time on the phone, checking in with others for the latest news on their campaign to kill Shiites. When anyone came to the house, he pumped them for stories about their "work," as they all called it.

In his state of agitation and boredom, he began raising suspicions about the Shiite neighbors. They didn't know I was there. They didn't appear to know that the men at this house were mujahideen. They'd drop off fresh bread or yogurt, or stop to chat outside, just as Iraqis had done for generations.

They did not yet recognize that those days of amity were over.

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Next: Part 9 • The Muj Brothers