The Other Beat Of Her Heart

The author with some Iraqi soldiers the night before the battle to retake Fallujah from insurgents in November 2004. (Courtesy Of Jackie Spinner)

I took my satellite phone outside and pointed it southeast, spinning around to get a signal. Bats fluttered in the artificial lights as I talked to Jenny a half-world away. "You'll never guess where I am. Abu Ghraib! The prison. Yes, I'm inside. It's so creepy, Jenny. I have to sleep in a cell. And I'm looking up right now, and there are all these bats, which makes it even more creepy. But I had salad for dinner."

With Jenny, I could be wide-eyed, excited, sad, scared, elated, real. In the bureau and with my editors, I had expectations to meet. The other correspondents were so hardened. They had seen war many times, had faced down dictators, guerrilla leaders and warlords in exotic, far-off places. This -- Iraq -- was all I had. I could not pretend to be more experienced than I was. But I could hide how green I was. I didn't need to act like a clown who had just joined the circus. No, I saved that for Jenny.

My words gushed out, as usual. I tried to call her at least once a day, never talking long, to check in, to bring her with me, when I just needed to hear her voice, when I was full of new sights and sounds and had to empty some of it. I could tell Jenny the part of the story that could not go in the news articles. I could tell her my story.

Back on my cot in the cell, I could not sleep. I kept imagining the ghosts of the detainees who had died in that room, kept hearing their screams, their voices finally growing hoarse, then fading into the nothingness that had already consumed them.

Andrea and I got up early the next morning to watch the release of about 500 detainees. The prisoners lined up according to the direction they were headed, Tikrit here, Baghdad there. They clutched homemade bags sewn from brown plastic MRE packages. Most professed their innocence to me.

From a guard tower, Andrea and I watched for hours as the buses with released prisoners rolled out, the crowd of nearly 600 waiting family members slowly thinning as the morning went on. Ghazwan and Bassam, our driver and interpreter for this trip, were outside the prison watching for us to come out. I wanted to wait until most of the onlookers had left so we would not attract as much attention.

Andrea decided to follow a bus of released detainees and jumped into a car with an Associated Press photographer and reporter. I called Bassam to let him know I was on my way and asked the Marines in the tower to make sure I made it to my car. I said it with such breeze, as if I were leaving a movie theater in the United States and getting ready to walk across a dark parking lot.

I followed a narrow path through barbed wire that led from the prison to a small parking lot near the front. Several cars idled in the noon heat. No one seemed to pay much attention to me. I walked along the perimeter of the parking lot and headed for the highway. I could not see Bassam or Ghazwan, but based on our telephone contact, I knew they were waiting in Ghazwan's yellow sedan.

Suddenly, a man ran toward me, grabbed me by the wrist and began pulling me toward an orange and white car. At first I said in Arabic, " La. La. Rajan. " No. No. Please. I pointed to the highway, where Bassam and Ghazwan were hidden from view. But he kept pulling me by the wrist. Another man came up behind me and grabbed me around the waist. Someone else grabbed the pillowcase that held my belongings and threw it aside. At first I couldn't fathom what was going on. What was happening to me? Were they trying to kidnap me? They were trying to kidnap me! My heart pounded.

I had avoided watching the video footage of Berg's beheading that played repeatedly on Arab satellite television. I imagined it now anyway. I could not let these men put me in that vehicle.

I was trying to remember how to say "I am a journalist" in Arabic as Abu Saif had instructed. I couldn't find the words. Instead, in a panic, I told them that I was a vegetarian. Ani Nabatiya! Ani Nabatiya! I fell to the ground and started kicking them. It did not stop them. They just dragged me on the ground, still trying to pull me by my hand. Someone yanked me up, and the man who first grabbed me ripped off my abaya. They saw the blue bulletproof flak jacket that foreigners wore in Iraq. He said, "No Iraqi, no Iraqi." I realized instantly: They think I'm CIA. So I screamed back, Washington Post! Washington Post! Until then, I had tried not to raise my voice. I did not want to attract the relatives still waiting for the detainees, but our tussle finally drew their attention, and a crowd formed around me. Where was Bassam? Where were the Marines I had asked to watch me as I walked to my car?

I looked over at the faces in the crowd, and I didn't see a single person who saw me as a human. I tried to plead with a woman standing there, plead with my eyes, and she looked like she wanted to spit on me. I was an American woman, no better than the American soldier in the photographs of the abused detainees who dragged one of their bloodied sons or husbands naked on a leash.