Jill Carroll's story | Part 10: Finally, a promise of freedom is fulfilled

Little Hajar, holding a chapter of the Quran, toddled away from the sagging bookcase. She was heading for the foot-pedaled sewing machine, where a candy wrapper had caught her attention.

She grabbed the wrapper, then showed me her treasures. She wasn't yet 2 and was so small that our eyes were at the same level as I sat cross-legged on the floor of the house west of Fallujah. I'd been here almost two weeks, and March was almost over. Hajar was great to play with despite the fact that her dress-and-jacket outfits often were smeared with yogurt or other messy food. Sometimes she'd bang on the door of my room to be let in. She was my only friend, the one person in this mujahedeen household not responsible for my captivity.

The door opened suddenly. I looked up, expecting to see Hajar's mother or father with tea or food. Instead, I glimpsed Abu Nour's visage. As always, the leader of these mujahedeen had come out of nowhere, like an apparition. I cast my eyes to the ground, afraid he'd think I knew too much about his face.

Hajar collapsed into the velveteen of my dishdasha tunic and buried her face in it, afraid of this stranger.

What did Ink Eyes want? I hadn't seen him for three weeks. He had promised then that he would release me in three days — a promise that had been as worthless as the many other times he'd vowed I was on the brink of freedom. I had learned to stop believing the promises.

I used to cling to every word Abu Nour said, analyzing them for days for any hint of my fate. Now, after almost three months of captivity, I just didn't have the mental energy to do that. All I wanted was to minimize pain and have good days. A few minutes of playing with a child or helping women in the kitchen was an attainable goal. Seeing my family again — that was impossibly far away.

I stroked Hajar's hair, half-listening to Abu Nour drone on. I wished he could go so Hajar and I could resume our game.

"Well, today is Monday, and tomorrow is Tuesday," Abu Nour said. "So maybe in three days we'll let you go."

He would return 24 hours before my release and we could have a final conversation about the mujahedeen, he added.

I'd heard this a million times.

"Oh, thank you, sir," I said, trying to smile as he left.

"Yeah, right," I thought. "Don't listen to him. Don't get your hopes up, Jill. Just don't do it."

This was my theory: They were worried about my mental state. Since my bitter blowups with the Muj Brothers, Abu Qarrar and Abu Hassan, the mujahedeen seemed to think I was fragile. Maybe Abu Nour thought a dose of false hope would keep me from doing something drastic.

"Dad's birthday is May 6," I thought. "If they let me out before May 6, that will be OK. That's all I really want."

Abu Nour had come on Monday. Tuesday was OK: I got to play with Hajar. Then Wednesday came around. I can't remember why, but I lost it. I sobbed the whole day. Quietly, so they wouldn't hear me.

I was so tired, so worn out. It had been three months, and I was drifting further and further from my family, from my life. Enough was enough.

"Let me out!" I screamed to myself. "Let me out!"

I was upset, sitting in my room in the dark that night. And I heard Abu Nour's voice. They brought me into the sitting room after dinner. Abu Nour sat crosslegged on the floor, his head bent toward the ground. He had told me he was going to come back 24 hours before I was released.

"Tomorrow morning, we're going to let you go," he said. "We're going to drive you to the Iraqi Islamic Party, and you will call your newspaper and you will be free."

I had no reaction.

Then came the catch: I needed to make one more video. And I needed to forget much of what he had told me about himself, his group and what I had seen. I had to forget about the Majlis, or council, of mujahedeen that he had claimed to lead. I had to say his group was medium-sized, not big, not small.

"You can't talk about the women and children," Ink Eyes said. "You have to say you were in one room the whole time and ... you were treated very well."

I was supposed to "interview" him one last time, and he would tell me what I was supposed to say. He handed me a notebook.

"Anything outside the notebook is forbidden," he said.

Abu Nour wanted to make the video that night, but the power went out. So we made it in the morning. I didn't know then that it would be on the Internet within a day.

After the filming, they put me back in my little room. They'd told me the previous night that they would pay for my computer, which they would keep, and that they would bring me a gift.

Abu Rasha, the large man who served as the head of the mujahedeen cell I spent most of my time with, once had told me that they would give me a gold necklace when they let me go, just as they had done for Giuliana Sgrena, an Italian journalist who had been kidnapped in Baghdad in early 2005 and held for a month.

I still wasn't excited. Money and gold, that was my ticket to freedom. I figured that if they did give me those things, then the end might truly be at hand.

Abu Nour said goodbye. I stammered out some kind of reply. Then I waited, and waited. The woman of the house finally rushed in with new clothes. There weren't proper shoes, so she gave me her black patent-leather sandals, high-heeled. They fit perfectly. They rushed me into a car. 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.

His voice normally was slow and quiet; now it was loud.

"Oh," I said.

"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.

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.

"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 had nothing left.

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. I got $400 for my computer and 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.

The money. The gold. Maybe they were 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 heard from him. He spewed venom and expletives in English at the U.S. military and government. He railed against the occupation, the war, Abu Ghraib prison.

I assured him that I wouldn't tell the U.S. 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.

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 U.S. officials, the mujahedeen would assume that I really was a spy, I thought. And I was afraid of what they then might do.

The mujahedeen had done everything they could to drill this message into my head: They were omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. There was no escape from them, even in the Green Zone. Maybe not even in the United States.

Abu Nour once had 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.

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

The car door opened. It was Abu Qarrar, one of my Muj Brothers guards. He handed me my gifts and a big bag full of clothes I'd accumulated over the past three months.

So my least favorite captor was the last one I saw.

I said, "OK, Abu Qarrar, OK, goodbye, goodbye."

Then I hauled away, tottering down the road in an insurgent's wife's high-heeled sandals, grappling with my stuff, scarves flapping in my face, an ex-hostage bag lady returning to the world.

I found the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) office and handed the note to the man behind the desk.

I was panicky, terrified, starting to shake. I wanted to use the phone, I mumbled in Arabic. Instead, the man ran to notify the manager.

"The same journalist?!" the manager said incredulously after reading the note. Debate over what to do followed. I felt weak, lost. All I knew was that I wanted to call my hotel.

They tried to hustle me into a white car for a drive to IIP headquarters. I resisted; I just wanted the hotel. I asked again to use an office phone, only to find that none of them worked.

A cellphone appeared, with a call for me. It was Tariq al-Hashemi, the IIP leader, later to become the new government's vice president. I told him that I wanted to call my hotel, and if no one from the Monitor was there, to call The Washington Post office and have them come get me. He said he would call the U.S. Embassy. I begged him not to, but he insisted.

After a few minutes, a convoy of white SUVs and trucks with flashing lights and gunmen appeared. IIP officials hurried me into a bulletproof luxury vehicle. I realized it was Hashemi's personal security detail. The lights and guns and militarylike atmosphere terrified me.

I wanted to shout, "I don't want this!"

Things were going horribly wrong. The mujahedeen were going to see me; they were going to kill us. They would think I lied, that I hadn't called my colleagues to come get me in a low-profile way. I doubled over in the seat, hiding below the ledge of the tinted windows.

A man sitting next to me laughed and said, "Why are you doing this?"

"I don't want them to see me," I said. I wanted to shout at them to let me out, to stop, to make the cars with the flashing lights go away. We tore down Baghdad's streets, a giant screaming convoy with guns sticking out everywhere. I was terrified that every ordinary car we passed was a car bomb.

"Be careful of car bombs, be careful," I said in Arabic to the man driving. I checked the location of the door lock and handle in case the vehicle went up in flames.

The guards looked bemused and said not to worry.

My release is one of the hardest memories of my captivity. I don't know why. My structure suddenly was gone. There was no one to tell me what to do. My body was free, but my mind was not. I was conditioned to be whatever anyone around me wanted me to be. I had no opinions, no self-will. I didn't know how to make decisions.

IIP headquarters was a blur. I was asked to make a video, write a letter of thanks and make an audio recording. This was to ensure that no one would accuse them of being my kidnappers, they said. The video was broadcast widely.

My friends from The Washington Post, including Ellen Knickmeyer, the bureau chief, showed up. I called my twin sister, Katie.

Searching for safety

I made the video for the IIP. My state of mind was reflected in the fact that I felt guilty for delaying the start of filming so I could call members of my family.

I learned that Scott Peterson was still in Baghdad. I was sure he would have fled. I borrowed Ellen's cellphone, and called him at CNN's offices where he was working on a new set of public-service videos. I was still on the phone when the U.S. military arrived. I was so afraid of the soldiers. "What should I do, Scott?" He said they were the surest way to safety. I hung onto my friend Ellen as we went downstairs. We got into an armored vehicle. I still had my big bag of stuff. I figured the mujahedeen were watching. They were watching everything.

The hatches closed. We were driving along, and I began to relax. One soldier pulled out a picture of me.

"I don't need this anymore," he said, and gave it to me.

Another pulled off a flag that was attached with Velcro to his uniform, and gave that to me. A third said, "We've been looking for you for a long time."

How did these men know me? I didn't understand why they had a picture. I had no idea how much coverage my kidnapping had received.

I talked with Ellen. After a few minutes, she said, "You can take off your hijab now."

"No, no," I said.

I waited a minute. Then I said, "Well, actually ... I guess I can."