HOSTAGE

Being a hostage is confusing: I couldn't work out if the kidnappers were my sworn enemies or misguided friends, and my opinion was in constant flux, allowing me no peace. I would analyze and second-guess every word, each gesture. Maybe the friendliness was just a means of control and I was being outsmarted. I was unsure how to measure the situation: Was it going well or badly? And they, too, seemed conflicted, uneasy about being hostage-takers. One guiltily told me it was against Islamic values, fretful about the impact this kidnapping would have on the purity of their cause.

So, one day I demanded to be set free. "We can all get in the car, drive to my hotel and forget about this," I said, seriously. Allawi smiled apologetically and explained it was not up to them, it was up to their bosses -- and that absence of control suddenly scared me.

At 2 a.m. on New Year's Eve my problems ended as suddenly as they had begun when U.S. soldiers burst into the room and, to their surprise as much as mine, found me handcuffed on the bed.

It was a routine raid; they had stumbled on the hideout by chance. No one, thankfully not even my parents who had been on vacation, knew I'd even gone missing. The video had never made it onto the television or Internet. It took time for me to realize I was safe, and I sat there, my hands still tied, shaking and cold. The American voices sounded unreal as one of the soldiers brought in bolt cutters to release the cuffs. I felt no overwhelming relief, no soaring elation, just mild pleasure and somber fatigue. It wasn't until I was in a helicopter being taken from my prison once and for all, that I felt a genuine smile break on my face. "Welcome aboard," the pilot said, and laughter welled in my throat.

Over the next days and weeks I learned more about the fate of the two men who were with me when I was kidnapped. My translator and friend, Salam, was taken hostage, too. Held separately from me, he was also found by the Americans, who treated him as a suspect. He endured six further weeks of custody in Abu Ghraib before being released. He talks of his time there as every bit as frightening as that spent with the mujaheddin.

My driver was apparently not a hostage, and investigators believe he may have delivered us to the insurgents. If so, I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he had no other choice -- perhaps his family had been threatened.

I harbor no hatred toward the people who kidnapped and threatened to kill me. There was, and still is, a mixture of fear, sorrow, fondness and anger in my sentiments. If I think about them now, in all likelihood suffering the misery of Abu Ghraib, I pity them. They are almost certainly being treated worse by their captors than I was by mine.

These feelings toward the mujaheddin have nothing to do with forgiveness: They were wrong to take me, wrong to hold me hostage. And I will never know for certain what they had in store for me. After freeing me, the Americans told me they found an orange jumpsuit and sword in the room next to mine. I long to look Allawi in the eye and ask him if he was planning to hurt me or allow me to be hurt. I suspect if so, it would have been nothing more personal than the bloody business of a war that is waged without rules.

It is now more than two months since my rescue, and the kidnapping has not profoundly changed my world. I do not view what happened through a religious prism, and it sparked no personal epiphany. I'm happy to be living still in the Middle East as a reporter. I don't have nightmares -- why should I? As a journalist working in Iraq I have seen worse happen to people. They have to live with loss and trauma every second of every day. I do not. I emerged unscathed. I was one of the lucky ones.

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Phil Sands is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for British GQ magazine.