'Like Falling Off a Cliff For 3 Months'

Jill Carroll, after her release yesterday. (By Scott Peterson -- Christian Science Monitor Via Getty Images)

"You know that shelf?" she asked. She meant a mirror-backed knickknack cabinet in the entry of the Post house in Baghdad. For one reason or another, it had become a place to put photos of close friends killed over the nearly three years of war in Iraq.

The cabinet had three shelves. Two of the shelves already held a photo, both of them, coincidentally, of young women.

"I kept thinking about that shelf," Carroll said. "I didn't want to be that third shelf."

Post staffers had had the same thought. They removed the shelf and hid it the day after she was kidnapped.

One of Carroll's hardest days had been Wednesday, the day before her release, she said, when she broke down and cried hard, muffling the sound with her abaya in the room where she was being held. She prayed.

Coincidentally, her twin sister, Katie, appeared that same day on al-Arabiya television, saying it had been nearly two months since the last news or video of her sister. "I also hope that those with Jill have come to know her -- that they recognize what a wonderful person she is and realize that they can show the world that they are merciful to an innocent woman by returning her safely home to us,'' Katie Carroll said.

Hours later, Carroll's captors dropped her off in a Baghdad neighborhood, outside an office of the Iraqi Islamic Party. The politicians inside gave her juice, candy, water and tissues.

Composed, Carroll negotiated her way through the first of many politically laden conversations she would have Thursday, trying to stick to what she wanted and didn't want to say.

The party officials asked her to write out and sign a statement saying she had not been harmed in her brief time at their offices. They had her record a question-and-answer session on camera that they said was for their records. It showed up on television shortly afterward.

Party leader Tariq al-Hashimi presented her with an embossed Koran in a plush box. The Koran was for the true followers of Islam, Hashimi said, and he mentioned the Iraqi people. Accepting it, Carroll said her suffering was nothing compared with theirs.