Part 10 • Freedom

(Page 3 of 5)

They rushed me into a car waiting outside. I still didn't have gold. I still didn't have money. I began to panic.

Abu Rasha was next to me in the back seat. He leaned over me, or so it felt, as I panted, blind, beneath three black scarves.

"Jill, we asked the Americans for the women prisoners and there were none," he said. Normally his voice was slow and quiet; now it was loud.

"Oh," I said, crouched in darkness, blind, hot, and breathless.

"And then we asked the government for money, and they gave us none," he said.

"Oh yes, I know," I said.

"Now we're going to kill you," he said, agitated and close to my head.

I thought they were going to do it. I imagined the gun. All they'd told me that day had been lies.

I knew I couldn't be afraid. I had to make them think they were good people who weren't capable of killing me.

I forced a laugh.

"No, Abu Rasha, you're my brother, you wouldn't do that!" I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

He laughed, more convincingly than me. "No, we're not going to kill you," he said. "We're going to take you to the Iraqi Islamic Party and drop you off."

I went limp. Tired, frozen, spent, I didn't know what was going on anymore. I couldn't make sense, couldn't analyze. I had nothing left.

We drove and drove and drove. They kept calling on cellphones to the car ahead, to make sure the way was clear. Finally, Abu Rasha told me to lift my scarves and keep my eyes straight down. He started placing $100 bills in my hand. For my computer, I got $400, and then another $400 for my trouble.

Then he said, "Oh yes, we got you this," and shoved a box into my narrow field of vision. He opened it and pulled out a gold necklace, with a pendant attached.

The money. The gold. Maybe they were really going to let me go.

We switched cars. I was in the front seat, with Abu Rasha driving. He began a monologue, angrier than anything I had ever heard from him. He spewed venom and expletives in English at the American military and government. He railed against the occupation, the war, and the Abu Ghraib prison.

I assured him that I wouldn't tell the US military or American government that I was free, and I meant it. I would only call my journalist friends to come get me and have them drive me to the airport.

View the neighborhood where Jill was dropped off and the Iraqi Islamic Party office where she was taken in our interactive map.

I had spent nearly three months feverishly trying to convince my captors that I wasn't a CIA agent. If I was dropped off and immediately sought help from US officials, the mujahideen would assume that I really was a spy, I thought.

And I was afraid of what they then might do. The mujahideen had done everything they could to drill this message into my head over the past three months: They were omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. There was no escape from them, even in the Green Zone. Maybe not even in the US.

Abu Nour had once told me they had eyes everywhere, and that they'd be watching me after I was released. I'd long imagined a car bomb crashing into a military Humvee sent to collect me.

Then Abu Rasha pulled the car up to a curb. He handed me a note written in Arabic explaining who I was and told me to get out, lift my scarves, and walk a few hundred meters back.

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