Jill Carroll via The Christian Science Monitor : 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. Normally his voice was slow and quiet; now it was loud.

“Oh,” I said, crouched in darkness, blind, hot, and breathless.

“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 and close to my head.

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, more convincingly than me. “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 couldn’t make sense, couldn’t analyze. I had nothing left.

Part VII and VIII.

Part VI.

Part V.

Part IV.

Part III.

Part II.

Part I plus relevant links including Jawa and Christian Science Monitor archives here.

One thing that comes to mind is for me is luck. Jill is a very lucky woman. Being a Jawa Report regular reader as well as blog helper I've seen the highs and lows. The release of Roy Hallums, The gruesome murder of Paul Johnson and others. The uncertainty of the Fate of Jeffrey Ake and others still missing. The sympathy I feel for Mrs. Ake and famiy who have gone two years with no word. We at the Jawa Report do not do this for any other reason than we feel it is right. It is the small contribution we make from our hearts. The joy of a hostage story that turns out well is the reward and the offset for the fate of the others. May they never be forgotten. And Jill I think I speak for all the Jawa cotributors when I say this: We are glad you are home and safe. Thanks for allowing us to follow your story and best of luck for the future.

Update: Epilogue posted below the break. And hey, one more thing, Watch yourself kid ;)

Epilogue Here at The Chrisian Science Monitor.

On April 2, 2006, a white Lufthansa 747 with the designation “Hamburg” written on its side taxied up to a gate at Boston’s Logan Airport. At 12:22 p.m., Jill Carroll stepped off the plane and onto US soil.

As she passed through customs, agents and other officials on duty crowded around for a chance to see her. Whisked into a waiting car, she was driven to the Monitor’s headquarters in Boston’s Back Bay, a police escort around her and news helicopters overhead.

Jill was traveling light. She’d left a big yellow bag of clothes and toiletries from her captivity in the Green Zone in Baghdad. She’d decompressed there for a day, talking to members of the US Embassy’s Hostage Working Group, before traveling on an aircraft carrying American casualties to Ramstein Air Force Base in Landstuhl, Germany.
In Boston, her car went straight into the underground garage of the Christian Science church headquarters. She then jumped into a blue van – easily missing the media horde camped outside the Monitor building.

The van went only a few blocks, to a nearby church-owned townhouse. There, Jim, Mary Beth, and Katie crowded around an open window, yelling her nickname, “Zippy!”

Jill met them coming down the hallway in a whole-family embrace. She wept and said, “I’m sorry.” She was home.

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