I watched Matthew being led away from our car toward the blue minivan, an American male, kidnapped alone in the Sunni Triangle. He would be tortured, perhaps killed. I knew the only way through this was as a team. We were in the Muslim world, where the greatest respect was reserved for women and children. I jumped out of the car and walked ten feet over to where Matthew was being held in the middle of the road. The gunmen looked slightly startled at the sight of me. I rubbed my index fingers together, symbolizing the union of a man and a woman in my made-up version of sign language, trying desperately to convey that he was my partner, and said in English, “He is my husband, and I am not leaving him.” They didn’t understand English but understood that I was not to be deterred. They half-led me—half-followed me—into the minivan alongside my “husband.”
Waleed and Khalid were still caught up in a flurry of activity outside the van. I sat next to Matthew, both of us now inside the truck—still parked diagonally across the road, its sliding door open on the passenger side. In the front seat two masked men faced us, pointing their guns. I rubbed the sides of my forehead with two fingers, repeating “Oh, my God,” over and over to myself, trying to hypnotize myself out of hysteria. Matthew was calm. I realized that I had left all my belongings behind: my cameras, my waist pack, my laptop, both of my American passports, my IDs, my satellite phone, my everything. I looked up, hoping to see an opportunity to retrieve at least my passports so I could hide them before they were discovered, and saw an insurgent, his faced wrapped in red and white, driving off with our car down the village’s main road.
Would I ever use my cameras again? What were the last images I shot? Were they good? Would anyone see them? Would I even live to know?
My passport. Oh, God, my American passport. How could I have been so stupid?
“Oh my God oh my God oh my God,” I whispered, rubbing my forehead. I tried to keep my eyes down. “Our passports. OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod.”
The minivan started along the main road in the village and pulled around to the back of a house. Dozens of masked men swarmed around, weapons cocked. Our door slid open to let in the commander, who had a calm face and wore a cheap set of AmberVision sunglasses. He didn’t seem as if he would kill us.
He introduced himself in slow, halting English as the commander of the village and asked Khalid to translate. Matthew answered all the questions, steady and sincere. All I could think about was our passports.
“Where are you from?”
“Greece and Italy.”
“Are you American? Are you with the coalition?”
“We are Greek and Italian, and not with the coalition.”
“Give me your passports.”
“We left them in Baghdad,” Matthew lied. “We don’t have them.”
I was sure they would find them and that we would be killed.
“Why are you here?”
“We are journalists, here to tell your side of the story. The Americans have closed the roads in and around Fallujah, and we want to tell your side of the story. We are here for you. We want to write about the civilian deaths, what the Americans are doing to the Iraqis.”
The truth always sounded so convincing. I kept my head down, kept rubbing my temples. It seemed to keep me calm and focused on staying alive.
“Where are your press IDs? Who do you work for?”
“Our IDs are in our bags in our car. We work for the Times.” He left out the New York part.
I asked: “Could you bring the car back?”
“Where do you live?”
“We live at the bureau, in a house in Baghdad.”
“Where is it, and what is the phone number there?”
He took Matthew’s Thuraya satellite phone. Rebel groups and journalists around the world carried Thurayas, smallish satellite phones that could make calls anywhere east of London and north of a satellite floating in the sky above Madagascar. Thurayas enabled journalists to operate in remote areas not linked to a mobile network. The commander started to dial the number of the house, when they suddenly decided they no longer trusted Khalid, our Palestinian-Iraqi interpreter. Poor Khalid was so scared, he was sweating and stuttering. The commander kept asking him whether he was lying, because he could barely get two words out of his mouth. They brought in Gareib, their own interpreter, a Palestinian Brit who claimed to work as a journalist but was clearly part of the insurgency. His hair was like a mop, and his eyeballs were jumpy. They asked Khalid to get out of the car, and the commander and Gareib continued.
“What is the phone number at the Times house? And where, exactly, is it?”
We gathered they were trying to confirm whether we were lying about not being part of the American-led coalition, whether we really lived outside the Green Zone. Matthew described where the house was, along the Tigris River, near the Palestine Hotel, and gave the phone number of the bureau. They dialed but didn’t call.
Gareib asked again: “Where are you from?”
We stuck to our alibis.
“If you are lying about your nationality, just say it. Just tell us the truth.”
I started sweating. I was sure he would give us away, and finally I raised my chin and made eye contact with both the commander and the dicey translator.
“We are not lying,” I said firmly.
Gareib softened. He told us that he, too, was a journalist, working with another British journalist, doing a piece on the insurgency. I was sure he was anything but a journalist.
The commander asked whether I had taken any photos since I arrived in Garma.