Boredom almost as big an enemy as fear

It was late January the next time we moved. Hot and tired of traveling, I threw up on myself. They didn't know I'd always been prone to car sickness.

"Do you need a doctor? Are you sick? We can bring you a doctor," said Abu Rasha, my No. 2 captor, who was driving. Again and again, I saw that their beliefs would allow them to deprive me of my freedom and kill my interpreter, Alan Enwiya, yet led them to express sincere concern over my health and well-being.

When we came to a stop I was led, stinking, into a new house — the sixth place I'd been, in the three weeks I'd been held. It wouldn't take much to prompt a move: a helicopter overhead, wild dogs barking at night, a U.S. patrol in the vicinity. From what I overheard, most of the houses were in western Baghdad or near Abu Ghraib.

They steered me directly into the bathroom, and I stripped off my soiled clothes. The house was so new that the mujahedeen were still building it around me. No family lived here.

This was a house built by Abu Nour, my lead captor, solely for the use of the mujahedeen. It was a meeting house, a bomb factory, and, for me, a jail. In my head, I called it "the clubhouse," and it was south of Baghdad, near Salman Pak. Here there were no women and children to serve as buffers between me and my captors — or to witness my eventual fate.

I'd felt some measure of safety in the presence of the mujahedeen families. As the weeks of my captivity accumulated, I felt physical and mental stress mount. The inactivity was claustrophobic. The psychological poking and prodding of my captors — who knew so little about Americans that they were shocked I wasn't blond — sometimes made me feel like an animal in a zoo.

Constant adrenaline crashed up against chronic fatigue. I'd lie down at night, and my eyes would feel swollen. Sometimes I would think about people back home and I would feel a little better. My grandparents are Catholic, and they go to Mass every day. I would figure what time it was in the U.S. and would think, "I bet they're praying for me right now."

If it was early morning in America, I would imagine my mom, dad and twin sister, Katie, waking up. If it was a little later I would think, "They're having their morning meeting at the Monitor. Maybe they're talking about me."

That was my only escape.

Alone with thoughts

At first in the clubhouse, I was happy to sit alone in my bedroom and not be bothered. Between moments of terror were long hours doing nothing. Here, I didn't want to look around the room too much, because I wanted to save the newness and the interest of looking at new things as long as possible. After fear, boredom was my tormentor, my constant enemy.

I'd think, "I'm going to spend today looking at the heater. And then tomorrow, I'll sit in a different part of the room, and it'll look different." I'd stare at flies for hours. I sang camp songs to myself, and songs that Mom used to sing to me. I spun fantasies of Marines rescuing me. I ruminated over old boyfriends and choices I'd made.

I deeply questioned my decision to come to Iraq. I had devoted a year in Jordan to studying Arabic and working at an English-language newspaper, slowly learning my craft. For what? To spend my last days under the thumb of the bleepin' muj? If I ever got out, I decided I'd never leave the U.S. again.

At night, I would think hard about Katie, sending her mental messages; 'I'm OK. Don't worry. Can you feel me, Katie?' I'd mentally write letters to Dad, in North Carolina. I'd imagine him hugging me in the doorway, telling me everything was OK.

I spent a lot of time staring at my toes, and wondering if I was slowly going around the bend. After several days at the clubhouse, the guards asked me if I wanted to watch them make dinner. They then let me watch TV. They eventually let me pace the length of the house, about 15 steps, and help wash dishes and prepare meals. I was overjoyed with these activities.

Access to sunlight became the most important new benefit, though. It poured into the sparse sitting room where my guards slept and where we ate. I was desperate for light after painful days in dim rooms in the Abu Ghraib house with my now-departed female minder, Um Ali. I had been handed off to a different cell under Abu Nour, to a different set of guards.

One of the new guards, who had spent time in prison, seemed to understand how I felt. One morning before breakfast, he tied back the thin curtains.

"Sun," he said, smiling and gesturing. I sat on the ground in the sunbeam and closed my eyes. It penetrated my eyelids and warmed my face.

Interviews with Ink Eyes

By this point, I had learned much about the way the mujahedeen operated. To me, at least, some of their tactics were surprisingly clever.

Take transportation. Men with beards, and cars with only one or two men, drew too much attention. So they shaved their beards and drove around as families, kids and women included. They played Shiite music in their cassette decks. As insurgents, they knew how to not look like an insurgent. They have the home-field advantage. Abu Nour ("Ink Eyes") began coming to see me almost daily. He clearly felt freer to visit the clubhouse than the other places. It was during one of these visits that he'd mentioned Margaret Hassan, a hostage who was killed in 2004, and I'd hysterically begged for the guards to use a gun to kill me, not a knife. He also now appeared eager to have me "interview" him. He seemed to have begun to view me as a messenger — an idea I had been pushing.

My hands always shook when I did these "interviews." Among other things, Abu Nour said some people joined the mujahedeen because they were angry about the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison or raids on their homes at night. Many enlisted after a battle that was considered a great victory, such as the April 2004 fight for Fallujah.

Abu Nour added that many of these new recruits had impure motives. That, he said, is why they lost Fallujah to U.S. forces in November 2004.

"A good mujahed enters the war so [that] if he dies he goes to heaven," Abu Nour said.

Secular insurgents were useful allies but wouldn't be allowed to take part in the Iraqi government after the mujahedeen's final victory, he said. Sunni politicians in the current U.S.-backed government were traitors to Islam and should be killed.

My captors would laugh, for example, when Adnan al-Dulaimi would appear on TV — either when he was pleading for my release or as part of a group of politicians trying to form a new government. I had gone to interview Dulaimi when they seized me in front of his political headquarters in Baghdad.

(In a Jan. 20 news conference, Dulaimi said: "By kidnapping her, you are insulting me. You're insulting the work that I've been doing for Iraq. ... Release her ... " Nine days later he issued another, tearful public appeal for Carroll's release.)

"Look, Jill. Ha, ha. There's your 'friend' Dulaimi," they scoffed when he appeared. "Oh, please, please free Jill! Ha, ha, ha, ha."

Within minutes of my capture, I had suspected Dulaimi, head of the Iraqi Accordance Front, a Sunni party. The kidnappers were waiting when we left his office. During one talk at the "clubhouse," Abu Nour said Dulaimi had been to see him that week. Dulaimi had begged "Ink Eyes" to let me go. He knew Abu Nour had me. The guards later told me that Dulaimi had been back again. Dulaimi said, "Please, please let her go. The [U.S.] soldiers are threatening my sons."

My captors were angry about being labeled "terrorists." But the deaths of innocent people caused by their activities — such as the murder of my interpreter, Alan — didn't taint the purity of their jihad.

"Sometimes when we try to hit the American soldier or Iraqi soldier, sometimes we kill women and children in this operation," Abu Nour said at one point. "We don't want to ... , but this is war."

Periodically, Abu Nour would tell me people were calling for my release. Throughout my ordeal, my captors would make oblique references to what I later discovered were organized appeals on my behalf. For example, Abu Nour wanted to know if I knew the leader of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group. I thought it was another test of my character. I later learned Hamas had issued a statement condemning the kidnapping of civilians.

When my father and mother made their first televised statements, Abu Rasha said, "Your father and mother say, 'Hello' to you. Very good man, good man, your father."

It was clear that whatever my parents had said on TV had made a good impression. Abu Nour arrived one day and said five women detainees had been released. This was important, and good news, he said.

"This is Step 1," he said. "Now we have to go to Step 2."

He wanted me to make another video, and ask for the release of all Iraqi women prisoners. I was crushed. Another video meant days or weeks of waiting for it to air, then waiting for a reply. The black-eyed leader now thought he had something really valuable. The last thing they were going to do was let me go.

It wasn't until later that I figured the release of the five women had helped by making it harder to justify killing me.