Constant companion offers no sympathy

Um Ali — the wife of Abu Ali, my stubble-bearded captor — was my constant companion during the first three weeks of captivity.

She was about 25, very pretty with big eyes, full lips and beautiful skin. Wherever I was moved, she came, too, along with some of her children. At first, I thought she might be an ally or at least sympathetic. She wasn't.

One night — one of the first nights in a new house in Abu Ghraib — Um Ali and I were lying on the thin mattresses that served as beds by night and seats by day. I had just taken off my head scarf when a guard suddenly rattled the key violently in the lock and burst into the room, flipping on the light.

In a frenzy, using basic English, he ordered me up. I leapt up, my hands shaking so much that I couldn't get my head scarf repinned.

The guard started wrapping a red-and-white-checked kaffiyeh around my mouth and head, violently and tightly. I opened my eyes wide in terror, silently pleading for help to Um Ali.

Her gaze returned no sympathy. The guard whispered orders in Arabic that I couldn't understand. "Hurry, hurry, quickly, quickly," the guard hissed angrily in Arabic. The kaffiyeh was wrapped so hard that the dry fabric was cutting into my mouth.

"They're going to haul me out and shoot me in the head," I thought in panic.

Um Ali had my glasses. As they moved me to a chair in the hall, I heard a "click, click." Terrified, I thought it was a gun being cocked.

"If an American soldier comes here, you don't speak," he said.

That was the reason for the frenzy! He thought soldiers were nearby. He then demanded that I recite the Quran.

"I just have to live through this. I just have to live through this," I thought, sitting, head bowed, blind and breathing with difficulty.

About 20 minutes later, he led me back into the room and barked a command to sleep.

There were no whispered words of comfort or explanation from Um Ali. In my early days of captivity, an elderly woman who had been visiting looked sadly at me and said that inshallah — "God willing" — I would go home soon. The visitor turned to Um Ali and sighed that my captivity was thuloum, or an injustice. "This is not thuloum," Um Ali snapped back.

My female companion/jailer/suicide-bomber wannabe grew more irritated and despondent as days wore on. Um Ali was stuck with me in a dim, little room. Then one evening she bounded in with a grin. She was delighted by reports that thousands of homes in California had been destroyed by forest fires.

"This is justice," she said, wrought by God, "because the soldiers destroy our houses."

A mistake

Part of Um Ali's growing hardness toward me came as I tried to let her know that, despite the many hours of reciting the Quran with her, I didn't plan to convert to Islam.

I was an eager student in the beginning, as I saw how much it pleased them. But I soon realized I had made a dangerous mistake. The more I let my captors teach me, the more they expected me to convert. After a few weeks, the question always was, "Why haven't you come to Islam yet?" I tried to put the brakes on delicately, afraid of what they might do if they thought I was rejecting Islam. How could I tell them that adopting a new religion and code for living wasn't possible when I was held captive, racked with despair and in fear daily for my life?

Exhausted one afternoon from listening to Um Ali repeat Quran verses so I could memorize them, I said, "I don't understand the Arabic in the Quran, and so I can't understand what it really means."

"We'll bring you an English Quran," said Abu Ali, who had overheard me. "You want this?"

They always were insisting that they didn't want to pressure me into converting, while asking why I hadn't converted.

"Oh, sure," I said.

Abu Ali whipped out his cellphone and made a call. "You have a Quran in English?" he asked. "Quickly, quickly, bring it."

He sounded almost frantic as he gave directions about where to meet him. He returned about 20 minutes later, bearing a small, green Quran. Emblazoned in gold on the cover was "Le Qur'an." It was a French translation.

I later tried telling Um Ali, gently, that I probably wasn't going to convert after all. She said she would be angry if I didn't convert, given the time she had spent teaching me.

"We are afraid for you and don't want you to go to hell," she said. "We are afraid that we'll see you [on Judgment Day] and you'll say, 'Why didn't you save me?' "

Looking out the window

I thought about escape from the beginning and made several elaborate plans. At one of the first places I was held, there was a small bathroom window, about 6 feet up.

I looked out two or three times. Each time, I would do it a little longer. I saw a field of tall grass that stretched for about half a kilometer. Behind that was a row of tall palm trees running roughly east, toward Abu Ghraib. I'd overhead them talking about the prison. And the prison meant a bazillion Marines. But I'd been too brazen. A guard came in after breakfast after a few days and said, "A man told me yesterday you were looking out the bathroom window.

"You know, I have a very dark place under the ground. It's cold, with a very small door," he said, repeating a warning I'd been given my first night in captivity. "There's no light. I have this place."

They hammered a tarp across the bathroom and bedroom windows. The loss of sunlight was devastating. It may not seem like much, but it was hugely demoralizing. They watched me all the time. Even when it seemed I was alone, men with guns were across the hall. I was moved often. I wasn't sure which direction to run even if I got out.

Escape looked impossible. All the things I had imagined about the future — marriage, children — were gone.

Ink Eyes

One day, Ink Eyes, my chief captor, arrived for a chat. He sat outside the doorway, out of my field of vision. I leaned against the wall, knees up, head down. I was afraid to move.

He started by telling me about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. Ink Eyes called al-Zarqawi his "good friend." "He's such a good man. ... If you met him, you would like him so much," Abu Nour said warmly.

But al-Zarqawi wasn't head of the mujahedeen anymore, Abu Nour told me, he simply was a member of something new: the Mejlis Shura Mujahedeen Fil Iraq. Roughly translated, this was "Mujahedeen Shura Council in Iraq."

The Americans constantly were saying that the mujahedeen in Iraq were led by foreigners, he said. So, the Iraqi insurgents went to al-Zarqawi and insisted an Iraqi be put in charge. Al-Zarqawi agreed, the story went. An Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid was the new head of the council.

"You don't know who is Abdullah Rashid?" Ink Eyes asked.

No, I indicated.

"I am Abdullah Rashid!" he said.

I sat there in absolute panic. I couldn't move. This man was telling me he was friends with al-Zarqawi — someone who personally beheaded hostages. And this guy was al-Zarqawi's boss? What did this mean?

But as I saw in coming weeks, al-Zarqawi remained the insurgents' hero, and the most influential member of their council. And it seemed, based on snatches of conversations, that two cell leaders under him — Abu Rasha and Abu Ahmed — also might be on the council.

I occasionally heard my captors discussing changes in their plans because of directives from the council and al-Zarqawi, including one in Arabic I only partially understood: something about how my case should be resolved "without money and without killing."

But that night — with the nature of those who held me spelled out for the first time — I lay on my bed motionless in the dark.

"Come, come pray," I heard Ink Eyes, aka Abu Nour, aka Abdullah Rashid, say in the next room. Someone else recited the call to prayer.

They must all be in there, gathered together.

"Allahu Akbar," the mujahedeen said. I couldn't see them, but I knew the identical motions every Sunni Muslim in the world performs in prayer. They now were standing shoulder to shoulder, hands raised near their faces, palms out.

The wall was like paper. Only a tissue seemed to stand between me and their devotions to God.

"Allahu Akbar," they said, sighing and quietly grunting as they kneeled on the ground.

"Allahu Akbar," they repeated, as they rose from prostration. "Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar," they said, with every movement.

I listened, afraid to breathe. I had to cough, but I suppressed it. I thought, "If I cough during their prayer, maybe they'll kill me."

I lay on my back, hands clasped across my stomach. I eventually dozed off.

I woke up in the same position. That's the way I woke up every morning in that house — frozen in the position I'd assumed after crawling into bed. I was afraid to move, even in my sleep.