“Yeah . . .” Anthony trailed off, eyes lowered onto the prison cell floor. “Poor Nada. I feel horrible for putting her through this.”
Would we even have a chance to tell our significant others how much we loved them? Covering war was inflicting immeasurable pain on our loved ones, and we knew it. This was the second time I was putting Paul through this pain. Anthony and Steve both had infants at home, too. And yet as guilty as we felt at that moment, and as terrified as we were, only Steve sounded convinced by his own declaration that he wouldn’t cover war anymore.
“If they bring us to Tripoli, we will probably end up in the hands of the Interior Ministry,” Anthony said, referring to a ministry infamous for torture. “And probably in one of their solitary-confinement cells, or where Ghaith is.” We had heard that Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi journalist and photographer for the Guardian, was being held by Qaddafi’s men. He had been missing for days, and we assumed the worst.
“But we need to get to Tripoli,” Anthony said, “because we will never get released if we don’t get to Tripoli. We will probably survive—it will be difficult, but we might live if we get there.”
“If we do, I am going to be so fat in nine months!” I exclaimed suddenly. I knew that if we made it out of Libya alive, I would finally give Paul what he’d been asking me for since we’d married: a baby. After all those years of feeling conflicted about having a child, I found myself praying for the chance to start a family with Paul. I felt confident that I could endure anything—that I would be able to survive psychological and physical torture—if it meant we would eventually be released.
Sometime in the night the clanking of our prison door woke me; I feigned sleep. A young man opened the cell door, looked at the four of us asleep, and grabbed my ankle. He started dragging me toward the door.
“No!” I screamed, frantically twisting my way back toward Anthony, who was asleep near me. The young man pulled my leg again toward the door. I squirmed back, pressing myself against Anthony, in search of protection. The man gave up and left.
Eventually I closed my eyes. I breathed slowly and took in the silence of our cell. Steve, Tyler, and Anthony were all asleep. Images of others who had spent time in prison echoed through my head: my Iraqi interpreter Sarah, who was jailed by the U.S. military in 2008 after she spent two years risking her life and interpreting for them; Maziar Bahari, a Newsweek colleague who was put in solitary confinement in Iran and hummed Leonard Cohen songs to stay sane. I sang “Daydreamer” by Adele over and over in my head, because I had been listening to the song as I painted my toenails the morning we were captured. I knew so many people had endured worse—captivity, torture—and their resilience helped me face my fear of what would come next, the physical pain of being bound and punched. My thoughts reverted back to Paul and my family, who had no idea where I was.
Throughout the night we listened to a man screaming in a cell nearby.
The familiar clanking sound of our prison door woke us in the morning. We heard them say Tripoli, and we knew that was our fate.
Soldiers led us outside of the prison once again blindfolded and bound, but this time with plastic zip ties that cut deep into our wrists. I asked them to loosen them. They tightened them even more, these plastic ties I had seen used by the U.S. military on so many Iraqis and Afghans. I felt my hands start to lose circulation, and when I let out a whimper, the soldier pulled the plastic cuffs even tighter, slicing them into my wrists and punishing me for my weakness. We were driven to the airport and loaded onto a military aircraft, which I recognized by the ramp, the hum of the engine, and the seats lining the walls.
“Is everybody here?” Steve’s question was first answered with a gun butt in the face.
“Yes.”
They sat us at least a few feet apart from one another, and with ropes and strips of cloth, tied our hands and ankles to the webbing covering the walls of the plane, like cattle. I heard one of my colleagues get smacked again, and then the whimper. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by desperation and helplessness. Tyler, Anthony, and Steve kept getting beaten with fists and rifles. Getting felt up and fingered through my jeans didn’t seem nearly as bad as that physical abuse. My hands and feet tied to the webbing along the inner fuselage of the plane, my eyes blindfolded, and the mystery of what would happen next was just too much to bear. I started crying uncontrollably. I was ashamed and lowered my head so whoever else was on the plane wouldn’t see me and wouldn’t hit me or tie me tighter for being weak and making noise.