(Christian Science Monitor) 
"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 both 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, there were men with guns just 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 — they were just gone. They were just gone, and not going to happen.

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Murphy and Peterson weren't investigators in the law-enforcement sense. They never visited the scene of the kidnapping, as that Baghdad neighborhood was now too dangerous. (Neither did the FBI investigators, who were not allowed to leave the safety of the U.S.-controlled Green Zone without an armed military escort.)

But for almost three months, the two reporters made finding Jill their primary job.

In a way, they became scholars of kidnapping. Dan created a database and drew diagrams of which groups had claimed responsibility for holding which hostages and when, to look for connections. They strategized with the British security firm, the Iraqi police, and the U.S. Embassy's Hostage Working Group in the Green Zone. They were told aspects of the FBI and U.S. military efforts, but never given the full picture. So, they sifted through cases that might be analogous to Jill's, to see who had been released and who hadn't. They looked for things that people on the outside had done that might have helped.

In one instance, the friends of a kidnapped Australian put up posters in the neighborhood where the crime had occurred, pleading for his safety. Murphy and Peterson decided to take that idea and supersize it. They mapped out a three-stage media plan, starting with advertisements in newspapers, then moving to radio news and television public service announcements (PSAs).

Their theme was "Jill Carroll loves Iraq and loves Iraqis. She needs your help. Please help free Jill Carroll."

Each step built on the previous one. The TV spots — produced with the invaluable help of CNN Baghdad staffers — used the voices of Iraqis themselves ("Oh, she was like a sister to me") with pictures of Jill in her hijab, quotes from Mary Beth, and, in one, 30 seconds of the Sunni politician Adnan al-Dulaimi calling for her release.

And Iraqi television news directors were generous with donated time.

The point was to get people who might know something to come forward with information. But the Monitor Baghdad Boys knew they were walking a thin line. They wanted to keep Jill in Iraqi minds, as a sympathetic character — making it harder for her captors to kill her. But they didn't want to be too loud or make her too hot a property. That might raise any ransom demand through the roof. Or, worse, it might cause her kidnappers to believe that they needed to get rid of her, fast — and that death was their best option.

— P. G.

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

He started by telling me about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He called 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 Zarqawi wasn't the head of the mujahideen any more, Abu Nour told me, he was simply one member of something new: the Mejlis Shura Mujahideen Fil Iraq.

Roughly translated, this was "Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq."

The Americans were constantly saying that the mujahideen in Iraq were led by foreigners, he said. So the Iraqi insurgents went to Zarqawi and insisted that an Iraqi be put in charge.

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?" said Ink Eyes.

No, I indicated, I didn't.

"I am Abdullah Rashid!" he said.

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

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

At various times, I heard my captors discussing changes in their plans because of directives from the council and 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 mujahideen said.

I couldn't see them, but I knew the identical motions every Sunni Muslim in the world performs in prayer. Now they were standing shoulder to shoulder, hands raised near their faces, palms out.

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

"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. Eventually I dozed off.

Next morning, 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 too afraid to move, even in my sleep.


By Jill Carroll and Peter Grier
© 2006 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.